Culture Quickie

Wherein We Have A Reason Why The Caged Birds Sing

This past weekend, more than twenty audience members at a performance of the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra held up three banners from a balcony and sang to protest the death of 18-year-old Michael Brown, who was shot and killed by police officer Darren Wilson in Ferguson, Missouri in August. The group serenaded the audience at intermission by singing, “Justice for Mike Brown is justice for us all.”

It gets cooler: some members of the audience and orchestra actually applauded the protesters. One witness tweeted of the demonstrators that they “incidentally had beautiful voices.” #WeShallOvercome …or nah?

Wherein The Color of Justice Seems to Be Transitioning

In super surprising “wow is this really happening?” news: last Wednesday, Michael Dunn was convicted of first degree murder. It was a retrial, and Dunn was on trial for the murder of 17-year-old Jordan Davis, a black teen whom he shot because Davis’ music was too loud and because racism exists. Davis’ parents have been quoted as saying they are “in awe” of the verdict. And I have to say, I am too — especially given the George Zimmerman trial fiasco. Is American Culture finally evolving?

Well, you know what they say, two steps forward, one step back.

Wherein Whites Have No Problems Giving Hall Passes to Racism

With recent revelations that seminal science fiction filmmaker H.P. Lovecraft (for whom there is an award at the The World Fantasy Awards) is an extreme bigot, come excuses and an obvious lack of fucks to give from white people who do not care to address racism in the present.

Why are POC ever surprised when white folks largely don’t support efforts like Ferguson? They still see racism as “Not a big deal, nothing to see here, folks!” #AmericanCulture