Calling all storytellers! When was the last time you read a great piece of writing? What quality made you want to share it far and wide? Why did it strike such a powerful chord? If you were asked to replicate that feeling — to craft an essay that leaves readers caught up in the rapture of an unforgettable narrative — could you do it?

We believe you could. You showed us as much in the past: the Pandemic Reflections writing prompt resulted in hundreds of submissions in the first month. Our call for entries to the #StopAsianHate blog resulted in hundreds of perspectives shared in the first week. And now we want to help discover and nurture great writing again, with The Medium Writers Challenge.

The challenge, which will take place over the course of four weeks, is a chance for you to share your best ideas with an esteemed panel of judges and millions of Medium readers — plus, an opportunity to win $50,000.

Here’s how it will work. We’re providing four guiding prompts: Reentry, Death, Work, and Space. Each is accompanied by a descriptive paragraph to help you get your wheels turning — but don’t feel confined. Your experiences or perspectives might take you down other roads that are well within the parameters of the prompt.

An expert panel of cultural leaders, editors, and writers will join as guest judges to select their favorites. Those judges include Natalie Portman, Roxane Gay, Saeed Jones, Imani Perry, Eve L. Ewing, Susan Orlean, Robert Kolker, kelly corrigan, Dao-Yi Chow, Bonsu Thompson, Julio Vincent Gambuto, Jude Ellison S. Doyle, Kurt Andersen, David Dennis, Jr., and others.

With the help of the judging panel, Medium will select four finalist winners — one for each prompt — who will each be awarded with $10,000 each. One of the four finalists will be selected for a grand prize of $50,000. Additionally, 100 honorable mention selections will each win $100.

Entering the challenge is easy: Just write to one — or more — of the writing prompts outlined below, and include the associated tag when publishing your story on Medium. (Once you hit “Publish” on your post, you can type it into the “Add a tag…” box.)

REENTRY

Tell us about an experience you’ve had coming back to something — or someone — after time away. What changed in your absence? How did you change? What are the funny moments, faux pas, discomforts, and joys that came with returning to an old situation (or your pre-pandemic life) with new eyes?

TAG: MWC Reentry
JUDGES: Imani Perry, Julio Vincent Gambuto, Saeed Jones, Jude Ellison Doyle

DEATH

People die, of course, but so do other things. Ideals. Relationships. Jobs. Life phases. Pieces of who we once were. A death isn’t always inherently sad, either; sometimes, it’s a positive step, freeing us from what was weighing us down or allowing us to move forward. Illusions can die. Grudges. Bad habits. Tell us about a death you’ve experienced, for better or worse, and how you marked the loss — whether it was with mourning or celebration.

TAG: MWC Death
JUDGES: Susan Orlean, Robert Kolker, kelly corrigan, Eve L. Ewing

WORK

“Work” is a term that contains multitudes. Maybe your work is a key pillar of your identity. Maybe it’s the thing that allows you to focus on other pursuits. Maybe it fulfills you; maybe it drains you. Maybe the real work in your life isn’t the same as the way you make money. We want to know what “work” means to you — and the factors that have shaped your thinking. What’s the most important work you do, however you define it? What’s the value of work in your life? What’s your dream job? Is there such a thing as a dream job? Is there a moment, a person, a role that’s changed the way you approach your work?

TAG: MWC Work
JUDGES: Roxane Gay, Kurt Andersen, David Dennis, Jr.

SPACE

Whether we’re letting our imaginations run wild or focusing on what’s in front of us, our day-to-day lives are defined by space: living space, personal space, outer space. We make space. We claim space. We practice social distancing. We turn spaces into homes, into communities, into refuges, and we forge relationships with others and ourselves within those spaces. We wonder, with varying degrees of skepticism and belief, about the beings that occupy the space beyond our planet. However you define it, tell us a story about a role space has played in your life.

TAG: MWC Space
JUDGES: Natalie Portman, Dao-Yi Chow, Bonsu Thompson

HOW TO ADD TAGS TO YOUR SUBMISSION

In the tag field, start typing the appropriate tag, and it will populate the drop down menu, and you can select it.

You can add a tag to a story in several ways:

• After writing your draft, you will be prompted to add tags during the prepublish flow, right before publishing.
• From a published story, click the three-dot menu in the lower-right corner, click “Story settings,” set the tags, and save.
• From a published story page, click the three-dot menu in the lower corner, click “Edit story,” click the three-dot menu in the top right corner, and click “Change tags,” and click “Save.”

You can only tag your story with a single challenge prompt tag, but can add an additional 4 non-prompt tags. You can submit one story per prompt.

Need some pointers on creating a standout essay? Please register for the Medium-hosted workshop, How to Write an Essay Everyone Wants to Read: 5 Steps to Craft Meaningful Personal Narratives on July 29, 2021 at 4:30 p.m. ET. And be sure to follow our Creators Hub for updates and writing advice over the course of the four-week challenge.

The deadline to publish your work is August 24, 2021. The four finalists and grand prize winner will be announced by October 12, 2021.

For more information please read this FAQ.

To begin writing on Medium, click here.

THE FINE PRINT

NO PURCHASE OR PAYMENT NECESSARY. Except for residents in Quebec, Canada, open to Medium users who are at least age 18 (or the age of majority in their jurisdiction of residence, whichever is older) at the time of entry. “Contest Period” is from 12:00:01 a.m. ET on 07/28/21 to 11:59:59 p.m. ET on 08/24/21. There will be four writing prompts made available at the start of the Contest Period. To enter: (i) log into your Medium account; (ii) publish an essay of 500 words or more in response to a prompt; and (iii) tag the essay with that prompt (i.e. MWC Reentry, MWC Death, MWC Work, MWC Space). One entry per person per prompt and four entries total during Contest Period. Submissions will be scored based on: (i) creativity (40%); (ii) originality (30%); and (iii) writing quality (30%) by September 23, 2021. 100 honorable mentions will each receive $100; four finalists will each receive $10,000; and one grand prize winner will receive $50,000. Total Value of All Prizes: $100,000. Odds of winning depend on number and quality of eligible entries. Submissions must comply with the Medium Rules and meet Medium’s Distribution Standards. Contest subject to Official Rules. Details and restrictions apply, so visit here for Official Rules. Sponsor: A Medium Corporation.

Introducing The Medium Writers Challenge was originally published in The Medium Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

As incidents of violence against the AAPI community have flared over the past year, calls to raise awareness have shifted into demands for solidarity in this heightened moment. With the recent racist attack carried out by a White man in Atlanta killing eight people, six of whom were of Asian descent, more than a few media headlines have explicitly called on Black people to better support their AAPI brothers and sisters.

On Twitter and elsewhere, some have pushed back. Why not focus on calling out White people who aren’t organizing on behalf of AAPI liberation? Why add more emotional labor to Black people’s plates? We’re tired from our own struggles, after all. Yet, while those questions and concerns are understandable, they’re not historically accurate — and they shouldn’t prevent getting involved alongside AAPI groups in the struggle against White supremacy.

Let’s get one thing clear: White people are not in the business of voluntarily relinquishing power. At least not on a macro level. So to focus on them addressing or upending their own supremacy is irrational. Every revolutionary who has successfully overpowered the state apparatus did so with a critical mass of people. That implies organizing across issues (like police brutality, reproductive rights, immigration, etc.) and addressing where racial conflicts intersect.

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Why it must be Black people is hardly a question to ask organizers who are already doing the work. America is a stolen land built on the exploitation of Black people for the glorification of Whiteness; that is its concept. And from the moment of our theft right up until today, we’ve been resisting and often literally fighting off Whiteness by organizing with others who experience similar struggles. But I’d imagine that for many of us, our exhaustion is vicarious, absorbed from organizers rather than caused by our own individual contribution. Organizing is an emotionally and physiologically demanding field, with often very little thanks from the mainstream world. Organizers are burnt out. We owe it to them to not take their labor for granted.

That is not to say there’s no animosity in the history of AAPI-Black relations. (Last month, a 19-year-old Black man was charged for a fatal attack on an elderly Thai man in San Francisco, which his lawyer has called an “outburst of rage.”) Still, how better to hold one another accountable to past violences than fighting together against White supremacy? As a good friend told me not long ago, “We are not accountable to anyone on Twitter.” It’s going to take real, critical, principled organizing to mend ourselves — and to gird ourselves for the fight.

— Tirhakah Love, staff writer

This Week in Racism

🗑 Slur-Hurling Fender-Bender Tender Turns Out to be Retired LAPD Detective

Of all the phone videos that have ever featured a white person dropping the n-bomb, it’s hard to starting more promisingly than these eight words: “oh, you can say n****r but I can’t?!” That unholy octet kicked off a minute-long clip captured in Santa Clarita, California last week after a minor car accident between a young Black man and a very angry, very cop-looking middle-aged white man. Not surprisingly, the footage blew up on Twitter. Even less surprisingly, the cop-looking middle-aged white man turned out to be a retired LAPD detective. But here’s where it gets good. According to the LAPD, LA’s attorney general’s office will be reviewing 370 cases handled by the detective, to see if his willingness to say things like “get back in your cage and wait until the monkey controller gets here” (yes, really) might have compromised his work. We’re gonna go ahead and guess it’s a big yes on that one. (NBC 4 Los Angeles)

🗑 We Have a Feeling This New Jersey Woman Might Also a Retired LAPD Detective

Last week, two Black women were driving in Bayonne, New Jersey when they got rear-ended. Hard. Hard enough that the other car’s entire fender came off. At first, the other driver allegedly offered them cash; then, when they balked, she launched into a live, completely ad-libbed rendition of The Sopranos’ Most Racist Moments. Yes, if you’re keeping count, this is the second traffic accident this week where the white driver — who, again, is at fault — calls the Black driver a “monkey.” This time, at least, Facebook viewers (and the women whose car was hit) got the cathartic joy of watching police show up and promptly arrest the woman for disorderly conduct, with the possibility of a “bias intimidation” charge still under consideration by the prosecutors’ office. (Hudson Reporter)

🗑 Black Juror Dismissed From Derek Chauvin’s Case For Acknowledging the Obvious

If you’re wondering why Derek Chauvin’s criminal trial hasn’t begun yet, it’s because attorneys are still filling out the jury. (As of yesterday, only a single alternate juror was left to be found, at which point the proceedings could begin; th ex-Minneapolis PD officer is charged with second-degree unintentional murder, third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter in the killing of George Floyd last May.) Jury selection is a sadly predictable process, mostly because in a case like this, where Chauvin’s blatant disregard for Floyd’s life was captured in full by both a bystander and surveillance cameras, it exposes defense attorneys’ panic at anything resembling a fair trial. That’s how you get jurors like a Black woman in her sixties who, according to the Associated Press, hadn’t seen the video and had no firm opinion of Chauvin or Floyd. (Given the fact that Chauvin is basically dressed as a Blue Lives Matter flag at this trial, it’s impossible not to have an opinion, but we’d never cast aspersions on our elders like that.) But it’s also how you get potential jurors who are rejected for reasons that boil down to acknowledging racism. That’d be “Juror №76,” who last week told attorneys that he experiences racism daily, and agreed with the idea that police are more likely to use force on Black people than on white people. “As a Black man,” he said, “you see a lot of Black people get killed and no one’s held accountable for it, and you wonder why or what was the decisions [sic]. So, with this, maybe I’ll be in the room to know why.” Except he won’t be. Too real for the just-us system, apparently. (AP News)

The LEVEL Up: Culture Picks From the Editors

📘 The Marathon Don’t Stop: The Life and Times of Nipsey Hussle, Rob Kenner

Nipsey Hussle is a certified rap legend taken from us far too soon. But the example he set while here on earth lives on — lessons on perseverance, integrity, self-determination, and staying 10 toes down for one’s community. Rob Kenner, an iconic journalist and author in his own right, brings those stories to life in this incredible, all-encompassing biography. Infinite respect. (Simon & Schuster)

🎧 The Plugs I Met 2, Benny the Butcher and Harry Fraud

Griselda’s dope boy turnt dope lyricist remains razor-blade sharp on his latest work, produced entirely by Harry Fraud (who’s been having a great run of his own). But Benny the Butcher’s time to shine hasn’t all been sunny. The 36-year-old spitter’s past life weighs heavily on his mental, as he reflects on deceased or incarcerated homies, his own unlikely escape from the underworld, and the November 2020 shooting he survived. Plug and play. (Spotify)

🎥 The Day Sports Stood Still

It was a work stoppage unlike any that preceded it — and for an urgent cause. After the August 2020 police shooting of Jacob Blake, athletes from the NBA, WNBA, MLB, and MLS refused to participate in gameplay, demanding that the powers that be use their influence to effect change. It wasn’t quite the revolutionary moment some hoped for, but it was certainly notable. This new documentary from HBO traces last year’s unprecedented series of events, from the NBA’s initial Covid-compelled suspension to its relaunched bubble league coming to a sudden halt in the name of social justice. (3/25, HBO)

LEVEL Read of the Week

Behind the Headlines of Corporate America’s Latest Blunders

There’s a reason corporate America is called white-collar work — there’s no shortage of White male supremacy at play. The examples are endless, and they find their way into news headlines regularly. In his new monthly column at LEVEL’s recently launched sister publication Index, our own The Only Black Guy in the Office offers his one-of-a-kind commentary on the most headshaking examples. His first entry includes the fallacy of effective diversity training, and reports of Google gaslighting employees who’ve been subject to racist treatment on the job. If only this were fake news. Read the story.

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We can’t fight White supremacy when we’re not united was originally published in LEVEL on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Prior to this weekend, the vast majority of us had never imagined gospel legend Kirk Franklin calling someone a “bitch ass.” That all changed Saturday, after his estranged son, Kerrion, released a video of his dad cursing him out. The Instagram clip went viral because of course it did — this the man who made “Imagine Me” dropping n-bombs and using phrases like “I’ll break my foot off in your ass.”

(Sidebar: That whole premise of Christians not being able to curse has always fascinated me because, well, who determines what words are off-limits? The FCC? I’ve heard so many Christians use words like “whore” and “bastard” but refuse to say “ass.” But I digress.)

The ensuing social media discussion eventually went beyond the shock of a Cussin’ Kirk and the real issue came into focus: verbal abuse. This was a story about a father heaving threats and curses at his 32-year-old son. And since social media is where nuance goes to die, there was very little of it exercised on Twitter.

Look, first and foremost, I’m glad my parents have never threatened to break my neck, regardless of my age or the severity of the disagreement. I’m also proud to say that my children will never be addressed in that manner while they’re living under my roof (I sincerely hope your parenting style is the same). But I also know that there are plenty of people who were raised in physically or verbally abusive households who are triggered by what they heard in the video — and rightfully so.

However, their points are going to be dismissed because the internet is the land of projecting. Which explains the sentiment of “my parents cussed at me and I turned out fine” when, uh, they probably didn’t turn out fine? It’s okay to reckon with the stuff that hurt us when we were younger — and to listen and empathize with other perspectives without Twitter dunking or trying to score retweets.

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Kirk Franklin has since apologized for his words in a public statement and video released to social media, claiming he “lost his temper.” Yet this mini saga, and how it’s played out in the public discourse, is a convergence of unresolved hurt, toxic masculinity, and religion. It’s a lot to parse and we’ll probably never get the full backstory of the situation. But maybe, just maybe, we can listen while people try to work through their own experiences as they absorb it all. Or maybe I just have too much faith.

— David Dennis Jr., senior staff writer

This Week in Racism

🗑 Funny, We Don’t Remember Wilford Brimley Dropping the N-Bomb

Late last week, the National Federation of State High School Associations streamed an Oklahoma high-school basketball game between the female squads from Norman and Sapulpa. (Are people really still calling it “girls’ basketball?” Really?) During the pre-game National Anthem, a number of the Norman athletes knelt, which seemed to set off one of the play-by-play announcers from state sports network OSPN. “They’re kneeling?” he asked his broadcasting partner in disbelief, clearly assuming his mic was off. “Fuckin’ n*****s. I hope Norman get their ass kicked.” Once the raw footage of the tirade hit Twitter, OSPN refused to name the voice behind the hatred, but ultimately Matt Rowan — who happens to own the network — took responsibility. Now, we’ve heard people explain away their racism using all kinds of excuses, most of them being variations of the Shaggy Defense. But Rowan opted for something with a much, much higher degree of difficulty. “I will state I suffer Type 1 Diabetes and during the game my sugar was spiking,” Rowan said in a statement issued to The Frontier. “While not excusing my remarks, it is not unusual when my sugar spikes that I become disoriented and often say things that are not appropriate as well as hurtful.” That’s the great thing about science; you learn something new every day! We can’t wait to hear Derek Chauvin blame it all on scurvy. (The Oklahoman)

🗑 Welcome to Another Episode of Law School Professors Gone Wild (Racist)!

Georgetown University Law Center perennially ranks in the nation’s top 15 law schools; it’s produced senators (Mazie Hirono, George Mitchell), journalists (Savannah Guthrie), “journalists” (Greta Van Susteren), and whatever ex-RNC chair Michael Steele is classifying himself as these days. Last week, someone discovered that a recorded Zoom call between two of the school’s faculty members contained what we here at LEVEL like to call “a shining crystalline distillation of the problem.” In discussing class participation over the years, adjunct professor Sandra Sellers shared that “I end up having this angst every semester that a lot of my ‘lower ones’ are Blacks. Happens almost every semester. And it’s like, ‘Oh, come on.’ You get some really good ones, but there are also usually some that are just plain at the bottom. It drives me crazy.” All the hits are here! You’ve got your default “lower ones,” your begrudging acknowledgment that there are some “good ones,” and of course the obligatory hey-this-isn’t-my-fault-I’m-a-good-liberal handwaving of saying it gives her “angst.” And let’s not forget “Blacks”! The law school’s dean terminated Sellers the next day, but don’t worry too much about her: the conservative spin machine has already anointed her a sacrificial lamb of “cancel culture.” The National Review went with “Increasingly, Facts Are Racist,” which is a particularly nice contortion to avoid the idea that maybe professors are responsible for what happens in their classrooms. But hey, what do we know? We’re still over here trying to figure out that whole diabetes thing. (ABC News)

🗑 Pardon Our French, But Don’t Pardon These French

In 2015, 12 staffers at French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo were murdered by two men angry that the magazine had published a cartoon depicting the Prophet Mohammad; the tragedy became a flashpoint for a charged discussion around freedom of speech, satire, and the blurry line between commentary and hateful baiting. This weekend, Charlie Hebdo again found itself in the global spotlight. This time, though, it was thanks to a decision that was entirely its own. Coming on the heels of Oprah Winfrey’s explosive interview with Meghan Markle and Prince Harry, the magazine’s newest cover blares the headline POURQUOI MEGHAN A QUITTE BUCKINGHAM (“Why Meghan left Buckingham”); underneath, a cartoon depicts Queen Elizabeth and Markle as Derek Chauvin and George Floyd, with the Queen kneeling on Markle’s neck while the latter says “Parce que je ne pouvais plus respirer!” (“Because I could no longer breathe!”) We’re gonna be real with you; we’ve got no jokes for this one. It’s just fucking vile. We grew up reading Mad Magazine, and even its ugly stepchild Cracked, and not a single one of the juvenile-ass headlines they published over the years comes close to the level of disrespect and utter lack of judgment the Charlie Hebdo staff shows in publishing it. We’ll just leave it at what Bas said and dip out. (CNN)

The LEVEL Up: Culture Picks From the Editors

The Falcon and the Winter Soldier

WandaVision blew our minds, but it was just the first of many Marvel series slated to drop in 2021. Next up is this odd pairing of Falcon (Anthony Mackie) and Winter Soldier (Sebastian Stan) that takes place post-Avengers: Endgame, as the duo attempts to fill Steve Rogers’ shoes and carry Captain America’s shield. While there won’t be any nods to various eras of television programming, this six-episode journey is sure to serve up something closer to the kinds of nonstop action scenes that MCU heads crave. We’ll be watching to see if Winter Soldier’s time as “White Wolf” offers any clues about Black Panther 2. (3/19, Disney+)

This Is the Fire: What I Say to My Friends About Racism, Don Lemon

Like Ta-Nehisi Coates’ Between the World and Me, Don Lemon’s new hardcover uses James Baldwin’s 1963 book, The Fire Next Time, as inspiration and a blueprint to go deep on racism. Spurred by the murder of George Floyd last year, this collection of essays and reported stories finds the CNN anchor getting real about this country’s history of oppression, his family’s history of slavery, and his ideas on the best way to move forward. (Barnes & Noble)

Genius: Aretha

Between the incredibly humanizing Biggie: I Got a Story to Tell, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, and Judas and the Black Messiah, it’s been a great time for biopics and documentaries celebrating our icons. That trend continues with this anthology series based on the life of the Queen of Soul, Aretha Franklin. Cynthia Erivo’s transformation into the music and civil rights legend will make you put some respect on her name. (3/21 @ 9 p.m., National Geographic)

LEVEL Read of the Week

Black Users Made Clubhouse a Phenomenon — How Will the App Treat Them in Return?

It’s a tale as old as social media: a platform launches; Black users turn that platform into an essential destination; the platform takes its Black users for granted, paying them either lip service or dust. From Vine to TikTok, it’s always the same — but now, with voice-chat app Clubhouse poised to become that next ubiquitous platform, Keith Nelson Jr. wonders if the story can get a different ending. Read the story here.

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Does God forgive men who verbally abuse their children? was originally published in LEVEL on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

The Black Lives Matter movement is a force. It’s been unapologetic about who it represents and has been doing the work to point out the many racial injustices that African Americans face in the land of the (kinda) free. Eight years have passed since George Zimmerman was acquitted in the killing of Trayvon Martin in Florida. Since then, Michael Brown, Eric Garner, Philando Castile, Ahmaud Arbury, Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, and a litany of other Black Americans have fallen to racial violence. The BLM movement, which started as a hashtag in 2013, sheds light on all those killings. It forces America to sit in its savagery.

Tomorrow is a big day at Medium as the co-founder of the Black Lives Matter movement, Alicia Garza, will be in conversation with Zora editor-in-chief Vanessa De Luca. March is Women’s History Month, but this coming together of two Black titans would be special anytime, anywhere. Find out what it took to organize the most important civil rights movement of the 21st century. And listen to what it truly means to go past a hashtag on social media.

These conversations are needed. Perhaps now more than ever. Join Vanessa and Alicia for this live Zoom conversation titled “The Purpose of Power”. The event begins today at 4:15 ET/1:15 PT. Please register here.

Looking forward to being present and listening with you.

Jermaine Hall

Editor-in-Chief, LEVEL

Do you know the story behind Black Lives Matter? was originally published in LEVEL on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Almost a year ago, I wrote an article about Drake. In it, I talked about how I’d identified so much with his music when I was 22 — but then, as we both grew into our mid-thirties over the next decade, he basically kept making music for 22-year-olds. The article, predictably, got held up by Drake fans as some sort of scathing takedown of his music and artistry. But that’s how the internet works. I also got a lot of “he just doesn’t make music for you, old man*” from twentysomethings — which was exactly my point.

Fast forward to this past Friday, when Drake dropped Scary Hours 2, an EP of songs meant to keep the buzz going for his gonna-drop-at-some-point album Certified Lover Boy. The material, finally, hints at a desire to evolve beyond being the hitmaker who drops TikTok dance anthems. Not everything has changed: The hooks are still full of catchphrases and tracks that immediately topped the charts because that’s what Drake does and will always do. He’s never going to suddenly become Phonte or Black Thought. But these first few tracks have some signs of maturity.

On “Lemon Pepper Freestyle” with Rick Ross, Drake goes on a three-minute bar-fest that’s as sharp as anything he’s dropped in years. But more importantly, he talks about going to parent-teacher conferences. That’s right: Drake is rapping about some of the washed life of a thirtysomething. Okay, sure, he’s rapping about how the other moms there hit on him — but it’s a start. On “What’s Next,” Drake has a hook that includes “Well, summer, all I did was rest, okay? And New Year’s, all I did was stretch, okay?” That’s the sound of a flag getting planted firmly on the side of the washed.

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Sorry, Gen Z: Drake belongs to us now, babyyyyy! Drake is a 34-year-old dad who pays child support and drops his kid off at school and when he gets out of bed something in his body that aches and he doesn’t quite know why. We as millenials have reclaimed our chart-topping messiah. You hear that, kids?! Go listen to Lil Tink Tink or Baby Toddler Jones and move your arms like you’re fighting Ip Man and leave us the hell alone. Drake is home! And — wait for it — nothing was the same.

— David Dennis Jr., senior staff writer

*I would make fun of a 20-year-old for thinking a 34-year-old rapper is part of their generation or telling them what’s cool, but I used to be 19 going to the clubs looking like an assistant deacon on casual 5th Sunday service because 35-year-old Jay-Z told me to wear button-ups. I get it.

This Week in Racism

🗑 Okay, It’s Officially Time to Rename February “(That’s Not How You Teach) Black History Month”

A couple of weeks ago we brought you the story of a college professor who thought writing Tupac’s backronym for the N-bomb and asking students to pretend to be confined to a slave ship was Good Pedagogy. As it turns out, she was far from the only educator who showed such sterling instincts. Mississippi eighth-graders were asked to write letters from the vantage point of an enslaved person; in Florida, a high school teacher told students that white people didn’t whip enslaved people; in previous years, bad ideas ranged from mock slave auctions in classrooms to “Let’s Make a Slave” essay assignments. Now, look, we may not have gotten advanced degrees in education, but we’re gonna go ahead and say JUST STOP TRYING TO “IMMERSE” STUDENTS IN SLAVERY. No good can come of it — actually, forget that. It might just be a public service. If teachers this boneheaded were just talking about multiplication tables and geology, how else would we know they had no right being anywhere near our kids? (USA Today)

🗑 So a Few White Ladies Love Raccoons — What’s the Big Deal?

Meanwhile, over in Missouri, a group of teachers ably demonstrated that religious schools are no exception. During a game of “human Scrabble” — what could go wrong? — five faculty members from St. Charles County’s Christian School District posed for a photo holding tiles that spelled out the word COONS. Only one of the five white women wasn’t wearing a mask, so we can’t vouch for the fact that the other four shared her shit-eating grin, but we can vouch for the fact that ? Students were pissed; parents were pissed; the school’s basketball coach decided to smooth things over by telling everyone they were overreacting. “Everybody in the world makes mistakes, everybody in the world has faults and this is just a little fault that we’ve had,” said John Smith, which we feel compelled to point out is the boiled chicken of names. “This is not our school. I truly believe that they did not know what they were posting.” We feel compelled to ask: if they didn’t know what they were posting, do we really want them teaching our children spelling and English? Get back to us on that one. (KSDK NBC 5)

🗑 Welcome Back to Another Edition of “Racist Boomer Facebook Post Countdown”!

The universe of Old People Facebook Memes is vast and varied, friends. You’ve got your “what’s up with these kids today” chain letters; you’ve got your “remember life before erectile dysfunction?” cartoon knee-slappers; and perhaps most popular and widespread, you’ve got your “political correctness run amok!” bilgewater filtered through decades of Rush Limbaugh and Fox News conditioning. Recently, Missouri businessman William Brown — what the hell is going on Missouri, anyway? — opted for Door 3. “Can we still order Black coffee???” his post began, with all the originality of an open-mic comic going off on airplane food. “Are Brownies being taken off the shelf? Is White Castle changing [its] name?” Stop, Bill, you’re killing us! Our sides! Brown went on to make similarly hilarious musings about Cracker Barrel, Chinese checkers, “Indian burns,” and Italian sausages, before ending on the capper, “How far do ya want to go with this foolishness?” We don’t know how the town of Lee’s Summit works, but we do know that Brown is a prominent supporter of the local school district, which seems to leave said school district with a question they need to answer: how far do ya want to go with this foolishness? (Kansas City Star)

The LEVEL Up: Culture Picks From the Editors

🎧 “Leave the Door Open,” Anderson .Paak and Bruno Mars

We never expected Bruno Mars and Anderson .Paak to join forces for a collaborative album, but when word got out last month, it made too much sense. The two soul brothers dropped the first single from their upcoming Silk Sonic album, and it’s a whole vibe. Things start off smooth with a conversational verse from Anderson, complete with his own sung ad-libs. Then Bruno comes in with that irresistible falsetto that’s made him a living legend, and the situation crescendos into a whole-ass old-school love song. Get your two-step ready! (Spotify)

🥣 Nature’s Cereal

The latest food trend has arrived — and it’s good as hell. TikTok user @natures_food has gone viral on the video-sharing social network with an alarmingly delicious, vegan-friendly recipe for what he’s dubbed “Nature’s Cereal” — a mix of blueberries, blackberries, pomegranate seeds, and coconut water. Lizzo is already on the wave; whip up a bowl for yourself and/or your kid to score some cool points while eating healthy. (TikTok)

📺 Dealer

Life comes at you fast. This is especially true in this Netflix crime drama series that follows a music video director who ventures into the underbelly of France to capture a trapper-turnt-rapper in his natural element. (Clearly, this dude has never seen Snow on the Bluff.) If you can tolerate the English audio dubs, this looks to be a thrilling ride that’s much grittier than Lupin. (3/10, Netflix)

LEVEL Read of the Week

We Should Have Held T.I. Accountable Years Ago

When Clifford Harris, Jr. went on a podcast in 2019 and detailed how he’d taken his teenage daughter to the gynecologist to make sure she was still a virgin, people rightly got upset. But those who saw it for what it was — a bright red flag — got told they were overthinking an overprotective father. Now, as sexual assault allegations from young women continue to mount against the rapper and his wife, Tiny, David Dennis Jr. points out one very important truth: we’ve turned a blind eye to the obvious for far too long. Read the story here.

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Your favorite rapper now goes to parent-teacher conferences. Yes Lord! was originally published in LEVEL on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

For Valentine’s Day, my wife and I went on a double date with another couple. The restaurant — a steakhouse in the heart of Atlanta — was packed, of course. We sat at the crowded bar while waiting for our table, talking about our expectations and job prospects for the year. We had drinks and ordered appetizers, sitting shoulder to shoulder with the rest of the patrons, everyone in their finest suits and gowns. Then we sat at our table, ate, and drank away the night.

This was February 2020 — the last time I had a meal with friends.

Like many of us, I’ve been thinking a lot about these one-year anniversaries as March has approached. They’re piling up faster by the day. The last time you went to a concert. The last time you saw your parents. The last time you went to work. The last time you saw your friend alive.

Winter was a depressing slog because of the sheer devastation of the death count. Even though infection numbers are finally beginning to drop as vaccine availability increases, March brings about its own emotional trauma. We’re looking at what amounts to a lost year for so many of us. We had months of plans that have been deferred or eradicated by financial crises, quarantine, and death.

There’s also the fact that we’re being forced to relive the trauma of how everything fell apart. I vividly remember the panic I felt when the NBA canceled its games and I had to pull my kids from school, those first few weeks when I thought coming anywhere near someone would mean I’d die. The terror feels like muscle memory.

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It’s weird to know that we’re all in this collective moment of reflecting on our trauma together. No one has escaped it. And now we have to somehow pretend like everything is okay. So, the first thing I have to offer is this: don’t. If at all possible, try to allow yourself the grace to fall short. To feel the pain. To hurt. To know that we’re still processing a devastation that is ongoing.

We’ll bounce back. But for now, it’s okay to take a moment and just feel whatever you feel, as honestly as you feel it.

— David Dennis Jr., senior staff writer

This Week in Racism

🗑 At This Point, We’d Be Surprised If a Conservative Conference *Didn’t* Happen on a Giant Nazi Symbol

For those of you who don’t stay glued to Fox News, last week was CPAC, the annual gathering of the country’s “best” and “brightest” conservatives that also happens to sound like your uncle’s sleep apnea machine. And this year’s installment had it all: the slogan “America Uncanceled,” which in its hopes to own the libs is about as assertive as boiled chicken; Ted Cruz yelling the word “FREEDOM!” like a televangelist who had just watched Braveheart; a gold statue of Donald Trump in stars-and-stripes shorts that we mistook for Rodney Dangerfield in Back to School. And it all happened in the beautiful Hyatt Regency Orlando, on a stage designed in a shape we can only assume is 100% innocuous. [Flips idly through history book called The Symbology of the Nazi Party] Uh, wait a second. [Looks at photos of CPAC stage, looks back at book] In the 1940s, the Nazis took a Norse symbol known as the Othala (or Odal) rune, added wings, and began using it as a swastika replacement in some units of the SS. And that’s exactly what the CPAC stage was shaped like. Coincidence? Sure — as long as you believe that the Trump campaign using concentration-camp symbols was a coincidence too. (Washington Post)

🗑 Is “We’ve Been Hacked” the New “It Was a Different Time”?

Full disclosure here: We don’t know much about Coastal Carolina University, or about the off-campus living options for students. We do know, though, that Coastal Club Living bills itself as “luxury” living, with amenities that range from energy-efficient stainless-steel appliances to a sundeck and yoga/dance studio, not to mention an Instagram account that posts images of a sign reading “WE WANT WHITE TENANTS IN OUR WHITE COMMUNITY.” Yes, really. On Saturday night, Coastal Club’s account featured that little gem, which stayed up until Sunday morning — at which point the account deleted it, slapped up a “NO ROOM FOR RACISM” post, and sent an email to all its tenants saying that “our Instagram account had been surreptitiously taken over and consequently, a hateful post had been placed on our community feed.” We gotta say, we’re actually inclined to believe the complex on this one. Not only does the original sign posted have a real ’50s vibe going, but this is South Carolina; if Lindsey Graham can say “If you’re a young African American … you can go anywhere in this state. You just need to be conservative, not liberal,” then a racist housing complex would let that shit rock. (WPDE ABC 15)

🗑 Let’s Just Go Ahead and Assume Everything Are Racist Until Proven Otherwise

Last year, when LA-area public radio station KCRW hit financial difficulties, it offered buyouts to two dozen employees. One of those outgoing employees, Cerise Castle wrote a goodbye letter excoriating the station for its lack of Black employees and the way it treated the few Black employees it did have. It stayed under wraps at the time — but after Castle appeared on a podcast last week and repeated the allegations, they’ve created a firestorm for the station. Among the allegations: that Castle’s coworkers described her hair as “militaristic” and said she reminded them of a “gangsta”; that the station took her idea and passed it off as someone else’s; and that building personnel tried to stop her from entering the building multiple times within her first month of employment. This is an especially bad look for KCRW considering what’s been unfolding at podcast network Gimlet Media, where … actually, just read it yourself. We’re getting pretty damn tired of hearing this song. (Los Angeles Times)

The LEVEL Up: Culture Picks From the Editors

📺 Coming 2 America

Sprinkle some rose petals. Order yourself a Big Mick. Spray some damn Soul Glo. The long-awaited sequel to Eddie Murphy’s classic 1988 film has arrived! This time around, Akeem returns to Queens as a king in search of the son and rightful heir he’s only recently discovered (Jermaine Fowler). Wesley Snipes, Teyana Taylor, Leslie Jones, and Tracy Morgan join the franchise, while Arsenio Hall, Shari Headley, John Amos, and James Earl Jones reprise their respective roles. Fingers crossed for a Sexual Chocolate encore! (3/5, Amazon Prime)

🎧 Good Kid Twisted Fantasy, Toasty Digital

Ever wonder how two of the greatest hip-hop albums of the 2010s would sound if they collided head-on like a couple of crash-test dummies? A music editor and DJ named Toasty Digital found out for himself, and the answer is far from a total wreck. Built around an elaborate fan fiction concept, this mashup of Kanye West’s My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy and Kendrick Lamar’s good kid, m.A.A.d city is masterfully blended. At times, K-Dot’s rhymes dance atop dazzling instrumentals like “Runaway”; elsewhere, Yeezy blesses the beat to “Money Trees.” In a word, it’s gorgeous. (YouTube)

🎥 Boogie

This coming-of-age basketball film has all of the ingredients of a winner: a high school rivalry, cultural intersections, and a gone-too-soon star in his first and only acting role. Eddie Huang’s directorial debut features newcomer Taylor Takahashi sharing the screen with the likes of Dave East and the late Pop Smoke in what looks to be a hoops flick for a new generation. Like an airball, this one won’t hit the ’net upon release, but look out for it at the official theater of meme stocks. (3/5, AMC)

LEVEL Read of the Week

How the Energy Problem in Texas Failed Houston in February

Houston has a problem, and Bun B wants to be its solution. Like much of the rest of Texas, the city faced a natural disaster of historic proportions last month, a winter storm made all the more deadly thanks to incompetent GOP leadership and a privatized energy industry. Bonsu Thompson spoke with Bun B about how the devastation in his home state may spur the UGK rapper to pursue public office — and why he believes he’d have a strong chance of securing election. Read the story.

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Vaccine or no vaccine, it’s okay to feel helpless one year into COVID was originally published in LEVEL on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Folks on social media once again got in peak soapbox mode this weekend. This time, the outrage was built around a video that surfaced of a teenager at Cam Newton’s football camp audibly calling the NFL star “ass.” Newton approached him, clapping back by boasting about his net worth before things devolved into an incoherent back-and-forth. The widely circulated video, captured on another teen’s TikTok, became the focal point of the latest episode of everyone’s favorite show, Dumb Discourse.

Like every other hot topic, two sides emerged on the matter: those who believed Cam Newton was in the wrong for responding to the kid, and those who thought the boy participated in a disgraceful act that brought shame to his family deserving of strict repercussions. If social media does anything well, it’s absolutes — but the truth is always somewhere in the middle.

The teenager who called Cam Newton “ass” did something incredibly stupid and disrespectful. It’s almost as if he’s [gasps] a teenager! Look: Teenagers are little idiot landmines that explode if you come anywhere near them. They’re chaos bombs. Who knows why they do what they do? They don’t even know what they’re doing on a given day. Hell, that kid probably didn’t even know why he said that. He was being dumb — which, again, is what teenagers do!

A kid yelling an obscenity at Cam Newton isn’t a commentary on life and TikTok and society and Grand Theft Auto or whatever. It’s just that: a kid yelling an obscenity.

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That hasn’t stopped many on the internet from suggesting Cam Newton should have put that kid in his place via some grand insult or violence. Like the big, rich NFL player should have folded this teen in half and tossed him down the field. Should Cam Newton have responded by talking about how much richer he was? Probably not. But again, he was earnestly responding to a little hormone droid insulting him.

Later, Cam approached the kid and they talked it out, creating a learning experience for all. And Sunday night, the kid posted an apology that seems to have settled everything. That’s really all it took: an apology. Not preaching, not glamorizing a video of a kid being stupid. Just talking.

Kids are going to be dumb. And we have to give them the grace to be wrong. Sure, we can (and should) reprimand him (like his parents did). Sure, he should learn from his mistake. Then we should, uh, move on because what the hell are we even doing here?

Sometimes a thing can just be a thing. And this exchange is an example of that.

TLDR: Kids are dumb. Let them be dumb and make dumb-ass mistakes and then reel them in with love and firmness when they need it. Now let’s move along.

— David Dennis Jr., senior staff writer

This Week in Racism

🗑 Your Weekly Reminder That When You Hear “This Is My America,” It’s Time to Dip Out

Quick, picture a successful anesthesiologist in your head. Got it? Okay, now tell us what that person does for fun when they’re not treating patients. Spending time with their family, maybe? Maybe a hobby, like golf or gardening? That all sounds perfectly plausible. But you left out one hobby: yelling slurs at a Latinx man, keying his car, telling him “we should have gotten rid of you when we could,” and then punching him when he tried to call 911. At least, that’s what Dr. Jennifer Susan Wright, a Miami-area anesthesiologist, was arrested for last week. Seems she got a little testy after the man asked her to respect social distancing in a supermarket checkout line, then followed dude to his car and assumed the form of Super Saiyan Karen. Given all that, it may not surprise to learn that Wright’s Facebook page (which she’s since deleted) was home to such shitposting classics as “It’s Okay to Be White.” (Daily Mail)

🗑 The Latest Arrestable Crime in Texas: Walking Home From Work While Black

One night last week, after snow and ice had blanketed Texas, 18-year-old Rodney Reese started walking home from his job at Walmart. He wasn’t that cold, despite only having a t-shirt on, but all that unplowed snow and ice meant he needed to walk in the street. Soon, though, another problem presented itself: Plano police officers, alerted by a phone call, began following Reese in their car. Despite the high school student’s repeated claims that he was fine and didn’t need help, they ultimately arrested him on a “pedestrian in the roadway” charge, and he spent the night in jail. Here’s where we point out that the officers, who were dispatched to the scene as a welfare check, had no right to arrest Reese … which is exactly why the charges were dropped. Here’s also where we wonder whether anyone would have arrested Reese (or called the cops in the first place) if he were white. Just kidding — we’re not wondering at all! (Fox 4 KFDW)

🗑 Neo-Nazis in the Military Are Finding Each Other Through Their Fashion Choices

Despite repeated warnings that law enforcement has a white supremacy problem, it’s an idea that doesn’t exactly appeal to the Thin Blue Line crowd. (“ThOsE arE tHe peOpLE kEePIng YoU sAFe,” goes a typical rebuttal.) You know who believes it? The motherfucking Pentagon. Yes, the Department of Defense sent a report to Congress last year detailing its efforts keeping extremists out of the military, and the details are just now coming out. Of particular note is the idea of training Army officials to identify lesser-known Nazi symbols — because that’s exactly how these asshats are learning how to identify each other. “A good way people in the military find other rightists is to simply wear a shirt with some obscure fascist logo,” wrote one active military member in an online chat mentioned in the report. You heard it here first: wearing SS symbols is so last year. (Roll Call)

The LEVEL Up: Culture Picks From the Editors

🎥 Biggie: I Got a Story to Tell

The Notorious B.I.G. has been deceased for nearly as long as he was alive. And while hip-hop fans around the world know Biggie Smalls as one of the greatest MCs to ever kick a rhyme (even his belt is legendary), far fewer truly know the man behind the music. This new documentary shines a light on Christopher Wallace’s life after death. (3/1, Netflix)

📺 Snowfall (Season 4)

At long last, it’s time to revisit those momentous Reagan years that turned Black communities upside down. In this new chapter of the Los Angeles-based crack era drama, we’ll discover the fate of Franklin Saint (played by Damson Idris) following the cliffhanger that has had fans holding their collective breath since the season three finale in 2019. Let’s see just how cold the snow game can get. (2/24, FX)

🎧 The Fraud Department, Jim Jones and Harry Fraud

Jim Jones just keeps getting better. Dipset’s 40 Over 40 iron man linked up with producer Harry Fraud for an 11-song collection of thoughtful bars over mellow beats. The intro track “Laps Around the Sun” recalls late-career Hov’s conversational flows, while “The People,” featuring Conway the Machine, memorializes George Floyd. The Fraud Department consistently keeps it real. (Spotify)

LEVEL Read of the Week

We Waited 9 Years for Our Daughter — and Had 9 Weeks to Prepare for Her

Jesús Triviño Alarcón and his wife tried for nearly a decade to start a family: IVFs, IUIs, the whole gamut of options. Next up was adoption — but despite the odds being in their favor as a young Latinx couple, they searched for a year and a half with no luck. Just as they were about to give up hope, though, hope found them. And it didn’t leave them much time. Read the story.

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Give kids the grace to be dumb was originally published in LEVEL on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Level Reader,

It’s been a trash year. We’ve had to deal with two pandemics. One is COVID-19; the other, anti-Black racism. We know many who are out of work — or, worse, are no longer with us due to the virus. None of this is lost on us when we greenlight stories to put out into the world.

Hopefully we’ve informed you and occasionally made you laugh, even through the worst of this shit-storm. I started this pub with a very focused mission. The category that was most important to nail was race and identity. If we did that correctly, I believed everything else would fall into place. It’s getting there.

Thank you for finding time to connect with us through words. You’ve done it often, and we’re grateful for it. As we’ve preached in this weekly newsletter, tell a friend to tell a friend if you like what you’re reading. In the meantime, we’ll keep serving you journalism that’s hotter than Trump after his election loss.

Happy Holidays.

Jermaine Hall, Director, Medium Editorial Group

P.S. This graphic was commissioned for you by designer and murlalist Queen Andrea— it’s the least we could do.

A shout-out to this year’s MVP: You was originally published in LEVEL on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Back in the days when sites like NahRight ran the internet, the best way to stunt on fellow blog denizens was by marking your territory as its most ardent visitor. You’d strive to leave the first comment on every published post — naturally, “first!” — and collect your imagined clout from the digital gods and webmasters. Sadly, that diligence didn’t become absorbed into holiday shopping culture.

If you’re anything like us, when Christmastime comes around, you usually sit on the sidelines throughout Black Friday and Cyber Monday, waiting to cram all of your shopping until the very last minute and swearing you’ll be more proactive and less procrastinator next year.

Christmas is 10 days out, which means we’re officially in the red zone of the big holiday. But that doesn’t mean it’s too late to round up gifts for all of the special people in your life, who have no idea how flagrantly you’ve deprioritized their material happiness. Not to worry — LEVEL’s got your back. Here are our 2020-friendly gift suggestions for all of your faves. That’s a wrap!

For Your Homie Trying to Get Their Whole Black-Ass Life

Black Futures, Kimberly Drew and Jenna Worthman

Minority Report subscribers likely saw this hardcover anthology in last week’s edition. Brilliant essays, incredible photography, some of the Blackest-ass excellence you’ll ever find in one place — this book will make you feel like you’re sitting at the Spades table. (Penguin Random House)

For the Screen-Addicted Germaphobe

Homedics UV-Clean Phone Sanitizer

Even if you’re not a Twitter and Tik Tok obsessive constantly glued to your mobile device, you should get your screens regularly sanitized — especially in the age of the ’rona. Remember, you put your face on that thing. (Best Buy)

For the Marvel Head Who’s Hyped About Black Panther 2

Shuri Vol 1.: The Search For Black Panther, Nnedi Okorafor

If you’re anxious about what’s gonna happen when Black Panther 2 drops — sadly without T’Challa — this will give you an idea of what to expect. Written by acclaimed author Nnedi Okorafor, it’s a masterful journey back to Wakanda (through outer space). (Amazon)

For the Faux Kitchenista

Ninja Foodi 6-in-1 2-Basket Air Fryer

If they’re looking for a fast-food taste without the fast-food grease drippings, this culinary appliance is the real chef game come-up. (Target)

For The Sneakerhead

Air Jordan 11 Jubilee

Ending the year with a new retro Jordan 11 drop is as much of a December tradition as Mariah Carey’s Christmas album. This pair is as pristine as ever, ready to be paired with a tech fleece or a tux. (StockX)

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For the Wu-Tang Fan Who Just Binge Watched The Queen’s Gambit

Chess lessons via Zoom

After binging this chess-themed mini series, we all wanna unlock our inner Beth Harmon (without popping a pill). Cop someone the gift of putting fools in check with one-on-one lessons from a grandmaster, no Flash! (Chessclub)

For Your Messy Cousin Who Lives For Drama

An invite to Clubhouse

We know you’ve been hoarding invites to the social media platform everyone is talking about (and on!). And while one of those golden tickets could get you some bread on the black market, you might as well spread joy to that special someone in your life who’d love to argue with the likes of 21 Savage and Meek Mill about, well, whatever the hell they’re talking about on any given day. (joinclubhouse.com)

For Your Least Favorite Child

Xbox Series S

How much do you love your child? Not enough to cop a Playstation 5? We’ve got juuust the console for you. (Best Buy)

For the Green Thumb Who Lives on Zoom

A Monstera plant

Look, we all got tired of shuffling between virtual backgrounds for work calls months ago. Reality is making a comeback in a major way — hook up the plant mama and plant zaddy in your life with this trendy tropical plant that resembles Swiss cheese for their backdrop purposes. (Bloomscape)

For the Person You Love More Than Anything in Life (or Even Just a Little Bit)

A one-year subscription to Medium

Unlimited access to LEVEL is reason enough — and that’s before you factor in premium editorial content from publications like Zora, OneZero, Human Parts, GEN, Marker, Forge, and Elemental. At $5 per month, it’s less than the cost of Netflix; we’d say it’s a steal. No lies told! (Medium)

— LEVEL Editors

This Week in Racism

🗑 Okay, We’re Gonna Need to Do Something About British Horse Owners

If you’re a racing fan who lives in central England, you may have decided to head to Wolverhampton over the weekend to play the ponies. That’s where you would have seen a two-year-old filly enter the race under the name of — wait, this can’t be right. [Holds up racing form] Really? The horse’s name was Jungle Bunny? Yes, that’s exactly what the horse was named. We say “was” because within a day, the British Horseracing Authority had retroactively changed the horse’s name so that records of the race list it as Jungle Bells. But wait, there’s more! The Guardian tracked down the horse’s owner’s wife, who claimed that they’d named the horse after its father, Bungle Inthejungle. (Guess they were big Jethro Tull fans.) “I’m upset because we’ve had our Sunday ruined by everybody ringing about it,” she told the paper. “It makes you look like a racist, which I am certainly not.” If you still hadn’t placed your bet in the office pool because you were waiting for the most emblematic sentence of 2020, your patience has been rewarded! (The Guardian)

🗑 Things Texas Loves: Barbecue, Big Cars, and the Word “Negro”

Language changes over time. That’s just a fact, as they say. (Hey, remember facts?) For instance, there was a long period of time during which the word “negro” was deemed perfectly acceptable. We can discuss why that was, or if we should have been using the word at all, but one thing we can all agree is that that long period of time is also long over. There’s just one problem: someone forgot to tell the state of Texas. It’s not like people didn’t try — in 1991, the state legislature passed a law eliminating “certain racially offensive names given to geographical features” — but in the nearly 30 years since that law was passed, only one location’s name was changed. (Also: 1991? Really? Y’all waited until 25 years after the Black Power movement?) As an NPR investigation found, the state submitted all name-change proposals to the federal government, which then reached out to the specific Texas counties where places like Negro Hollow and Negrohead Bluff could be found. And that’s where the trouble really happened: according to the federal agency handling the matters, those counties resisted the change, so the federal agency rejected the request. Which leaves us in coming up on 2021, with nearly 20 places in the state register still using the word. So here’s to 2021 — when Texas (hopefully) throws out a word it should have stopped using more than 50 years ago! (NPR)

🗑 Don’t Worry, San Francisco’s Got Things Completely Under Control

For all its famous political progressivism, San Francisco doesn’t exactly have a great track record on matters of race — just witness its ever-dwinding Black population, shunted by gentrification and exclusionary zoning to some of its least-served neighborhoods. And judging from a class-action suit recently filed by three Black city employees, things aren’t going all that great in SF’s public sector either. Drawing on official data from the city’s Department of Human Resources, the suit alleges that Black employees make on average $32,000 a year less than their White counterparts, are half as likely to be promoted, and receive nearly double the disciplinary actions. On a more personal level, the three plaintiffs detail a number of racist offenses they’ve endured at work, from receiving racist emails from supervisors (e.g., being told something was “mo’ betta”) to receiving performance reviews that claimed their facial expressions made people “uncomfortable.” So much for being Sucka Free, we guess. (Mission Local)

The LEVEL Up: Culture Picks From the Editors

🎧 Kid Cudi, Man on the Moon III: The Chosen

Has there been a more fitting year for the return of the self-proclaimed lonely stoner? Our favorite humming-ass hero has blessed fans with the third installment of his signature series, a cohesive album stacked with bangers (“Tequila Shots”), exciting features (Pop Smoke), and a signature brand of emo tunes (“The Void”) that will still put you in your feelings. Free your mind. (Spotify)

📺 Desus & Mero: The Obama Interview

After grilling political stars like Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the Bronx’s most knee-slappingest duo sit down for a frank discussion with former President Barack Obama. (Yes, we’re deadass!) In a nearly 30-minute interview, the legends of different games chop it up about bodegas, hoops, and the hoopla around that one time Barack wore a tan suit for a press conference. (YouTube)

📱 Verzuz: E-40 vs. Too Short

Ashanti and Keyshia Cole’s Verzuz was sadly postponed this weekend due to the former catching Covid-19, but the digital series that helped us survive 2020 is back with two hip-hop bigs from the Bay Area going song for song. Let’s give the 40 Over 40 gang all of their flowers, from 2020 and beyond! (Spotify)

LEVEL Read of the Week

Black Conservatives Don’t Care About You — Or Anyone Else

After four years of bumbling through his presidency and stoking the fires of American racism, Donald Trump has been defeated in his quest for reelection. But that’s not without growing his voter turnout amongst an unlikely demographic: Black men. Why exactly did 18% of Black male voters cast their ballots for a presidential candidate whose leadership would be particularly detrimental to Black people? Writer Scott Woods has a theory. Read the story.

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The only last-minute gift guide you procrastinators need was originally published in LEVEL on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

This week, to celebrate the release of our Best Man 2020 package, we decided to chop it up about the process involved: the genesis of the idea, the execution, and the future of the idea as an ongoing series. Enjoy!

Peter Rubin, executive editor: So, as with every large package that we’ve done, this one started a few months back. Jermaine, it was a pretty open-ended question you first asked: What are we going to do for the end of the year? Because it’s LEVEL’s first birthday, too.

Jermaine Hall, editor in chief: I was looking to create LEVEL’s version of [GQ’s] Men of the Year, LEVEL’s version of Coming Kings, which I really used to love back in the days of King. I thought the class that we could put together this year would be really interesting for the reader, because it gives us a chance to hit on some amazing human-interest stories and get some regular folks in there — not celebrities — to open up the space.

PR: We played with the idea of doing something that was more tongue in cheek and satirical, but we quickly realized that didn’t feel like the right energy to walk out of 2020 with. Like, does this feel right?

John Kennedy, senior editor: The interesting thing about that and about what Jermaine said is there were so many celebs who let us down this year. One idea we got at with our Man in the Mirror piece was, “Where do you find pride in being a Black man in 2020?” It can be hard to find that pride when that’s what you’re seeing from the people who represent you on a broad level. So I loved the spin of Best Men. There were some celebrities in there — Ricky Martin, Dwayne Wade, Swizz, Timbaland, D-Nice — but there are also these great human-interest stories about people that are doing good and putting good out into the world who you might not know otherwise.

JH: Taking the time to look back and see what Anthony Herron, Jr. did — go and sit on somebody’s lawn for 90 days because he felt that person was in danger and needed protection. And he was tired of seeing the performative things that people do on social media. It’s like, no, actually be about it. If you think this person is in danger, how are you going to protect them? That’s an amazing story, incredible story.

PR: As our first year has gone by, there have been these themes that have emerged for us, and “support and protect Black women” is a major one. “Hold each other accountable” is a major one. Letting go of outmoded notions of masculinity. JFK, your conversation with Anthony is one of my favorite stories of the year. These examples that people are setting, whether him or someone like Dwayne Wade, for fathering Zaya and allowing her to teach him, are worth covering. They’re all absolutely fundamental to what LEVEL is about.

JH: The other thing that really grabs me about that story is that this is a man with a full-time job. He’s leaving his full-time job. And then he’s going to make sure that this Black woman is protected, then going back to work. That is the LEVEL man. Right?

JFK: Also, just the fact that he’s also a 30-year-old artist who raps about upliftment — he’s basically everything that represents LEVEL distilled into one person.

PR: In another 10 years, he’s going to be angling to be in 40 Over 40.

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JH: Question for you guys, now that we’ve had time to live with the John Lewis, Kobe Bryant, and Chadwick Boseman cover: Do you feel that we missed anybody? I was wrestling this weekend with the fact that we don’t have George Floyd on the cover, but I think that’s okay.

JFK: I’m okay with it only because what he represented is different from what the three men on our cover represented. We’re honoring what they did in their lives and the mark they made while they were here. George’s story is tragic — he’s kind of like a martyr. I don’t know if they would’ve necessarily fit together. He would be deserving of his own space or way of paying tribute to him this year.

PR: Ahmaud Arbery, Tony McDade, just countless Black men and women who were killed by the system this year — and by system, I mean either police or people who have internalized the same thinking — and that felt very difficult to grapple with within the awards. We have a series of essays throughout the week that deal with some of the less celebratory aspects of the year. But as an award, it felt strange. Jermaine, we’ve talked a lot about the importance of establishing these sorts of franchises that are tied to the identity of LEVEL itself. How much does Best Man feel like one of those things?

JH: As a franchise, I think we did what we set out to do, but there’s a long way to go. And I say that because we’ve done this while being in quarantine. And if we did this when things were more regular, there’s so many tentacles that I see to go along with this — experiential activations, you name it. There are just so many other things you can do outside of just living on LEVEL.

JFK: 2020 has been crazy. Best Man is an interesting way to show that through the craziness, there was some good that came out of it. There were Black and Brown men who showed up and answered the call.

This Week in Racism

🗑 Kid Rock, We’re Gonna Need You to Come Get Your People

We already knew the Michigan branch of MAGA Nation was on some other shit entirely — see: openly trying to disenfranchise a whole-ass city — but after last week’s voting hearing, we’re gonna need to designate a new level of certifiable delusion and hatred. We’re not talking about this seven-hour hearing of GOP “poll challengers” making all manner of baseless accusations, or future Karen Hall of Fame inductee Melissa Carone going absolutely scorched-earth with concepts like “truth.” No, we’re talking about people leaving voicemails for Cynthia Johnson, the Democratic chair of the state’s House Oversight Committee, that say things like “Dems are going down, especially fuckin’ big-lipped n*****s like you.” Johnson, a Black woman, forwarded the voicemails to her colleagues in the state legislature, only to receive a response from Republican Mary Whiteford that began with “I don’t understand why you would share this with me.” Mary Whiteford, you say? Sounds about right. (Local 4 News)

🗑 Speaking of Michigan, Have We Found Our New Diamond & Silk There?

One of the people to speak at Michigan’s Senate hearings about vote counting last week — if a seven-hour video sounds like a slog, here’s a handy Twitter thread delivering the greatest hits — was Linda Lee Tarver. Tarver, whose bio highlights include serving as an Advisory Board Member on the national Black Voices for Trump coalition, claimed that Republican poll challengers were subjected to harassment. Okay, fine, if that’s your affidavit, that’s your affidavit. Let’s see what else she said [riffling through transcripts] … oh. Here’s something: “The larger the jurisdiction which are people of color, people who look like me, the more fraud that can be inserted into stealing an election.” So predominantly Black voting districts are more likely to be fraudulent? Got it. All of a sudden, the Twitter name “Linda Lee Tarver — Notable Exception” and the avatar photo that’s been lightened to damn near Powder levels start to make a lot more sense. Anyway, it looks like everyone’s as delighted with Tarver’s claims as we are; Lansing’s city council president has asked her to resign from a scholarship advisory board. For more, we’ll just have to stay tuned to whatever Parler account or YouTube talk show she pops up on next. Here we go! (Lansing City Pulse)

🗑 Don’t Worry, Michigan’s Not the Only State on the 85th Parallel With Racism!

Another week, another official being exposed as racistus wildicus. This time, it’s Courtney Rogers, commissioner of Tennessee’s Department of Veterans Services. Before being appointed to that position, Rogers was elected as a state legislator a few years back, during which she described her vision of diversity as “recruiting the best, from light meat to dark meat, across the entire spectrum.” Not a great sign — and she reportedly doubled down on her predilections during her stint at DVS, referring to someone as “another Black guy looking for a free ride” and using a racial slur in the aftermath of George Floyd’s murder. If you’re wondering about the judgment of the man who put her there, Tennessee governor Bill Lee, all you really need to know is this: homie dressed up as a Confederate soldier when he was in college. Say no more, fam! (The Tennessean)

The LEVEL Up: Culture Picks From the Editors

📺 Big Mouth (Season 4)

This animated series made headlines earlier this year when Jenny Slate (a White comic) relinquished her role in voicing Missy (a biracial character) to allow for a more authentic casting (comedian Ayo Edebiri, a Black woman). But that was just the first step in establishing the toon tween. Here, her identity is at the forefront, as she learns about her hair, gives up her beloved overalls, and grapples with comments that her classmates didn’t consider her Black-Black. Be sure to catch the code-switch song in episode five — and thank us later. (Netflix)

📖 Black Futures

The coffee table book of the season has arrived! Co-editors Kimberly Drew and Jenna Wortham set out to answer a complex question: What does it mean to be Black and alive right now? The product of that quest is a gorgeous hardcover that compiles photos, essays, conversations, memes, tweets, poetry, and more — all of which paint a picture of the infinite bounds of Black beauty and imagination today and far beyond. (Penguin Random House)

🎥 40 Years a Prisoner

In 1978, Philadelphia police ambushed the headquarters of Black radical liberation group MOVE, a shootout that resulted in one officer dead and nine members of the organization sentenced to 30-to-100 years behind bars. Tommy Oliver’s powerful new documentary chronicles the plight of the unit now known as the Move 9 (which maintains its innocence) and its 40-year struggle for justice — told through the lifelong campaigning of Mike Africa Jr., son to two of the incarcerated members. It’s yet another reminder of the urgent need to abolish the carceral system ASAP. (12/8 at 9 p.m., HBO)

LEVEL Read of the Week

The Unsung Hero Who Protected a Complete Stranger From Her Racist Neighbor For 90 Days

In 2020, activism has meant putting boots to pavement to protest systemic oppression and police brutality — or at its most underwhelming, posting a black square to Instagram. But in the case of New York resident Jennifer McLeggan, a single mother whose note about increasingly menacing harassment by her racist neighbors went viral, symbolic support wasn’t enough. Thankfully, Anthony Herron, Jr., a complete stranger, stepped up by patrolling her home for 90 consecutive nights, serving as a shining example of the mantra “Protect Black women” in action. Read the story.

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Salute the Black men who made 2020 not a total trash fire was originally published in LEVEL on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.