A Love Song for All of Us?: Macklemore's “Same Love” and the Myth of Black Homophobia

2018 ◽  
Vol 12 (4) ◽  
pp. 425-448 ◽  
Author(s):  
LAURON KEHRER

AbstractAccording to theNew York Times, white rapper Macklemore and his DJ partner Ryan Lewis's “Same Love” was “the first song to explicitly embrace and promote gay marriage that has made it into the Top 40.”1In 2013, as the Supreme Court of the United States prepared to rule on challenges to the Federal Defense of Marriage Act and California's Proposition 8, which banned same-sex marriage, the track quickly climbed the charts and became a nationally recognized anthem for marriage equality. Despite this generally positive reception, however, the song does not reflect all queer-identified listeners. Macklemore raps, “If I were gay, I would think hip hop hates me,” an assertion that positions black communities as a significant threat to (white) LGBTQ rights. Much like the backlash against black voters following the 2008 passing of Proposition 8, this claim relies on an invented black pathology that locates homophobia in black American culture specifically rather than American culture at large. This article offers a close reading and contextualization of “Same Love” and demonstrates that, rather than combating homophobia in hip hop, Macklemore's lyrical claims actually bolster his strategic performance as a socially and politically aware white rapper, while erasing queer and trans hip hop artists of color from the discourse.

Prospects ◽  
1988 ◽  
Vol 13 ◽  
pp. 181-223 ◽  
Author(s):  
Howard P. Segal

“Technology Spurs Decentralization Across the Country.” So reads a 1984 New York Times article on real-estate trends in the United States. The contemporary revolution in information processing and transmittal now allows large businesses and other institutions to disperse their offices and other facilities across the country, even across the world, without loss of the policy- and decision-making abilities formerly requiring regular physical proximity. Thanks to computers, word processors, and the like, decentralization has become a fact of life in America and other highly technological societies.


2021 ◽  
pp. 089692052098661
Author(s):  
Amanda T. Boston

Gentrification’s racial consequences are garnering increased attention as the process advances into majority–minority urban neighborhoods. This study examines the EB-5 Immigrant Investor Program’s implementation in Brooklyn, New York to ground these trends in policies through which gentrification is promoted, histories of racism and uneven development against which they are unfolding, and their disparate impacts on Black communities. While the program purports to use foreign investment to promote job growth in high unemployment areas, its financing of multimillion and billion-dollar development projects facilitates the displacement of longtime residents of the very places the initiative was designed to improve. Central Brooklyn and its outlying areas, home to one of the largest contiguous Black communities in the United States, are host to numerous EB-5 projects that have failed to produce sustainable job growth for existing residents and heightened the growing crisis of unaffordability. My analysis shows how EB-5 projects have enabled investors to use distressed areas disproportionately inhabited by poor and working-class Black communities to qualify for funding, while redistributing benefits upward to wealthy developers and affluent residents and consumers. Ultimately, the EB-5 program and other neoliberal, colorblind urban development policies exacerbate existing racial inequalities in the organization and operation of urban space.


1994 ◽  
Vol 20 (4) ◽  
pp. 357-394 ◽  
Author(s):  
George J. Annas ◽  
Frances H. Miller

American culture reflects a paradox: the more openly we discuss death and its inevitability, the more money we spend to postpone and deny it. Sherwin Nuland's book How We Die, a frank description of the way our bodies deteriorate with and without medical intervention, topped the New York Times best seller list in the spring of 1994. At the same time, Jack Kevorkian, arguably the world 's best known physician, was being acquitted of violating Michigan 's law against assisted suicide, while a Michigan commission was debating legislative changes to permit physicians to help their terminally ill patients kill themselves. Despite such open discussion of death and expansion of the informed consent doctrine, U.S. medical expenditures at the end of life remain astronomically high. Most of this elevated spending is attributable to new medical technology.In J.G. Ballard 's Empire of the Sun, the United States, British and Japanese cultures are contrasted through the eyes of a young British boy incarcerated by the Japanese army in China during World War II.


1968 ◽  
Vol 30 (4) ◽  
pp. 415-427
Author(s):  
Quentin L. Quade

In The issues of the New York Times from February, 1965, to November, 1967, religious leaders and groups are reported 185 times commenting on one political issue: Vietnam. If a comparable search were done on an inclusive list of political topics, such as civil rights, the number of citations would be greatly multiplied. Most of these statements are on substantive issues — the United States should do this, do that — rather than on the theoretical questions about religion's role vis à vis politics. Most of these religious interventions presume some connection between religion and politics, whether articulated or not. A similar examination of some leading religious journals, for example, Chrisianity and Crisis, Commonweal, Christian Century, America, produces similar results: in articles and editorials, such publications are deeply immersed in direct commentary on political problems of our time.


2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (10) ◽  
pp. 1357 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jinxiu Jin

The relationship among China, the United States and North Korea has already been a focus of international politics. From June 19 to 20, North Korea leader Kim Jong-un ended his third visit to China within 100 days. This is also his three consecutive visits to China since he took office in December 2011. The high density and frequency are not only rare in the history of China-DPRK relations, but also seem to be unique in the history of international relations, indicating that China-DPRK relations are welcoming new era. This paper selects the New York Times’ report on China-DPRK relations as an example, which is based on an attitudinal perspective of the appraisal theory to analyze American attitudes toward China. Attitudes are positive and negative, explicit and implicit. Whether the attitude is good or not depends on the linguistic meaning of expressing attitude. The meaning of language is positive, and the attitude of expression is positive; the meaning of language is negative, and the attitude of expression is negative. The study found that most of the attitude resources are affect (which are always negative affect), which are mainly realized through such means as lexical, syntactical and rhetorical strategies implicitly or explicitly. All these negative evaluations not only help construct a discourse mode for building the bad image of China but also are not good to China-DPRK relations. The United States wants to tarnish image of China and destroy the relationship between China and North Korea by its political news discourse.


2020 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Lawrence J. Trautman

In November 2018, The New York Times ran a front-page story describing how Facebook concealed knowledge and disclosure of Russian-linked activity and exploitation resulting in Kremlin led disruption of the 2016 and 2018 U.S. elections, through the use of global hate campaigns and propaganda warfare. By mid-December 2018, it became clear that the Russian efforts leading up to the 2016 U.S. elections were much more extensive than previously thought. Two studies conducted for the United States Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI), by: (1) Oxford University’s Computational Propaganda Project and Graphika; and (2) New Knowledge, provide considerable new information and analysis about the Russian Internet Research Agency (IRA) influence operations targeting American citizens.By early 2019 it became apparent that a number of influential and successful high growth social media platforms had been used by nation states for propaganda purposes. Over two years earlier, Russia was called out by the U.S. intelligence community for their meddling with the 2016 American presidential elections. The extent to which prominent social media platforms have been used, either willingly or without their knowledge, by foreign powers continues to be investigated as this Article goes to press. Reporting by The New York Times suggests that it wasn’t until the Facebook board meeting held September 6, 2017 that board audit committee chairman, Erskin Bowles, became aware of Facebook’s internal awareness of the extent to which Russian operatives had utilized the Facebook and Instagram platforms for influence campaigns in the United States. As this Article goes to press, the degree to which the allure of advertising revenues blinded Facebook to their complicit role in offering the highest bidder access to Facebook users is not yet fully known. This Article can not be a complete chapter in the corporate governance challenge of managing, monitoring, and oversight of individual privacy issues and content integrity on prominent social media platforms. The full extent of Facebook’s experience is just now becoming known, with new revelations yet to come. All interested parties: Facebook users; shareholders; the board of directors at Facebook; government regulatory agencies such as the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC); and Congress must now figure out what has transpired and what to do about it. These and other revelations have resulted in a crisis for Facebook. American democracy has been and continues to be under attack. This article contributes to the literature by providing background and an account of what is known to date and posits recommendations for corrective action.


Novum Jus ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 69-89
Author(s):  
Julián Rodríguez ◽  
Andrew M. Clark

This research uses in-depth interviews with three data journalists from the Houston Chronicle and the New York Times in the United States to describe the role of data journalists, and to illustrate how and why they use big data in their stories. Data journalists possess a unique set of skills including being able to find data, gather data, and use that data to tell a compelling story in a written and visually coherent way. Results show that as newspapers move to a digital format the role of a data journalist is becoming more essential as is the importance of laws such as the Freedom of Information Act to enable journalists to request and use data to continue to inform the public and hold those in power accountable. 


2021 ◽  
Vol 6 ◽  
Author(s):  
Luisa Massarani ◽  
Luiz Felipe Fernandes Neves

The search for an effective solution to control the COVID-19 pandemic has mobilized an unprecedented effort by science to develop a vaccine against the disease, in which pharmaceutical companies and scientific institutions from several countries participate. The world closely monitors research in this area, especially through media coverage, which plays a key role in the dissemination of trustful information and in the public’s understanding of science and health. On the other hand, anti-vaccine movements dispute space in this communication environment, which raises concerns of the authorities regarding the willingness of the population to get vaccinated. In this exploratory study, we used computer-assisted content analysis techniques, with WordStat software, to identify the most addressed terms, semantic clusters, actors, institutions, and countries in the texts and titles of 716 articles on the COVID-19 vaccine, published by The New York Times (US), The Guardian (United Kingdom), and Folha de São Paulo (Brazil), from January to October 2020. We sought to analyze similarities and differences of countries that stood out by the science denialism stance of their government leaders, reflecting on the severity of the pandemic in these places. Our results indicate that each newspaper emphasized the potential vaccines developed by laboratories in their countries or that have established partnerships with national institutions, but with a more politicized approach in Brazil and a little more technical-scientific approach in the United States and the United Kingdom. In external issues, the newspapers characterized the search for the discovery of a vaccine as a race in which nations and blocs historically marked by economic, political, and ideological disputes are competing, such as the United States, Europe, China, and Russia. The results lead us to reflect on the responsibility of the media to not only inform correctly but also not to create stigmas related to the origin of the vaccine and combat misinformation.


2012 ◽  
Vol 42 (4) ◽  
pp. 283-321 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lisa M. Mundey

In 1958 the United States secretly conducted a low-yield, high-atmosphere nuclear weapon effects test in the South Atlantic code-named ARGUS. It tested a theory devised by Nicholas Christofilos that an anti-missile shield could be created around the planet by trapping high-energy electrons in the Earth’s radiation field. In order to conduct the test before the October 1958 nuclear test moratorium, the military borrowed International Geophysical Year equipment and used the program as cover for the clandestine nuclear tests. Though the experiment determined that an electron shield could not work, it provided important research data for weapon effects, atmospheric physics, and long-distance communications. In March 1959, Hanson Baldwin and Walter Sullivan of the New York Times published an unauthorized account of the tests. In response, the White House presented ARGUS as a civilian science program of the International Geophysical Year rather than a nuclear weapon effects test. In the internal debate about declassification, in the publicity of the test, and in the memories of James Killian and Herbert York, Operation ARGUS demonstrates that many scientists and Americans remained comfortable with anti-militarism, even under militarized policies.


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