Last night, the Berkeley-bred, Internet-beloved rapper Lil B gave a sold-out lecture at NYU’s Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts. It’s possible that this was a beautiful, inspiring event, at which people rallied joyously around a quirky young entertainer’s timely message of empathy and kindness. It’s also totally possible that the whole thing was an epic tragedy, in which a young man’s urgent plea for basic human dignity was repeatedly laughed at by stoned college kids who preferred to shout catchphrases at him while finding his existence hilarious. I think it mostly depended on where you sat, and who was sitting near you.

When I teach about the history of the segregated South, sometimes my students remark that things are just as bad now as they were then, that conditions for Black Americans are still as bleak for too many. Often my response is that if someone were to hang me or them by that tree in front of the building, someone would come. The law would investigate. Our citizenship would matter in at least that crucial way.

 This month is challenging that assumption. When Trayvon Martin was murdered for looking "suspicious", killed without any pretense of a trial, the police failed to come.

it’s worth interrogating why we find images of over-the-top approaches to law enforcement funny or compelling A combination of anger as pathos (vicarious justice rendered), hero worship, and making light of authority?

‘Breitbart died, like all of us will, in darkness. But as a media persona he chose to also live there, and in the process has impelled countless others to throttle themselves into the abyss.’

‘The problem with the expansion of homeownership wasn’t that some people don’t have what it takes to be homeowners. They did. The problem was that traditional methods of discrimination were replaced by new forms of exploitation. Borrowers in certain neighborhoods were steered toward subprime loans. Appraisals were deliberately inflated. Loans with predatory terms were set up and designed to fail. None of that had to happen. And now, as that house of cards is collapsing, we’re losing decades of progress in integrating and stabilizing neighborhoods.’

‘Both videos refer to adult women as "girls," and portray them as weak, stupid, silly, bad with technology, and helpless.’

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.

"NPR's Setsuko Sato explains why a Japanese American, such as herself, reacts differently to Lost in Translation, an American film directed by Sofia Coppola and starring Bill Murray that is set in Japan."