#DMTBeautySpot #beauty

The story coming out of the 63rd Grammy Awards is about women. It’s the narrative that makes the Recording Academy and their choices look positive. I heard a morning show host exclaim, “What a night for the ladies!” One of the most popular Grammy recap headlines: “Who Run The Grammys? Women.” Of course, it’s a play on a Beyoncé song and also, presumably, a nod to Beyoncé becoming the winningest woman in Grammy history with 28 wins, tying legendary producer Quincy Jones and putting her 3 wins behind late conductor Georg Solti who has 31. The two biggest awards of the night, however, went to two white women: Taylor Swift and Billie Eilish, respectively. 

The morning after the Grammys, the 93rd Academy Award nominations were announced and again, the results were immediately touted as a win for women. For the first time, two women are nominated in the Best Director category. Viola Davis earned her fourth nomination for Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, making her the most nominated Black woman in Oscar history (in contrast, Meryl Streep has 21 noms). But, like most achievements awarded to Black women by notedly racist white institutions, these “historic” moments come with a caveat. These supposed victories for Black women who are now getting their due — from the same governing bodies that have historically overlooked and disrespected them — are more about the Grammys and the Oscars patting themselves on the back for “diversity” than they are about honoring Beyoncé or Viola Davis. It’s more about good publicity than it is about rightfully rewarding Black women — because if it were, Beyoncé would be a multiple Album of the Year winner, Megan Thee Stallion would have won Record of the Year, and Regina King would be a Best Director nominee. 

Does the Recording Academy not understand that Beyoncé is a historic winner despite their efforts, not because of them?

There were a few particularly cringey moments at the Grammys (which was an overall tightly produced and surprisingly entertaining show) but the one that stands out is when host Trevor Noah stopped Beyoncé and Megan Thee Stallion as they were walking off stage after accepting the Grammy for Best Rap Song. Standing beneath them, Noah triumphantly announced that Beyoncé had made Grammys history with the win. Beyoncé, who declined performing at the show and was rumored to be skipping the broadcast altogether, looked like she cared more about getting back to her little working lunch with her husband than the trivial milestone.

Sure, maybe Beyoncé was just uncomfortable because Virgos don’t like surprises, maybe she showed up just to support Megan Thee Stallion and didn’t want the attention, or maybe I’m projecting my disdain for the Recording Academy, which has yet to give Queen Bey its highest honor (AOTY), but it’s no secret that this awards show has not given her the accolades she deserves. How can someone be the most winning artist in a show’s history and be shut out of all of its major categories? Of Beyoncé’s 28 Grammy wins, only five of them have been  outside the R&B or “urban” groupings that Black artists are continually relegated to. And two of those wins are in the Music Video categories. Does the Recording Academy not understand that Beyoncé is a historic winner despite their efforts, not because of them? 

The same can be said about Viola Davis. She is the most nominated Black Actress in Hollywood history and yet, in a viral clip of Davis at a Women In The World conference I’m sure you’ve seen, Davis explains that even though she’s hailed as the “Black Meryl Streep,” she’s not paid what she’s worth or offered the roles she’s worth. She definitely doesn’t have Streep’s hardware. She’s only won one Supporting Actress Oscar. Halle Berry is still the first and only Black woman to win in the Best Actress category. That was 20 years ago. In the non-acting categories, only two Black women have ever won Oscars: Hannah Beachler for production design and Ruth E. Carter for costume design. Once again, when we pull back to examine the most coveted “best of the best” awards, Black women are barely represented if at all. A recognition for Regina King for Best Director for One Night In Miami could have changed that fact this year, but they decided that one woman of color in the category (Chloe Zhao for Nomadland) was enough progress for one year. 

Davis “making history” at this year’s Oscars isn’t a win for women, and certainly not for Black women. And even though there are other big banner moments for diversity in the nominations (the most Asian actors nominated, the first Pakistani actor nominated, and the first time two Asian-led films are up for Best Picture), celebrating these superficial accolades without critique does a disservice to the structural issues that are still entrenched in these organizations — and those issues are the worse for Black women. 

These organizations — the Recording Academy and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences — do not deserve to be exalted for the exceptions they made in the past 24 hours.

These organizations — the Recording Academy and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences — do not deserve to be exalted for the exceptions they made in the past 24 hours. Especially when those exceptions are lauded as progress, rather than simply, the facts. Beyoncé and Viola Davis are two of the greatest artists in their respective fields, the GOATs in my personal opinion, and they are still underappreciated by these white institutions that use their wins or nominations for clout (the Grammys conveniently televised Beyoncé’s solo Best R&B Performance win for Black Parade when most of the rest of the “urban” categories were relegated to the pre-show) without actually leveling the playing field or making any real structural changes. It’s why every year we question the relevance of these shows, or why there’s an inevitable thread about divesting from these institutions because “representation won’t save us.” It won’t, and in a perfect world, we could burn both organizations down and say f-ck your table, we’re building our own! but it’s not a perfect world. The tables are still very much assigned, and the seating charts are labelled by the same gatekeepers who greenlight projects and hand out record deals. Demanding equity in the field in which you work does not mean you are succumbing to seeking validation from your oppressor. It just means that along with attempting to dismantle every aspect of white supremacy, we’re pushing for the representation and recognition owed to Black artists. Representation is just one step on the long ladder of liberation.

Neither Beyoncé, nor Megan Thee Stallion, Viola Davis or Regina King need these awards, but if the governing bodies are going to aggrandize themselves in the name of faux feminism and ride on the PR high of celebrating “history-making women,” they should examine their own histories of exclusion. The Grammys shouldn’t need Billie Eilish and her white guilt to awkwardly point out how messed up it is that “Savage” didn’t win, and the Academy should know better than to boast about nominating Viola Thee Davis for only two more awards in her entire career than Scarlett Johannson got in one year, or for nominating Mank over literally anything, but especially One Night In Miami. 

As Beyonce proved last night by showing up late to collect her awards and casually making history, if these awards shows don’t wake up, they are rightfully going to get exactly what they’re giving us – absolutely nothing.

Like what you see? How about some more R29 goodness, right here?

Beyoncé Just Casually Broke Another Grammy Record

Viola Davis Deserves So Much More From Hollywood

The 2021 Oscars Nominations Made History

DMTBeautySpot

via https://www.DMTBeautySpot.com

Kathleen Newman-Bremang, Khareem Sudlow

#DMTBeautySpot #beauty

There were gasps on gasps. Bombshell after bombshell. Enough explosive comments to keep the world rapt and Twitter ablaze for two straight hours. And yet, after all the incendiary revelations, it was a moment near the end of Meghan Markle and Prince Harry’s sit down with Oprah Winfrey that hit me hardest. 

As she wrapped things up, Winfrey asked the couple if they have any regrets. 

“My regret is believing them when they said I would be protected,” Markle replied gravely. “I regret believing that because I think had I really seen that that wasn’t happening, I would have been able to do more. But I think I wasn’t supposed to see it; I wasn’t supposed to know.” 

And there it is. There’s a lot to unpack here, but first, let’s state the obvious: Markle is right that she wasn’t supposed to be aware of “The Firm” or the royal family’s alleged reluctance to support her like she was one of their own. An institution built on colonialism and racism that publicly prides itself on decency and decorum not only thrives on their bigotry being wielded in secret —  it depends on it. 

Based on everything we know about this institution, I’m sure they were banking on Markle’s blind trust in the monarchy. I’m sure they were expecting that they could use her, hang her out to dry in the press, leave her unprotected and that despite it all, she would lower her head and stay silent, like a good servant. But the counter to that, of course, is how Markle herself could have been so oblivious to the long history and the precedent proving that a divorced Black American woman marrying into this family would not be warmly embraced? How could she not know? And how could she have believed them? 

It’s easy to critique Markle as someone who would have ignorantly upheld an archaic and notedly racist establishment if they had just been nicer to her, but that fails to acknowledge how many Black people (especially ones who look like Markle) cling to whiteness and hold onto faith in institutions that have historically harmed us right up until the inevitable moment they let us down. 

Markle’s proximity to whiteness couldn’t save her from the royal family’s commitment to anti-Blackness

For many, that moment comes early: when a teacher assumes the worst in you for no other reason than you’re Black; the first time you’re pulled over by police; or when a parent lays out the structural and damaging ways in which whiteness works. For Markle, it sounds like that moment of realization came in her thirties, when she decided to marry a prince. Call it naïveté or willful ignorance — you can also call it generations of conditioning to not only revere, but expect more from these white institutions. Throughout the Oprah interview, it became clear to me that the past few years have likely been the first time Markle has been faced up close with the reality that white supremacy is the foundation of certain systems, and that whether you call yourself “biracial” instead of “Black” or say and do the “right” things, speak the “right” way, or have “good hair,” you are not immune to its oppression. Yes, Meghan Markle is light-skinned. She is the most palatable kind of Black woman — a fact that might even be related to why she was deemed desirable enough to date by Prince Harry — and still, even Markle’s proximity to whiteness couldn’t save her from the royal family’s commitment to anti-Blackness. What got her into the family (her “acceptable” Blackness and beauty) is also the reason she was forced out of it. 

In the exhaustive analysis of the Oprah/Meghan/Harry interview that is sure to come in the following weeks, I would bet that we’re going to hear about Markle’s plights as they relate to All Black Women. Some of those connections will be a stretch. Some of them will rest on a tired surface-level “representation matters” refrain (one that Markle herself reinforced when she talked about visiting little girls in the Commonwealth) that does not apply when the representation is in a collective that literally colonized a bunch of Black countries. For dark-skinned Black women, the Meghan Markle discourse may even be eye-roll inducing because, no, Markle’s experience with racism by the UK tabloids and by members of the royal staff and family are not the same as the reality of all Black women, who exist without her power, privilege and light skin. But Markle’s experience, as she told Oprah, just reinforces the notion that the imperialism of the British royalty is strong and unafraid to invoke pain and suffering on people of color, specifically Black people, and specifically dark-skinned Black people, around the world as they see fit. Markle’s experience is not the same as so many Black women who don’t have to imagine what would have happened if she were darker because we live in that truth every day. But the specifics of her story are still all-too familiar. 

When Markle spoke of the “turning point” in her relationship with the family —  an incident where she says her sister-in-law Kate Middleton made her cry, and which was then spun by the press into stories about Markle wreaking havoc on Middleton eliciting her purported tears—  I was reminded of every instance I’ve had in a workplace where a white woman weaponized her feelings against me. Markle’s alleged interactions with the Duchess of Cambridge weren’t shocking to me because I’ve seen them play out in real time. I’ve watched the innocent white girl get the benefit of the doubt, while her feelings are validated and coddled, and on the other end, there is the Black villain, a bitch by birth. As Markle defended her sister-in-law as a “good person,” she  also chastised the press’s depiction of them as rivals. “If you love her, you don’t need to hate me,” she said. But that’s exactly how the narrative has played out, and will continue to, in the press. Markle served up this delicious piece of gossip that could be dismissed as a simple spat between sisters-in-law over bridesmaids dresses at a wedding, but it’s actually an alleged example of how the world protects white women and allows them to be “bullies” without repercussions, while the same grace is not afforded to women of colour. 

Markle admitted to Oprah that she entered into the royal family “naively.” Early into the jaw-dropping interview, Markle explained that she didn’t know she had to curtsy in front of the Queen of England in private and that she had to furiously Google the lyrics of the British national anthem. (Maybe she should have Googled “the royal family’s history of colonialism” instead.) She spoke of etiquette cues she missed because of her cultural differences as an American. But her wide-eyed inexperience isn’t just about deep curtsies or bungled royal protocol, it’s also about her son Archie and his future sister. In the moment that left Oprah speechless and gave us a “What?” gif that will live in infamy, Markle says members of the royal family were “concerned” about how dark Archie’s skin would be. (This was also the moment I was ready to roll up on Buckingham Palace and throw hands myself). Later, Prince Harry corroborated the account but refused to name who dared to say this horrendously racist thing about an infant. 
The anecdote about Archie’s skin is heinously and undoubtedly racist, but it’s still not surprising. There’s a difference. Gail King asked Oprah on CBS This Morning in a debrief of the interview whether she was shocked that the racist incident happened, or whether she was surprised that Harry and Meghan shared the moment with her. Oprah said it was the latter. After all, Oprah is a Black woman in America. Anti-Black racism isn’t shocking anymore, but it is still disappointing. And though it may be naive to remain optimistic about white institutions and how they will treat us, we do it every day when we go to work, or go to the polls, or when we hold onto the belief that protection is something Black women deserve too. But as Oprah always says, quoting the late  Maya Angelou:  “When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.”

Like what you see? How about some more R29 goodness, right here?

Harry & Meghan's Interview Was Truly Shocking

Meghan Markle's New Look Included An Ode To Diana

Megyn Kelly & Piers Morgan Enter The Markle Chat

DMTBeautySpot

via https://www.DMTBeautySpot.com

Kathleen Newman-Bremang, Khareem Sudlow

#DMTBeautySpot #beauty

Nearly three decades separate activists Janaya Future Khan and Ilyasah Shabazz, but they are bonded by the same goal: Black liberation. Shabazz was just a toddler when her father, civil rights icon Malcolm X, was assassinated in 1965 (in the presence of Shabazz, her pregnant mother and three of her sisters). She’s since devoted her life as an educator, motivational speaker, and author to preserving her father’s legacy. 

It’s a legacy that has inspired Khan at every step of their work with Black Lives Matter (they are one of the faces of the movement internationally and a co-founder of the Canadian chapter), and though his death came years before Khan was born, it’s undeniable that Malcolm X’s spirit lives on through the work of the charismatic, outspoken leader. Khan’s “Sunday Sermons” Instagram series has been hailed by Vogue as “the place where political action and spiritual liberation meet.” Every week, the Toronto-born, LA-based organizer tackles topics you could imagine Malcolm X approaching with the same fervor, reverence and urgency if he was an activist with an Instagram account in 2021.

Over Zoom from her New York home, Shabazz states that her father is quoted “53,7000 times per hour on social media,” and it doesn’t come as a shock to Khan, who has “poured over every page” of X’s autobiography and has quoted the trailblazer themself. As a queer, gender-nonconforming social-justice educator and millennial, Khan may seem to stand in stark contrast to Shabazz, an adjunct professor of the Baby boomer generation, but their rapport comes easy and is clearly based on a mutual respect and admiration. 

While listening to Khan and Shabazz speak, it’s hard not to think of the unfortunate parallels between the two movements — the civil rights era and Black Lives Matter — and how much work there still is to be done. If you pay attention to Twitter, the generations are seemingly in constant opposition. This Black History Month, we’re looking back as much as we look forward in order to acknowledge that the past and future cannot exist without one another. Change is slow. Movements are long. And the fight for liberation is laborious no matter how old you are, which is why we brought these two extraordinary thought leaders together to cut through the discourse and have a real talk about progress, purpose, and finding peace in activism. 

In an intimate conversation that will leave you inspired, comforted and, at times, emotional, Khan and Shabazz talk about Malcolm X’s legacy, the benefits and pitfalls of social media, and how they each stay motivated to keep fighting.

Janaya Future Khan: “I read about Malcolm X’s work. I get to have my own interpretations and create my own idea of who he was and what he meant, but I don’t have to live in the legacy or feel the weight of it. How has being his daughter shaped you as a person?” 

Ilyasah Shabazz: “It is who I’ve always been. I’m so grateful to my mother [Betty Shabazz]  because she was a young woman when she witnessed her husband being assassinated. A week earlier, her home had been firebombed. This was a young couple. My mother was in her late 20s. Her husband was 39 years old. They had babies, and she was pregnant. I usually look back on her life not from the perspective of a daughter, but just looking at this young sister who was partners with Malcolm X and the wife of a man who challenged the government that had been historically unjust to its own people. 

I’m grateful that she raised us in a bubble of love. She made sure that we loved who we were as women, as people of the African diaspora, and as Muslims. Growing up, I never really felt the pressure because it was easy to just be me. When I went to college, people started saying, “You’re Malcolm X’s daughter.” And I’m like, Whoa, what’s that? I remember calling my oldest sister and saying, ‘What am I supposed to do?’ She said, ‘You don’t have to pass the test to be Malcolm’s daughter, you already are.’ I always translate that for other people; if you can look in the mirror and like who you are, that’s all that matters.”

JFK: “That’s right.”

IS: “I know that the Black Lives Matter movement began out of compassion, passion, and a Facebook post. What your generation has that my father didn’t have, and I didn’t have, is the ability to touch a button and communicate with people all around the world. Janaya, how have you used social media as a tool to organize all of this great work that you’re doing today?”

JFK: “Social media is tough. I don’t have an easy relationship with it. We have seen through social media the birth of mass mobilizations in quicker succession than we ever have. We went from [the] Occupy [movement], which was just the very beginning of what that mass mobilization could look like, to Black Lives Matter, to Standing Rock, to the Women’s March, to No Muslim Ban, to Parkland and #MeToo. All of these movements have been really organized and galvanized around social media. To that, I feel energized, but what it’s also allowed for is organizing on the other side in unprecedented ways. For example, the attack on the Capitol is a result of social media.”

“While we have been able to organize ourselves in a particular way, so have far right and far right extremism with far more allowance than protesters for Black liberation have ever experienced. Social media has made life so vastly different than anything that I think we as people, as humans could have ever imagined. I think that the implications of this time on us, on our psyche, and on our organizing has yet to be seen. I’m grateful for [social media]. But if I’m being 100% transparent, I’m also a little terrified of what it means for the future us.”

IS: “And what do you think it means? To me, it seems like so many young people were politicized through direct actions, protests and marches this past summer because of the global pandemic and the negligence of a failing administration. I thought that it was really a good wake up call — not that we needed the wake up call, but it seemed that so many others did. This youth movement attracted global support in 50 states for the first time, then 18 countries abroad, where people actually got involved. I would go running in the morning and I would see these makeshift signs around my community that said ‘Black Lives Matter.’ And it was just so beautiful.”

JFK: “There were signs everywhere that said “Black Lives Matter.” It was on walls. It was on shirts. It was on signs on people’s lawns. As small as those things are, and I know a lot of pure leftists will have critiques on this, but I love it. I love it because it’s a connection. And once there’s a connection you can turn that into a commitment.” 

IS: “Absolutely. It’s important to retain this generation with information. My father is quoted 53,7000 times per hour on social media. And young people are discovering whatever it was they were learning in classes was inaccurate.” 

JFK: “That’s right. I, like millions of people, have read Alex Haley and your father’s collaboration on The Autobiography of Malcolm X and poured over every page. There’s a period of time that tends to be less the focus, and that’s where he’s in prison. I know that your new book [The Awakening of Malcolm X] really focuses on those adolescent years that get swept over for what he became, not how he became. Why is that period of time so important to you to capture now?”

IS: “In 2012, the U.S spent 81 billion taxpayer dollars on correction facilities. Since 1970, the incarcerated population has increased 700%, and this is what is happening to our young people. For me, it was about first recognizing why Malcolm went to prison — the society in which we live and how it’s been designed — and to show that this was Malcolm at 16-years-old. He wasn’t a grown man. He was assassinated at 39. He was a very young man when he lived his life and made this long-lasting impact. I wanted to make sure that we focused on the humanity of these young people who are being incarcerated. Bryan Stevenson said, ‘We will not be judged on how we treat the rich and the celebrated. We will be judged on how we treat the poor and the incarcerated.’”

“[My father] was the head of the debate team while in this prison. He was always a smart young man, because of values instilled in him by his parents. I want to make sure young people understand that you don’t go to jail and miraculously become Malcolm X. You go to jail and become Malcolm X because of your foundation and village, and we have to fortify that village.”

JFK: “Yes, that’s right.” 

IS: “I want to ask you about the discourse online about the differences between how the previous generations approach Black liberation and how young people approach the Black liberation movement. The stereotype is that young people are more radical. And that elders aren’t. So tell me, do you think this is true?”

JFK: “I’ll say this: I’m a millennial. And at this point, I don’t understand half the things that Gen Z says on social media. There are different cultural cues. Gen Z has a lot of critiques about us. Social media changes things so quickly these days so that the discourse changes and evolves. Half the time, millennials aren’t radical enough for Gen Z in the same way that we think that Boomers and Gen X-ers aren’t nearly as radical as we are. I’m less interested in who is more radical. I think it’s about picking up where the other generation left off and continuing to march forward. I think that’s exactly what we’re supposed to do. There can be frustrations that we’re not as far as we should be, but here’s the question: how much of that are we going to put on oppressed people? And how much are we going to put on the actual system that shapes what norms and the status quo are?” 

“Black Lives Matter is a movement that is largely led by women and queer and trans people, and that is on purpose. There have been a lot of civil rights heads and people who came before us who said, “You’re not neat enough. You don’t dress the part. Why are you bringing sexuality and gender into things?” And there was a lot of criticism and resistance from mainstream media that desperately wanted a singular male voice that we just refused to give them. They wanted someone where they could say, “You’re the new Malcolm X. You’re the new [Nelson] Mandela. You’re the new Martin  [Luther King Jr.].” Have we met people who are from what could be considered “the old guard” who have nothing but critiques without care to offer? Yes. And I know that from my generation, there’s a belief that folks in the civil rights era couldn’t tolerate queerness and couldn’t tolerate gender and sexuality. As much as I believe those things to be true, I also know that society can’t tolerate those things either and they both have to shift. I wonder if I could have been a leader at that time in the ’60s and ’70s as I am? Probably not.”

IS: “Why not?”

JFK: “I believe in my personal power. It took a long time to get here, but I do. It has to be political power, though. Martin, for example, wasn’t just someone who came about from nowhere. Martin was chosen. He was chosen by a group of very sharp, smart, sophisticated Black women who knew what the heck they were doing. They looked at his looks, his charm, and the way that he spoke. There was a whole administration in that movement that designed that. And still it was a very misogynist movement. We saw that also happen in the Black Panther Party where Black women were pushed to the side because of things like patriarchy and misogyny. And we’re not even talking about within the realm of sexuality. I know that time it would be hard and damn-near impossible for me to hold the same kind of weight today that I do now if I were in that time, because so many the systems would be conspiring against me in a way that was completely normalized and embraced, even by our movements. There was a belief that women should be left behind and that queer, LGBTQ people should be quiet.” 

“I think in this generation it’s simply not possible for [queer people] to be on the side. But in terms of those philosophical shifts, have you seen major changes happen around things like gender, inclusion, and sexuality? What do you think still needs to happen?”

IS: “I know that my father said that we are not discriminated against because we’re Christians, because we’re Jewish, because we’re women, because we’re gay, or because we’re straight. We’re discriminated against because we’re Black. And I think that what happens is we somehow allow these divisive tactics to continue to prevent us from going forward. To me, it’s a distraction. When we focus as my father said on what we have in common and what the ultimate goal is — to rid this bigotry and this terroristic system that exists — we can do it. But it just seems that we keep getting distracted by all of these things that don’t matter. At the end of the day, Black power is not exclusionary. It simply says that we’re demanding our place in the human family.”

“In the 1950s when my father came onto the human rights scene and you had young people marching, demonstrating, protesting for a quality existence, Malcolm came along and said, ‘Look, we demand our human rights as your brother, we demand our human rights ordained by God.’ We’re not focusing on the things that don’t matter. If we stand around and squabble over what differences we have instead of what we have in common, we’re missing the damn boat. At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter. Because we are not accomplishing the goal that is intergenerational. It is those who precede us that make these significant accomplishments for us. We stand on their shoulders. So we have to embrace them.”

JFK: “I think there are a couple of things that you laid out there that are so important. One is the misrepresentation of Malcolm X’s stance. I can tell you personally that people have manipulated your father’s words to try to shut me up, to say that I de-legitimized the movement. And there has been a lot of rejection of Black Lives Matter from cis straight Black men. They don’t want to follow us. They think that we represent the demise of the Black family. That is what happens when we accept the conditions of a colonial imagination. When we accept these ideas as if they were our own. I think that’s what we’re fighting overall.”

“We’re fighting the idea that we’re all born into a script and there is a singular way to live, and a singular way of understanding each other, and a singular way of doing things. If we accept a couple of those conditions, you’re accepting all the other ones too. To accept that I should not exist because I’m queer or because I’m trans, it is the very same logic that says that Black people should not exist for the simple reason that they are Black.”

IS: “If anything, that is what was imposed on us. It’s the psychological scars and the post-traumatic syndrome of slavery that Dr. Joy DeGruy talks about.”

JFK: “That’s right. And there is a weight that only a Black woman can know when it comes to carrying our people forward. I think of Zora Neale Hurston, and I’ll adjust language just a little bit, but she said, ‘the Negro woman is the mule of the world,’ and there are moments where I look at you and I look at Bernice King, I think of Mama Harriet [Tubman], Rosa [Parks], and Angela Davis. We look to you all constantly for answers. You are our answer. You are meant to be the moral compass of the world while you carry the entire weight of it. So, what do you do to stay afloat, to keep going, to be inspired, or just to get by?”

IS: “Having lost my father the way we did, or my mother, I’ve always been grateful for the self-love that my mother made sure that I had. And so when I first started tutoring young girls in a group home facility, I had to figure out what I was seeing. I had not been familiar with young people who didn’t love themselves. And who didn’t have that light about life. And so I always felt that we needed a better educational [system], that every child should have the opportunity to know that they’re worthy of love and that they’re worthy of a quality education. They’re worthy to participate in mainstream society in any way they desire. What keeps me going is knowing that it’s adults’ responsibility to ensure that all children have these things.”

JFK: “I was one of those group home kids. That’s where I spent high school and it was not easy. I didn’t have someone like you. It made life in moments unbearable because everything that you see in the world is telling you a story that cannot possibly make sense. It’s unfathomable for a child to reckon with the fact that they mean nothing. It fundamentally reorganizes your insides and you can spend a lifetime trying to collect the pieces of you back again. If it were not for this work that we’re talking about, and the ability for me to find these histories and our people in books, which is where I found refuge, I may not be here. It took me a lot longer to find mentorship. And even still that mentorship was largely in the imagination I created from the works of people like your father. He stood in that absence.”

IS: “When I look at you, I just see just dynamism. I see greatness, and you make me feel very proud. When I look at young children, that’s what I want to give, because it’s how my mother made sure I was programmed. I’m grateful to my ancestors. There’s lots of peace here when I think of the next generation.” 

“Malcolm said it would be this young generation who would recognize that those in power have misused power and that change was going to be made, and they would be willing to roll up their sleeves and make that happen. This is something that I see you doing through your work, and I’m really quite proud of it. I’m proud of you. But I’m also protective. What do you do to sustain yourself? Because I know this work is challenging.”

JFK: “I box. I miss my boxing club. That was the hardest thing. That was my therapy. I do [talk] therapy as well, and that’s helpful, but the body remembers and internalizes things very differently than the mind and the spirit. Being physically active is very, very important to me. I actually have a heavy bag stuck in the concrete out back so I can just get out there and have that catharsis.”

“It’s also really about the community for me. I have been privileged enough to be able to open my mouth after years of not knowing how to, after never knowing what to say. And I’ve been privileged enough to be able to find that [voice] and to speak. And I’m lucky enough that, for whatever reason, sometimes people want to listen. I’ll never squander that. I feel like I owe a great debt to the world and I never ever want to squander a moment of it. When I feel my most melancholic and I just want to lay down on the floor and look up at the ceiling in an existential crisis, I give myself 10 minutes or so to do that. And then I remember that I still owe too much, and there’s still more work to be done.”

IS: “It always goes back to the work. That’s what matters. My father was organized and strategic as he made sure that everyone understood the ultimate goal, that what we had in common was going to keep us together. You focus on your goal and do not give energy to the things and the people that don’t matter. I look forward to having more conversations and figuring out how we can accomplish some of these goals that you and I both have. It has been such a pleasure to talk to you. You can call on me anytime. I’m always here.” 

JFK:  “Thank you so much.”

This conversation has been edited for clarity and length. 

R29Unbothered continues its look at Black culture’s tangled history of Black identity, beauty, and contributions to the culture. In 2021, we’re giving wings to our roots, learning and unlearning our stories, and celebrating where Black past, present and future meet.

Like what you see? How about some more R29 goodness, right here?

Life After Black Squares: Who Kept Their Promises?

Police Are Killing Black People At A Higher Rate

A Letter From Unbothered On Black History Month

DMTBeautySpot

via https://www.DMTBeautySpot.com

Kathleen Newman-Bremang, Khareem Sudlow

#DMTBeautySpot #beauty

This post contains spoilers for Malcolm & Marie, now streaming on Netflix. 

A few minutes into Netflix’s Malcolm & Marie, Marie, played by Zendaya, warns her tipsy boyfriend on the verge of another tirade. “I promise you, nothing productive is going to be said tonight,” she says exasperated. In a different film, this line may have been a relatable, self-aware observation about the exhaustive nature of fighting with your long-term partner into the wee hours of the morning. In writer-director Sam Levinson’s tedious vanity project about a couple yelling at each other for two hours, it serves as a laughable foreshadowing of the script to come.

When Malcolm & Marie was first announced in July, it sounded like a promising salve from the pandemic in the form of a mysterious, pared-down, beautiful film starring Levinson’s Euphoria collaborator and muse, Zendaya, and John David Washington (both are also producers). The combination of two of the brightest Black talents in Hollywood and a secret project shot during the pandemic that didn’t involve Zoom recordings was enough to get our hopes up. Sexy Black couple squabbling in a confined space? Sign us up. But what Levinson delivers is not what was advertised. And even Zendaya’s extraordinary talent (she manages to be riveting throughout a film that is mostly unwatchable) can’t elevate the material to anything remotely worthy of her magnetism. As for Washington, his character Malcolm is such a reprehensible human that it’s hard to tell if it’s his performance that is lacking or if the bigger problem is what he’s been given to work with. Malcolm is basically the incarnation of that gif of Denzel Washington, his dad, pounding his fist on a table — but meaner, louder, and more insufferable. 

It gets worse. Not only is the script unworthy of its talent, Malcolm & Marie is barely about Malcolm and Marie. Instead, it’s a screechy commentary on the value (or lack thereof, in Levinson’s opinion) of film criticism and what it means to be a Black director in modern-day Hollywood… written by a white man. Levinson tried his best to render what we do obsolete but as two writers who critique films, and as women (one Black, one white), we have some things to get off our chests after watching this film. 

What was your overall reaction to Malcolm & Marie?

Kathleen Newman-Bremang: Frustration. And “great gowns, beautiful gowns.” 

Anne Cohen: It was really exhausting to watch. And it was way too long. 

What expectations did you have going in? How did it differ from what you had in mind?

AC: I expected hot people in a beautiful house having a big fight about their relationship. I would have been all here for that. But the insertion of all this preachy pontification is distracting and takes away from what was fundamentally an interesting concept. Just the fact that it stars Zendaya and John David Washington, two Black actors in this unbelievable house, wearing these unbelievable costumes, that in itself makes a statement. You don’t have to say the statement.

KNB: It really hit me the first time Malcolm goes on one of his tirades about race. And my whole body just deflated. I thought, oh, this is just going to be Sam Levinson going off. Oh no. I wanted to see two fine ass Black people arguing because that’s how it was sold to me. It’s not set in quarantine, but if you’re in a relationship and you’ve been in lockdown with your partner, you’ve probably been fighting. That’s relatable. I wanted to watch a cathartic two hours of these two people digging in deep about the troubles in their relationship. That is not what we got. We got a toxic man yelling at a woman partially about their relationship but mostly just lecturing her — and us — about racism in the film industry. 

 First of all, Black people don’t sit around talking about white people and what they think of us that much. We just don’t.

Kathleen Newman-Bremang

What starts out as a fight specifically about Malcolm and Marie’s relationship turns into a broad conversation about race in Hollywood. Did you buy it?

KNB: First of all, Black people don’t sit around talking about white people and what they think of us that much. We just don’t. There’s a difference between popping off on Twitter about white gatekeepers and systemic oppression in the industry in which you work and how that can manifest in awards or criticism, and going home to yell at your Black partner about it for hours. They have this massive conversation where Malcolm is basically screaming about the state of film criticism and his place as a Black man in this world to Marie, but through a white lens. It just did not feel real. At all.

AC: A similar example of this to me is X-Men: Dark Phoenix — which was written and directed by a man, there was this line in it where they made Jennifer Lawrence say, “By the way, the women are always saving the men around here. You might want to think about changing the name to X-Women” I remember sitting in the theater just being like, What? That’s not how women talk to each other. We’re not like, “Fuck the patriarchy!” at every brunch. 

KNB: It also felt like a lot of these conversations didn’t play out the way a couple who had been together for five years would be talking to each other. First of all, if my partner started in on an exhausting late-night diatribe about the state of the world, I’d be like, “I’ve heard you go on this rant before. Shut up.”

How do you feel about Sam Levinson, a white man, writing this script for Black actors? Did it feel like he was just using them as mouthpieces for his personal grievances? 

KNB: This was the most egregious offense. He’s preaching about “identity politics” and how film critiques about authenticity can affect Black creators… as a white man. The sheer caucacity of this script is astounding. Sam Levinson needed to save these opinions for his therapist or his journal, or troll a Twitter account — whatever he needed to do to get these egocentric, careless and frankly embarrassing thoughts off his chest, hiring Black actors to say them to try to shield himself from criticism was not the move. To paraphrase Toni Morrison, “Take us out of it.” 

So much of the script felt like an essay written by a disgruntled fan boy on Reddit — but one without a thesis. 

AC: Malcolm does make some points, but they don’t hit right. “Who gets to make what” is a good conversation that we never get to see because he’s being so defensive: Malcolm makes the argument that anybody can make a movie about anything. I think that, by proxy, we can extrapolate that Sam Levinson is telling us, “I can make a movie about Black people, and that’s fine. You can’t criticize it.”

KNB: Is it about Black people, though? How much of Malcolm’s or Marie’s interior and depth do we really get to see? Malcolm says, “Not everything I do is political just because I’m Black,” which I guess is a valid thing to say, but also, is it? Sam Levinson can’t make that point and then turn a movie that could have just been about a Black couple and their argument into political commentary. He did that. No one else forced that onto his film. 

If he was trying to make a point about how much people project onto movies just because Black people are starring in them or have made them especially because of the moment that we’re in (white critics love to say “this movie is so timely” about literally anything with a Black person in it these days), he didn’t do that. He took certain topics that could’ve been really interesting and that we do need to be having conversations about and twisted them into a defensive, neurotic, mansplain-y mess. 

The film has A Lot to say about film criticism. What did you think about that?

AC: All of his whining about film criticism are also clearly directed at one person who trashed one of his films. A woman reviewed his film Assassination Nation for the LA Times and did not like it. What annoys me most about his stances on film criticism is that he thinks that he’s punching up when, actually, he’s punching down. He’s the son of a director. He has a position in Hollywood that’s basically guaranteed.To center the discussion around film criticism on a woman — when women’s opinions are already discounted so deeply as critics — feels intentional and vindictive.

KNB: There were times in that script where it seemed like he was trying to critique white feminism and give commentary on how certain liberal white women try to dominate certain conversations about race — which is a valid point to make — but he failed. All he did was tear apart this one woman critic and her opinions and try to invalidate the very existence of film criticism, which is actually the thing that keeps a lot of the issues of systemic racism in Hollywood in check. Black women critics like Soraya McDonald and Angelica Bastien give thoughtful, beautiful critiques and make us think about film in a different way. Their writing is essential to this industry. 

One of our colleagues asked, “Who is this movie for?” and I think that’s such a crucial question. As I was watching this movie as a Black woman I thought, Okay, clearly I’m not the audience. It seems like the audience is a white audience, one that needs to be told about racism or to be told how a Black director potentially feels about them watching his work.

What annoys me most about his stances on film criticism is that he thinks that he’s punching up when, actually, he’s punching down.

anne cohen

AC: But which white audience? I’m a white woman film critic and it doesn’t speak to me at all. As I was watching this movie, I was like, OK, Sam Levinson. You’re going to explain how women view the world? No. Do we deserve to have a discussion about certain topics? Sure. We are not immune to criticism, but should that criticism come from this guy? You’re the dude who’s going to tell me what’s wrong with what I do? I think this movie is really for white men. 

KNB: If we boil it down and this movie is supposed to be for white men, the problem is a) making a movie starring two Black actors for white dudes and b) even under that problematic premise, he didn’t even make a good movie!

Did the script make any valid points about racism in Hollywood? 

KNB: Sam needed a Black woman to be co-writer. He needed somebody to come in and check him on all the blind spots that he has that were so apparent in this movie. To me, this was a white dude who feels like he has a pass because he has a Black friend in Zendaya. 

We’re not disqualifying Zendaya’s contributions to the film as a producer — arguably the best part of it — but if she was in there adding in notes and collaborating on the script as Sam has said, that’s not the same as her being an equal to him as a co-writer with the freedom to say, “No, they wouldn’t talk like this.” There’s a power imbalance since he is the director/writer/producer. And if Zendaya did contribute significantly to the script, then they invalidated her by not crediting her. They pulled a Malcolm and didn’t thank Marie properly.

Did he render any critique of the film impossible? 

KNB: I mean, as a critic, I’m sitting here in this conversation saying this movie is inauthentic thinking, well, he’s just going to say I’m a dumb critic calling it inauthentic.

AC: That’s what annoys me most about this movie: If you’re going to engage in a real conversation about film criticism, there’s a lot to say. I just don’t know that Sam Levinson’s the person to lead it.

Let’s talk about the conversation around Zendaya and John David Washington’s age difference. Was it a distraction? 

AC: I actually don’t think a 12-year age gap is unrealistic. It makes sense in the context of the story. I could see someone like Marie in her early 20s, meeting this guy and feeling like she needs validation from him and wants to contribute to his process — especially if she is trying to build her identity as an artist wanting to feel like she has as much relevance as he does in the relationship in terms of creative output. That’s a real dynamic, but because the film doesn’t really focus on that all that much, you’re left stewing about the age gap. Cool, another representation of a young, hot love interest and older man. 

KNB: I also think that any conversation of the age gap would have gone away if Levinson had just written it in. If Malcolm had just said, “You met me when I was 20 years old and you were 32 or whatever and you took advantage of me.” Put that in the script.

AC: They could’ve acknowledged that they are a walking Hollywood cliché. The fact that this whole press tour has been Zendaya having to justify that she’s a “grown up” woman because they never address their ages in the movie is so weird to me.

KNB: I just feel like Sam Levinson didn’t do her any favors here. Because if he had written it into the script, she could be like, “Our age difference is part of the story. Just go watch the movie” to any backlash. 

Was there a specific scene that did resonate with you?

KNB: The mac and cheese scene. Marie says something like, “You’re fully eating that whole mac and cheese while we’re fighting?” That, to me, felt like a real moment, where potentially you’d be in the kitchen having a fight with your man and he would be fucking eating and you’d be like, “How?” I did laugh at that scene. 

AC: It’s the fact that he went back for a second helping mid-fight for me. 

KNB: Yes. That detail was good, which is why the rest of the movie is even more infuriating. Give me more moments like that! I liked when there were glimpses of their chemistry, like when Marie is mimicking how white people talk and Malcolm is belly laughing. Any moments that revealed Marie’s backstory of addiction and rehab were interesting, but we didn’t get a lot of that. 

AC: I saw Malcolm as every asshole I had a crush on when I was like 22. If a woman had written this story, it would have had a different ending. 

KNB: She should have left his ass.

Like what you see? How about some more R29 goodness, right here?

"Malcolm & Marie" Trailer Shows A Couple At War

Watch Out, World — Zendaya's "Grown" Now

Law Roach’s Costumes Shine In Malcolm & Marie

DMTBeautySpot

via https://www.DMTBeautySpot.com

Kathleen Newman-Bremang, Khareem Sudlow

#DMTBeautySpot #beauty

For years, I’ve had a complicated relationship with Black History Month.
 This year, “complicated” isn’t strong enough of a word. It’s more like I’m prematurely exhausted and annoyed. I’m mentally preparing myself for 28 days of #BlackoutTuesday, aka performative, hollow gestures masquerading as allyship. At the same time, I’m also — call it naive optimism — hopeful. 

My boss, Chelsea Sanders, the VP of Unbothered, described her feelings on this month as “anxiety-tinged enthusiasm” and I think that perfectly sums it up. 

On one hand, as a Black woman in media, I’m never more in demand than I am in February. I’m asked to speak on panels (now, it’s the virtual kind). I’ve been asked to give talks to impressionable teenagers at my old high school, where I was once a confused young girl surrounded by kids who didn’t look like me. In the moments when I’ve gotten to look out at a 16-year-old Black teen and make her feel less alone, I’ve loved Black History Month. 

But this year, after a worldwide racial reckoning, the brutal killing of Black men and women by police, and terrifying displays of white supremacy, I just know this Black History Month is going to hit different. For better or for worse. 

The month has almost always been about paying tribute to the history of Black people in North America — a history that is full of pain or stories of extraordinary human beings whose contributions to the fabric of this nation are overlooked and ignored (Black trauma or excellence — no in between). So, in the past, while it was nice to feel wanted every February, I wondered why I didn’t feel as wanted every other month. I wondered why I wasn’t worthy enough to speak to Black girls who were just like me in September or October. I wondered why the achievements of Black people, specifically Black women, weren’t lauded every month. They should be, but the truth is that in many classrooms and publications, they still aren’t. Every February, Black women take on the emotional labour of making sure the women who came before us are recognized because the Black women who have shaped this country —  and are moulding its future — have been continually discounted for the stories of problematic old white men. 

This is where the hope comes in. I hope all the “listening and learning” and feigned wokeness of last  summer starts to pay off in tangible ways this month. This is the time for allies to prove they’ve actually been listening. It’s their time to pick up the burden. I hope this month is different not just because non-Black people are promising to do better, but because they are actually following through. 

This Black History Month, we’re showcasing Canadian Black women who deserve to be known —  past and present. And I’m asking, and hoping, that as we make sure we continue to celebrate the achievements of Black women long after February 28, you do too. 

Like what you see? How about some more R29 goodness, right here?

The Pandemic Of Black Trauma Will Never End

White People, Are You Done "Listening & Learning"?

For Black Women In Media, A “Dream Job” Is A Myth

DMTBeautySpot

via https://www.DMTBeautySpot.com

Kathleen Newman-Bremang, Khareem Sudlow