Black (and Brown) Lives Matter

Historically, I don't watch a lot of television.  We did not have one as I grew up, and as such I never really got into it beyond sports and news. Over the last 15-20 years I have not really owned or watched a great deal of TV more broadly either, so I may not be the best one to provide the analysis I'm about to, but still believe I see something important to note.

Over the last couple years as I work through this PhD program and have needed short breaks from reading, I have started watch some TV beyond sports.  Firstly, I have been sucked in to the influx of superhero related movies and programs. Since learning to read using comic books (I'm dyslexic), I have always been passionate about superheros and the altruistic messages they promote. Of late, I have been drawn into watching shows like Arrow, the Flash, and other Marvel and the Star Wars based television efforts. Of late, I have also expanded to some outdoors, survival styled shows, like Live Free or Die.  So in short I am watching things that create their demograhic (and who they market to) based on superheros, nature and survival shows, and both American and regular football (soccer).

As I have watched this over the last couple years and historically watched all sorts of sports, I have been noticing a decided upsurge in the amount of commercials featuring African Americans.  Well dressed in colored shirts, living in suburban homes, with nuclear families, driving new and luxury cars.  And perhaps this is the sports or superhero demographic, or that I'm watching in the New York market, but over the last few months there seems to be a shift, and this presentation has been far more pronounced.

Building a Crisis upon Missouri's Status Quo

The University of Missouri is in crisis, or is it?  If I was wishfully thinking, I'd say the horrendous news coming from their campus involving racism and hate implied a crisis, but a crisis - by definition - has a temporal component to it that denotes non-permanence. A crisis can not be a status quo.  So is there a crisis at the University of Missouri, or is the racial unrest happening there just the status quo at that university (and the country in general)?

What we do know, is that the University of Missouri allowed students of color, specifically black students, to attend beginning in 1950. Yet today, in 2015, a student of color can still not walk through campus without fear of being called the N-word, or seeing a swastika smeared in feces on a wall. Students that have been on campus for years speak of systemic and institutional racism that has gone unchallenged and unchecked by the university administration. Again, is this a crisis if this is simply a consistent microcosm of general  Missourian or American society?  But I digress.

The fact is that what is happening more broadly withing the protests at the University of Missouri mirrors larger movements happening throughout the country.  Over the last two years - specifically since the shooting death of Michael Brown - ironically - in Missouri, and on the heals of the Occupy movement that swept the country, people (especially younger generations and millennials) have been standing up and fighting for a voice in the political arena beyond a vote (which many don't believe carries any power).  This has cascaded to the college campus in Columbia, in which students stood up and fought for their rights in the face of racial prejudice.