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THE IN-CROWD:

THE BLACK EDITION

1 The In-Crowd: The Black Edition April 2010

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Women inBlack

Black Politicians

Black Hollywood

Black Doctors

Black Athletes

Lyrics in theblack

contents

The In-Crowd: The Black Edition April 2010 2

p CEO of Bankable Productions, Supermodel Tyra Banks Would you rather be slightly over-

dressed or under dressed at a party? 57% of Black women would prefer to be slightly overdressed, compared to 44% of all other women. Almost

a third of all Black women are Fashion Innovators, com-pared to less than one sixth of all other women. Given the impressive percentage of fashion-conscious Black women, it’s no surprise that fashion reporter Constance C. R. White says that “looking disheveled, no matter how creatively done, is never thought to be stylish in our Black culture-be it American, Caribbean, or African.” White is also the author of just-published StyleNoir, the first how-to guide to fashion written with Black women in mind. “Generally, one will find that Black women do love to dress up.”

Then why do 88% of Black women think casual Friday is appropriate-compared to 78% of all other women?

“Many Black women of all ages like to express their culture in the way they dress,” says White. “Until the recent casual revolution, there was no room to do this in the workplace. Cornrows or a kente scarf could be misinterpreted as a political statement, when it’s just about fashion, looking beautiful, and feeling good when it’s just about fashion.

women in black


p Oprah Winfrey and First Lady Michelle Obama

“In the 80’s, the corporate look was conservative, and generally limited to dark suits,” says Jennifer Keitt, hostess of “Today’s Black Woman,” a Mi-ami-based radio show broadcast in seven cities, which gives personal, financial, and health ad-vice. “Now, with the casualization of the work-place, women are able to bring their style to the office. I live in South Florida, and women will wear Caribbean-style prints on ev-erything from scarves to skirts at work.”

Style isn’t something women are born with it’s accumulated over time and is often perfected.

But whether at work or elsewhere, Black women express their culture in a variety of different ways depending on age, ethnicity, location, profession.

Black is the new BlackpThe chart represents the per-centage of women who care about their appearance, have a major interest in fashion, regu-larly shop for clothing, uses fashion influences, and the im-portance of natural fibers in clothing worn.

“At least one out of five black women have falling victim to bad fashion trends.”

In 1997, Diahann Carroll be-came the first Black woman to debut a signature clothing

line. The upper moderate line is designed with an eye towards the

preferences, fashion sense, and siz-ing of today’s Black woman age 35 and older. The brand currently has over twelve licensees in categories that include career wear, evening

wear, weekend wear, sleepwear, socks, hosiery, handbags, hats, and jewelry. The line is sold at JC Pen-ney, Macy’s East, Dillard’s, Lord & Taylor, and other stores.

BarometerBlack woman All other women

Appearance 44.03 37.57Fashion 47.57 42.39Clothes Shopping 62.43 52.37External Influence 44.60 40.64Natural Fiber Pref. 58.90 58.66


p Pop singer Rihanna

p UK singer Estelle

p R & B Singer Beyonce

“I’ve tried to incorporate informa-tion that I’ve gathered about sim-plicity and elegance from some very knowledgeable mentors through the years,” says Carroll. “I think I’ve found a happy me-dium between reflecting my own personal style in the line and help-ing the customer choose what she wants to resolve her needs. These are garments for an accomplished woman to wear to the theater, the office, the PTA meeting, and church.”

Sizes go up to 22. “More women today who are large-sized are quite visible, and not apologiz-ing for their size,” says Carroll. “They do not want to live their lives worried about the size of their waistline.”

But often size has less to do with dieting and more with body type. “Black women tend to be bustier than other women, and their bot-toms are fuller,” says Sheffey-Brown

Black Fashionistas

Fashion Mini Bio

Kimora Lee Simmons (born Kimora Lee Perkins on May 4, 1975) is an Ameri-

can fashion model, author, and the president and Creative Director for Phat Fashions. Formerly the Cre-ative Director of Baby Phat, Sim-mons became CEO of Phat Fashions after ex-husband Russell Simmons stepped down. A 2007 reality televi-sion show, Kimora: Life in the Fab Lane, focuses on her life as a mother and CEO of Phat Fashions. She has appeared in music videos and was a judge on the first season of Ameri-ca’s Next Top Model. She was sup-posed to return but cancelled.

at Essence. “Essence fashion pages are new, fresh, and we feature great fashion at all price points for our reader and her unique body type.

More than any other group, Black women have a grass-roots style that comes from their community rather than trickling down from top designers,” says Constance White, author of StyleNoir. “They might take snatches of things from popular and designer culture, such as a Tommy Hilfiger polo shirt or Versace Jeans. But whether Black women are wearing a kente head wrap and beads, a robustly colored matched suit, or baggy jeans and a polo shirt, the style is always or-ganic.

“The Fashion Industry better watch out because we’re here!” - Chanel Iman


Music Mini Bio

lyrics in the black

Common arrived on the hip-hop scene of the ear-ly-Nineties as Common

Sense, a post-Native Tongues rapper who offered an alternative to the pre-

vailing gangsta fare of contemporaries like Snoop Dogg and Dr. Dre. With

space-age effects, old-school beats, jazz- and funk-influenced musical bedding and

lyrics that often come off like spoken-word poetry, he helped kick off an underground hip-

hop movement that would gain steam — and new rappers — by the latter part of the decade.

He was born Lonnie Rashid Lynn, Jr., in Chicago on March 13, 1972, the son of a teacher and former basket-

ball pro. During high school, Lynn formed the rap trio C.D.R., which opened for national acts including Big Daddy Kane and N.W.A.


Music Mini Bio

“ We are what we create, and we create from our souls letting it all hang out!”

The 1970s saw one of the greatest decades of black bands concerning melodic music.

Album-oriented soul contin-ued its popularity, while mu-sicians like Smokey Robinson helped turn it into Quiet Storm

music. Funk evolved into two strands, one a pop and soul fu-

sion pioneered by Sly & the Family Stone, and the other a more experimen-

tal psychedelic and metal fusion led by George Clinton and his P-Funk ensemble.

Black musicians achieved generally lit-tle mainstream success, though African Americans had been instrumental in the invention of disco, and some artists, like Gloria Gaynor and Kool & the Gang, found crossover audiences. White listeners pre-ferred country rock, singer-songwriters, stadium rock and, in some subcultures, heavy metal and punk rock.

No music is dead, but if we choose to break boundaries we must think out-side the box .

The dozens, an urban African American tradition of using rhyming slang to put down your enemies (or friends) devel-oped, through the smart-ass street jive of the early Seventies into a new form of music. In the South Bronx, the half speak-ing, half singing the rhythmic street talk of ‘rapping’ grew into the hugely successful cultural force known as Hip hop.[9] Hip Hop would become a multicultural move-ment. Jamaican immigrants like DJ Kool Herc and spoken word poets like Gil Scott-Heron are often cited as the major innova-tors in early hip hop. Beginning at block parties in The Bronx, hip hop music arose as one facet of a large subculture with re-bellious and progressive elements. At . cal-

pRapper/producer Kanye West

pRappers T.I, Lil Wayne, and Jay-Z’s hit albums.

ly funk, while MCs introduced tracks to. The dancing audience. Over time, DJs be-gan isolating and repeating the percussion breaks, producing a constant, eminently dance-able beats, which the MCs began improvising more complex introductions and, eventually, lyrics.

“We aren’t just rappers, we’re lyri-cists!” - Rapper Lupe Fiasco

In the 1980s, Michael Jackson’s record-breaking success of his al-bums Off The Wall, Bad, and Thriller which currently remains the best-selling album of all time, transformed popular music and united all races, ages, and genders and would eventually lead a revolution that saw more suc-cessful crossover black solo artists in-cluding Lionel Richie, Whitney Hous-ton, and Prince, who all sang a type of pop dance-soul that fed into New Jack Swing by the end of the decade. These artists are the most successful of the

era. Hip hop spread across the country and diversified. Techno, Dance, Miami bass, Chicago house, Los Angeles hard-core and Washington, D.C. Go Go developed during this period, with only Miami bass achieving mainstream success. But before long, Mi-ami bass was relegated primarily to the Southeastern US, while Chicago house had made strong head ways on college campuses and dance arenas. The DC go-go sound like Miami bass became essentially a regional sound that didn’t muster much mass appeal.


BLACATHLETESThe best of the best athletes of the

20th century include Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier, who were the participants in the March 8, 1971, “Fight of the Century”; Jesse Owens,

who won four gold medals at the 1936 Olympics and dashed Hitler’s theory of Aryan supremacy; Joe Louis, who held the heavy-weight boxing ti-tle longer than any other person; the first Black Wimbledon champion Althea Gibson, who later became an accomplished golfer; Jackie Robin-son, who broke baseball’s color barrier in the modern era and was named Rookie of the Year in 1947; and Michael Jordan, who led the Chi-cago Bulls to six championships, was a 10-time scoring champion and is considered by many to be the best player in NBA history.

At the 1960 Olympics in Rome, Wilma Ru-dolph became the first woman to win three gold medals at a single Olympiad.

Jack Johnson became the first Black heavyweight champion. Many spectators still consider Willie Mays the best all-around player in baseball his-tory. Carl Lewis won nine gold medals and one silver medal as a sprinter and long jumper in four Olympics.

The NFL’s all-time rushing leader, Walter Pay-ton, has the record, but Jim Brown, the Cleve-land Browns star who retired at age 29, is still the standard by which all running backs are judged. Despite the odds and racism, Hank Aaron broke baseball’s “unreachable” home run record in 87’.

Jackie Joyner-Kersee, who won two gold medals in the heptath-lon, has been called “the greatest female athlete in history.”

The century’s greatest Black athletes also include such spectacular per-formers as Florence Griffith Joyner, who was known as “the world’s fastest woman” after setting world records in the 100- and 200-meter dashes. Ar-thur Ashe, who was the U.S. singles

champion in 1968, became the first Black male to win Wimbledon .

pNFL Wide Reciever.

Terrrell Owens

Black athletes:

A century in the making


BLAC

The first child born at the White House was the grandson of President Thomas Jefferson. The second child born there was his property - the African-American baby of Jefferson’s two slaves.

Slaves not only helped build the White House, but also for decades men and women in bondage served America’s presidents and first families as butlers, cooks and maids.

Two hundred years later, Barack Obama’s election as the 44th president - the first black chief executive - is casting a spotlight on the complicated history of African-Americans and the exalted place they called home - the White House.

During and after slavery, black workers have made the White House function. Obama’s entry on Jan. 20, 2009, will be a moment for the ages that few of them could imagine.

“I’m very proud of the fact we’re going to have an African-American president and I think the help is going to be pleased to be working for an African-American presi-dent,” said 89-year-old William Bowen Jr., a second-generation White House butler who worked for Presidents Dwight Eisen-hower to George H.W. Bush.

When Bowen started at the White House, the civil rights movement was still in its infancy, segregation was still legal and Af-rican-Americans were just penetrating the upper echelons of government service.

People like Bowen, employed at the White House before the civil rights and feminist movements, were the “help.”

Surrounded by presidential memorabilia in his suburban Maryland home - includ-ing a newspaper trumpeting Obama’s vic-tory - Bowen is contemplating coming out of retirement to work for the first black president.

“I never thought, coming up, that this would ever happen. Not in my lifetime,” Bowen said.

Blacks in the White House

pNFL Wide Reciever.

Terrrell Owens

pPresident of the United States, Barack Obama

pSecretary of State, Condelezza Rice

p Four-star general, Colin Powell

Politiciansblackfinally in the white house


When Hattie McDaniel, the first Af-rican American ever nominated for an Academy Award, arrived at the Ambassador Hotel for the 1940 ceremony, she was seated at

a table on the extreme periphery of the auditorium. McDaniel had been nominated for Best Supporting Actress based on her role as Mammy in Gone With the Wind (1939). Though this seating

In the 61-year time span from 1940-2001, only five other African Americans—Sidney Poitier, Lou Gos-sett, Denzel Washington, Whoopi Goldberg and Cuba Gooding (can we put an asterisk next to this one?)—won the distinct gold statuette in the presti-gious acting categories. Of those six total awards, Sid-

ney Poitier is the only one to have won in the Best Actor category.

“Black actors have to work twice as hard to be accepted in Hollywood.”

assignment was quite insulting, such slights were not uncommon, as Mc-Daniel had also been forced to miss the film’s Atlanta premiere due to southern Jim Crow laws. McDaniel would go on to win the Academy Award that evening in 1940, becoming the first African American to ever win the prestigious award. It would be 24 years before another African American would be declared an Oscar winner.

Roles come and go, what matters is what you do when you get it.

Actress Mini Bio

Born on August 16, 1958, Angela Bassett grew up in public housing in

St. Petersburg, Florida. She was first truly electrified by acting

when, in 1974, she went on a field trip to Washington D.C. There she saw the illustrious black thespian

James Earl Jones in a Kennedy Center production of the play Of Mice and Men.

“I just sat there after the play, boo-hoo cry-ing, weeping,” Bassett recalled to Barbara

Jones of Premiere. “I couldn’t move, and I remember thinking, ‘My

gosh, if I could make somebody feel the way I feel right now!”

Black Hollywood


p Neurologist Dr. Ben Carson

during his stay in Scotland. When Smith took the floor, he stated,

“I thank you for the sake of my countrymen-that part of them, especially, who participate in such an unholy prejudice--for it must prove to them that you, who also have a complexion as fair, if not fairer than their own--that you are not only free from such prejudice, but glory in be-ing free from it.”

With all of that going on, modern day heroes such as Dr. Ben Carson who is a world renowed neurolo-gists, who is known for taking part in strategic surgeries.

Historians credit James McCune Smith as the individual who best exemplified the nineteenth century African-American physician-abo-litionist. Smith has the distinction of being the first university-trained black physician. Smith attended the Free African School of New York. As a child, Smith showed flashes of brilliance. At the age of eleven, he was chosen to give the school’s address when General La-fayette visited the school in 1824. At age 19, the Rev. Peter Williams, a Episcopalian priest, helped Smith enroll in the University of Glasgow

in Scotland. He completed study for the B.A. degree in 1835, his M.A. degree in 1836, and his M.D. degree in 1837. Part of Smith’s edu-cation was sponsored by a British anti-slavery organization known as the Glasgow Emancipation So-ciety.

African Americans have broken major standards in the medical field.

Unrestrained superlatives were given Smith for his stellar academ-ic and private accomplishments

The pioneering leadership of virtually every professional area, routinely participated in by Africans Americans in the twentieth century, have antecedents in the nineteenth cen-tury. The first black physician in America, not professional-ly trained in a medical school, was James Derham. Derham,

born a slave in Philadelphia in 1757, was owned by three doctors. Dr. Robert Love, his third owner, encouraged Derham to practice medicine.

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“ We do our jobs and we do them well,point blank period.”


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