1817-Movement

For the Twins, Khan and Quan Evans, donating to the homeless is about more than just giving to others; it's about helping your own. Influenced by their past experience with serving the homeless, which resulted in uniting with a family member for the first time, the twins are determined to bring resources, encouragement, and community-bonding to the homeless, again.

A few years ago, the twins, their mother, and fellow church members volunteered to go to Lancaster Ave. in Fort Worth and pass out plates of spaghetti to the homeless. While there, they talked to, prayed with, and fed the homeless. As they were interacting with those in attendance, the twins' mother noticed a familiar face in the crowd. She grabbed her two boys and led them to the man who caught her attention. It was then that Khan and Quan were first introduced to their maternal great, great grandpa.

Up until this point, neither Khan and Quan,  nor their great, great grandpa knew the other existed. As you can imagine, they were all shocked; not so much at the circumstances but at the immediate outcome of “giving back.” Had Khan and Quan not set out to serve their community, they would have never been presented with the opportunity to develop a relationship with their great, great grandpa.

Most of you may be familiar with Khan and Quan from their 2002 appearance on Apollo, or for their contribution to Fort Worth’s rap industry as the Hardhead Twinz. Instead of allowing their growing popularity and fame to distance them from their community, Khan and Quan are using it as a platform to bring recognition, resources, and reunification to the exact place that has, for years, molded and supported their talent.

Growing up as African Americans in the inner city, the twins are well aware that homelessness isn’t as distant as one would hope it to be. As of this month, 1 in 5 U.S. adults now live in households either in poverty or on the cusp of poverty (Financial Times). Even more horrifying is that chronic homelessness in Tarrant County has increased by 60 percent since 2013 (Star-Telegram). More than 2,000 people are homeless in Tarrant County at any given time, and 1 in 5 out of this population is a child (DRC Solutions). Homelessness is our epidemic!

Freighting, but real statics like these along with the fact the homeless are far from strangers, rather they are our family members, are the reasons Khan and Quan are taking action. As up-and-coming artists, the twins know what it’s like to need support. Fortunately, they also acknowledge the trade off of giving support in order to receive it. How can one expect their city to promote them if they have forgotten where they came from? One cannot grow without nourishing their roots, right?

Therefore, on December 23^rd from 12-3pm, Khan and Quan are gathering all entertainers, artists, hairstylists, barbers, and all of the other self-proclaimed faces of Fort Worth to go to Lancaster Ave. and pray for, donate to, and encourage the homeless. The twins are asking people to come out and show their support, and/or donate blankets, pillows, and canned goods. (Please bring your donations with you on the 23^rd Between 12 and 3pm).

The exact location will be made available in the next few days.

You never know whose life you will impact, or who will become a part of your life until you join the 1817 Movement!

Those who have already committed to giving back include, but are not limited to: Cap-Innovation Autos, GetMoneyLilRonnie, Go Yayo #HoodFame, AceBee, Run C, NeNe-SheCook!, Nola-Beautiful Designs, Oh Boy Prince, Kataztrofee, Miah Ross, Kalessia Wallace #BookTheDiva, and Demarcus Williams-PurpleVizionPhotography.

“Service to others is the rent you pay for your room here on earth.” –Muhammad Ali

She's Got His Heart

10 years ago, two teens almost lost their lives. Instead of giving up, they came together and gave each other what one was lacking

My cousin was only 17-years old when she was told she needed a heart transplant. At this time in your life, your biggest fear is being told you're short too many credits to graduate, not "you're life may be cut short." Even though I was one of the people staying the night at the hospital with her and witnessed the process, I can't effectively or accurately relay to you what she was going through. Words can't capture that kind of pain and fear. Nor should they try, as that would just reduce both her hurt and her strength to mere sentences and I think she's owed much more than that.

By the time the hospital found a donor, my cousin didn't want the heart anymore. She had only been released for a few days before they called her back and told her they found a donor. To everyone else, this phone call was nothing short of a miracle. Our prayers had been answered. But my cousin was initially reluctant. Can you blame her though? What 17 year old would want to keep going back to the hospital? Isn't spending your homecoming, thanksgiving, and birthday, in there enough? For a kid, the hospital is a robotic torture camp. It drains you before it fixes you. Once you leave, you never want to go back. Even if it's your last chance.

I think it goes without saying that her mom drug her butt up there and made her get that heart transplant.

Over the years my cousin was able to discover more about her donor and his family. Thanks to technology, both my cousin and my aunt have been able to communicate with his family via social media. As a result, my aunt was able to plan an amazing celebration for my cousin's 10th year anniversary, in which her donor's mother and sister attended.

Seeing them there made me realize that the heart didn't just keep my cousin alive, in a way it kept their son/brother alive too. At the request, of my cousin I have vowed to be an organ donor. I want to be able to do for someone else's family what this young man did for mine. However, I overlooked a critical benefit of begin an organ donor.

Donating your organs means your family doesn't have to lose their loved one either. Donating your organs allows you to give a life and preserve your life at the same time. Donating your organs gives your family the opportunity to keep watching you grow. Donating your organs makes mourning a little bit easier when families know their child has decided to stay around longer just to do the work of a hero. Because this young man donated his heart, neither one of our families has had to say goodbye. His heart has never stopped beating, he has yet to stop living, and he could never possibly be forgotten.

Please, donate your organs. We all deserve to live a little longer.

Segregation Won't Result in Unity

Yesterday, I read an article written in response to the hate crime that occurred at Harvard Law School. The article was written by a student of Harvard, hence the title, "This Morning at Harvard Law School We Woke up to a Hate Crime." The piece was well-written, as it described the occurrence without bias, and related it to broader issues.

To summarize the act, Harvard has a hallway lined with portraits of every tenured professor in the history of the university. Sometime between the night of November 18th and the morning of November 19th, the portraits of black professors were defaced. A single piece of black tape was placed over the face of every black professor's portrait. The author, Michele Hall wrote, "their faces were slashed through, X-ing them out, marking them as maybe unwanted or maybe unworthy or maybe simply too antithetical to the legacy of white supremacy on which Harvard Law School has been built." She then goes on to say that the legacy of white supremacy "drips from every corner of the campus," but yet, they [black students] are not afraid.

Her words are powerful, emotional, but relatable and accurate. Because her writing had traces of her feeling personally attacked, I predicted the comments would, too, attack her. Usually, when we read pieces reporting a crime the author distances themselves and objectifies the situation. Hall did not do this, and I'm glad she didn't. As a black student at Harvard, she does have a direct connection to the crime and should be able to voice her hurt in a rational way.

After completing the article I went on to read the comments. At the time I joined in there was nothing outright inappropriate being said. A little controversy, but nothing blatantly disrespectful (I don't know about now though). As assumed, people did criticize her approach to the "crime." One person said that she shouldn't label it a hate crime until it is proved to be such, and another commentator advised her not to assume a white person committed the crime.

Another commentator, whom I am most interested in, responded to Hall's concluding remarks, "This morning at Harvard Law School we woke up to a hate crime. And what we do next will shake will supremacy at Harvard Law School to its core," with the suggestion that black students "exclusively attend Historically Black Institutions."

Although this comment was made with good intentions, I couldn't help but to find it to be one of the most damaging. I understand the call for unity and nationalism, but I can't stand by the plea for segregation. That's what we've been fighting against this whole time, isn't it? Do we really want to re-visit this notion of separate, but equal?  Suggesting that we just "stick together" moves us away from victory, not closer to it.

Isolating ourselves won't solve the problem, it will just make it easier for us not to be a problem.

We must remember that racism is now more pervasive at the macro level, than at mirco level. It has become structuralized, rather than just individualized. Yes, some people are just  racist, but institutions and ideologies had a strong hand in teaching them to be that way. We have to fight against the institutions, and let the change trickle down.

Also, by secluding ourselves we will only be able to appeal to advocate amongst each other. It is imperative that our conversations take place amongst a diverse group of people. We need to hear other voices, consider the advice of other people. What fruitful conversation can you have with people who all hold your same opinion? Yes, you'll move in unison, but will your methods be absolutely effective?

Like Hall said, we need to shake white supremacy to its core, that way we will have the choice to attend whatever institution we want and be valued, respected, and educated equally. Unity is not segregated, and neither should we be.

Be a Threat

At point in middle school my friend and I were asked to step outside of the classroom and speak privately with the teacher. She wanted to discuss our attire. It was close to the end of the school year and it was hot. More than once we made the choice to dress like twins. On this day we decided to wear shorts and a t-shirt tucked in the front (that was the style). As the teacher told us that our shorts were too short because they didn't exactly touch our finger tips when we stood with our hands to our sides, I watched a another--slimmer--girl walk past in the same shorts. The teacher said nothing. 

We sat in detention for hours, waiting for our parents to bring us a pair of pants. Our parents, like most, had jobs. They had to leave work, go home for clothes, and then come to the school. By that time they arrived, we had missed multiple lessons. A waste of a school day. This was one of the many times I was asked to leave the classroom because I was a distraction. For far too long I believed it. 

Another time a teacher wrote me a referral and told me to leave because me talking was distracting the other students. I told her no. I was tired of being sent out just because I was bored. I politely asked her to give me more work or to just leave me alone. This infuriated her and instead of receiving a simple referral, my parents were, again, asked to leave work and come up to the school. Because the principle, like most of my teachers, hadn't taken the chance to get to know me he was ill prepared for the meeting. He expected to pull up a file full of bad grades that matched the complaints of distracting behavior. Instead he found straight As and high test scores. He said he didn't understand, I told him it was simple, I'm bored! He said my talking back was one of my biggest problems. My parents took over from there and I never had a problem with that principle again.

Later, my mother told me "you're smarter than you know J.J, and that makes you a threat." Always having been under the impression that smart people were desired, I couldn't understand how that could make me  a threat. For the rest of my school career I tried not to "threaten" my teachers. Confused by my mom calling me a threat while my teachers articulated it as a distraction, I just tried to stay out of the way. I applied myself in school and when I wasn't begin challenged I found other activities for me to put my energy into. 

It wasn't until I entered grad school that I came to realize who was really distracting who. Being accepted into a PhD program fully funded for up to seven years, at the time, was the biggest accomplishment of my life. It was a dream come true. I knew at an early age that I wanted to be a professional student, and I had made it happen. I was looking forwarded to being immersed in knowledge, researching my area of interest, and finding a means to contribute to our society. I was in for a surprise. 

I got to take classes, learn new things, and do my research, but under a lot of constraints and stipulations. I had to take required courses, which is normal, but none of the courses offered every fit my areas of interest or my background. I was also asked to engage in a lot of services. Services such as, attending reading groups, meetings, being in pictures to show diversity, hoisting visiting African American professors, writing letters to advocate for hiring a professor of color you know since I'm a student of color and all. After three years of this I had only met one person that could be used as a resource for my research and took 3 classes relevant to my area of interest. I had not advanced, however, my department looked like it was advancing because their token black student presented them with a face. A nice face, I might add : ) 

My whole life my body and my brain have been too developed for the spaces I occupy and for that reason I have been reduced to a distraction. But in all reality I am not the distraction. By making me sit in detention for hours because my shorts are short I AM being distracted from my education. Making me leave class because I can't sit still after fishing my work 30 minutes early, distracts ME from aiming higher. By focusing on my race and making me a mascot, rather than supplementing my research, I AM being distracted from all of the immaculate things my brain is capable of doing. 

Now let's look at the bigger picture. When children protesting for the right to pursue their education without the distraction of racism are asked to be evacuated, INSTEAD of the people making death threats against them, we are being DISTRACTED. When we have young minority men stealing to survive because they are long time victims of institutionalized racism but the police officers that are mudering them are walking around free because they were just protecting THEMSELVES, we are being DISTRACTED. When there are a plethora of illegal European immigrants in the United States that hold elite jobs, but thousands of people protesting against Mexican immigrants, we are being DISTRACTED. When we think it is ok to ask a woman what she wore or what she did to be raped, we are being DISTRACTED. 

The problem is that we are confusing what it means to be a threat with what it is to be a distraction. A threat is "a statement of intention to inflict pain, injury, damage, or other hostile action on someone in retribution for something done or not done." A distraction is, a thing that prevents someone from giving full attention to something else." 

Be A THREAT

Be a statement that let's people know you are not satisfied with ever getting less that you deserve. Intentional inflict injury and damage to the ideologies, policies, and rules that are preventing you from reaching your full potential. Be hostile about the fact that you're still not being respected or perceived as an equal.

Don't be a distraction. Don't be a detour for the real issues we need to face. 

Be a threat. 

Wanna see me kiss a girl?

You clicked on this link because you were interested in me kissing a girl, but you probably turned the channel when Love and Hip Hop's Miles was about to kiss his boyfriend Milan. SHAME ON YOU!

Recent scholarship in American TV studies has shown that television programs have failed to explore and demonstrate the dynamics of two particular characters, one of them being homosexuals. Julie D'Acci's "Television, Representation, and Gender" conceives television as a "technology, and as a social, economic, cultural, and ideological institution" (373).  D'Acci goes on to argue that "television's schedule, its information, and its stories have active roles in shaping the ways TV viewers think about themselves and feel about themselves in their world" (373). Meaning, television not only produces images and sounds, but it produces citizens. TV is a common and popular medium that informs the ways in which we act, think, and treat other people.

Up until recently television shows have refused to display homosexual relationships. Now, we have a couple of hit shows--Modern Family, Empire, Glee--that thrive on their homosexual co-stars, however, it is important to note that rarely ever is a homosexual the protagonist in a show and their lives, especially not their love lives, are not explored in depth. It is nice that homosexuals are on screen now, but we're still not getting to know them. Their characters are always supportive other their heterosexual friend's relationships--especially during breakups--but what about their own relationships. Why don't we get to hear their intimate conversations, experience their fights, watch their kissing scenes (well we do if it's two girls smh). My point is, by censoring homosexual relationships we are giving the impression that 1) they don't exist and 2) they're not ok.

That is until Love and Hip Hop finally did something right. For years now, we have been watching these has-been music stars try to earn some extra cash and grip on tight to the last bit of publicity they can get,   just to see the same ol' shit every time. So and so is sleeping with this girl's baby daddy, this dude is always in the studio, but never puts out an album, while this bum chick is trying to fight another bum chick over a worthless man. Drinks go flying, weaves get pulled, someone comes out with a lipstick line, and Mona wraps up the season finale with a professional spill that fails to mask how ratchet her show is.

For so long, Love and Hip Hop has been degrading the black community. They're making a mockery of hip hop, they're disrespecting our bodies, making fun of our refusal to commit to our significant others, and profiting on our pride, negligence, and lack of manners. But now, they're actually showing something worth watching. Miles and Milan are more than two gay men, with I'm sure their own ratchet drama, of course. They are one of the first homosexual couples that will get the opportunity to demonstrate the dynamics of a homosexual relationship on TV! This is a big freaking deal. Because guess what! That other underrepresented group that I mentioned earlier is….yep you guessed it….African Americans.

African Americans and homosexuals have yet to secure leading roles, consistent roles, and/or well-developed roles in American TV. Shows such as Scandal, How to Get Away with Murder, and Empire are opening doors for more shows to have a dominantly Black cast. But guess what, those shows just started airing, which means we're just now getting our foot in the door. So don't close it!!!! Two men kissing may not be as sexy as two lesbians kissing, but it has meaning.

Here's my point. Our lives are not being documented well, accurately, or in depth, if at all on television. If television is an institution that influences the way we think about the world, our absence on screen is confirmation that our bodies aren't worth being seen, heard, explored, or appreciated. In no way am I trying to equate Blackness to homosexuality or vice versa, but I do want to articulate that both communities are struggling to be valued. I also want to reiterate that these two communities are not binaries nor are the enemies, they do overlap. When you chant #blacklives matter, I need you to know that our straight black men are not the only ones being hated, harassed, gun downed, exterminated. Our black homosexual males are suffering too.

Love and Hip Hop does not provide the best representations of Black people, but it's representation nonetheless. Miles and Milan are a game changer for the show and for American TV. We are finally being seen, so watch.