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.

Violence Personified

I have been working on a special issue of a new journal entitled Social Movements and Change, about social movements and democracy in Central and Eastern Europe. Nothing too profound with this, but I received an email this morning from one of the contributors (who is based in Bulgaria) regarding some updates to her submission. Again, nothing profound here. But she did say at one point that given what has happened with the Paris attacks, that she expects in regards to the original call for papers and thematic of the journal, that I will already have rearranged my priorities. She also expressed her sympathies as she assumed I was based out of Belgium where the journal hales from (I am in the New York area).

Obviously I appreciate her sympathies, and agonize over the loss of life in Paris. But if there is one thing that I can say is that these terrorist attacks in Paris don't change my life or my world view at all. I live in Newark, NJ; one of the most violent cities in America. This past year my neighbor alone (who grew up here) had four of his friends killed, including a pillar of our community who was murdered early in the morning walking to work this summer. As many people as died in the Paris attacks will be killed this year in Newark alone (city of 277,000 people). Violence is a part of every day life here, just as anywhere through the country (and world) really. There will be over 30,000 deaths by firearm in the US alone this year, and have already been over 1000 people killed by police officers country wide since last January. And this is to say nothing of the post 9/11 world... revolutions, drones, protests, fear... etc.