Archive: March, 2013
Jenice Armstrong, Daily News Columnist
And some people say we don't talk enough about race. Five years ago today, Pres. Obama gave his famous speech on the topic at the National Constitution Center.
Tonight, the Consitution Center will be host a panel discussion on race, that was prompted by Philadelphia Magazine's controversial March cover story called, "Being White in Philly."
Meanwhile, the Philadelphia Human Relations Commission has sent a letter to Tom McGrath, editor of Philadelphia Magazine, expressing concern about the piece and invited McGrath and his colleagues to attend the commission's next public meeting on April 18 to be held in the Fairmount/Brewerytown area of the city. No location has been determined as of yet.
Jenice Armstrong, Daily News Columnist
Controversy over that problematic Philadelphia magazine March cover story called “Being White in Philly” continues to simmer. In the latest development, Mayor Michael Nutter has sent a letter to the Philadelphia Commission on Human Relations decrying the “disgusting” tone of the piece and accusing the magazine of having “sunk to a new low even for a publication that has long pretended that its suburban readers were the only citizens civically engaged and socially active in the Philadelphia area.” In the piece, based on anonymous interviews, Robert Huber makes the claim that white people are afraid to talk about race for fear of being called racist.
“That the magazine thought a collection of these despicable, over-generalized, mostly anonymous assumptions rose to the level of journalism is unfortunate enough,” the mayor wrote. “Worse, some of the residents of the nation’s fifth-largest city who are quoted in the piece seem to have ignored every positive anecdote they might otherwise have shared about a positive experience with African-Americans in favor of negative stories, many of them not even clearly attributable to African-Americans at all, to allow the author to feed his own misguided perception of African-Americans – notwithstanding his own acknowledged daily experiences on his own block – as an ethnic group that, in its entirety, is lazy, shiftless, irresponsible, and largely criminal.”
Nutter asked that the Human Relations Commission “consider specifically whether Philadelphia magazine and the writer, Bob Huber are appropriate for rebuke by the Commission in light of the potentially inflammatory effect and the reckless endangerment to Philadelphia’s racial relations possibly caused by the essay’s unsubstantiated assertions.”
Jenice Armstrong, Daily News Columnist
UPDATE, Friday, March 15, 2:30 p.m.: Philadelphia Magazine will host a panel discussion called "Can We Talk About Race?" on Monday at 6:30 p.m. at the National Constitution Center. Philly mag editor Tom McGrath will moderate the discussion which will be followed by a town hall session. Robert Huber, author of the controversial March cover story "Being White in Philly," will be on the panel. Admittance is free but reservations are suggested.
UPDATE: Philadelphia Association of Black Journalists has announced that Philadelphia Magazine Editor Tom McGrath will discuss the March cover story, "Being White in Philly." with its members at 7 p.m. March 19 at the new headquarters of the Philadelphia Inquirer and Daily News, 801 Market St. Also on the agenda: the magazine's hiring practices.
The supposed purpose of that controversial Philadelphia Magazine cover story called, "Being White in Philly," was to get us talking about race. Judging from the comments yesterday on this blog and all the newspaper columns, TV news segments, and talk radio chatter, the article by Robert Huber more than achieved its goal.
Jenice Armstrong, Daily News Columnist
UPDATE: The Being in Philly event has been postponed due to possibily inclement weather.
Organizers hope Philadelphians of all races will turn out next week for an event at Love Park called “Being in Philly.” The gathering, scheduled for 4 p.m. on March 20, is in response to a controversial Philadelphia magazine cover story called “Being White In Philly.” In the piece, based on anonymous interviews, Robert Huber makes the claim that white people are afraid to talk about race for fear of being called racist.
The article has a lot of problems, many of them well documented already. But the first-day-of-spring event isn’t so much to address the issue of bad journalism but to present another view of what’s happening in Philly.
Jenice Armstrong, Daily News Columnist
Have you ever engaged in sexting? You know. Sent a naked photo of yourself to someone? If so, it's likely that you also have engaged in other risky behavior.
That's the finding of a new study by students at the Community College of Philadelphia. They surveyed 1,020 people between the ages of 12 to 82 from November 2012 to February and discovered that respondents who send out racy text messages to a potential love interest were more likely to have engaged in unprotected sex with a person who was not a long-term partner (59 percent as compared to 26 percent of non-sexters) and also were more likely to have used an illegal drug in the past 30 days (33 percent as compared to 19 percent of non-sexters). Those who engage in sexting also were more likely to have had sex under the influence of drugs or alcohol that they later regretted (46 percent as compared to 22 percent of non-sexters).
"What we found was that sexting was related to other risky sexual behavior," Rick Frei, the instructor who organized the study, told me earlier this week.
Jenice Armstrong, Daily News Columnist
The Politics of Black Women's Hair Symposium at the University of Pennsylvania is going on now. Click here to see it live streamed over the Internet.
In case you missed it, here's a link to my Daily News column on the topic which ran earlier this week.
Are you as annoyed about this subject as I am? Or even as my colleague Elizabeth Wellington who also wrote on this subject?
Read more from Jenice Armstrong at Earth to Philly, the Daily News blog on anything and everything "Green."
Reach Jenice at armstrj@phillynews.com.
