Civic Cipher 040222 How Viral Fight Videos Reflect on Us (Part 2)

She's the first African American to win an Oscar. She has two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and she was her only Her dying wish was to be buried in the Hollywood Cemetery and it was denied to her because she was not a white woman, and a lot more cool things about her. Obviously, she's long, so hence our way black history fact. But yeah, our entertainment episode is in full swing. First and foremost, let's talk about the NFL.

sound like the most articulate sports person. That's why. All thirty two NFL teams will hire a minority offensive assistant coach for the twenty twenty two season, part of a series of policy enhancements announced Monday to address the league's ongoing diversity efforts. The coach can be quote a female or member of an ethnic or racial minority and quote according to the policy adopted by NFL owners during their annual meeting, and will be paid from a league wide fund.

The coach must work closely with the head coach and the offensive staff with the goal of increasing minority participation in the pool of offensive coaches that eventually produces the most sought after candidates for head coaching positions. Quote. It's a recognition that at the moment when you look at stepping stones for a head coach, they are the coordinator positions. End quote. Said Pittsburgh Steelers' owner Art Rooney the second,

the chairman of the NFL Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Committee. Quote. We clearly have a trend where coaches are coming from the offensive side of the ball in recent years, and we clearly do not have as many minorities in the offensive coordinator position. Now, the NFL wasn't hiring some guy because they were just pretending to interview him. I forget the guy's name, but he was special, Brian Florence. That's

why we keep you around. And then the NFL came back and did this, so we know our beef is not eternal.

I have to be perfect to be good enough. I have to be twice as good to be good enough, right, And that's not fair, right, because there's a lot of people who are good enough that will never be considered because they're not twice as good, you understand. And that's not the same when you cross over into a different race, because you can just be good enough. If you're a different race, it's a different reality. I want to further illustrate how this weight feels right now. This is not

your fault, society, but it is. We'll call it our problem. And if it's our collective problem, then we have to challenge our prejudices and stereotypes with respect to these things. We have to do it together. I'm not putting it on you, it's us Okay. The first thing I want to talk about is those videos that go viral about people fighting. When the people are black and they are fighting after school, after a club, whatever the video is. I cringe because to me, I'm like, h white folks

could see this video. They will see this video and they will think, look, I knew it. That's exactly how they behave and they paint with broad strokes. It's not if you're white. I'm not picking on you. It's not your fault. It's human nature to categorize things. This is how we make sense of the world. Right. We categorize lots of things. Right. It's not your fault. But again, it is our problem to fix right. So we have to challenge ourselves not to say that's how they act.

We have to challenge ourselves to say that's how these specific individuals are acting. Right, and not all people are prone to this type of behavior. Similar to with to Will Smith and to Chris Rock, right, those two individuals are having this moment. This is not all black folks, right, because there's tons of black people in the audience got the whole night went off without a hitch quest Love God as Award, and Zelle was sitting there giving great advice.

Lupito was you know what I mean, nobody, no one has any issues, right, But when you see those videos to know that, Okay, this is an individual group of people that are behaving in this way and it's not fair to paint with broad strokes. And you listening to this show, you might actually do that. But when I when I'm talking, I'm saying society. Society doesn't often do that, right.

These things tend to subtly reinforce stereotypes, right that black people are violent or we like to fight or something like that. But there's just as many videos of non black people get invites.

I mean. Part of the reason that they don't cringe, however, is that the lack of societal power to create a society's outlook on them by black people, even if all black people felt that way, society at large would just as we pointed out about by the disparity in numbers and the lack of an infrastructure in place to flex any type of.

cultural or behavioral outliers to the degree that black people are. Right, So if you see, you know, some white folks in a viral video fighting at a trailer park or something like that, right, there's just some individuals in your mind and in our minds, some individuals fighting at a trailer park. Those are the cultural outliers. You yourself may not live

in a trailer park. You yourself may have all your teeth, You yourself may not drink during the day, you yourself, may not have a cousin who's also your sister or whatever, some weird you know whatever, whatever's going on in this imaginary viral video. Right, And we would not look at that, nor would you look at this video and say, see this is how they act. We would look at the video as would you, and say, look at these individuals acting crazy. Right, But again go back to remember Sharkisha.

Remember that video. Qu You might not remember Sharkisha, but that Sharkisha video came out, don't google this, but it was basically a fight, you know, some black girls fighting.

bus one time. This was in high school. This was in the nineties, right, the culture was a little different, but it was changing.

I'm not throwing it outside. It's fine. And he pulls me aside and he says something that I knew to be true, because I was conflicted when I left it. But I just I think I had my hands full backpack and I was carrying something else or whatever, and we had to go somewhere whatever. He pulled me aside. He's like, hey, man, you know you can't. You can't leave that there. It's white people on this bus looking

at you. And he was right. And I had to pick that up, and I had to stuff it in my pocket or whatever.

She's passed away long long ago. She'll take care of me. When I was little, she said that when she was growing up, she said that she was taught that black people had a natural odor to them, that we naturally smelled, and no matter how much we bathed, we could not get rid of that smell.

moment here to shout out Hip Hop Weekly Magazine. These videos that we're talking about, I believe to a large extent, were popularized by a site called world Star hip Hop. Not mad at world Star, but I do recognize that though sharing those fight videos and having them go viral before you know, the infrastructure was in place for things to go viral almost and on every social media site.

World Star was the first, and one of the things that really got them there was these fight videos, and they unfortunately became synonymous with fight videos that people would get into fits and yell out world Star and anticipation for making it on the site exactly. So, I'm not mad at world Star, but I really wish that that

didn't happen in that way. I wish there was another way that we didn't have to be like Mandingo Warriors in order to make money or to get the sort of social media or viral cloud or whatever it was.

to tell that story. But through hip hop music, drugs and gangs and that sort of stuff, or at least that culture kind of permeated hip hop culture, and the machismo that came along with this gang mentality also took center stage.

about here insofar as I'm concerned. You know, I if people can see you and they are not culturally competent, they don't understand the culture right to them, it looks like chaos, It looks like insanity, It looks like violence, and it is in some cases, but it looks way more sinister and because they don't have a cultural context, it's more difficult to process. It has a lingering effect, and they have a tendency to paint with broader strokes right In other words, paint all of these people, all

of this music, all of this culture. If you dress like this, then you are this type of person. If you sound like this, then you are this type of person. You know what I mean, You're going to break into my home and do awful things with my daughter, that sort of thing, you know what I mean. And so over the years, rap beef and you know, what is born out of it in some instances has been another thing where that's a weight that at least me, I carry it a bit differently, you know what I mean.

I'm not talking about machine gun Kelly beefing with eminem, you know what I mean, because that's not the same I'm talking about, you know, doctor dre and Easy when Easy was alive. You know, that was something that happened when I was like, you know, I'm from Compton, California, so that gang environment is something that I was born into. You know, my family was born into that, you know what I mean. So I knew that that was real.

You know, Tupac getting shot, Biggie getting shot, you know, all that sort of stuff, and other people on the outside look in and saying, oh my god. Now I will say this after thirty years, however long. It's been almost thirty years, give or take. You know, these stories are a part of our society. So the biggies in the Tupax and I stuff, it's not as scary anymore. It's you know, there's a million years ago right. In fact, I was taking a walk today and I saw a

woman wealthy, woman clearly wealthy, with her husband. And you know, with the neighborhood where we take walks, they're all mansions. Everyone there is wealthy. She was wearing a Biggie shirt and ready to Die, you know, the first album cover, and then on the top of the shirt it said Notorious.

And it's okay to make patterns and make connections. That's human nature. I'm not mad at you for that, but we can't let it go too far and define a reality for us that doesn't really exist right now. I know I've been talking a lot, so I do want to hear your thoughts on, of course, the Brat beef, the viral videos. I know we talked about, you know, hip Hop Weekly versus World Star hip Hop, all that sort of stuff.

then this must have happened because this happened. And when it comes to painting with broad strokes and the conclusions that we reach with regards to black people, our culture, our hair, our way of dress, our music, the cities that we come from, the fear that is caused by the perpetuation of those stereotypes, we have to be careful with the dots that we connect, because sometimes those connections

don't exist, we just put them there. Sure, coming from Detroit, Michigan and Compton, California, respectively, you know, you've seen our cities on the news for reasons that are not things that we're proud of. To be our age, to be in the space that we're in and coming from where we came from, it's something that we're both very, very proud of. So you know that there's another side to it. Of course, those things exist, the games, the drug that

we're not blameless, violence, all that stuff actually happened. It's just not the only thing that happened singular or a monolith with regards to that. So it's very very complex to be from where we're from and be intellectual and be kind and be and not be tough guys, and to not have chosen the other path that people that we grew up with did. It wasn't easy to take the path that we took, but that other path isn't easy either, and sometimes it's circumstantial.

type of person I wanted to be. Sounds like a get excuses for myself, which I don't want to do. But I am not a thief. If someone were to call me that, they would be absolutely wrong. In fact, if that toys rust still existed, I would go and give them their other nickel, you know, to make it right.

has two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Was inducted into the Black Filmmaker's Hall of Fame in nineteen seventy five, and in two thousand and six, she became the first black Oscar winner honored with the US Posters Stamp. In twenty ten, she was inducted into the Colorado Women's Hall of Fame. In addition to acting, McDaniel, recording sixteen blue sides between nineteen twenty six and twenty nine, was

a radio performer and television personality. She was the first black woman to sing on radio in the United States. Although she appeared in more than three hundred films, she received on screen credits for only eighty three McDaniel experienced racism and racism and racial segregation throughout her career, and was notably unable to attend the premiere of Gone with the Wind in Atlanta because it was held at a

whites only theater. At the Oscar Ceremony in Los Angeles, she sat at a segregated table at the side of the room. In nineteen fifty two, McDaniel died due to breast cancer. Her final wish to be buried in Hollywood Cemetery was denied due to the graveyard being restricted to whites only at the time. Nineteen thirty one, McDaniel moved to Los Angeles to join her brother Sam and sisters Eda and Orlina. When she could not get film work,

she took jobs as a maid or cook. Sam was working on a KNX radio program, The Optimistic Don Hour, and was able to get a sister a spot. She performed on radio as High Hat Hattie, a bossi maid who often forgets her place. Her show became popular, but her salary was so low that she had to keep working as a maid. She made her first appearance in the Old and West in nineteen thirty two, in which

she played a maid. Her second appearance came in the highly successful May West film I'm No Angel in nineteen thirty three, in which she played one of the maids with whom West camped Oh, sorry, camped camped it up backstage, written strangely, but I guess that's how they called it. Sorry about that. She received several other uncredited film roles in the early nineteen thirties, often singing in choruses. In

nineteen thirty four, McDaniel joined the Screen Actors Guilds. She began to attract the attention and landed larger film roles, which began to win her on screen credits. Fox Film Corporation put her under contract will appear in The Little Colonel with Shirley Temple, Bill Bojangles Robinson and Lionel Barrymore. The competition to win the part of Mammy and Gone with the Wind was almost as fierce as that for

Scarlett O'Hara. First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt wrote to film producer David O. Seals Nick to ask her to ask that her own maid, Elizabeth McDuffie, be given the part. McDaniel did not think she would be chosen because she had earned her reputation as a comedic actress. A comedic actress sorry. One source claim that Clark Gable recommended that the role be given to McDaniel. In any case, she went to our audition dressed in an authentic maid's uniform. Had won

the part. Upon hearing of the planned film adaptation, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People that's CNAACP, the ones that gave me my award for being a media trailblazer. Media activist Trailblazer shout out to the NAACP. They fought hard to require the film's producer and director to delete racial epithets from the film, in particular the offensive slur nigger, and to alter scenes that might be

incendiary and that, in their view, were historically inaccurate. A particular concern was a scene from the novel in which black men attacked scrl ot Olehira, after which the Ku Klux Klan, with this long history of provoking terror on black communities, is presented as a savior. Throughout the South, black men were being lynched based upon false allegations they had harmed white women. The attack scene was altered and some offensive language was modified, but another epithet Darky remained

in the film. The film's message with respect to slavery remained essentially the same, consistent with the book. The film screenplay also referred to poor whites as white trash, and it ascribed these words equally to characters white and black. Lowe's Grand Theater on Peachtree Street and Atlanta, Georgia, was selected by the studio as a site for the Friday, December fifteenth, nineteen thirty nine premiere Have Gone with the Wind.

Studio head David O'selznik asked that McDaniel be permitted to attend, but MGM advised him not to because Georgies because of Georgia's segregation loss. Clark Gable threatened to boycott the Atlanta premiere unless McDaniel was allowed to attend, but McDaniel convinced him to attend anyway. You know, shout out to Clark Gable.

I never knew that about him. Most of Atlanta's three hundred thousand citizens crowded the route between the route of the seven mile Shout Out to seven motorcade that carried the film's other stars and executives from the airport to the Georgian Terrace Hotel, where they stayed while Jim Crow laws kept McDaniel from the Atlanta premiere. She did attend the film's Hollywood debut on December twenty eighth, nineteen thirty nine,

upon Selznick's insistence. Her picture was also featured prominently in the program, So shout out to Sealsnick as well for her performance as the house servant who reportedly scolds her own daughter Scarlett O'Hara Vivian Leigh and scoffs at rhet Butler Clark Gable. McDaniel won the nineteen thirty nine Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress, the first black actor to have been nominated and win. An oscar I loved Mammy, McDaniel said, when speaking to the White press about the character.

I think I understood her because my own grandmother worked on a plantation, not unlike Tara. Now, this is the woman that played all of those made roles her and women like her. She played all those made roles that you remember when Star Trek came out, and oh man, I forget her name. She played Lieutenant O'Hara. I don't know how I know the character's name and not the actress's name, but the original Star Trek, the original series with Captain Kirk and mister Spock and all that was it,

Diane Carroll, I don't think so. I know there was a black actress, forgive me, I should know her name, but she was the woman that WHOOPI Goldberg said, that's the first woman I saw not playing a servant, first black woman I saw not playing the servant on television. And so this kind of shows the lineage and the legacy of black folks getting from you know where we started,

which was nowhere blackface essentially too. You know, Nachelle Nichols, we're the actress who portray There you go, Lieutenant Nyotahura. There we go on Star Trek. Thank you for that ce save me there. But that's that's it for us and our entertainment episodes. So thank you for tuning in once again. I'm your host, rams' jah.