When it comes to social media trends, there’s hardly a kid between the ages of 14 and 24 who hasn’t heard of TikTok superstars Charli D’Amelio and Addison “Rae” Easterling. Together, they have nearly 50 million followers on TikTok alone, have become synonymous with viral dances like the Renegade, Holy Moly and Gimme Sum, have performed in public arenas — the most recent being the NBA All-Star game — and have even been signed to United Talent Agency (UTA) and William Morris Endeavor Entertainment (WME), respectively, to work on launching digital content.
Essence Marie and Anayah Rice, meanwhile, are two of the biggest names in their community of dancers on Dubsmash and together have amassed nearly 2 million followers on Instagram. Still, they've been unable to amass the following of Charli and others on TikTok. That’s because, when it comes to viral dance videos, there seems to be a parallel universe, based largely on race, in which white kids dominate on TikTok while everyone else seems partial to a 2014 app that actually predates TikTok: Dubsmash, a short-form video sharing platform where burgeoning content creators can showcase their talents, mainly in dance and comedy. "
The troublingly segregated backstory began blowing up last week, when The New York Times published a feature about 14-year-old Georgia native, Jalaiah Harmon, and her creation of the “original Renegade.” This coincided with a tweet from K Camp, the artist behind the song “Lottery,” by which he gave Harmon a shoutout for helping with the success of the song through her viral dance. Just two days later, Harmon finally had her big break, performing her dance at the NBA All-Star game and receiving recognition from the likes of Kim Kardashian and Michelle Obama. She has since appeared on The Ellen Degeneres Show.
While neither D’Amelio nor Easterling responded to Yahoo Lifestyle’s requests for comment, each graciously responded to news that Harmon had created Renegade by posting a video featuring Harmon, in which the three did the original choreography together. But that overdue recognition was hard-won, and observers say that the delayed Renegade credit is just the tip of the iceberg in the viral-dance world — and just the latest, most visible example of cultural appropriation to dominate pop trends.
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When Celeste Ng published the novel, there wasn’t a Black Mia. “I didn’t feel like I was the right person to try to bring a Black woman’s experience to the page,” Ng said. The Atlantic: When a TV Adaptation Does What the Book Could Not
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At first glance, the novel Little Fires Everywhere seems to be a suburban whodunit. In the opening chapter, a house in a progressive neighborhood of Shaker Heights, Ohio, has burned down after someone set a series of fires inside its bedrooms—and no one knows why. But then the tale rewinds to the previous summer, and from there it becomes a study of two women—Elena Richardson, a wealthy mother of four, and Mia Warren, a nomadic single mom, who become inextricably linked. Their relationships stir up a dangerous obsession among both families, revealing the story to be less a crime thriller and more a clever, moving examination of motherhood, female ambition, and sexual politics.
Set in 1997, Little Fires is an audacious novel, hence the 48 weeks it spent on the New York Times’ hardcover-fiction best-seller list. The story is not just about two women who don’t get along. The author, Celeste Ng, posits that their conflict stems from the fact that the women are not meant to connect, because they are constrained by their circumstances. Elena, who’s rich and intelligent and mannerly, understands success to mean a nuclear family. To her, Mia’s lifestyle as an artist and a photographer seems exotic. The privileged Elena will always see Mia as inferior, even if Elena refuses to admit it.
Ng originally intended to make their differences even clearer. Elena’s white, but the author never defined Mia’s ethnicity. “Initially, I had wanted to write [Mia and her daughter, Pearl] as people of color,” Ng, who’s Asian American, told me in February. “I thought of them as people of color, because I knew I wanted to talk about race and class, and those things are so intertwined in our country and in our culture … But I didn’t feel like I was the right person to try to bring a black woman’s experience to the page.”
The small-screen adaptation, which currently airs a new episode on Hulu every Wednesday, doesn’t just take the story from the page to the screen, but goes where Ng felt she couldn’t go on her own. The show focuses on race as one of the crucial contrasts between Elena (Reese Witherspoon) and Mia (Kerry Washington). Though the book works without that detail, it presents a missed opportunity to make the relationship between the families even knottier. Shaker Heights residents take pride in the fact that their community was one of the first suburbs to racially integrate, for instance. If Ng had made Mia a woman of color, she could have delved further into that attitude through Elena. Plus, the dynamics between their families offer plenty of chances to incorporate race: The Richardsons often ogle the Warrens and pride themselves on knowing them; one of the children considers Pearl his “claim” because he befriended her first. Elena is troubled by Mia and what she calls the “dark discomfort” that Mia inspires in her. And Mia cares deeply about ownership—of her art, of Pearl, and of her identity. In retrospect, Ng was clearly tiptoeing toward defining Mia’s race. Out of a feeling of authorial responsibility, she chose not to.
But a TV series doesn’t have such a choice. And while adaptations are never carbon copies of their source material, Little Fires Everywhere hasn’t made a change just for cosmetic reasons. The concept of caging others and being caged by others—based on one’s background, values, and lifestyle—is a pivotal theme in Ng’s novel. Throughout the first half of the season, defining the Warrens as black complicates that theme.
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Former President Barack Obama took to Twitter to insist that “all of us, especially young people,” demand better of the government, following the Trump administration’s decision to roll back its predecessor’s fuel standards.
“We’ve seen all too terribly the consequences of those who denied warnings of a pandemic. We can’t afford any more consequences of climate denial,” Obama wrote in a Tuesday post on the social media platform.
“All of us, especially young people, have to demand better of our government at every level and vote this fall,” he continued.
The tweet came with a link to a Los Angeles Times article announcing the slashing of the Obama-era fuel standards, which were implemented in an effort to combat climate change.
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With churches and pastors coming under fire for defying shelter-in-place mandates for holding religious services—two pastors were arrested in the last week—civil rights leader Rev. Al Sharpton called on the heads of the country’s largest historically black religious institutions and other faith leaders to halt services.
This is usually a busy time of year for churches across the country. Holy Week is approaching, capped off by Easter on April 12. But with the coronavirus pandemic prompting shelter-in-place mandates across the country, concerns about the safety of their congregations should be leading church leaders’ decision-making, Sharpton said.
On a video conference call Wednesday, Sharpton drew a line between civil disobedience and some pastors’ insistence on defying public health recommendations. He minced no words.
“I have been arrested over thirty times for civil rights and civil disobedience—twice for ninety days and another forty-five days for standing up for people’s civil and human rights,” Sharpton said, according to a press release. “These separate incidents involving leaders of faith putting people’s lives in danger is not a matter of civil or human rights, nor is it a statement of faith. It is self-aggrandizing, reckless behavior of those Shepherds who would risk their sheep rather than lead their sheep.”
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When she founded WOC Space, Tiara Moore envisioned a virtual place where professional women of color could meet, socialize, and offer support in a safe setting.
Then when stay-at-home orders began to be issued across the country, Moore believed the group's weekly meetings were more important than ever. They offered moral support, tips, and relief to the isolation of working from home by being able to connect people via Zoom.
So on Monday, she logged onto the video conferencing app and continued working on her computer, waiting for the handful of members to join her.
"I wasn't even looking at my screen and I hear a girl and she's like, 'I saw this on Twitter," Moore told BuzzFeed News. "I said, 'Oh, hey girl!' and she said, 'Yeah, but you should be careful because you can get hacked.'"
The virtual room instantly filled with what seemed like 100 people, Moore said, with multiple people yelling racist slurs at the same time. It was chaos — but the n-word, being repeatedly yelled in the middle of it, could be heard distinctly.
"I immediately closed it down like, what just happened," she said.
With schools closed and people across the country working from home, the use of teleconferencing has exploded during the coronavirus pandemic. Business executives, government officials, and kindergarten classes have flocked to apps like Zoom, which have become vital to day-to-day work and life during the pandemic.
Unfortunately, racists and trolls have also taken advantage of the app, sneaking their way into unsuspecting meetings and online gatherings, usually bombarding them with pornographic images or racist attacks.