Lord Stanley's Cup returns to Chicago!
Congratulations to the 2015 Stanley Cup Champion Chicago BlackHawks!
Now while I do take a bit of civic pride in the return of Lord Stanley's Cup to the Windy City, I have to admit that I feel a little dirty saying that.
After all, I AM from Detroit.
These Tigers-White Sox, Pistons-Bulls, Lions-Bears, Red Wings-BlackHawks rivalries are part of my civic DNA (but not as much as this rivalry!). And even during the 1984 baseball season, pretty much every Detroit Tigers fan wanted the to play the Chicago Cubs in the World Series but...well, they ARE the Cubs so, we should have known THAT wasn't happening, lol.
Michael Jeffrey Jordan converted me to being full-fledged 100% Bulls fan. Needless to say, the family back in Detroit is not amused.
One of my favorite childhood memories is going to see the Detroit Red Wings at The Old Red Barn on Grand River with my brother and stepdad. As far as I could tell, we were the only black people and I do remember being a little scared about that but no one bothered us.
Now there's a secret within a secret, here; the Detroit Red Wings were not my favorite team as a child in the 1970's.
All of Detroit's professional sports teams pretty much sucked in the 1970's in spite of stars like Bob Lanier, Mark "The Bird" Fidrych, and Ron Leflore.
My favorite team was the Montreal Canadians and my favorite hockey player (to this day) was one Guy Lafleur (and I think that a lot of it had to with the fact that he didn't wear a helmet).
I grew up watching Hockey Night in Canada pretty much every Saturday night.
And there were other black kids in Detroit like myself that were hockey fans; we seemed to form some sort of nerdy geeky cabal. After all, hockey was a white man's sport. But we did (as kids do) imagine what having a little color in the National Hockey League would like.
Nowadays, it's pretty common to see African Americans in Detroit wear Red Wings, though. In fact, I've seen a few African Americans in Chicago wear Detroit Red Wings gear. I've worn it myself.
What brought all of these memories up is a Chicago Tribune story stating that The National Hockey League is experiencing their greatest fan growth with African American fans.
Hockey long has been considered a white man's sport because of the limited access to ice rinks in cities, the cost of play, the lack of black professional players and — perhaps the most daunting roadblock of all — stereotypes.
Historically, hockey has been a non-diverse sport, said William Douglas, who operates the blog Color of Hockey, which highlights minority hockey players. He played on youth hockey teams in the 1970s in Philadelphia, where he was subject to racial taunts.
"There's a perception in the African-American community that we shouldn't like hockey or sports like NASCAR," Douglas said. "There aren't that many rinks in urban areas and the cost of equipment is outrageous.
The Color of Hockey
Shannon Ryan's Tribune story includes the numbers to back up these claims
African-American fans have the highest growth rate among NHL fans at 1.4 times the overall rate, according to Scarborough, a national media research company.
In Chicago, the number of African-Americans who identify themselves as very or somewhat interested in the Hawks increased from 12.6 percent in 2011 to 21.9 percent in 2014.
The number of black fans who watched a Hawks game on TV or listened on the radio grew from 28.1 percent in 2011 to 37.9 percent last year.
They made up 9.7 percent of Hawks fans in 2014, up from 7.1 percent in 2011, which is the only increase among racial groups charted by Scarborough.
The numbers are far less than the 49.9 percent of African-Americans who identify as NBA fans or even the 40.9 percent of white fans who identify as hockey fans, but it doesn't diminish the significance of the growth.
During the BlackHawks 2013 championship run, I was working as a temp with an overwhelmingly African American crew. Black men and women regularly wore Black Haws gear and were extremely knowledgeable about the game. And yes, when I said that I was a diehard Red Wings fan, I was given every bit as much sideeye as if I'd said that I was a Detroit Pistons fan.
Now to be sure, there continues to be a dearth of black hockey players, although their numbers are growing.
And to be sure, black players are subjected to racism. After all, who can forget when Boston Bruins fans unleashed racial slurs on Washington Capitals forward Joel Ward in response to a loss?
And who can forget when Philadelphia Flyers forward Wayne Simmonds was greeted with a soccer hooligan-like banana peel thrown at him in an exhibition game in London, Ontario?
But I have to say that it does feel nice that in greater and greater degrees, black hockey fans are coming out of the closet.
Go Hawks (I think!)...oh, and...uh...HARBAUGH.
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News by dopper0189, Black Kos Managing Editor
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After a short stint for drug possession, the man behind Mikey Likes It has become one of New York City’s hottest ice cream makers. The Root: How Michael Cole Went From a Jail Cell to Selling Ice Cream With Hip-Hop-Inspired Flavors.
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The East Village neighborhood in New York City is chock-full of small bars and nightclubs that are destinations for people from far and wide, so it’s never a surprise to see a crowd spilling onto the sidewalk.
Yet, the crowd at Mikey Likes It isn’t there for alcoholic beverages or the scene. They’re there for ice cream. Michael Cole, aka Mikey, is making some of the most-in-demand ice cream, even in an era when independent, artisanal ice cream parlors are all the rage.
Cole has won over the skeptics—it’s New York City, so everyone is a skeptic—with flavors like Pretty in Pink, a strawberry ice cream with fresh strawberries, balsamic vinegar and just a hint of pepper. His Mint Condition is mint ice cream with chunks of triple-chocolate brownies and his Cool Running is coconut ice cream with shavings of dark chocolate and roasted almonds. One of Cole’s biggest innovations is his waffle ice cream sandwiches, which pack a big helping of ice cream between two waffles made from scratch.
His ice cream is sold well beyond his cozy little shop; for instance, his D’Usse de Leche—a spin on dolce de leche and made with the Jay Z-endorsed D’Usse cognac—is sold at Jay Z’s 40/40 sports bar in Manhattan.
“If Ben and Jerry grew up in the Lower East Side when I did, this is what they’d be doing,” Cole says, reclining in his chair at a biscuit-sandwich place across the street from his parlor.
Michael “Mikey” Cole
COURTESY OF MIKEY LIKES IT
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Seriously people, you don't need to be black (or Latino, LGBT, or a woman) to support the advancement of those groups. Before she stepped down thi story just kept getting wierder and wierder. The Guardian: Civil rights activist Rachel Dolezal misrepresented herself as black, claim parents.
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The biological parents of a prominent civil rights activist in Washington state have claimed that she has been misrepresenting herself as a black woman when her heritage is white.
Rachel Dolezal is an academic, chair of the office of the police ombudsman commission in the city of Spokane and president of its chapter of the African American civil rights organisation NAACP.
Dolezal, a professor of Africana studies at Eastern Washington University, where she specialises in black studies and African American culture, has spoken out regularly on local media about racial justice.
This week, however, in an interview with the local Spokane news channel KREM 2 News, Ruthanne and Larry Dolezal said their daughter’s biological heritage was not African American but German and Czech, with traces of Native American ancestry.
They said their daughter had adopted black siblings and had attended school in Mississippi, where her social circle had primarily been African American. She later married and subsequently divorced an African American man, they said.
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Let's not even call that hit piece by the AP real journalism. Slate: No One Heard Cleveland Officer Warn 12-Year-Old Tamir Rice Before Opening Fire.
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Cleveland prosecutors have released the results of an investigation into the killing of 12-year-old Tamir Rice, who was shot and killed by a police officer. The Cuyahoga County Prosecutor’s Office released a redacted version of the 224-page report, which was compiled by Sheriff’s Department investigators, which examines the events that led up to and followed the shooting of the black youth in November. There is a lot of information in the report, but one of the most significant appears to be that the investigators could not find a single witness who heard police officer Timothy Loehmann issue a warning before opening fire, reports the Northeast Ohio Media Group. Loehmann has said he ordered Rice to show his hands three times before opening fire.
Although Loehmann and his partner who drove the police car, Frank Garmback, refused to be interviewed by investigators a fellow officer said Loehmann had told him Rice reached for his toy gun right before he opened fire. "He gave me no choice. He reached for the gun and there was nothing I could do," Loehmann allegedly told a fellow officer after he shot Rice, according to WKYC. Fellow officers said Loehmann appeared to be distraught once he realized Rice was holding a pellet gun and that he was much younger than initially believed. Other officers backed Loehmann’s claims that the gun looked real.
Although the report notes the investigation attempted to be “unbiased” and “has not, and will not, render any opinion of the legality of the officer’s actions,” it does, at the very least, illustrate failures from the beginning. The man who first reported Rice’s actions to 911, for example, told the dispatcher that the gun was “probably fake” but that information did not get to the officers who were called to the scene. Then once the Loehmann fired the shots, neither he nor his partner could administer first aid and didn’t even have the necessary equipment to do so in their car. An FBI agent who happened to be in the area was the one who began administering first aid. "It's an incredibly disturbing injury to look at," the FBI agent later told investigators. "And ... you could see the level of concern in (the officers). I don't think they knew what to do."
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A South African court on Sunday issued an interim order to prevent President Omar al-Bashir of Sudan from leaving the country after the International Criminal Court sought his arrest on genocide charges. He later was allowed to leave. New York Times: South African Court Said to Block Sudan Leader’s Departure.
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A South African court issued an interim order on Sunday to prevent President Omar Hassan al-Bashir of Sudan, the only head of state wanted by the International Criminal Court on genocide charges, from leaving South Africa.
The International Criminal Court in The Hague had called on South Africa to arrest Mr. Bashir, who was attending an African Union summit meeting here in Johannesburg. It demanded that the South African authorities “spare no effort in ensuring the execution of the arrest warrants” issued by the court against Mr. Bashir, who is suspected of having ordered atrocities in the conflict in the western Sudanese region of Darfur.
A South African high court was due to rule on the request on Monday after postponing a decision expected on Sunday.
Mr. Bashir’s charges and two arrest warrants against him are linked to the conflict in Darfur, where an estimated 300,000 people have died and more than two million have been uprooted by almost a decade of fighting between the government and rebels.
UPDATE FROM THE BBC: Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir has returned to Khartoum from South Africa, avoiding arrest over war crimes charges on an international warrant.
Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir at an African Union summit in Johannesburg on Sunday. Credit Gianluigi Guercia/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
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Voices and Soul
by Justice Putnam
Black Kos Poetry Editor
On the evening of 4 June 1968, at the age of thirteen, I accompanied my father to the Ambassador Hotel in downtown Los Angeles. For several years, he had been writing policy and research papers for the California State Democratic Steering and Platform Committees. I had walked precincts and volunteered at the Kennedy Campaign Headquarters in the San Gabriel Valley for the preceding two months, so as a sort of reward, I was allowed to stay up past my regular bedtime to go with my father to what was, we were certain, to be a victory celebration.
Dad and I had been at the Ambassador since around 8:30 p.m. It was a huge and boisterous crowd. Normally, I retired before 10 p.m., so by the time Kennedy entered the ballroom around 11:30 p.m., I was pretty bushed. His speech would be broadcast on the radio, so Dad and I headed home. On the way, we heard Kennedy and five others had been shot.
I was at a department store near our home, in the television department when the news of Martin Luther King's assassination was broadcast on 4 April 1968. Dad had been teaching his history classes at Cal State Fullerton that day and evening; and had not heard the news, so my revelation was the first he had heard of it. I never had seen my Dad cry, but he teared up when I told him. At that point, I had been a Eugene McCarthy aficionado, but I changed allegiances after listening, with my Father, to Kennedy's speech in front of a black audience in Indiana, informing them of MLK's assassination.
Kennedy is reported to have questioned earlier, when informed of King's killing, "When will this violence stop?"
As more black lives are lost due to state sponsored violence, as young black bikini clad girls are attacked and young black men threatened with death by steroid-addled cops, the question continues, when will it stop?
Dirge Without Music
I am not resigned to the shutting away of loving hearts in the hard ground.
So it is, and so it will be, for so it has been, time out of mind:
Into the darkness they go, the wise and the lovely. Crowned
With lilies and with laurel they go; but I am not resigned.
Lovers and thinkers, into the earth with you.
Be one with the dull, the indiscriminate dust.
A fragment of what you felt, of what you knew,
A formula, a phrase remains,—but the best is lost.
The answers quick and keen, the honest look, the laughter, the love,—
They are gone. They are gone to feed the roses. Elegant and curled
Is the blossom. Fragrant is the blossom. I know. But I do not approve.
More precious was the light in your eyes than all the roses in the world.
Down, down, down into the darkness of the grave
Gently they go, the beautiful, the tender, the kind;
Quietly they go, the intelligent, the witty, the brave.
I know. But I do not approve. And I am not resigned.
-- Edna St. Vincent Millay
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