Parents address issues of race and interactions with police, why Latino leaders need to support their black peers, long-term car loans underscore growing levels of debt in America.
Having 'the talk': Parents of color reflect on discussing race and policing with kids
This week on The Brood — Take Two's family and parenting segment — we explore "the talk": How parents of color teach their children about interacting with police.
This comes in light of the recent police shootings of two black men in Louisiana and suburban Minneapolis, and the graphic videos detailing their deaths.
So how do you have tough discussions with children around race and law enforcement? What did you tell your children about the incidents in Louisiana, Minnesota and Dallas? If you're the parent of a child of color, at what age did you have "the talk." What did you say?
Three African-American parents joined Alex Cohen to share how they're tackling these questions with children ranging from 5 to 20.
Guests:
Jennifer Carter - mother of two sons, aged 20 and 18
Tarik Smith - father of four; two teen daughters and two young boys
Stephen Hoffman - father of one son, aged 5
Interview highlights
Personal memories of "the talk"
Jennifer Carter
I started going to a Lutheran church when I was eight. My pastor was white and his wife was African American, and he was actually the first person that had a real race conversation with me. You know, you're African American, you're really smart, you're a woman and people are going to try to marginalize you in this way. I've always been really spunky and talkative and outgoing and I was starting to get some feedback about that, you know, being too opinionated or knowing too much, but my pastor was like, don't ever shrink. Make sure people know who you are, always speak up.
Tarik Smith
I think unfortunately it's probably something my mom and I should have talked about a little more directly when I was younger, but I remember one time being harassed by cops and coming home and I'm just going to be honest, crying. My mom asked me what was going on, and we talked about it then, but unfortunately she didn't really have too many comforting words, to be honest.
Talking with young children about race and policing
Stephen Hoffman
Before this week actually, we hadn't really thought about it until this weekend when we were driving back from visiting relatives and [my son] sort of overheard us talking about [the shootings] and from the back seat he chimed in wondering what we were talking about. He's a boy, so he likes guns, even though we don't let him have guns, he's fascinated with them. It was important for us to explain why we don't allow him to have a toy gun, because things can happen. Just speaking with him about it, you could just hear in his voice that he didn't really quite understand. We mentioned the police shootings and police pulling people over, and doing it more towards African-American men than other groups and he was just very concerned. He said "so wait, Daddy does this mean you're going to get pulled over and shot?" It was one of those moments that you can't really prepare for.
Talking with older children about race and policing
Jennifer Carter
Having a conversation with my younger boy last week, he came in and he was literally totally shaken up because he watched the video of the shooting of Alton Sterling and he just asked 'why do they disrespect so much? You know, we work hard, we try, we want nothing more to just live life like everybody else, but I feel constantly disrespected.' And what can I say, except, well, evidence has shown that in many cases you will be disrespected and it's not about anticipating that disrespect, it's about reacting to that disrespect and using your sense of identity, your sense of principles, your sense of morality to figure out a way to elevate beyond that.
Tarik Smith
My two oldest children are bi-racial and my oldest presents as white, so it's a very interesting perspective and lens that she has because of that experience. But she's very aware and very scared for my younger children who are not biracial and definitely present as black and are boys, so she's really aware of that and she travels in spaces and is constantly alerting people to the complexity of race because of how she presents. I think, that in that way, it's been pretty amazing to see her perspective on things, because she's passing through barriers that other people don't.
Practical advice for older children on interactions with law enforcement
Jennifer Carter
There have been enough conversations in their presence ... enough people who have guided them and given them advice about how to behave in the presence iof policemen, that just like any other situation, I expect them to go out and carry themselves in a way that keeps them protected. And I know it sounds like a small thing, but I can just ask them to walk in God's shadow ... because I don't have any faith, to be frank, in anybody else. I can't trust police. I can't trust bystanders. You know, our immediate reaction is not to intervene, but to take out a cellphone, meanwhile someone's getting their head cracked open. So I don't have faith that human reaction will serve them, so I have to rely on the fact that I've trained them well, that I've raised them in faith and that they're going to act on that. That's all I have.
Tarik Smith
I don't want to be too melodramatic, but I remember one bad experience with police where they had the gun out on me and I'm looking at the gun and it's shaking, and I'm thinking about what that means, that the gun that's being held on me is shaking. But I think that that's what I'm going to pass on to my children; that they need to be very calm, very aware and very methodical in everything that they do.
Stephen Hoffman
I mean, honestly everybody is in the same boat these days. The lessons that I'm trying to grasp as a parent to my son are probably the same that everyone is doing right now. It's not always about racial differences with the police, it's about questions of force and authority. So I think there's just some basic things that we all just have to tell our kids; be respectful, understand who you are and what your rights are, but by that same token, don't exasperate the situation by showing your anger, even if you're in the right. Hold the anger until after the situation is done. And then you can go about setting things right. Just make sure this situation isn't one where you end up being arrested, or held, or the most unimaginable thing happening.
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Listen to the discussion by clicking on the blue button above
Former MLK speechwriter and young activist discuss the future of black activism
President Obama was in Dallas today to mourn the deaths of five police officers.
Last week's shooting and the deaths of African American men in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and Falcon Heights, Minnesota has left some speculating about similarities between what's happening now and what happened a half century ago during the civil rights movement.
There are, of course, some huge differences: perhaps most notably, the lack of a leader like Martin Luther King Jr. For more on this, Take Two spoke to two guests.
- Clarence B Jones, visiting professor at the University of San Francisco and political adviser, lawyer, and speechwriter for Martin Luther King Jr.
- Tyree Boyd-Pates, professor of African American studies at Cal State Dominguez Hills
Press the blue play button above to hear the interview.
New music from Soapkills, the Helsinki-Cotonou Ensemble and The Breath
If you love music, but don't have the time to keep up with what's new, you should listen to Tuesday Reviewsday. Every week our critics join our hosts in the studio to talk about what you should be listening to, in one short segment. This week, music journalist
Artist: Helsinki-Cotonou Ensemble
Album: "Fire, Sweat and Pastis"
Songs: "The Road is Long," "Djigbo"
So, Finnish guitarist Janne Halonen goes to Benin in West Africa, forms a collaboration with local singer-percussionist Noël Saïzonou that grows into a full band with players from both countries and it winds up sounding like… Earth, Wind & Fire? Well, that’s one of the impressions from this buoyant, bubbly and thoroughly pleasurable new album "Fire, Sweat and Pastis," notably in the opening song "The Road is Long," with the horn-powered funk here and there evoking the golden joy of classic ‘70s EWF. Elsewhere it brings together buoyant Afrobeat and electric Euro-jazz, some things in English others in Gounn, Saïzonou’s native dialect, in a notably natural-sounding mesh — no imposition, no need for either party to bend to the other. It’s a rare fusion that truly fuses. And it’s a fuse that ignites.
It’s not a big surprise for anyone familiar with some of the exciting music coming from Benin in the last generation — the gripping, multi-faceted artistry of Angelique Kidjo most prominent, but also such figures as innovative jazz guitarist Lionel Loueke, showing Benin as a land of many musical streams, from the traditional village songs to the Jimi Hendrix and Santana records that took their own root there after coming in through the Cotonou ports.
It was the astonishing and distinctive playing of Loueke, via his role in Herbie Hancock’s band, that captivated Halonen to the point that in 2009 he made a pilgrimage to Cotonou in Benin, there being introduced to Saïzonou. The partnership clicked quickly, Saïzonou soon making several trips to Helsinki for writing and recording sessions, putting together a core quartet lineup and after just a few shows, releasing a debut album in 2013. The next year, Halonen returned to Benin and a new phase began leading to the expanded, highly spirited sounds on the new album. And speaking of spirited, the Pastis of the album title, if you didn’t know, is an anise-flavored French liqueur.
Make no mistake, this is an African album first and foremost. The high-power rhythms, stacks of vocal chants, percolating Vodun drums and choppy guitar lines all are firmly on West African ground. Nowhere is that stronger than on the rollicking "Djigbo." But throughout, this is music of two cultures, two artist from two cultures, working together as one.
Artist: Soapkills
Album: "The Best of Soapkills"
Songs: "Cheftak," "Tango"
There’s an eerie calm to much of the music of Soapkills. Well, it came from a time of relative calm, eerie at best, in Beirut in the late ‘90s and early 2000s, sounds forged by musician Zeid Hamdan and singer Yasmine Hamdan — no relation — representing an emerging youth culture that had known little but conflict. They were both born in 1976, a year after brutal civil war erupted in Lebanon, only giving way to an uneasy truce when they were teens, after hundreds of thousands dead and wounded and perhaps a million people displaced. Somehow, Soapkill’s distinct and entrancing mix of dark-hued electronics and classical Arab music inspirations captures that time. Even the duo’s name evokes a sense of lurking danger and uncertainty, musician Zeid having explained that the rebuilding of the city going on at the time seemed tenuous and fraught.
Soapkills split in the early 2000s, with Yasmine in particular going on to projects meeting some success in the Middle East and Europe. Listening to this now, in this compilation marking the first full U.S. release of Soapkills’ music, comes with knowledge that the peace, such as it was, proved tenuous, violent conflict erupting again in 2005 with the car-bomb assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Harrari. At the same time, it is tied to generations of tradition (and, yes, conflict) through Yasmine’s melodies and techniques, which shape and dominate even the most dub and trip-hop tracks, not the other way around as if often the case with these kind of ethno-electronics projects.
"Cheftak," for one example, uses a loping bass in a very dubby context, but always fitting the contours of the vocals. And on "Tango" the duo reached an impressionistic peak, starting with an Arabic orchestra sample sounding as if being heard through a layer of blankets, before Yasmine’s voice breaks through, echoing through bombed-out walls and echoed by ghostly wails. Eerie, perhaps. Calm, maybe. But hardly calming.
Artist: The Breath
Album: "Carry Your Kin"
Songs: "This Dance is Over," "Tremelone"
Peter Gabriel’s Real World label and studio in Bath, England, were established in the ‘80s as a place where artists from different cultures and traditions could come together in mutually inspiring collaborations. The Afro-Celt Sound System and Pakistani qawwali star Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan’s teamings with Canadian producer/sonic sculptor Michael Brook among the notable projects. The Breath may not span physical or cultural geography quite so dramatically, teaming Manchester-raised guitarist Stuart McCallum with singer Ríoghnach [REE uh nah] Connolly from the town of Armagh in Northern Ireland. But the combination of their very different roots and viewpoints at times on this debut album, well, breathtaking.
McCallum comes to this from the aptly named Manchester band Cinematic Orchestra, known for sweeping, lush sounds. Connolly has deep ties in rural Irish folk music, the sounds of her ancestors, embodied in a voice at once lilting and earthy. Each makes full use of their talents, McCallum (joined by two other Cinematic alums in pianist John Ellis and drummer Luke Flowers) builds flowing layers of sound that billow around Connolly’s melodies, while she uses that to propel emotions of the hearth and hardships of home, never over-singing, never sounding a note unconnected to those roots. It’s not folk music, not pop music, however much it might touch on both.
"The Dance is Over" even alludes to Radiohead’s "Everything In Its Right Place" in its shifting piano lines, though the ice-encased frostiness of the latter is replaced with a warm heart here, if a heart that seems a bit guarded and cautious, hurt even, as the title suggest. That’s a mood and feel that threads throughout the album, human at all turns. The peak, perhaps, is the closing song, "Tremelone," soaring to a symphonic swell, layers and layers of instruments and voice, darting and trilling and thrilling.
How Lambda Legal hopes to help LGBT immigrants
More than 250,000 of undocumented immigrants in the U.S. are LGBT.
But their treatment in a Santa Ana detention center has drawn fierce criticism, with activists saying trans people have especially been subject to mistreatment and abuse by authorities.
At the same time, LGBT activists were angry and disappointed by the recent Supreme Court ruling that struck down President Obama's action shielding detainees from deportation.
Rachel Tiven, the new head of Lambda Legal, joins Take Two to explain the work her organization plans to do helping LGBT immigrants and more.
How LA's Latinos are supporting Black Lives Matter
Throughout the nation, chapters of the Black Lives Matter movement have been organizing demonstrations.
In Southern California, BLM demonstrators held a somewhat spontaneous march following a meeting in Inglewood on Sunday. Protestors were black, white and brown.
is the president and CEO of the Community Coalition, which works to bring together blacks and Latinos for social justice causes in South Los Angeles. He joined the show to give insight into the role that L.A.'s Latinos are playing in the Black Lives Matter movement.
In light of the recent shootings, the Community Coalition will host a community conversation Tuesday at 6 p.m. Address: 8101 S. Vermont Ave., Los Angeles 90044. Click here for more information.
To listen to the full interview, click on the blue audio player above.
Cal State Fullerton marks 40th anniversary of mass shooting
On this day in 1976, a mass shooting at Cal State Fullerton claimed the lives of seven people and injured two others.
One of those victims was graphic artist Frank Teplansky, who was shot twice in the back and once in the head. His daughter Patricia Almazan was by his side when he died.
The tragedy has stayed with Almazan to this day, but it also had a hand in inspiring her to help organize a vigil and memorial to mark the 40th anniversary of the shooting. The vigil was scheduled for Tuesday from 7 p.m. to 8 p.m. at the Cal State Fullerton Memorial Grove.
Almazan joined Take Two to speak about the memorial and the tragedy itself. She described her father as "an exceptional artist, a talented pianist, a talented writer and journalist. He once illustrated a book for Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. He worked in all mediums of art, but he loved caricatures. he was a person who just loved people. He had a great sense of humor ... He was just a very talented person."
Interview highlights
How did you learn about what happened that day?
"I was on my way to work, and the news flashed that there'd been a mass shooting at Cal State Fullerton with many casualties. I knew at that moment that my father lay dying ... it's just something that you feel and I really needed to hear his voice so as soon as I got to work, I called him, because I know he would have called me. But I couldn't get through. I waited a while, then I raced home and finally got through to Cal State Fullerton, and I said 'Is my father Frank Teplansky OK?' and [the receptionist] said, 'Well, let me put you on hold, the president of the college wants to speak with you.' So I knew then that I was about to realize my worst fears.
"He got on the line and I said 'Is my father OK?' and he said, 'I'm sorry to tell you he was shot.' I said 'Where on his body?' and he said, 'Twice in the back and once in the back of the head, but he's still alive. He's at St. Jude's Hospital.'
"I entered the room, and he's just laying there. He looked very peaceful and serene, and he looked like he could sit up and give me a hug. I had my hand in his, and he started to squeeze it, and I thought he was trying to tell me what happened. They quickly ushered me out of the room ... the only comfort that I have of his passing and of that scene is that he waited for me. He could have died and should have died when he was shot. He was the last to die. I feel like he waited for me to get to the hospital."
Tell us about the memorial at Cal State Fullerton that you helped organize.
"I always keep in contact with Supervisor Todd Spitzer, who I admire very much. He's been very supportive throughout the years ... he knows about how I feel and what went on at Cal State Fullerton. I called him and asked him if he could help me with contacting Cal State Fullerton to see if they would do a 40-year memorial. I believe I started back in October."
Almazan also discussed how her personal tragedy has shaped her perspective when it comes to incidents of gun violence today, when mass shootings are becoming more commonplace. To hear that and more of the interview in its entirety, please click on the blue player link above.
UC survey finds nearly 1 in 5 students go hungry at times
Nearly one in five University of California students went hungry at times in the past year. Another 23 percent lack reliable access to good-quality, nutritious food.
That's according to a new survey of nearly 9,000 UC students released yesterday.
To address the problem of food insecurity among students, UC President Janet Napolitano committed $3.3 million in additional funds over the next two years.
Joining Take Two to discuss:
- Tim Galarneau, a food systems researcher at UC Santa Cruz and co-chair of a UC Global Food Initiative committee focused on student hunger
Cars are not affordable for many Americans
U.S auto sales are on track to reach an all-time record this year of 17.7 million. But there’s a dark side to that story. A lot of Americans can’t afford the $34,000 it takes to buy an average-price vehicle. Yet many of them are doing it anyway by taking out longer, more expensive loans.
A recent study from the personal finance site, Bankrate.com, found that median-income households in each of the country’s 50 largest cities can’t afford a vehicle at Kelley Blue Book’s current national average price of $33,865.
That’s even in a place that’s oozing with money, like San Jose, Calif., where the median household income is $84,000. In San Jose, an affordable car, according to Bankrate.com, costs about $33,000.
In L.A., where the median income is $50,544, that type of income would only support buying a car that costs $17,630, according to the Bankrate.com survey.
Bankrate determined affordability by applying the 20/4/10 rule: 20% down on the purchase price, no longer than four years of financing, and no more than 10% of a household’s gross income going toward principal, interest and insurance combined.
Applying that formula to a passenger vehicle that’s the average price people are paying — about $34,000 — would require a $6,800 down payment. The amount that would need to be financed, then, is $27,200.
To pay that off in Bankrate’s recommended four years would cost buyers about $620 per month, presuming a 4 percent annual percentage rate.
And that’s just the car. It doesn’t include fuel and insurance.
“People are spending far too much money on their cars,” Steve Pounds, personal finance analyst at Bankrate.com, said in a statement. “There are many safe, affordable and stylish options on the market for people to choose from that won’t cut into more important budget items such as college funds and retirement savings.”
The credit reporting agency Experian is reporting the trend of unaffordabiilty is accompanied by an increase in the percentage of new car buyers who are financing the purchase, as well as the amount people are financing and the length of time for their loans.
The average new vehicle loan term is 68 months, according to Experian, or about six years. Almost a third of new vehicle loans are now between six and seven years — a 12 percent increase from the fourth quarter of 2014 to the same period in 2015.
Cars’ unaffordability is also pushing more consumers into new car leases to help keep payments low. Leases were 27% of the new car market in the first quarter of 2015. A year later, they had jumped to 31 percent. The average monthly lease, as of early 2016, was $503.
Before you catch them all: Pokemon Go safety and privacy
Do you "want to be the very best, like no one ever was?"
That's the opening line of the theme for the original "Pokémon," the creature-catching video game that debuted on the handheld Nintendo GameBoy system 20 years ago that sparked a craze where the phrases like "gotta catch 'em all" and "It's super effective" weaved their way into the pop culture lexicon.
Now the fictional creatures have found their way onto another handheld device this weekend: Your smartphone. "Pokemon Go" is an augmented-reality mobile game, where a combination of your phone's GPS and some graphical mapping to depict where you are in the game world enables you to physically track down, in the real world, the various Pokémon that pop up around you.
This has inspired masses of people to find Pokémon wherever they are, be it the office, the back yard, the park or anywhere else one can pop up ... like various spots in Southern California.
THERE'S TWO THOUSAND PEOPLE ON THE SANTA MONICA PIER RIGHT NOW AND WE ALL JUST CAUGHT LAPRAS LETS GOOOOO pic.twitter.com/fQaGL8EC0I
— batrick (@ScarizardPlays) July 12, 2016
My office is a #Pokemon gym. Will I ever get any work done? #PokemonGO #HighlandPark #YorkBlvd #LosAngeles pic.twitter.com/PzzxfxZNXC
— Eric Martin (@elmartin1989) July 11, 2016
Here to break down the craze and it's cultural impact is Justin Haywald, managing editor at Gamespot.
Interview highlights
Tell us a little bit about the 'augmented reality' aspect of Pokémon Go.
"This is the first mobile game from Nintendo in a long time, and it uses the Pokémon franchise, something that a lot of people I think are familiar with, and allows you to catch these creatures in the real world. The augmented reality aspect is something that adds a little bit to it ... it's a fun way to put these Pokémon in the world around you. You're able to use your camera and maybe put it on your friend's shoulder or you can see a Pokémon hiding behind a couch. But it's also something you can turn off if you want to be a little more discreet, say if you're playing on a bus ir playing on a train, so it's something that adds to the experience but isn't completely part of the experience."
How long did it take for Pokémon Go to get to everyone?
"The developer used to work at Google. They're a company called Niantic, and they made a game called 'Ingress' which was wildly popular and has worldwide fans, people that are still playing it. They left Google a couple of years ago, and last year they announced that they were working with Nintendo on a Pokémon go game, which is very similar to 'Ingress.' This was announced about 10 months ago, so a pretty quick turnaround for what's become a phenomenal success."
What are some of the safety concerns?
"I think, like with any mobile device, when you get immersed in a game, when you get immersed in anything, even if you're checking your email or you're reading something on your phone, it can create a lot of distraction, and you'll see that around here too. That's always a dangerous way to approach any app. For playing Pokémon, it's good to stop and assess your surroundings ... don't be so immersed in this, use common sense with where you're going and paying attention to the world around you. Some of the dangers I think we've run into are people who are so distracted by what's on their phone whether it'd be the Pokémon app or anything else they're paying attention to that they might walk out into traffic or stumble on something."
Haywald also talked about some privacy concerns around Pokémon Go, as well as its how its immense and sudden popularity has impacted Nintendo.
Click on the blue play button above to listen to the full interview.
This post has been updated.