Sing on just a little while longer

Share to Twitter Share to Linkedin At only 43, John Legend has accomplished an incredible amount already in his career. He was the first Black man and youngest artist ever to achieve the coveted EGOT (Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, Tony). For Legend, all of that success was so he could make a difference in the world. As he recalled when we spoke over Zoom last week he won an essay contest at 15 by saying he would become a famous musician use that fame to make the world a better place. He is helping do that this Memorial Day Weekend when he will headline the Northwell Health "Side By Side" benefit show this Saturday, May 29, at New York's UBS Arena. Legend will perform with Jason DeRulo at a gig that raises money for healthcare services for veterans and their families. I spoke with Legend about why it was especially important for him to support our military during these difficult times, his love of playing life, how artists like Harry Belafonte, Stevie Wonder and … [Read more...] about Q&A: John Legend On Activism, His New Album, Playing Live And Marvin Gaye

Share to Twitter Share to Linkedin Tragedy hit yet again on Saturday, May 14, during a racially-motivated domestic terrorist attack in a Buffalo, N.Y. grocery store that led to the murder of ten people. The identified shooter, Payton S. Gendron, who cited the Christchurch gunman as his inspiration for carrying out the hate shooting, was quickly taken into custody after the attack on Saturday afternoon and is currently in jail. Although there is some comfort in knowing that Gendron is no longer free to continue his planned murder spree of Black Buffalo residents, his actions add to a long list of similar White supremacist attacks that have specifically targeted Blacks and the growing fear that many Black people face living America. However, we cannot allow the sensationalism of this heinous terrorist act to overshadow the life and legacy of those who lost their lives. On Saturday, news broke that a mass shooting occurred at a grocery store in Buffalo, New York. … [Read more...] about Say Their Names: Here Are The Victims Of The Buffalo Hate Crime Shooting

O ver the past 24 months, politicians and business leaders have invoked the name of George Floyd in calling for racial equity for Black Americans. Companies and foundations pledged billions on initiatives to recruit and promote Black talent, invest in Black-owned businesses and promote equity in everything from policymaking to policing. Despite an evolution in the dialogue and effort, there’s been little progress in outcomes for Black lives and livelihoods. Black families still have a fraction of the wealth , owning about 13 cents for every dollar held by white families. All that allyship and money hasn’t really moved the needle on the National Urban League’s equality index, which tracks how Black America is faring relative to white America on measures such as income, health outcomes, education quality, and incarceration rates. Its 2022 index stands at 73.9% – with 100% representing racial parity – which is one-tenth of a percentage point higher than the 73.8% index … [Read more...] about Despite Post-Floyd Era Promises, Limited Gains In Racial Equity

Share to Twitter Share to Linkedin Trendy menswear brand Psycho Bunny is crazy about physical stores. The brand, known for its polo shirts and its skull-and-crossbones-with-bunny-ears logo, is leaning heavily into brick-and-mortar after seeing that its physical stores not only are four-wall profitable, but that they dramatically boost online sales in the markets where they are located. After opening 20 U.S. stores last year, the company has 29 new U.S locations in the works to open this year. It also is ramping up its global expansion, and plans to grow its portfolio to 130 stores worldwide by the end of this year. Psycho Bunny jumped into physical stores just before the pandemic, and found that even with quarantines and lockdowns its stores drew lots of in-person visitors, as well as drawing more online sales. In terms of online sales, “the metro areas that have stores have out-paced by more than 200% cities that don’t have stores,” said Justin … [Read more...] about Psycho Bunny Stores Are Multiplying Rapidly, U.S. Locations To Double This Year

On May 25, 2020, George Floyd died before our eyes as a police officer knelt on his neck for approximately 9 minutes on a street in Minneapolis. Had Darnella Frazier, then 17, not captured the murder on her cell phone and posted it to Facebook, Floyd would have been yet another Black man to die in police custody – a statistic. Instead, George Floyd became a powerful symbol of persistent inequality and systemic injustice against Black Americans and a wake-up call for all. The response was historic – from the scores of leaders making forceful statements every day about racial justice to the $50 billion that U.S. companies pledged (but not necessarily paid) to support Black communities. To understand the complexities of where we stand as a nation, though, look no further than the racially motivated mass murder at a Buffalo grocery store on May 14. In an effort to capture the reality of being Black in America, we decided that we wanted to hear from leaders in the community. Here are … [Read more...] about Two Years After George Floyd, Black Leaders Reflect On Change

Share to Twitter Share to Linkedin Last week, a U.K. court awarded damages amounting to £50,000 to the parents of a 20-year-old student who tragically took her own life after her university was adjudged to have discriminated against her disability by failing to make reasonable accommodations to the way it undertook academic assessments. Chronically shy and suffering from debilitating anxiety, Natasha Abrahart, a physics student at the University of Bristol, was found dead in her flat in April 2018. The next day, the young woman who was petrified of public speaking and so shy that, on rare nights out, she would often rely on friends to order food and drinks for her, had been due to participate in a group presentation to staff and students in a 329-seat lecture hall. In his ruling, Judge Alex Ralton criticized the university for failing to provide Natasha with an alternative means of relaying the results of her experiments stating that it was “obvious … [Read more...] about Why Social Anxiety Remains A Deadly Silent Killer For Vulnerable Young People

Write to us We can finally travel again! We would love to hear about your travels and adventures not just within Malaysia, but overseas too. If you don’t feel like travelling yet, that’s OK, as you can always tell us about your past holidays instead. Your story – experiences, tips, advice – should be 700 to 800 words long in Word or Text format. Please attach some photos (1MB, captioned) in a separate email. There is no payment for submissions, and we reserve the right to edit all submissions. Email [email protected] with the subject “Readers Share” In 2019, I decided to go on a six-country tour. I made all the travel arrangements in October that year, and my three-week trip was supposed to begin in February 2020. However, by December 2019, Covid-19 was becoming a serious problem all over the world and the travel industry was already affected then. Initially, I thought of cancelling my trip, but after much research, and hesitation, I decided to just go ahead with my … [Read more...] about Malaysian travels to six countries in three weeks before pandemic

One of the more amusing aspects about the flag flap from “First Man,” the upcoming biop of Neil Armstrong, is how the filmmakers seem to have forgotten the first rule of holes: When one is in a hole, stop digging. When the critics noticed that conspicuous absence of the raising of Old Glory on the lunar surface, a tweet storm started, led, curiously, by Sen. Marco Rubio, who called the omission “lunacy” and not (yet) President Trump. Ryan Gosling defended the omission. According to the UK Telegraph , he stated that the Apollo moon landing “transcended countries and borders” and that he thinks “this was widely regarded in the end as a human achievement [and] that’s how we chose to view it.” The famous plaque did say the astronauts “came in peace for all mankind.” The moon landing, however, constituted a decisive victory in the Cold War over the Soviet Union, fulfilling the challenge laid down by President John F. Kennedy. It proved that any technological feat that the United … [Read more...] about Makers Of ‘First Man’ Forget The First Rule Of Holes

Share to Twitter Share to Linkedin It is important to first acknowledge the words of scholar and activist Angela Davis. In her book Freedom is a Constant Struggle , Davis wrote “the call for public conversations on race and racism is also a call to develop a vocabulary that permits us to have insightful conversations. If we attempt to use historically obsolete vocabularies, our consciousness of racism will remain shallow.” For the sake of this article, the term white supremacy will be used throughout the piece because it is the term with the greatest amount of familiarity. It should, however, be noted that some have urged us to move away from the term white supremacy because it implies that the group of people that are racialized as white are “superior” to other racialized groups. Some alternatives to the term white supremacy that have been suggested include the terms white perversion and white insecurity . In the future, the term white supremacy will … [Read more...] about 4 Ways White Supremacy Harms Humanity

By Rachel Metz , CNN Business Updated 1124 GMT (1924 HKT) May 24, 2022 (CNN Business) Cher Scarlett, a software engineer, has a history of being misidentified by face-scanning technology, including one instance that may have surfaced a distant ancestor in a photo. So when she was introduced to an online facial-recognition tool she hadn't heard of, she wanted to see whether it would mistake photos of her mom or daughter for her. On February 1, Scarlett uploaded some images of her teenage daughter and her mom to PimEyes , a facial-recognition website meant to be used to find pictures of yourself from around the web — ostensibly to help stamp out issues such as revenge porn and identity theft. She didn't get any images of herself in return — pictures of her daughter yielded other kids, she said, while one of her mom led to some pictures of her mother, plus images of other, similar-looking women. Anyone can use this powerful facial-recognition tool — and … [Read more...] about She thought a dark moment in her past was forgotten. Then she scanned her face online