The AIDS quilt is a huge, 47,000 panel traveling memorial to people who have died of AIDS. And although 42 percent of Americans diagnosed with AIDS are black, only 400 panels — that’s less than 1 percent — of the quilt honor African Americans. That’s where the Call My Name Project, which holds workshops to create panels to memorialize blacks, comes in.
The Call My Name project is organized by the NAMES Project Foundation, which is located in Atlanta and is the caretaker of the quilt. The panels will be stitched together into displays, or blocks, that will travel for exhibitions in schools, corporations, places of worship and community centers.
The quilting workshops have been taking place around the country since 2006. They meet at churches, community centers and colleges.
Some quilters select names of strangers; others are there to pay tribute to a friend or family member. All the materials for the 3- by 6-foot fabric panels are provided by the foundation and no experience is necessary.
The panels will go on a tour of HBCUs in 2008. Click here for more information on the AIDS Quilt.
No, I still don’t think Nas should name his new album Nigger. Obviously. Yes, I understand where he’s coming from, even if I don’t agree. He needs to get used to doing this dance every time a white person asks him about it. [RTNY]
Either TMZ has a crazy vendetta against Dr. Jan Adams or Dr. Jan Adams is a crazy. But probably both, right? Consider the evidence: since Stereohyped’s post a few hours ago about TMZ’s tireless coverage of Donda West’s death, there have been nine new posts on Adams and West. They uncovered a variety of malpractice suits, a patient who claims he got her pregnant, a TV clip of him saying that most complications happen weeks or months after surgery, and his DUI mugshot.
Are we done yet?
I am not a person who believes that we can really “take back words.” Bitch is bitch, whether a woman is saying it affectionately to another woman or a man is screaming it through clenched teeth moments before his fist connects with a woman’s face. Nigger is nigger, whether a black person is using it to describe his best friend or a crowd of rabid racists is chanting it as a man swings from a noose tied to a tree. Faggot is…well, you get the picture.
I overstated the case a little there for dramatic effect. Of course I understand “intent” and how one must take this into account in the scenarios I listed above. I don’t think that all people who use bitch or nigger as affectionate words are bad — that would mean I would have to cut off half of my friends. “Intent” goes a long way toward changing the meaning of a word. But it doesn’t. Quite. Cut it.
Not for me. Not for a lot of people.
So no, I don’t think that nigger is going to turn into a “good” word. Even if you replace the “-er” with a more friendly “a.” Why? Because plenty of people still use it as a bad word. Racist slaveowners were using it to degrade us at least 200 years ago, and many of their descendants (plus some newcomers!) are still using it today. We use it too, sure. But it’s not our word. And it won’t ever be.
There’s a larger point here. I get to it after the jump.
CONTINUED »
Anytime you have to open your new video with a too-long taste of your old hit single — “I Get Money,” in this case — you’re kind of telling people that you don’t have that much faith in the new stuff — “I Still Will,” featuring Akon, in this case. And you didn’t really need to tell us, 50. All we have to do is watch the first couple of minutes.
I’m not sure what it was about these three photos of Lil’ Wayne that had the people over at XXL saying, “We can’t choose just one for the cover! Let’s go with them all!” But that’s why I’m not an editor of XXL. Anyway, the more Lil Waynes the merrier, right?
Right?
It’s all Donda West all the time over at TMZ today, where the illustrious editors have shifted their focus to Dr. Jan Adams, the black plastic surgeon who conducted Kanye West’s mom’s tummy tuck and breast reduction. They report that Adams, who has made appearances on Oprah and is the host of the Discovery Health Channel show Plastic Surgery: Before and After, is not certified by the American Board of Plastic Surgery and almost had his license revoked by the California Medical Board after a series of DUIs.
CONTINUED »
If, by the time you in state office, you’re still unable to figure out that it’s not ever appropriate to call a black person “*,” particularly the mother of your local NAACP president, then maybe you should start to rethink your career in politics. Oh, and getting pulled over for driving drunk doesn’t help much either.
A state representative in a runoff election infuriated civil rights leaders after she ended a conversation with the mother of the NAACP’s local president by saying, “Talk to you later, Buckwheat.”
State Rep. Carla Blanchard Dartez, of Morgan City, acknowledged she made the remark during a Thursday night telephone conversation with Hazel Boykin to thank her for driving voters to the polls.
Buckwheat, a black child character in the “Little Rascals” comedies of the 1930s and ’40s, is viewed as a racial stereotype demeaning to black people.
Hazel Boykin’s son, Jerome, is the NAACP’s president in Terrebonne Parish. She is well-known as a 1960s civil rights activist, helping to desegregate restaurants and the parish school system.
Dartez, who said she’s not dropping out of the race, apologized and reminded voters that she voted in conjunction with the black caucus 93 percent of the time. This, of course, means she’s well within her right to call well-respected, elderly black women “Buckwheat” whenever she damn well pleases.
*Thanks, BMD!
• Black teens love them some Michael Vick, dog fighting and all. [ET]
• Environmental racism could be going on right under your nose. Literally. []
• Minorities, young people, hip hop, and the internet — a recipe for profit. [BW]
• T.I. sincerely looks forward to being exonerated. He said so himself. []
• LL Cool J is still pouting about Def Jam. [EUR]
