Is #BlackLivesMatter Leading Nowhere?

Neuromancer

Neuromancer

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LordCashmere said:
Of course. These people are self serving and the sooner people see this the better.

When I was in undergrad these types were seen as a small number of weirdos bit it seems these types are now running rampant at Universities and corrupting the minds of other young people.
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The internet is a great tool for propagandists
 
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ahdsend

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Family furious over criticism of black drum unit at Mayor Peduto's inauguration

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Cameron Jennings is a proud member of a Civil War drum re-enactment group of the 6th Regiment United States Colored Troops.

He began playing drums in the unit at age 7. He's 17 now and a junior at Taylor Allderdice High School in Pittsburgh's Squirrel Hill neighborhood.

His parents, Brandon and Mia, are also proud of their son and were thrilled to learn his regiment would perform during Pittsburgh Mayor Bill Peduto's inauguration ceremony Wednesday at Soldiers and Sailors Memorial Hall and Museum.

Then they saw a column ridiculing the performance .

Damon Young, a Pittsburgh resident, panned it in his popular, far-reaching blog called Very Smart Brothas. The blog contained a photo of Cameron Jennings, who plays the tenor drum, and three other drummers from the inauguration.

This sarcastic sentence by Young struck Brandon Jennings the most: "You know what? I don't think this is slave-y enough. Can we make it more slave-y?"

Young also asked "who thought that a group of young black people dressed as them and playing the drums for the white mayor of one of America's whitest major cities was a good idea?"

Jennings said his son and the others drummers happily played at the inauguration.

"The fact that he said 'slave-y' and this went viral was totally out of bounds," Jennings said Thursday. "I am furious."

Jennings, a creative design and marketing director at KBK Enterprises in Pittsburgh, wants Young to publicly apologize in the blog and on Facebook. He'd also like to sit down with Young.

"If you are truly a journalist, you would have taken the time to do your research," he said. "You're a grown man making sarcastic statements and trying to belittle these young men. Those comments were about my son."

In addition, the Jennings family wants Young to take the article down.

"Although the damage has been done, it is still hurtful and disrespectful to me and my family and the families of the others in the photograph," he said. "For him to bash it without knowing the facts is completely wrong."

Young responded on a Facebook post that contained comments from several outraged relatives of the drummers. He said he would remove a photo, but did not remove the post.

"So I am familiar with the background of the drummers and their connection to Soldiers and Sailors," Young wrote. "And I commend those young men for the work that they do. Still, I believe it's an awkward and tone deaf choice to include in the inauguration because of the optical juxtaposition of this white mayor of this extremely white city having young black men dressed as 19th century soldiers performing for him. It's just ... a bad look.

Young added: "That said, the young people in question did nothing wrong, and we're working on editing that picture in a way that obscures their identities. The edited replacement should be there soon."

He replaced the image with a still photo from the 1989 movie "Glory," which was about the Union Army's first military unit of African Americans.

Reached Thursday, Young declined comment beyond the Facebook response. Just more than a quarter of Pittsburgh's residents are black, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

At least one image of the drum unit performing was still on the Very Smart Brothas Twitter page Thursday afternoon.



Young's response did not sit well with Jennings, who has yet to show the post to his son.

"Who the hell you are you to say this was a bad look and hurt these young men's' feelings?" he said. "I can have my son educate you."

Peduto also responded on Twitter on Wednesday evening.

"Soldiers & Sailors Memorial Hall, where we held the event, hosts the USCT Regiment," the mayor wrote. "The group serves as an Honor Guard and is trained in the history of the Colored Troops during the Civil War."



Jennings pointed out that the drum unit plays frequently in and out of state and at most Soldiers and Sailors events.

"This is a very reputable drum corps," he said. "They are paying homage to the brothers who fought in civil war. We're a proud family, proud of our heritage and we know our history."
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