(Akiit.com) A corporate event in the struggling city brings stars and money but also creates tensions with the locals…

The Essence Music Festival’s Marketplace and Art Expo this past weekend resembled a Monopoly board. Spaces around the perimeter of the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center’s conference halls were bought, or rather leased. Instead of houses and hotels marking properties, there were stages and DJ booths popping all over. The area held by carmaker Lincoln featured shiny, silver Navigator SUVs glimmering like updated versions of the tiny, aluminum race car that come with the Monopoly board game.

The massive area was far more marketplace than art, and all the top corporate sponsors — Coca-Cola, Wal-Mart, McDonald’s — to name a few — were duly represented, along with prominent placement, curiously, for the U.S. Army. If nothing else, it was an exhibition of capitalism, and the corporations knew how to reach their captive market — through disc jockeys.

In a far back corner was a bookstore run by the local vendor Community Book Center, whose bookstore in New Orleans’ Seventh Ward is an essential ingredient of the city. For 25 years, it’s nourished families with books, educational seminars, art expos and its own musical festivals. When Essence visits, though, the Community’s owners and operators Vera Warren-Williams and “Mama Jen” are in the Marketplace every year, greeting and rewarding the city’s guests in a way that neither the mega-corporates nor the Army could. The Book Center is this event’s version of Monopoly’s “Community Chest.”

However, the scene outside the convention center, beyond the Superdome where the nighttime concerts are held, is a city that’s been failed by markets and the Army alike. When disasters such as oil spills and hurricanes have arisen, Louisiana has been left vulnerable by the Army Corps of Engineers’ failure to build adequate levees and protective barrier islands. And when public housing was demolished, wiping away the few homes still standing for low-income families that the breached-levee floods didn’t destroy, markets were supposed to chip in to help erect replacement affordable housing. That hasn’t happened yet.

With Essence Fest, there’s a legitimate question whether the 40-year-old women’s magazine has a special obligation to provide more prominent placement to local businesses and artists. The expo is free — a great service — but the cost to attend the concerts can be prohibitive ($53 for nosebleed seats; $180 for the floor; as high as $3,000 for VIP access) in a city where close to a quarter live below poverty level (23 percent) and the median household income is $37,047 — both 2008, pre-recession figures.

Mama Jen, whose business involves serving those communities of modest means, said Essence Fest provides great “camaraderie” and a chance for African Americans across the country “to come see the positive things that New Orleans is doing instead of always hearing about the negative stuff, like the murders.” However, she also says they could do a better job of steering attendees to local brands. “They could make us more visible,” said Mama Jen, from the back of the expo floor, behind spaces occupied by TV stations TNT and CNN. “I know corporations have all the rights. We just black, but they got all the green.

And while her space is smaller than previous years, she says, despite paying the same vendor rate, and she’s not pleased that Wal-Mart was also in the house selling books, she said she was grateful of the exposure to new customers. Also, the revenue she collects from the festival is “a significant part” of their yearly gross. This ambivalence probably sums up best the Essence experience for the local New Orleanian: Love the tourism dollars, hate being overshadowed.

A study presented by the University of New Orleans, “2009 African American Travelers’ Perception of Louisiana as a Tourism Destination” shows that black people are most interested in attending fairs and festivals when visiting the state and most popularly in July — when the Essence Fest is. According to an Essence Music Festival fact sheet (”Presented by Coca-Cola”) the focus of the event is “the ‘rebirth’ of New Orleans,” and is “expected … to benefit the local and state economy to the tune of $200 million.” Since the first festival, it’s added “nearly $1.5 billion” to the state’s economy — or about $100 million annually over 15 years (the summer after Katrina it was held in Houston). The spending at hotels, restaurants and shops outside the festival eases tax burdens and supplies jobs, but those are non-union service jobs that mostly don’t pay living wages.

Meanwhile, New Orleans is facing a $62 million budget deficit, mostly attributable to overspending by previous mayoral administrations, according to the current mayor Mitch Landrieu. The past few years saw the city spend over $100 million more than it collected in revenue, and as a result jobs in city government might be lost until the budget can be balanced.
Read The Full Story…

(Akiit.com) For better or worse (some would say the latter), the BET Awards has become one of the premier events in entertainment, particularly for hip-hop and R&B. Throughout its nine-year existence, the star-studded annual celebration has provided viewers with ample fodder for debates about the state of music and popular culture. While one could accuse the organizers and participants of many sins, a failure of imagination certainly wouldn’t be among them.

Which brings us to 2010’s awards. Hosted by Queen Latifah, Sunday night’s ceremony was packed to the brim with performances by some of music’s biggest marquee names - a roster that included Kanye West, Alicia Keys, Usher and Eminem. The show was ostensibly dedicated as a tribute to two artists — the late Michael Jackson and the purple-clad rocker Prince — one performance in particular is bound to make its way into the annals of award-show excess. But more on that in a moment.

It should be noted that the choice of Queen Latifah as host was a somewhat odd selection. Musically speaking, she’s drifted away from hip-hop to such a dramatic extent that she rarely refers to her prior incarnation as one of the most dominant female MCs to ever grace the stage. Nowadays, she’s gone to great lengths to cultivate an image as a mainstream everywoman, a choice few would begrudge her given the natural artistic penchant for reinvention. Yet during the awards ceremony, she provided only mild comedy relief - her costume changes and affected attempts at laughs were thin and unsatisfying gruel for the viewers.
Read The Full Story…

(Akiit.com) Most decent, educated, hard working black Americans have their own particular reason for disliking the BET Awards. All the while, it must be acknowledged that there are some Americans who love the show. Finally, there are those who love to watch the show so they can talk about how much they hate it. BET appreciates these viewers as much as anyone else, since most networks value ratings, no matter how they are obtained.

My personal anti-love affair with the BET Awards began when the singer R. Kelly was accused of having sex with an underage girl and videotaping the act. This occurred during a time when people were under the mistaken assumption that most African-Americans actually care about young black girls. Of course, this silly notion was quickly dismissed by BET, who not only continued with the planned R. Kelly performance, but gave him the longest segment on the show. The segment was the only one to actually include video and even ended by honoring him with an award.

Sure, we know that R. Kelly had been technically acquitted of his crime, but I hold to the reality that being found not guilty is not the same as being found innocent. Also, my friends who’ve watched the video “for research purposes” (no, I didn’t watch that video, I have daughters the same age as the young girl allegedly involved in the incident) report that the man on the video has a striking resemblance to R. Kelly. Either way, BET had an opportunity to take a stand on principle, and they did: They proved that they are incredibly principled about the idea of making money at any cost. When BET founder Bob Johnson reminded us that the “E” in BET stands for “Entertainment, not education,” that is when the network officially became similar to the purely capitalist entities who exploit poor, black Americans for financial gain. The difference is that you can get away with an extraordinary amount of exploitation if you disguise it with a blackface.

The R. Kelly/anti-black girl trend of the BET Awards continued years later as Lil Wayne rapped about wishing he could “f*ck every girl in the world” all the while, having underage girls dancing on the stage behind him. Finally, along with every other person who grew up admiring Michael Jackson’s talent, I wasn’t happy to see BET’s botched and hastily-designed tribute to the singer last year. But of course the execs at BET could care less, since the show was one of their most highly rated in history. When it’s all said and done in black America, making money seems to justify any and every activity utilized to make that money. This, my friends, is wrong.
Read The Full Story…

(Akiit.com) Circulation of a Karl Lagerfeld photo of Claudia Schiffer as a black woman with an afro to commemorate the 60th issue anniversary the German quarterly magazine, Stern Fotografie, has sparked much interest in the blogosphere. Polls of the photo, which was taken two years ago, either show most people not bothered about it or many others not really knowing what to think.

Considering German’s troubled ethnic and racial past, it’s not surprising that the photo raises a few eyebrows. Although Schiffer is photographed as various personalities, including a biker chick and an Asian woman, it’s the picture of her as a black woman that has stirred up the most controversy. Perhaps the photo of Schiffer as an Asian woman hasn’t raised concerns because most people were unable to identify her as such. The one with the darkened skin and afro, however, is undeniable.

In the 21st century, it is a bit unsettling that blackface is even deemed necessary or creative. While passé for certain, is blackface always a call to arms? Last year, many blasted the French edition of Vogue when its editor Carine Roitfeld had photographer Steven Klein shoot Dutch model Lara Stone in blackface for its October 2009 issue. History aside, what made Roitfeld’s decision disturbing is that, despite some progress in the high fashion industry in past decades, black models have definitely been fewer and farther between in recent years. So, if the desire is to photograph black skin, the logical question is: why not employ those who happen to possess it?

When it comes to Schiffer, it’s a stickier situation. Stone is an unknown white model but Schiffer is a beloved supermodel who is well associated with Naomi Campbell. Schiffer, who is German, has never been associated with racially offensive incidents. Neither has Stone, to our knowledge, but we don’t know her as well as we know Schiffer. If this photo was done at the beginning of Schiffer’s career and not towards the end, perhaps there would be more outrage. In other words, we know Schiffer and she’s never really been that controversial until now.

So does knowing the character of the person donning the mask make blackface more acceptable? If Glenn Beck, Anne Coulter or Rush Limbaugh were to pose in blackface, they certainly would not get the same pass that Claudia Schiffer has received. Their conservative outspokenness and, what many deem racially incendiary rhetoric, combined with the disturbing history behind blackface, would just be too much. It would serve as an endorsement of racial bigotry and not as an artistic statement.

And understandably so. In the 1830s into the 1840s, Manhattan, New York-born and raised white performer Thomas Rice, also known as Daddy Rice, became extremely popular throughout the United States and in London for donning blackface, dressing in rags and exaggerating the speech patterns and dance movements of a ‘black’ character known as “Jim Crow.” Sadly, when actual black performers became the main attractions in the ever-popular “black” minstrel shows that emerged in the 1850s, they also had to don blackface and follow the stereotype of either the “plantation darky” who missed slavery or the well-dressed, lazy city slicker.
Read The Full Story…

(Akiit.com) The 2010-2011 TV season is shaping up to be one of the most diverse ever with regard to on-camera talent. There will be nearly double digit representation by all ethnic groups (African American, Latino, East Indian/Asian) in leading roles - with the heaviest number of actors appearing on NBC vehicles. Tonight, Are We There Yet?, a sitcom based on the hit series of films starring Ice Cube, debuts on TBS–but that’s just one of several promising programs featuring talented people of color.

NBC
The biggest increases stem from dramas. The canceling of The Jay Leno Show has provided some benefits - those extra five hours his prime-time departure created has returned drama series orders to pre-2010 levels. NBC has ordered 12 new series this year: 7 dramas, 5 comedies. For the dramas, the obvious suspects are - married super spies Undercovers with leads Boris Kodjoe and newcomer Gugu Mbatha-Raw; Outlaw with Jimmy Smits who stars as a Supreme Court justice who quits the court and starts his own law practice; The Event featuring Blair Underwood as the president of the United States; and Outsourced, a comedy about a customer-service call center in India, whose cast is mostly actors of East Indian heritage.

Supporting roles can be found in Chase with Amaury Nolasco, formerly of Prison Break, as well as Aml Ameenas Malcolm in the Kathy Bates starrer, Harry’s Law.

And comedies have definitely made something of a comeback. Yes, series pickups by writers of color were few, but the development season was pretty brisk overall. Both broadcast and cable networks have stepped up to embrace both traditional multi-camera sitcoms as well as single camera.

TBS
For sitcoms, it appears that for the first time cable TV, particularly TBS, leads the charge for minority-driven comedies.

Are We There Yet? series joins Tyler Perry’s successful sitcom combo of House of Payne and Meet The Browns. And we can’t forget that George Lopez leads the late night charge for the cable net Monday through Thursdays. Though TBS stands alone in singularly featuring sitcoms lead by African-Americans actors - the major broadcasters don’t have any, there are other shows on both broadcast and basic cable that appeal to other ethnic demos. There is one small exception — Fox does have the animated Cleveland Show to represent - though not all of the actors that provide voiceover talent are of color.

ABC
The dramas lead again with Jason Winston George formerly Chandra Wilson’s squeeze of Grey’s Anatomy. George reappears as one of the leads in creator Shonda Rhimes, Off The Wall, co-starring Enrique Murciano; Sonja Sohn formerly and formidably of The Wire with Windell Middlebrooks, co-star in Body of Proof. Detroit 1-8-7 is fully loaded with Jon Michael Hill as Det. Damon Washington, James McDaniel as Sgt. Jesse Longford, Shaun Majumder as Det. Aman Majan, Aisha Hinds as Lt. Maureen Mason, with Natalie Martinez as Det. Ariana Sanchez.
Read The Full Story…