What I Read This Week – 01/12/2015

Welcome to 2015! Happy New Year!

This is the first link post of the new year so let’s get to reading:

• What Ruth Bader Ginsburg Taught Me About Being a Stay-at-Home Dad: A young lawyer puts his former boss’s ideals into practice.
• Billboard profile of Kendrick Lamar (with comments about Iggy Azalea).
• Inside the service economy class: the barista trap.
• The War Over Hollywood Sign Pits Wealthy Residents Against Urinating Tourists.
• THE CODE: A DECLASSIFIED AND UNBELIEVABLE HOSTAGE RESCUE STORY: How the Colombian army sent a hidden message to hostages… using a pop song.
• Surprise, surprise: Black NYPD cops get racially profiled too.
• How White Flight Ravaged the Mississippi Delta.
• The Secret History of Women in the Senate.
• Profile of actress Taraji P. Henson and her new role in the FOX series, Empire.
• Two stories about Ava DuVernay, director of Selma.
• The NYPD’s ‘Work Stoppage’ Is Surreal.
• When a Patient’s Death is Broadcast Without Permission.
• Popular ESPN anchor Stuart Scott died last week after a 7 year fight with cancer. Here’s a profile of his life and here’s how the network put together a tribute to him.
• The Rise of the Black British Actor in America.
• ‘We Out Here’: Inside the New Black Travel Movement.
• Michael Brown Sr. and the Agony of the Black Father in America.
• The rise of the classic hip hop station.
• Houston Hip Hop Pioneer Bun B Expands Business Portfolio (love this dude!)
• Before-and-after maps show how freeways transformed America’s cities (often destroying black/urban communities I might add).
• Plus-Size Fashion Moves Beyond the Muumuu.
• The End of Gangs.
• Behind the scenes (in pictures) of the network morning shows.
• Profile of Houston Texas wide receiver, Andre Johnson.
• Profile of former old school MC and current DJ/photographer D-Nice.
• Perfect for us starting off the New Year with weight loss resolutions: What 2000 Calories Looks Like.
• The Secret World of Stolen Smartphones, Where Business Is Booming.
• The Birth of A New Civil Rights Movement.

What I Read This Week (And Last Week) – 12/23/2014

Here’s my gift to you! I’ll be back in 2015 with more good reads! Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!!!

• After Ferguson, the weight of a conversation. A father in Arizona talks with his daughter.
• Profile of Donte Stallworth, a former NFL player now working for the Huffington Post.
• An interview with outgoing Attorney General Eric Holder.
• The inside story about Master P’s No Limit Sports.
• I love stories about the mechanics of media and always liked David Gregory of NBC. Here’s how he fell from grace.
• A profile of Seattle Seahawks Marshawn Lynch, who doesn’t care much for the media but cares alot about helping kids in his hometown of Oakland.
• Bound By A Plantation, Two Georgians Remember A Special Christmas.
• Mass Incarceration’s Collateral Damage: The Children Left Behind.
• How Young Thug Got Trapped By A $15,000 Advance From A Major Label.
• The Rise of Extreme Daycare: with more people working non traditional shifts, the need is rising.
• What Happened When Marissa Mayer Tried to Be Steve Jobs.
• What happens when a cute little brown boy becomes a black man.
• An Ebola Orphan’s Plea in Africa: ‘Do You Want Me?’ (You might lose your thug on this one..)
• The Sad Saga of Tommy Gaines: the story of a Georgia basketball legend who lost his dreams to drug addiction, and his quest for redemption.
• A conversation with Chris Rock.
• A ‘Survivor’ Producer, a Dead Wife, Four Years in a Mexican Prison: New Evidence Amid a Nightmare.
• Growing up ‘post-racial,’ teens suddenly find a world that isn’t.
• Four Lessons From The Media’s Conflicted Coverage of Race.
• Is it a crime to raise a killer?
• Giving away ‘Anatoly Z.’: One boy’s un-adoption, two families who love him and a woman’s mission to bring ‘rehoming’ out of the shadows. (This was a REAL good one.)
• Behind The Alarming Rise Of The Online Vigilante Detective.
• For rape victims, hurt and anger in dealing with New Orleans police.
• Let’s go crazy: Inside the making of Purple Rain.
• York&Fig: At the Intersection of Change. Gentrification in Los Angeles.
• Good Kids, Bad City: After 39 Years of Wrongful Incarceration, Ricky Jackson and the Bridgeman Brothers Walk Free.
• At Nets’ Game, a Plan for a Simple Statement Is Carried Out to a T.
• This Andrew Goldman piece about how Twitter ruined his career is worth reading.
• Critic’s Notebook: Hollywood, Obama and the Boxing-In of Black Achievers.
• What it’s Like to be Black In the NYPD Right Now.
• Yes, North Korea has the internet. Here’s what it looks like.
• For Blacks in Cuba, the Revolution Hasn’t Begun.
• The Slow Death of the Death Penalty: The public supports it, but the costs are lethal. (Another must read)
• From the E.R. to the Courtroom: How Nonprofit Hospitals Are Seizing Patients’ Wages.

Lastly, but certainly not least, if you want to read some of the rest long reads by category then go here and knock yourself out!

 

 

 

What I Read This Week – 12/8/2014

Happy Monday to you! Hope your holiday was awesome and you are getting ready for the onslaught of Christmas. I was off last week but I was still reading good stuff. Let’s get to it:

• Chris Rock has been a tear lately while promoting his new movie “Top Five”. All 3 of these interviews/essays about or by him are worth your eyeballs: Rolling Stone/Vulture/The Hollywood Reporter.
• A profile of the man behind World Star Hip Hop.
• The book about the stories behind some of hip hop’s greatest albums.
• How NYC’s high school cell phone ban inspired an unexpected local industry.
• A profile of Ava DuVernay, director of the new movie about MKL, “Selma”.
• Hall of Fame women’s basketball player Cheryl Miller is now coaching at Langston University, a small HBCU in Oklahoma. Here’s why.
• The secret life of a crime scene cleaner.
• The Tampa Bay Buccaneers are using the homeless as labor and not paying them.
• An analysis of the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air and how it made it to 100 episodes, rare for a sitcom, let alone a black one.
• Why it’s damn near impossible to indict a police officer.
• A candid conversation about race in St. Louis.
• Two interesting articles about “broken windows policing” from Slate and The Atlantic.
• A transcript of an interview done earlier this year with the late DC Mayor Marion Barry.
• Why “Hands Up, Don’t Shoot” is bigger than Mike Brown and Ferguson.
• I just love this dude: a profile of former Carolina Panther and current Baltimore Raven player Steve Smith.
• Mississippi’s Top Prison Reformer Is Facing 368 Years Behind Bars.

Have a great week of reading!!

 

What I’m Reading This Week – 11/24/2014

It’s Turkey Day in a few days but some of us (like me) are stuck at this office..so my gift to you is some good reads! Let’s get to it!

• Dave Chappelle is GQ magazine’s man of the year.
• Keep Moving: The Nomadic Life of An Assistant College Basketball Coach.
• Junior Smith was a troubled kid who needed help. Instead, West Virginia sent him to jail.
• He went to Yemen. He was almost kidnapped.
• Can You Gentrify America’s Poorest, Most Dangerous City?
• The mystery of an artifact from the 1800s slave trade, and the girl who made it.
• Can Whole Foods Change the Way Poor People Eat?
• For the Public Good: The Shameful History of Forced Sterilization in the U.S.
• A profile of the NY Knicks Carmelo Anthony.
• The World Loves the rapper B.o.B — Why Doesn’t Atlanta?
• The Untold Story of Black Fatherhood.
• The Slow Motion Lynching of President Barack Obama.
• Explaining White Privilege to a Broke White Person.
• A two part series on how NFL teams handle domestic violence. Part 1/Part 2.
• Two unlikely friends: rapper Wale’ and comedian Jerry Seinfeld.
• 25 years later, Art Shell reflects becoming the FIRST black NFL head coach in the modern era.
• A Chat with Dionne Osborne, the Vocal Coach Who Changed Drake’s Style.
• Speaking about Drake, we might as well learn a bit more about his dad.
• In Alabama, Judges Play God: A judge can override a jury that spares a murderer from the death penalty.
• Peterson’s hometown still supportive:  Some call Vikings star a child abuser, but in Palestine, Texas, he’s still favorite son.
• A Rape On Campus. And what if you are accused of sexual assault on a college campus.
• From Wrestling Legend to Double Amputee, Kamala Keeps Fighting.

Happy Thanksgiving!!!!

What I’m Reading This Week -11/13/2014

Hi, hope you have had a good week! Let’s slide into the weekend with some good reads, shall we??

• Micheal Sam was the first openly gay player drafted by the NFL. But there is a Micheal Sam, Sr. Here is his story.
• A letter to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. from the FBI that basically asks him to kill himself.
• Stephen Glass fabricated articles that nearly destroyed a magazine. Sixteen years later, he tells why he did it.
• A bold entrepreneur with a radical startup. An African-American. In tech, those two phrases usually don’t go together. Enter Tristan Walker.
• Max Lenox was born to a crack-addicted black mother and raised by two white gay fathers who helped shape him into the much-admired captain of Army basketball.
• The rewards and stigma associated with paternity leave.
• How racism stole black childhood.
• Should Valerie Jarrett be fired??
• A review of the biography of Laura Ingalls Wilder, author of the Little House on the Prairie series of books.
• Alvin Robertson: A Fallen, Forgotten (San Antonio) Spur on Trial for Human Trafficking.
• How White People Got Made. Part One and Part Two.
• 14 Shots In April.
• The return of Jim Crow (via the ballot).
• Like Something the Lord Made: Vivien Thomas was paid a janitor’s wage, never went to college, and still became a legend in the field of heart surgery. (If you don’t read anything else I post, READ THIS.)
• My stepfather, the Peeping Tom.
• Jay Bilas vs. NCAA: How a former player with a law degree became an agent of change.
• Everybody sexts: What love (and sex) really looks
  like in the 21st century.

That’s all I got. See you next week!

What I’m Reading This Week – 10/23/2014

Happy Thursday! Ready for some good reads?

• Penn State, three years after the Sandusky scandal.
• Who sells celebrity nudes on the internet? This dude.
• The laborers who keep dick pics and beheadings out of your FB feed.
• Am I black enough? Thoughts on the new movie Dear White People.
• A modern family with issues. Thoughts on the new ABC series, Blackish.
• One woman’s start up interview from hell.
• Inside Hollywood’s blackface problem.
• A brick leads to memories of a young girl long dead.
• She tweeted against the cartels. They tweeted her murder.
• The ugly truth about Cory Booker, former mayor of Newark and now US Senator.
• A profile of Nicki Minaj.
• Do you follow MensWearDog on Instagram? He makes 15K a month.
• Is Kobe Bryant the reason for the LA Lakers downfall?
• What if Black America were a country?
• The origins of Instagram.
• How the Supreme Court made a mess of our voting system.
• Inside the fascinating lives of defectors from North Korea.

Have a great weekend!

What I’m Reading This Week – 10/16/2014

Let’s get to it:

• The third coming of the Chicago Bulls Derrick Rose.
• What’s it like to work in strip club in a North Dakota boomtown? Read this and find out.
• What It’s Like Being A Black Woman In A Dom/Sub Relationship With A White Man?
• What happens when women become men at a woman’s college?
• The price of black ambition.
• Uber’s dirty little secret: sexual harassment by its drivers.
• BuzzFeed’s secret weapon.
• A profile of Representative Elijah Cummings. (Fun fact: Rep Cummings wife, Maya Rockeymoore pledged on the line before mine in Spring 1994!)
• Another great profile on Shonda Rhimes from the The Hollywood Reporter.
• A New Orleans lawyer transforms a plantation into a slavery museum.
• Young, gifted and homeless…student athletes.

See you next week!

What I’m Reading This Week – 10/7/2014

Been reading some good stuff over the last week or so, hope there’s something that catches your interest in the links. Let’s go:

• A profile of actor Andre Braugher, from TV series “Homicide” and “Brooklyn 99”.
• What is like to be a young, black actress trying to make it in Hollywood.
• Meet George Zimmerman’s insane family.
• A boy was accused of taking a backpack. The courts took the next three years of his life.
• Two great stories on the OutKast reunion concerts in Atlanta.
• The battle for reproductive rights in my home state of Texas.
• How the law turns battered women into criminals.
• Mostly black cities, mostly white city halls.
• Is there room for black people in the new Detroit?
• The always on stalker.
• A professional line sitter throws his wait around.

See you next week!

What I’m Reading This Week

Another week, more good reads! Let’s go!

• This article on Shonda Rhimes is currently setting Twitter ablaze!
• Related: a profile of Viola Davis and her new TV series.
• How gangs took over America’s prisons.
• How does it feel when you are the only white person in the room?
• A murder investigation with a whole lotta suspects. Who killed Darren Lumar?
• The story of young Carlos, an undocumented child in the system.
• A full scale ethering of how the NFL turns a blind eye to domestic violence.
• Reinventing plus sized style!
• Teach for America has faced criticism for years. Now it’s listening.
• The photographer who rejected racism in the American South.
• That time the US government gave out reparations and then took them back.

That’s for this week. Have a great weekend and enjoy!

What I’m Reading This Week

I have a lot of links to share this so get ready to save to  your Pocket or Instapaper apps. And if you don’t have either, why not??

• I am a HUGE Biggie Smalls fan so I was geeked to read this: Ready To Die: 20 Years Later.
• With genetic testing I gave my parents the gift of divorce.
• The stages of domestic violence, Acts 1-4. This is impressive work.
• Why Serena Williams is America’s greatest athlete.
• A profile of Martha Wash (from the Weather Girls and C+C Music Factory) and how she became a pioneer for artist rights. This was a good one.
• For Kayden Kross, the family business happens to be porn. It’s not what you think.
• A profile of hacker collective, Anonymous.
• This made me cry. Gay teens become homeless after being cast out by their families, and what is being done to help them.
• In 1981, Mauritania became the last country to abolish slavery. An estimated 140,000 are still enslaved there today.
• Henrietta Lack’s descendants come to an agreement with the National Institutes of Health about the handling of her cells. If you are not familiar with her story, take a look here.
• A detailed report on the Oklahoma cop accused of sexually assaulting 8 black women. Additional follow up here.
• This college professor lives in a dumpster on the campus of an HBCU in Austin.
• Men in the armed forces get sexually assaulted too.
• Ever thought about a digital detox?
• How St Louis County profits from poverty: an engrossing read about tiny cities around Ferguson.
• The rise and fall of NYC’s biggest weed dealer.

See you next week!