If anyone ever wonders how much power can be welded when the Black community comes together, they need look no further than Jack Yates High School in Third Ward. We’ve been keeping you up to date on the firing of Yates principal Tiffany Guillory (with no viable explanation). Well, that was a move the community wasn’t going to take without a fight. I don’t know Guillory, but those who do – including her students – say she is just what that school needs as she brought much-needed stability to a campus that has struggled. Politicians said their phone lines were jammed with calls, and notable alumni threatened to pull funding. And in a dramatic reversal that came after HISD twice reassigned her, the Board overrode the administration’s decision to fire Guillory, and she is now back in the building at Jack Yates.
The fight in those pushing for Guillory’s return is admirable. It was peaceful, persistent, thorough and consistent. Gerry Wayne Monroe and Marcus Brooks are on opposite ends of alot of issues. But they put their differences aside for this common goal. And it wasn’t just folks from Yates. Sterling, Kashmere, Worthing, community leaders, celebrities….all came together for a cause they believed in. A textbook example of how to make your voice–our voice–be heard.
Oscars so Black
We’ve finally reached the pinnacle of awards season: the nominations for the 95th Academy Awards. I’m side-eyeing the omission of The Woman King and Till— but I was still excited to see so many inspiring Black artists receive their extremely well-deserved flowers. Black Panther: Wakanda Forever cleaned up. Angela Bassett received a nod for her jaw-dropping performance as Queen Ramonda in the Marvel Studios blockbuster. Ruth E. Carter—who won for the first film—received another nod for Costume Design. And the song “Lift Me Up” was nominated for Original Song. In the Best Supporting Actor category, we got an awesome surprise when Brian Tyree Henry was nominated for his beautiful work in Causeway. While Ke Huy Quan is the unquestioned favorite for Everything Everywhere All at Once—and deservedly so. Today, we celebrate these achievements, but we’re gonna come back to those the Oscars left out.
Maya Rudolph is officially the new spokesperson for M&Ms.
You might wonder why FOX News would care about M&Ms. Well, if those M&Ms are racist, of course FOX’s Tucker Carlson would call it out. In several rants about the fact that the green M&M spokes candy was losing her boots and the brown M&M was getting kitten-heels, Carlson argued that the company was trying to make its candy “less sexy.” He said corporations had an agenda to make the candies so unappealing that you wouldn’t even “want to have a drink with them.” Yes, this is real life.
But one good thing came from this. In a “woke” move, M&Ms made Maya Rudolph their spokesperson saying, “Even a candy’s shoes can be polarizing … so we decided to take an indefinite pause from the spokescandies.” I guess because Maya is half-Black and half-white, funny as all get-out, and scandal-free, she’s a safe choice. Maya, get those coins, girl. But, are we really sexualizing candy??? Big sigh.
