Dozens of protesters kneel and raise their fists in tribute to George Floyd and other victims of police brutality, Tuesday, June 2, 2020, in Coral Springs, Florida. The banner reads “My black skin is not a weapon.”
Carl Juste
cjuste@miamiherald.com
A quick recap of what went down in March: six mass shootings, Georgia made it illegal to hand out water to voters and COVID-19 infection rates began to rise. I saw someone say on TV that this feels like we’re 15 months into 2020 and, with all the calamity this year, I can’t help but agree.
But let’s move on. This is a space where we celebrate not just Blackness but differences of all kind. And though life is filled with tragedy, it’s important to find the little bit of good in this March Madness. That’s why I’ve fallen in love with this quote courtesy of Viola Davis’ W Magazine interview. (I highly recommend you check out the accompanying Regina King-directed photo essay in W Magazine):
“There’s a life beyond the tragedy, there’s life even within the tragedy, and there was a life before the tragedy. That you can be experiencing moments of joy when tragedy comes in and invades your life, and then it melts into something else—we understand that about life in general, but not always with Black folks in it.”
I say that to say, tragedy is part of the human — not just the Black — experience. Whether you’re white, Asian, Latino, that feeling of uncertainty about the future can sit at the pit of your stomach.... Well, welcome to our world: many Black Americans have felt this since 1619. So just embrace it, make the best out of your day-to-day and control what you can control. Because, to paraphrase a Philly legend, when the world is down on you, joy is somewhere around.
Saturday was a rather peculiar day In Miami Beach. In and around Ocean Drive, you had thousands of tourists, many of them Black and maskless, vacationing and reveling in the sun. About a mile north, you had a group of about 80 residents, many of them white, protesting the city’s nightlife industry.
The residents maintained that this wasn’t a race issue. But signs like this...
Mike Haynes, 56, and his son Colby, 10, waved signs during a resident rally outside Miami Beach City Hall to protest the city’s handling of spring break on Saturday March 27, 2021. Alexia Fodere Special for the Miami Herald
... make it very difficult to agree. Moreover, the vacationers couldn’t help but feel slighted by the protests, with one telling the Miami Herald, “We have a right to vacation just like they do.”
With Miami Beach’s curfew in effect until April 12, it’s clear this issue isn’t going anywhere. Stay locked into the Herald for latest updates.
The landmark E.W.F. Stirrup House in the historically Black west Coconut Grove, built in 1897 by a Bahamian settler, is seen while under restoration for use as a bed and breakfast. Lynne Sladky AP
One of Coconut’s Groves most storied homes could be getting a makeover.
Miami commissioners just approved a plan that would transform the E.W.F Stirrup house into a new Bahamas-style inn. The project would hopefully inject a bit of life into the West Grove, an area that housed some of Miami’s first Black residents but has since been plagued by gentrification.
“I think we need to kick-start the development of West Grove,” Dr. George Simpson, the 96-year-old scion of the family, told Miami commissioners at a hearing last Thursday. “I think this project will do that. It will bring jobs, and it will preserve the history, traditions and culture of the West Grove.”
A Bahamian immigrant, Stirrup was once one of the Grove’s wealthiest landowners. He built more than 100 wood houses in the budding community for fellow Bahamian immigrants and later African Americans from southern Georgia and northern Florida.
OUTSIDE THE 305:
L. J. Malone holds signs at the entrance of the Coca-Cola Bottling Co. on Rocky Creek Road as part of a Black Voters Matter campaign to hold large corporations accountable. Coca-Cola and many other companies pledged to support racial equity during the summer of protests in 2020 following the deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and Ahmaud Arbery. Black Voters Matter is trying to get those same companies to help them fight voter suppression in Georgia. Jenna Eason jeason@macon.com
Voting in Georgia became a lot more difficult over the past week. As of last Thursday, giving food and water to people waiting in line to vote, mobile voting sites and early Sunday voting is essentially illegal.
Critics have likened the bill to Jim Crow 2.0 — especially after news broke that Georgia State Rep. Park Cannon was arrested when she tried to watch Gov. Brian Kemp sign it.
Georgia isn’t the only state that’s trying to pass laws to restrict voting rights. As of Feb. 19, about 43 states, including Florida, have pending legislation that would make voting considerably more difficult, according to the Brennan Center for Justice.
Flores adornan un homenaje a George Floyd en Harlem el 10 de junio de 2020, en la ciudad de Nueva York. AFP/Getty Images
It seems like all eyes are on Minneapolis now that opening arguments for the Derek Chauvin trial began Monday. Chauvin, a former Minneapolis police officer, is accused of murdering George Floyd, a Black man whose death sparked worldwide protests.
Some of the highlights of the first few days of witness testimonies include a mixed martial artist’s description of Chauvin’s chokehold, the defense employing centuries-old tropes by attempting to paint him as an angry Black man and the videographer behind the now infamous footage of Floyd’s death saying she wished she would’ve physically confronted the officers.
According to USA Today’s Tami Abdollah, the Chauvin trial is both Minnesota’s first televised criminal case and first live-streamed case in state court. That, explains Abdollah, offers people of color the opportunity to monitor a system that has often been pitted against them.
“We can’t trust this system; they need to be watched,” Leslie E. Redmond, former president of the Minneapolis NAACP, told USA Today.
So I’ve heard of the Beyhive and the Barbz but the Telfar Tribe? That’s certainly a new one. Either way, they definitely have juice: the superfans helped take down Guess last week after accusing the fashion brand of ripping a handbag design from Telfar Global, a Black-owned brand that, as the New York Times notes, “represents its own kind of luxury… for communities often previously marginalized by the fashion world.” Within a day of the social media storm, Guess decided to withdraw its product.
Lil Nas X performs at HOT 97 Summer Jam 2019 in East Rutherford, New Jersey. Scott Roth Scott Roth/Invision/AP
Leave it to the New York Times’ Jon Caramanica to adeptly capture this whole Lil Nas X situation. For those unaware, the “Old Town Road” artist’s album rollout has included a music video for “Montero (Call Me By Your Name)” in which he gives Satan a lap dance, a customized pair of Nikes reportedly infused with human blood and of course a whole lot of uproar. But Caramanica contends the vitriol surrounding Lil Nas X was the point.
“The true art here isn’t the music (that said, it’s one of Lil Nas X’s better songs) or the video (more on that below): it’s the effortlessness, the ease, the joy of his reactions to the reactions. It’s the sense that he is playing chess to everyone else’s lame checkers moves — he is simply faster, funnier and on firmer, more principled ground than his adversaries, who are at best, comically flimsy.”
Regardless of where you fall on the moral spectrum, you have to agree that Lil Nas X is a masterful troller. Check out this Buzzfeed article for his best clapbacks.
This story was originally published April 1, 2021 at 3:15 PM.
C. Isaiah Smalls II is a sports and culture writer who covers the Miami Dolphins. In his previous capacity at the Miami Herald, he was the race and culture reporter who created The 44 Percent, a newsletter dedicated to the Black men who voted to incorporate the city of Miami. A graduate of both Morehouse College and Columbia Graduate School of Journalism, Smalls previously worked for ESPN’s Andscape.
