Showing posts with label African-American. Show all posts
Showing posts with label African-American. Show all posts

Monday, July 09, 2018

Are you a black nerd? Then you might want to check out the Blerd City Con

Are you a black nerd? Then you might want to check out the Blerd City Con.

What is that you ask?

Simply put it's a 3 day geek out for black people who like science fiction, horror, and fantasy.

“I want the audience to experience Horror, Science Fiction, and Fantasy by the talents of leading writers as well as filmmakers, coders and creators of the African Diaspora who are serving the community of black and Nerdy,” said founder Clairesa Clay.

The 3-day conference takes place July 13 - 15, 2018 celebrating the fantastic nerdiness in you! Through panels & workshops of Art, Science, Film, Comic Books, & Technology in Brooklyn, New York making you truly feel like a Blerd!

Blerd City is a conference dedicated to showcasing the multidimensional complexity of black nerdiness through all spectrums of creativity, invention, and innovation and this is its second year in action. You can expect panels, workshops, film screenings, Afrofuturism, special guests, and presentations. In addition, there will be a marketplace for gaming and comic books open to all ages.

The conference will take place at St. Francis College in Brooklyn, New York.

For more information click here: https://www.blerdcityconference.com/

Sunday, July 08, 2018

African-American Communities Lack Movie Theaters, and Here’s Why Many May Never Be Developed

African-American and Latino audiences are more interested in moviegoing than many other populations, and yet in a country with nearly 40,000 screens, some of these communities face a cinema desert. That seems counterintuitive at best, racist at worst, and difficult to improve: We are in a period with fewer new theaters under development than virtually any time since the multi-screen era began five decades ago. Here’s why some areas may never see a movie house.

There’s a number of major population centers with African-American communities with successful theaters. Atlanta leads the way, but others thrive in or around Los Angeles, San Francisco, Baltimore, and Chicago.

Selma has a population of about 19,000, and is the largest town in a county of 46,000. The closest multi-screen theaters are in Plattville and Montgomery, at a distance of 35 miles or more. The city is 80 percent black; the county, 63 percent.

While Selma doesn’t have a commercial theater, it has the Walton, a single-screen outlet owned by the city and leased by a local nonprofit. With the support of distributor Paramount Pictures, the Walton provided free screenings of “Selma” for several weeks during its general release in January 2015. Currently, the theater is showing “Ant-Man and the Wasp.” (DuVernay’s “A Wrinkle in Time” also screened this spring.)

Among its 10 top-grossing films in the last three years are three by black directors (“Black Panther” and two Tyler Perry films), plus three more with significant black story elements (“Hidden Figures,” “Woodlawn,” and “War Room,” its biggest success.) The theater tries to avoid R-rated films, which limits play across the board and particularly among some of the most acclaimed African-American directed films of recent years like “Get Out,” “Moonlight,” and “Birth of a Nation.”

While the Walton is clearly a valuable Selma resource, it’s a town is large enough to be served by more than a single screen. Many similar small towns have four- to six-screen theaters, often the result of the boom in multi-screen construction 20 to 30 years ago.

Compton’s situation is similar. The Los Angeles suburb is about 65 percent Latino, with 26 percent of households below poverty level. The nearest theaters are multi-screen complexes in Carson, Paramount, and the Los Angeles neighborhoods of Baldwin Hills, with the closest at least 15 minutes away.

A population of nearly 100,000 is enough to support a theater complex, but that absence is not unheard of given the sometimes-patchwork municipalities of Los Angeles county; West Hollywood and Beverly Hills have no major-first run theaters. However, Compton is hampered by economic and construction issues in a way those independent cities are not.

It’s been more than two years since Moctesuma Esparza’s Maya Cinemas proposed building a 14-screen complex in Compton. Esparza currently has five complexes in California, all located in underserved Latino areas; another in Las Vegas is on the way. However, he’s yet to break ground in Compton, and recently told the Los Angeles Times that he’s stymied by the lack of available land for parking.

Other smaller, mostly black cities lack local theaters, including East St. Louis, Illinois; Gary, Indiana; and Camden, New Jersey. Similarly, the largely Latino community of unincorporated East Los Angeles with a population of over 150,000 is served by no modern first-run complexes closer than downtown Los Angeles to the west or Commerce to the east.

In a time of plateauing ticket sales, and the promise of these underserved, movie-loving audiences, why don’t theater chains respond to the demand? One answer lies in the economic calculations necessary to invest in modern a multi-screen theater that will include stadium seating, plush seats, IMAX screens, and other amenities now viewed as standard essentials to attract audiences in the streaming age.

When complexes began to replace single screens in the ’70s and ’80s, it was a much less expensive proposition; chains opened new outlets in strip malls and other established shopping centers. Today, those hubs are dying, and a new theater often means committing to new construction to accommodate those massive screens and stadium seats. At a minimum, it’s a $15 million investment.

To support that outlay, investors look for areas that offer other local draws like restaurants and other entertainment venues. No one wants to count on movies as the sole attraction. That means a rabid audience isn’t enough; communities need parallel economic development, which is another complex and challenging issue with its own racial overtones.

While Magic Johnson’s theater chain failed — of the five multiplexes he opened in Cleveland, Houston, Atlanta, Los Angeles, and Harlem, only the AMC Magic Johnson Harlem 9 remains — companies like Maya still offer hope. However, cinemas are not a growth industry in America. Domestic screen numbers show decline, and theater chains focus their outreach overseas. Yes, all audiences have unprecedented access via streaming — but as they say, it’s just not the same.

[SOURCE: YAHOO NEWS]

Wednesday, August 31, 2016

Donald Trump to show up, but not speak out at Detroit church

Seems like someone doesn't want to take a chance at getting booed while he's attempting "out reach" to black voters. It seems that Donald Trump's much publicized visit to a black church in Detroit will not include Mr. Trump actually addressing the congregation itself.

When Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump comes to Detroit this weekend to try to strengthen his standing in the African-American community, he will be attending a service at a church and doing a one-on-one interview with the congregation's leader, Bishop Wayne T. Jackson.

That's about it.

Trump won't be speaking to the black congregation at Great Faith Ministries International during the 11 a.m. service. And his Saturday interview with Jackson on the church's Impact Network — which will not be open to the public or the news media — won't air for at least a week after the event.

Trump's first foray as a presidential candidate into a church of African Americans was initially billed as a speech to the congregation to lay out his policies that impact minorities, followed by the interview with Jackson.

Saturday, January 09, 2016

Whoopi Goldberg can call herself whatever she wants!

By George L. Cook III.

I'm sure many have heard Whoopi Goldberg's comments about her not being African American on the TV show The View and heard about the backlash that followed on social media. Just in case, you missed it read Whoopi's comments below.

“You know what uh uh! This is my country,” Goldberg said. “My mother, my grandmother, my great-grand folks, we busted ass to be here. I’m sorry. I’m an American. I’m not an African-American, I’m not a chick American, I’m an American!”

Now I identify as African-American and have my own opinions about what Goldberg said but you know what, THAT DOESN'T MATTER!

My argument against those who have a problem with the term African-American or any other hyphenated identifier has always been that we as Americans have the right to identify however we want. So to me, those African Americans upset at Whoopi for simply wanting to identify as American are being hypocritical. This is about being able to identify as you want not on making others identify as you would like them to. Whoopi Goldberg has that right to call herself whatever she wants whether anyone likes it or not.

That may not be a popular stance but I believe it's one that those who want to be treated fairly and equally should embrace. Whoopi still stands up for African American causes and issues and how she identify does not change that.

I, you, and Whoopi Goldberg can call ourselves whatever we want. What we call ourselves is not the most important issue, though. It's what we do to make things better that ultimately counts.

Tuesday, June 16, 2015

San Antonio Elects Its 1st African-American Mayor

San Antonio, the seventh-largest U.S. city and the only one of the 10 largest cities with a Hispanic majority, elected its first African-American mayor on Saturday in a closely watched runoff election.

Ivy Taylor, a Yale-educated urban planning professor, won with an unlikely coalition of the city’s two largest minority voting groups, blacks and generally conservative white voters, the latter comprising just 26 percent of the 1.4 million population.

Taylor was appointed interim mayor last summer, when Julian Castro resigned to become Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, winning the seat outright in Saturday's runoff with 52 percent against one of the state’s best-known politicians.

Read more: Hispanic majority San Antonio elects African-American mayor

Saturday, February 14, 2015

Former Young and the Restless Star Victoria Rowell Sues CBS for Racial Discrimination

Victoria Rowell, who starred as Drucilla Winters on The Young and the Restless from 1990 to 2007, has sued CBS and Sony for racial discrimination, Deadline reports.

In a suit filed Wednesday, Rowell claims she has not been allowed back on The Young and the Restless or The Bold and the Beautiful because of her advocacy for greater diversity on soap operas. Rowell alleges that she was "impoverished and blackballed because she had chosen to speak out against the discrimination and injustice that she had endured and witnessed happen to other African Americans."

Read more: Former Young and the Restless Star Victoria Rowell Sues CBS and Sony for Racial Discrimination

Sunday, November 23, 2014

White Americans Draw Distinctions Between African-Americans and Blacks

This was a very surprising study to see. I was surprised because online you read post by some whites about the divisiveness of the term African American while at the same time, maybe even unbeknownst to them they have a different perspective of African Americans vs "Blacks". George L. Cook III AfricanAmericanReports.com.

White Americans are fine with African-Americans. Blacks, however, are a different story.

That’s the disturbing implication of a new study, which finds the way a person of color is labeled can impact how he or she is perceived.

In the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, a research team led by Emory University’s Erika Hall argues that “the racial label ‘black’ evokes a mental representation of a person with lower socioeconomic status than the racial label ‘African-American.’”

“The content embedded in the black stereotype is generally more negative, and less warm and competent, than that in the African-American stereotype,” the researchers write. “These different associations carry consequences for how whites perceive Americans of African descent who are labeled with either term.”

Read more: http://www.psmag.com/navigation/health-and-behavior/white-americans-draw-distinctions-african-americans-blacks-94554/