BLERDNATION™

"Can I start this essay by asking a rhetorical question? Have you heard of black cool? It used to be something ineffable but indisputable. Certain African-American cultural figures — in music, in movies, in sports — rose above what was manifestly a divided, unjust society and in the process managed to seem singularly unruffled. They kept themselves together by holding themselves slightly apart, maintaining an air of inscrutability, of not quite being known. They were cool."

"My first hint that a recent column on diversity in late-night TV had made an impact came when I saw a tweet from an old acquaintance.

He runs a website and blog devoted to covering television and had decided to write a post based on my audio story on late-night TV. He then sent out a Twitter message with the headline:

"Critic argues there are too many white guys in late night TV.""

"While sports fan in the U.S. have been focused this week on the Donald Sterling scandal, European soccer fans have been talking about another racial incident. At a match between FC Barcelona (popularly known as Barça) and Villareal CF in Spain this past weekend, Brazilian player Dani Alves was setting up to take a corner kick when a banana, thrown by a fan, landed in front of him on the pitch. (You know, because racist taunts are never subtle.)"

"In August, Paulette Brown will be come The American Bar Association’s first black female to be appointed president. Brown will become president-elect for one year before taking the helm in 2015. A native of Baltimore, Brown attended Howard University with aspirations of becoming a social worker, but decided on a legal profession."

"Sahro is a Somali immigrant, one of thousands who immigrated to the United States to escape the violence back home in Somalia.

Like many Muslim women, Sahro wears a hijab, a traditional headscarf, to cover her hair. But her hijab is bright orange and sparkly.

“I wouldn't go Lady Gaga extreme, but I like something that people look at it and think, oh my god, that's interesting. Like, what is she wearing,” Sahro says."

"What do people think of when they think about hip-hop? I don’t mean the technique of the music so much as its meaning. Technique is a limited part of any art form, really: how well Rapper X raps is important but not central. How devious or wonderful Producer X’s beats are can get you on your feet more quickly, but hip-hop isn’t an abstract sonic art form. It’s a narrative one. And what that means is that matter matters more than art. Or rather: what matters to art is its matter, what it’s about, the ideas it communicates to its audience. The other aspects serve it, but perfect performance and production of empty ideas can’t fake the fill. I hope this isn’t a controversial view. It shouldn’t be."

"MCs aren’t known for being quiet, but there’s a moment in the new documentary “Time is Illmatic” that leaves New York City’s Nas speechless. The film celebrates the 20th anniversary of the rapper’s debut project, “Illmatic,” and this moment finds Nas sitting on a modernist sofa in a Los Angeles recording studio. He’s talking about the photo shoot for the album package, which featured a then-18-year-old Nas walking around the Queensbridge housing project where he was raised. In one photo he’s giving dap to his dudes on the corner. But in another (pictured below), he’s standing at a bench surrounded by his friends who have since disappeared."

"Rap and hip-hop have been around for decades and have become one of America's most successful cultural exports.

But when the Library of Congress added new recordings to its national registry this year, none of them were hip-hop.

Tell Me More guest host Celeste Headlee discusses that with William Boone, professor in the English and African-American studies department at Winston-Salem State University. He says that hip-hop artists are used to being overlooked by the powers that be."

"I get it, Pharrell Williams is happy. He’s happy his “Happy” song eventually topped the charts. He’s happy that people embrace his “singing.” And he’s so happy he cried tears of joy during a recent Oprah Winfrey interview when he saw other people sing his song.

Everyone loved that segment.

Pharrell, Oprah, and tears–ratings gold.

But outside of the clip, Pharrell had some interesting thoughts on what he refers to as the “new Black:”"

""How do we enter the poem?" That's the first question poets are asked to consider for their readers. When reworking and formatting, before the line breaks or last word, the poet must find a way into the poem, first, to show the reader how to get there for herself.

We are taught to use language in a way that reinvigorates language. We are taught to squeeze out the multiple meanings of a word in a single poem, sometimes in a single line. Our turns of phrase, our colloquial speak, the embedded meanings and code-switching are all what makes the poem rich in the multiple meanings of what it ultimately conveys: the poet's history, the poet's geography, the poet's first language, the poet's purpose in showing up to the page. And the page itself, full of splendor and the pastoral, hauntings and merriment, means something new and different to each reader who graces it."