On a gray day last October, teachers across Seattle wore a shirt that read BLACK LIVES MATTER. … White parents from the city’s tonier neighborhoods wrote to their principals to say they were displeased. A Black Lives Matter day was too militant, too political and too confusing for their young kids, they said. … “They would prefer to be ‘all lives matter,’ because then their child is included in the conversation about mattering,” [Jill Geary, the school board director representing northeast Seattle] said. “What they don’t think is, would a black mother feel like her child matters, based upon the way that history, the nation, the city, the institutional structures, have treated her child? That’s not the process they’re using.”

this isnt just about Kimmel and Kanye it's about who gets to be a creative genius in America and who we'd rather see as a clown

I've had guns pulled on me by four people under Central Mississippi skies — once by a white undercover cop, once by a young brother trying to rob me for the leftovers of a weak work-study check, once by my mother and twice by myself. Not sure how or if I've helped many folks say yes to life but I've definitely aided in few folks dying slowly in America, all without the aid of a gun.

I believe the company has good intentions, and is run by people who do not want to be racist or to create racist contributions to culture. Nevertheless, the company made a cultural contribution that was predicated on racist ideas. It's particularly egregious to trade in racist ideas when it's not for artistic purpose or to comment on society, but to sell a product. Therefore, the most helpful thing I can do is to help them fix the broken process within their company that produced this unfortunate result.

Kenan Malik writes that the attempt to preserve "cultural identity and authenticity" is largely an inauthentic act, one steeped in relativism and traditionalism, and more concerned with how individuals "should" act than how they actually do. Thanks to @kemp for the link.