Kris Humphries Claims Kris Jenner Staged Kim Kardashian Tape There are just too many things wrong with this one right here… Via TMZ: Kris Humphries trashed Kim Kardashian and her family in conversations and text messages to his former girlfriend, Myla Sinanaj … telling her Kris Jenner not only directed Kim to shoot her sex tape, but to re-shoot because Kris J didn’t think the first one was pretty enough. As TMZ first reported, Kim has subpoenaed Myla in Kim’s divorce case, and we’ve learned Myla has a lot to say about what Kris told her about his relationship with his famous estranged wife. In addition to the sex tape, sources tell us Myla has numerous text messages in which Kris says she is the love of his life and he wants to get the divorce over with quickly so they can spend the rest of their time on earth together. In several of the messages, we’re told Kris says specifically that he’s “moved on” from Kim. The information is extremely damaging to Kris, because he’s alleging in his divorce that Kim has destroyed him emotionally by allegedly defrauding him into believing it was a real marriage. Turns out, Kris has been banging Myla since mid-January, so his devastation argument may be hard to swallow. Sources close to the Kardashians tell TMZ … Kris is lying about the sex tape. They say Kim made it clear at the beginning of their relationship she would not discuss the tape because she didn’t want to be judged by it. Our sources say the sex tape never came up in any subsequent discussions between Kim and Kris and it just shows he’s delusional. Regardless if this is true or not, this Kris Humphries character is acting like such a little beyotch. If it is true, Kris Jenner is one “by any means necessary” muhfugga! Birth control at 14 and now this!
Black People Are Still Jobless In New York As City Recovers From Recession How many of you are unemployed in NYC? For months now, New York officials have been highlighting how the city has regained all the jobs lost during the long recession and then some. But by several measures, the city’s recovery has left black New Yorkers behind. More than half of all of African-Americans and other non-Hispanic blacks in the city who were old enough to work had no job at all this year, according to an analysis of employment data compiled by the federal Labor Department. And when black New Yorkers lose their jobs, they spend a full year, on average, trying to find new jobs — far longer than New Yorkers of other races. Nationally, the employment outlook for blacks has begun to brighten: there were about one million more black Americans with jobs in May than there were a year earlier, according to the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics. But that is not the case in New York City, where the decline in employment since the recession began here, in 2008, has been much steeper for blacks than for white or Hispanic residents, said James Parrott, chief economist for the Fiscal Policy Institute, a liberal research group. One problem, said David R. Jones, the president and chief executive of the Community Service Society of New York, is that blacks were overrepresented in fields that suffered the most in the downturn, including government agencies, construction and manufacturing. “It’s being in the wrong place in the economy, so the recovery is not trickling down to these workers,” Mr. Jones said. Kevin Starkes, 53, who is black and lives in the South Bronx, said he had been trying for about 10 weeks to find work as an accountant. “Employers are getting more for less,” said Mr. Starkes, who was at a Workforce1 Career Center in Harlem on Wednesday. “People who used to get a job with a bachelor’s degree now need a master’s. I just think that’s the state of the economy right now.” Four years ago, there were about the same number of discouraged blacks and whites in the city. But since then, the number of discouraged black workers has grown to almost 40,000, from about 13,000, while the number of discouraged whites increased to about 22,000, from about 12,000. Discuss.. Via NYTimes
We would… This looks like it could spark some real conversation about race . Indie Film “Dear White People” Satirizes Being Black In Very White Places There’s an independent film in the works called “Dear White People” which is being called “a satire about being black in a very white place” that we wanted to expose you to. Check out the trailer below then peep the info about how you can help bring it to theaters: Here’s some info from the fundraising site that’s trying to get up the gwap to make this film happen: Remember when Black movies didn’t neccesarily star a dude in a fat suit and a wig? Or have major plot twists timed to Gospel numbers for no apparent reason? No? Damn… Well believe it or not there was a time when “Black Art-House” was a thing. When movies like Do The Right Thing, Hollywood Shuffle, and Boyz In Da Hood were breaking box office records as well as making us laugh, cry, and think in ways movies hadn’t before. The humble producers of DEAR WHITE PEOPLE, a satire about being a black face in a white place, long to bring those days back. But we can’t do it without you! Here’s the deal…we’re looking to raise seed money that will go a tremondously long way in securing the capital we’ll need to produce our million dollar indie feature. With our trailer, script and your help, we believe we can bring this exciting piece of cinema to life! Join us, won’t you? If you’re down for the cause head to their site to contribute HERE What do you think about this film and the premise? Will we see this one come to the big screen?
About dayum time!!! Congratulations ! Rev. Fred Luter Jr. is set to become the first African American president of the nation’s largest Protestant denomination organization when convention delegates vote next week in New Orleans. It’s a big step for a denomination that was formed out of a pre-Civil War split with northern Baptists over slavery and for much of the last century had a reputation for supporting segregation. In recent years, faced with growing diversity in America and declining membership in its churches, the denomination has made a sincere effort to distance itself from that past. Many Southern Baptists believe the charming and charismatic Luter is the man who can lead them forward. Many Southern Baptist leaders, when speaking of Luter, mention how respected he is for his determination to stay in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina hit in 2005, destroying Franklin Avenue and scattering its members. Luter said the disaster shook his faith and he didn’t know at first if the church could recover. A photograph from that time shows Luter on a helicopter tour of the city, wiping tears from his eyes as he gazed at the flooded buildings and vans of his church. He told the Baptist Press the tragedy showed him that “life is like a vapor on this side of eternity. What you have today could be gone tomorrow. You can’t put your trust in earthly things.” As David Crosby, of First Baptist New Orleans, puts it: “It’s such a note of grace and favor from God that a man of this caliber would step forward to become the first African-American president of the SBC.” This sounds nice and all, but we have a couple of questions that need to be addressed. If he is elected, do you think it will have less to do with his qualifications, and more to do with demonstrating how the new Southern Baptists aren’t racists? Similar to how Michael Steele was elected head of the RNC right after Obama’s election. We support the organization “turning a new leaf” but we have to question the timing and motives behind the election. Just sayin’.
Student Returns Scholarship Intended For Black Students There’s been a lot of talk about whether white students should be privy to scholarships and awards generally reserved for Black students. Well one high schooler took the debate into his own hands. A white student at Riverside High School in California has returned a $1,000 dollar scholarship intended for black students. Jeffrey Warren of Martin Luther King High School received the scholarship from the Martin Luther King Senior Citizens Club at a school awards night last month, prompting giggles from the crowd. Later Jeffrey learned what all the laughter was about, prompting him to return the scholarship. Even though the presentation was an awkward moment, Jeffrey says “now it’s kind of a joke” with his his friends. Jeffrey’s father, Rod Warren, said his son applied for 27 scholarships and also won three others, two for $2,000 each and another $500 scholarship. He encouraged his son to apply for every scholarship for which he might be eligible. The Martin Luther King Senior Citizens Club plans on changing the language on the application for next year’s scholarship applicants to make it clear that the scholarship is intended only for African-American students. The scholarship application clearly states that only African-Americans are encouraged to apply, but that doesn’t go far enough. What do you think? Did he need to return the money? Should he have kept it? Sound off. Source
He will probably tell you that some of his best friends are black too The billionaire blowhard offered that zany explanation after critics blasted his new birther rants as race-baiting. In an address at the North Carolina State Republican Convention, Donald Trump said the outcome of this season’s “Celebrity Apprentice” shows he’s no racist. “Somebody said, ‘Oh, because I brought up the birth certificate, I’m a racist,’ ” Trump said Friday. “I said, ‘How can I be a racist? I just picked Arsenio Hall.’ ” Questions over President Obama’s birthplace appeared to be put to rest last year after he released his long-form birth certificate, which showed he was born in Hawaii. But Trump has seized on last month’s release by Breitbart.com of an Obama biography compiled nearly two decades ago as evidence of a conspiracy to conceal the President’s origins. The biography identified Obama’s birthplace as Kenya — an assertion the agent who edited it later told Yahoo News was an error. WTF!? Did this idiot just play the ultimate “Trump” Race Card?
This is some pretty interesting stuff as far as genealogy goes, but the reaction of these Appalachian folk goes to show — some folks will do anything not to be “Black”. Race mixing goes WAY back, so how were these people SURPRISED to find out they were of African heritage? For those of you unfamiliar with the mountainous region between Tennessee and Virginia, the area has historically been home to a group of dark-skinned Appalachian residents once known derisively as the Melungeons. While the origins of these people has been contested on several occasions, it was primarily speculated they were descended from Portuguese explorers, Turkish slaves or Gypsies. But guess what. DNA don’t lie and a new study shows these people come from African men and White women. Yep. Something that was considered criminal back in the day actually happened often enough that a whole community was formed that included a bloodline that was pretty much explained by folklore. Here are the details: Now a new DNA study in the Journal of Genetic Genealogy attempts to separate truth from oral tradition and wishful thinking. The study found the truth to be somewhat less exotic: Genetic evidence shows that the families historically called Melungeons are the offspring of sub-Saharan African men and white women of northern or central European origin. And that report, which was published in April in the peer-reviewed journal, doesn’t sit comfortably with some people who claim Melungeon ancestry. “There were a whole lot of people upset by this study,” lead researcher Roberta Estes said. “They just knew they were Portuguese, or Native American.” Beginning in the early 1800s, or possibly before, the term Melungeon (meh-LUN’-jun) was applied as a slur to a group of about 40 families along the Tennessee-Virginia border. But it has since become a catch-all phrase for a number of groups of mysterious mixed-race ancestry. In recent decades, interest in the origin of the Melungeons has risen dramatically with advances both in DNA research and in the advent of Internet resources that allow individuals to trace their ancestry without digging through dusty archives. G. Reginald Daniel, a sociologist at the University of California-Santa Barbara who’s spent more than 30 years examining multiracial people in the U.S. and wasn’t part of this research, said the study is more evidence that race-mixing in the U.S. isn’t a new phenomenon. “All of us are multiracial,” he said. “It is recapturing a more authentic U.S. history.” Estes and her fellow researchers theorize that the various Melungeon lines may have sprung from the unions of black and white indentured servants living in Virginia in the mid-1600s, before slavery. They conclude that as laws were put in place to penalize the mixing of races, the various family groups could only intermarry with each other, even migrating together from Virginia through the Carolinas before settling primarily in the mountains of East Tennessee. Claims of Portuguese ancestry likely were a ruse they used in order to remain free and retain other privileges that came with being considered white, according to the study’s authors. The study quotes from an 1874 court case in Tennessee in which a Melungeon woman’s inheritance was challenged. If Martha Simmerman were found to have African blood, she would lose the inheritance. Her attorney, Lewis Shepherd, argued successfully that the Simmerman’s family was descended from ancient Phoenicians who eventually migrated to Portugal and then to North America. Writing about his argument in a memoir published years later, Shepherd stated, “Our Southern high-bred people will never tolerate on equal terms any person who is even remotely tainted with negro blood, but they do not make the same objection to other brown or dark-skinned people, like the Spanish, the Cubans, the Italians, etc.” In another lawsuit in 1855, Jacob Perkins, who is described as “an East Tennessean of a Melungeon family,” sued a man who had accused him of having “negro blood.” In a note to his attorney, Perkins wrote why he felt the accusation was damaging. Writing in the era of slavery ahead of the Civil War, Perkins noted the racial discrimination of the age: “1st the words imply that we are liable to be indicted (equals) liable to be whipped (equals) liable to be fined … “ Later generations came to believe some of the tales their ancestors wove out of necessity. Jack Goins, who has researched Melungeon history for about 40 years and was the driving force behind the DNA study, said his distant relatives were listed as Portuguese on an 1880 census. Yet he was taken aback when he first had his DNA tested around 2000. Swabs taken from his cheeks collected the genetic material from saliva or skin cells and the sample was sent to a laboratory for identification. “It surprised me so much when mine came up African that I had it done again,” he said. “I had to have a second opinion. But it came back the same way. I had three done. They were all the same.” In order to conduct the larger DNA study, Goins and his fellow researchers – who are genealogists but not academics – had to define who was a Melungeon. In recent years, it has become a catchall term for people of mixed-race ancestry and has been applied to about 200 communities in the eastern U.S. – from New York to Louisiana. Among them were the Montauks, the Mantinecocks, Van Guilders, the Clappers, the Shinnecocks and others in New York. Pennsylvania had the Pools; North Carolina the Lumbees, Waccamaws and Haliwas and South Carolina the Redbones, Buckheads, Yellowhammers, Creels and others. In Louisiana, which somewhat resembled a Latin American nation with its racial mixing, there were Creoles of the Cane River region and the Redbones of western Louisiana, among others. The latest DNA study limited participants to those whose families were called Melungeon in the historical records of the 1800s and early 1900s in and around Tennessee’s Hawkins and Hancock Counties, on the Virginia border some 200 miles northeast of Nashville. The study does not rule out the possibility of other races or ethnicities forming part of the Melungeon heritage, but none were detected among the 69 male lines and 8 female lines that were tested. Also, the study did not look for later racial mixing that might have occurred, for instance with Native Americans. Goins estimates there must be several thousand descendants of the historical Melungeons alive today, but the study only examined unbroken male and female lines. The origin of the word Melungeon is unknown, but there is no doubt it was considered a slur by white residents in Appalachia who suspected the families of being mixed race. “It’s sometimes embarrassing to see the lengths your ancestors went to hide their African heritage, but look at the consequences” said Wayne Winkler, past president of the Melungeon Heritage Association. “They suffered anyway because of the suspicion.” The DNA study is ongoing as researchers continue to locate additional Melungeon descendants. Fascinating stuff right? Or is it even that deep? Source
Women Of Color In Maxim’s Hot 100 You won’t believe who’s not on the list… Maxim just released its annual hot 100 list and they’re trippin’. The highest they put a black woman was Zoe Saldana at 45! The highest woman of color was Eva Mendes and she didn’t even come close to the top. Here are all the ladies of color that made the list…and a couple that we can’t believe didn’t make it. Maxim needs some help. But enjoy the cakes until then.
No isht Sherlock Study Shows That White Juries Convict Blacks More Than Whites Juries formed from all-white jury pools in Florida convicted black defendants 16 percent more often than white defendants, a gap that was nearly eliminated when at least one member of the jury pool was black, according to a Duke University-led study. The researchers examined more than 700 non-capital felony criminal cases in Sarasota and Lake counties from 2000-2010 and looked at the effects of the age, race and gender of jury pools on conviction rates. The jury pool typically consisted of 27 members selected from eligible residents in the two counties. From this group, attorneys chose six seated jurors plus alternates. “I think this is the first strong and convincing evidence that the racial composition of the jury pool actually has a major effect on trial outcomes,” said senior author Patrick Bayer, chairman of Duke’s Economics Department. “Our Sixth Amendment right to a trial by a fair and impartial jury of our peers is a bedrock of the criminal justice system in the U.S., and yet, despite the importance of that right, there’s been very little systematic analysis of how the composition of juries actually affects trial outcomes, how the rules that we have in place for selecting juries impact those outcomes,” Bayer said. Some of the more interesting findings in this story are as follows: – In cases with no blacks in the jury pool, blacks were convicted 81 percent of the time, and whites were convicted 66 percent of the time. The estimated difference in conviction rates rises to 16 percent when the authors controlled for the age and gender of the jury and the year and county in which the trial took place. – When the jury pool included at least one black person, the conviction rates were nearly identical: 71 percent for black defendants, 73 percent for whites. – About 40 percent of the jury pools they examined had no black members and most of the others had one or two black members. – When blacks were in the jury pool, they were slightly more likely to be seated on a jury than whites. The eligible jury population in these counties was less than 5 percent black. Does any of this information surprise you at all? We’re more surprised that Duke University, a predominantly white school, did this study. But maybe that lends the research more credibility… Source
Jamaican Sprinter Usain Bolt Accused Of Suffering From “White Woman Complex” Looks like Jamaicans are NOT feelin Usain Bolt’s swirl relationship with that Slovakian chick we posted back in March: Usain Bolt, who has been dating Lubica Slovak for six months and the relationship is described as “very serious”, has been engulfed in a race row as Jamaicans have accused him of suffering from “white woman complex” due to his fashion designer girlfriend. His arm around her waist, the world’s fastest man and his latest girlfriend are the picture of togetherness. “Love has no race – it’s a heart to heart connection,” the Daily Mail quoted a friend of Slovak as saying. But 25-year-old Bolt has come in for criticism from fellow black Jamaicans unhappy that he has chosen a white partner. “Really now Usain! Some successful black men obviously suffer from a white woman complex. You too?,” one online posting said. “Another one of our men snatched,” another said. “Out of all the girls on this island you pick a snowbunny. These superstars will always disappoint if we depend on them to raise our racial identity,” one of the many protests said. He hopes to smash his own records and retain his titles in London this summer, watched by his Slovakian-born girlfriend. The 28-year-old emigrated to Canada with her father when she was 14 and studied fashion design at the Ryerson University in Toronto. She moved to Jamaica after she ‘fell in love’ with the island during a holiday in 2000. Slovak was introduced to Bolt last year through a mutual friend, reggae singer Tami Chynn, with whom she owns an award-winning clothing line called Anuna and a Kingston boutique. Shortly after they met, she interviewed Bolt for a feature in a Slovakian newspaper and they began dating in mid-November. Fiercely private, the couple made sure they were not seen together at functions and spent most evenings at Bolt’s gated home in a suburb of Kingston. But when a picture of them kissing was published in the Jamaican Observer last month, they received a barrage of abuse. The accompanying article included a controversial cartoon of a black woman with ‘local’ written on her T-shirt looking upset while Bolt runs into the arms of ‘Slovakian fashion designer’. ‘They make he mingle with white girls. She just divorce him and take aways his money,’ one reader responded. ”I hope when he’s ready to settle down he chooses a beautiful Jamaican black woman … In the meantime have fun ‘responsibly’, cause some ‘pretty girls’ just a wait fi ‘lock u down’ for the wrong reasons,’ another added. Others called Bolt ‘the next Tiger Woods’, referring to the mixed-race golfer and his 60-million-dollar divorce settlement with Swedish former model Elin Nordegren. Source
