President Obama’s selfie game is better than yours.
This week the President teamed up with Buzzfeed to bring us the hilarious video “Things Everybody Does but Doesn’t Talk About”. He uses a selfie stick, plays fake basketball and quotes a Jay-Z song. Is there anything better than that? I don’t know if anything else that happened this week can top this video, but let’s try.
Pop Off of the Week: Kanye pulled a Kanye. In what seemed like a funny joke, Kanye West walked onto the Grammy stage after musician Beck beat out Beyoncé for Best Album of the Year. West promptly sat down before actually grabbing the mic to a roar of laughter, funny right? Well, turns out it wasn’t a joke. At E!’s after party, Kanye took the opportunity to once again go to bat for Beyoncé and offer his recommendation that Beck give his award to her. Now, I LOVE Bey and am sad she lost; but who made KW her spokesperson? People need to stop inviting him to award shows until he gets himself together. Period.
Let's see that stage invasion one more time...
Trend of the Week: #JackieRobinsonWest
In the summer of 2014 a team of black boys from the South Side of Chicago won the hearts of Americans with their historic and impressive U.S. Little League Series win. While the team didn’t win the World Series their sportsmanship and athleticism made them national heroes, until this week.
The team was stripped of their titles and wins because the adults who led the team broke the rules by going outside of residency boundaries to recruit players. The disappointment being expressed is real, especially in a city that has a history of deep racial divides. Funny how some levels of cheating are deemed OK (looking at you Patriots) and others demonized. Regardless of what the coaches and officials did—these young boys are still champions in my eyes and many others.
Poliwood Round-Up: Trending Topics in the #BlackTwitterverse This Week
THREE: Laverne Cox Breaks More Ceilings
Laverne maybe setting her sights on the other side of the law. The Orange is the New Black breakout star has been cast in CBS’s new legal procedural pilot ‘Doubt’ as a transgender Ivy League lawyer. If the show is picked up Laverne will be the first transgender actress on broadcast television. Diverse television shows are topping the Neilsen ratings these days, so this is a fabulous move by CBS. Hey Laverne, there’s a seat open at The View as well that is in need of your flawless talent as well. Just saying!
TWO: #RelationshipGoals
Alabama has become the 37th state to recognize same-sex marriage, and guess what? Hell didn’t freeze over. What’s better than the extension of same sex marriage you ask? The South’s new poster girls for marriage—a young black lesbian couple. Tori Sisson and Shante Wolfe became the first same-sex couple to be married on the steps of the Montgomery, Alabama courthouse steps after sleeping in a tent overnight, now that’s commitment!
ONE: Terrorism in America
This week the Equal Justice Initiative released a report on the history of lynching’s in the United States. The report was 5 years in the making with 160 visits around the south to gain information on state sanctioned terrorism that black people faced from 1877-1950. The report reveals that there were nearly 4000 African American men, women and children who were hung, burned alive, beaten to death and more.
Bryan Stevenson, the Executive Director of EJI hopes to erect historical markers and memorials at lynching sites. “Lynching and the terror era shaped the geography, politics, economics and social characteristics of being black in America during the 20th century,” Mr. Stevenson said, arguing that many participants in the great migration from the South should be thought of as refugees fleeing terrorism rather than people simply seeking work.