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Before Billie Eilish performed the Beatles' "Yesterday," during the Academy Awards "In Memoriam" segment last month, she walked the red carpet in a look that's become something of a signature for her: custom oversized Chanel tracksuit, a chunky, gold Cuban link chain, long black acrylics. Eilish's style defies recent conceptions of what a pop star should look like, and has helped raise her profile. While singers of the Britney Spears and Jessica Simpson era wore tank tops and cut-offs, in a 2019 Calvin Klein ad Eilish revealed she's opted for baggy clothes to focus media attention towards her musical output and away from her body.

Along with her fashion choices, everything else about Eilish's impressive run over the past three years feels like we've arrived somewhere new in pop culture. The 18-year-old's moody music has taken over the world, earning her a No. 1 hit on the Billboard Hot 100 and a sweep at the Grammys. But more truthfully, her success and image didn't come from nowhere. She's been cooking for a while. Eilish began singing and making music with her older brother, Finneas O'Connell, when she was a child. And the buzz around her impressive voice and songwriting potential started years ago, when she released the "Ocean Eyes" at 13 and it caught fire online.

Her fashion touchstones aren't totally novel either. As Eilish's star has risen, many have been quick to point out how much of her image is borrowed from Black pop stars, leading to an ongoing debate over whether she deserves the label of cultural appropriator. The question is a valid one. You'd be disingenuous to not recognize the fact that Eilish and her stylists looks to late '90s and early aughts hip hop as a style touchstone though her tracksuits and cuban links feel less heinous than Kim Kardashian's cornrows or Iggy Azalea's "blaccent." While these criticisms have merit, the Eilish dilemma speaks to something much larger than a single chart-dominating popstar.

When Eilish was born in December 2001, the No. 1 song in the country was Mary J. Blige's "Family Affair." Outkast, Destiny's Child and Alicia Keys were dominating the charts that year. Jay-Z had just released his landmark album The Blueprint. No argument could be made that hip hop and R&B existed in the margins; no longer the soundtrack of the counterculture, it had gone thoroughly mainstream. The cultural landscape that Eilish and those born after 2000 and came of age in was one where Drake and Nicki Minaj were the hitmakers. And crucially, for the first time in history, the way fans discovered, engaged with and discussed pop culture was entirely online.

What does this mean for Gen-Z, the generation Eilish epitomizes? A study published in the Journal of Broadcasting & Digital Media published in 2010, the year I was a sophomore in high school, found that the TV watching habits of Black teens and white teens were clearly divided along racial lines. I can speak to this divide personally. Back then, I could recognize that the cultural touchpoints that my white and non-Black POC friends have were very different from my own as a Black person. But for Gen Zers like Eilish, the lines are a lot blurrier. And that's largely because of the internet.

According to Nielsen Music U.S. year-end report, 2017 was the year R&B/Hip Hop became the country's most popular genre, largely driven by music streaming. Any time spent on Tik Tok, the video-based social network popular among teens, confirms that hip hop remains king, and continues to drive cultural conversations among teens. Several tracks, like Lil Nas X's "Old Town Road" and Rico Nasty's "Smack a Bitch" even owe bumps in streaming to the app.

Appropriation of Black cultural practices is the story of American pop culture, particularly in music. From jazz and blues to Elvis' swaying hips, Black culture has always been more marketable with a white face. And it continues. Just last year, Ariana Grande faced backlash for her single "7 Rings" and claims of her performance being disingenuous. The internet has escalated this dynamic in ways that we've yet to fully come to terms with because if the internet does anything well, it's taking complex data and presenting it totally out of context.

This issue came to a head after comments Eilish made in an interview with Vogue, which highlighted just what makes her image and success so frustrating to some. She noted that several artists that she admires, like Lana Del Rey and Tyler, the Creator, excel at making honest music that's nonetheless filtered through alter egos or personas. She made a distinction between this kind of character driven writing, and that of other, less "authentic" artists. "There's a difference between lying in a song and writing a story," she said. "There are tons of songs where people are just lying. There's a lot of that in rap right now, from people that I know who rap. It's like, 'I got my AK-47, and I'm fuckin' . . .' and I'm like, what? You don't have a gun. 'And all my bitches. . . .' I'm like, which bitches? That's posturing, and that's not what I'm doing."

What was likely an off-hand comment from Eilish struck a nerve, not because the sentiment was novel, but precisely the opposite. The artistry of hip hop and the people who make it has always been under question, particularly from white people, despite being a source of obvious inspiration for many white pop artists in particular. Eilish was echoing comments from another pop star, Miley Cyrus, who more freely borrowed from Black culture in her 2013 album Bangerz and her polarizing VMA performance that same year, later moving away from hip hop by painting the genre as not "positive" enough.

What's most frustrating about these comments from Eilish and Cyrus is not just that they demonstrate an ignorance of the factors that contribute to hip hop being able to resonate with so many racism, social disenfranchisement but rather the fact that these artists can find inspiration in hip hop and other forms of Black cultural expression, borrow from it, and experience a level of success that young Black artists rarely ever reach. What it also illustrates is that a perceived closeness to Black culture doesn't translate to a greater understanding or desire to understand the lived experience of Black people. Unfortunately for Eilish who has consistently cited artists like Tyler, the Creator, Earl Sweatshirt as her influences her role as a pop star has made her a lightning rod, and put her at the center of the debate over who has a right to critique Black culture.

The internet has provided, for white youth who've spent a large part of their adolescence on it, a front seat to the creation and distribution of Black cultural products Black music, slang and dances. But as those cultural products move across the internet, they get farther and farther away from their original context and meaning and often become collapsed under the simplistic label of "youth culture." This isn't as democratizing as it seems. Apps like TikTok and its spiritual predecessor Vine not only encourage the performance of Black culture by non-Black teens, but incentivize it with real money to be made. It used to just be financially viable for pop stars to perform Blackness. Now, it presents an opportunity to non-Black teens everywhere.

TikTok's dance challenges, like the Renegade challenge, go viral on the app without a whisper of where they came from, which more often than not is a Black creator. The Renegade dance is a rare instance where its creator, Jaliah Harmon, eventually did get credit, after it already took over the world. But this reaches much farther than content posted online. Words, clothes, beauty trends have found their ways from Black mouths and bodies to white ones, at a pace faster than ever thanks to the internet.

Gen Zers and the generations that will follow spend their most formative years online. In the chaos of forming an identity, trying on different masks is an almost inevitable part of the journey. Trends like acrylic nails and Nike Air Force 1s, or words like "fleek" and "deadass," to them, feel native. And they likely don't have the awareness that they're borrowing something or the language to express it.

Parents of young people now may look back on their high school years and regret the big hair or shoulder pads or flannels or whatever fashion mistakes they made in their youth. For their kids though, it'll likely be the problematic TikTok trend they participated in or, even worse, something like "blackfishing."

But for Black people, this connectedness has led to opportunity. Whole genres of music like soundcloud rap have been born entirely out of the internet. Social movements like Black Lives Matter were able to flourish due to the ability to connect online so easily. Vine and Instagram and Dubsmash have presented opportunities for exposure for Black creatives of all kinds. But they don't exist in a vacuum. White teens are just as connected as ever as well. Which also means they have access to information that even their parents didn't. Thanks to blogging and social media, Gen Z is surely the most diverse and socially conscious generation in history. They may be part of the problem, but they are also the best equipped to become informed enough to untangle these uneven power structures.

As for Eilish, or any young internet-savvy creator who has grown up on the internet where people of color set the trends, it's clear that Black artists have served as huge influences to her creatively. Hopefully she finds the language to speak to all the ways she's been influenced by them.

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When White Kids Grow Up on the Black Internet - Papermag

Speaking from Madrid, President Obama said the Black Lives Matter movement shouldn't be judged by the actions of a few non-peaceful protestors.

Black Lives Matter rally in Oklahoma City, Sunday, July 10, 2016.(Photo: Sue Ogrocki, AP)

After a week of conflict in the United States that included the police-involved shooting deaths ofAlton Sterling andPhilando Castile,and the subsequent sniper attack thatleftfive Dallas police officers dead,the Black Lives Matter movement once again hasbeen at the center of controversy.

But lost in the discussion is a sense of what Black Lives Matter isand what it stands for.

What is Black Lives Matter?

Black Lives Matter was founded by PatrisseCullors, Alicia Garza, and Opal Tometi as botha hashtagand a political projectaftertheacquittal of George Zimmerman in the 2012 killing of Trayvon Martin. Distraught at the verdict, Oakland, Calif., community activist Garza wrote an impassioned Facebook plea ending with the words "black lives matter." Cullors, a community organizer from Los Angeles, shared the Facebook post and put a hashtag in front of those three words. The ideals expressed the economic, political and socialempowerment ofAfrican-Americans resonated nationwide.

Since 2013, Black Lives Matter has movedfromsocial media platforms to the streets, morphing into an organization andamovement that gainednationalrecognitionduring demonstrations after the 2014 police-involved killings of Michael Brown and Eric Garner.

How does Black Lives Matter work?

What setsBlack Lives Matter apart from other social justice groups, however,is its decentralized approach and reliance almost solely on local, rather than national, leadership. Cullors said organizing is often spontaneous and not directed byone person or group of people.

We dont get (people) onto the streets, they get themselves onto the street, she said.

Black Lives Matteris made up of a network of local chapters who operate mostly independently. Chelsea Fuller of the Advancement Project, a nonprofit that works with grassroots justice and race movements, said that local organizing is a powerful way to address poverty, access to housing and jobs, community policingand other issues that intersect with systemic racism.

We cant affect national narrative, we cant affect national legislation that comes down and affects local people if local people dont push back and take a stand about what's happening in local communities, Fuller said.

Black Lives Matter founder Patrisse Cullors shares her thoughts about race in America.

What does Black Lives Matter stand for?

Themost important directive of Black Lives Matter,Cullors said,is to deal with anti-black racism,to push for black peoples right to live with dignity and respect and be included in theAmerican democracy that they helped create.

This is about the quality of life for black people, for poor people in this country, said Umi Selah, co-director of Dream Defenders in Miami. Though not officially affiliated, Dream Defenders and similar social justice groups often align themselves with Black Lives Matter.

The conception that all were mad about is police and policing is a strong misconception, Selah said.In fact, Black Lives Matter released a statement last weekcondemning the shooting in Dallas as counter to whatthe movement is trying to accomplish.

Ralikh Hayes of Baltimore BLOC echoed Selah, saying that Black Lives Matter is not inherently anti-police or anti-white, nor does the phrase Black Lives Matter means other lives aren't important.

We are against a system that views people as tools, Hayes said.

Cullors also hears claims that Black Lives Matterlacks direction or strategy. But Cullors said the strategyis clear -- working to ensure that black people live with the full dignity of theirhuman rights.

We are not leaderless, were leader-full, she said. "We're trying to change the world...developing a new vision for what this generation of black leaders can look like."

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Black Lives Matter: A primer on what it is and what it stands for

The stagnant numbers raise interesting questions: Does Sanderss revolution simply need more time? Did voters not know enough about what his policies could do for them? Or, more plainly, did they simply prefer Biden? If the Sanders movementNot me. Usis going to win, either now or in the future, it needs to figure out a way to sway southern black voters to its cause.

Some black people in the South are already on board for radical change, though, and they are trying to bring others with them.

Read: A warning to the Democratic Party about black voters.

Lumumba, whose beard is just beginning to show flecks of gray at its ends, is a rising star of progressive politics. And hes seen the limitations of politics as practiced.

No matter whos been president, no matter whether weve been told that the economy is thriving or were in a recession, weve still been at the bottom, Lumumba told me during his layover in Atlanta on Friday. He was headed to Detroit to join Sanders for a rally before the Michigan primary. People may participate in the pageantry because they dont believe that its really going to affect their lives in a grand way.

Voting becomes pageantry when those who do so arent able to actively engage with the candidates, their staffs, and, most important, their ideas, he said. A contender shouldnt become the candidate through an exercise less participatory than procedural, he argued. He hoped that the people of his citywhich is more than 80 percent blackwould be able to experience the political process more deeply this time around.

In mid-February, Arekia Bennett, an organizer with Mississippi Votes and the Movement for Black Lives, staged a peoples caucus, which involved more than 100 residents of Jackson. The event gave voters a chance to hear directly from staff members representing several candidates, including Biden, Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and Michael Bloomberg. Sanders won the caucuss mock vote overwhelmingly, and Lumumba based his endorsement on that result.

It was an intimate experience, the kind of thing Lumumba had imagined when he and three other southern black mayors wrote an open letter to candidates last September. The letter outlined the roadmap for 2020 Democrats to win not only their support, but the support of their communities. We didnt want it to be a perfunctory experience, he told me. It needed to be substantive.

But a little over 100 people is hardly representative of all of Jackson, a city of roughly 170,000. My fear in Jackson, just like my fear around the nation, is that not enough people get a chance to experience that, Lumumba confessed. That was a small sample size of the city in an atypical situation not only for Jackson to get to experience, but that most other southern states dont get to experience.

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Bernie Sanders Reached Out to Black Voters. Why Didnt It Work? - The Atlantic

Artist Tunji Adeniyi-Jones and collector Bernard Lumpkin discuss inclusivity and the evolving relationship between artists and institutions

Fifty years ago, Nina Simone released To Be Young, Gifted and Black, a song written in memory of her dear friend, the playwright Lorraine Hansberry who died in 1965 at the tender age of 34. It became an anthem of the Civil Rights Movement that soon found its way into a 1972 episode of Sesame Street. Simone sang, We must begin to tell our young / Theres a world waiting for you / This is a quest thats just begun to Gen X babies, who took the message to heart and paid it forward to the children of Generation Z, who fearlessly stand at the forefront of a brave new world.

With the Black Lives Matter movement centering issues of race in the discourse, the historically exclusionary art world has finally made space for Black Art. A wealth of established, mid-career, and emerging artists are breaking new ground, be it at auction houses, major museum exhibitions, on magazine covers, or with new books. Yet Black Art is far from a trend; it has informed the world for thousands of years in various incarnations in Africa and across the diaspora.

This point is beautifully illustrated in the exhibition Young Gifted and Black: The Lumpkin-Boccuzzi Family Collection of Contemporary Art, which pairs collector Bernard Lumpkin with critic Antwaun Sargent to curate a masterful showcase of some of the most innovative and influential contemporary black artists. The exhibition is a symphony of voices and visions from across generations all around the globe, creating a mellifluous confluence of style, media, and subject matter. Culled from the Lumpkin-Boccuzzi Family Collection, Young, Gifted and Black features works by David Hammons, Glenn Ligon, Kerry James Marshall, Henry Taylor, Mickalene Thomas, Lynette Yiadom-Boakye, Sadie Barnette, Jordan Casteel, Jonathan Lyndon Chase, Deana Lawson, Paul Mpagi Sepuya, and Tunji Adeniyi-Jones, whose work appears on the cover of the catalog. Here, Lumpkin and Adeniyi-Jones discuss how when the collector and artist work together, they can transform the narrative of identity, politics, education, and art history.

DAngelo Lovell Williams, The Lovers, 2017. Pigment print. 20 x 30 in. DAngelo Lovell Williams, Courtesy of the artist and Higher Pictures.

Tunji Adeniyi-Jones: [Black Art] is an incredible movement to be a part of and see it manifest. It makes me and several of my colleagues and friends feel validated and motivated to keep working. Its almost like weve been chosen for this moment. Its a wonderful thing to watch happen, to take part in, to collaborate with collectors like Bernard. We were introduced in a studio visit during my first year at Yale. From there we had a series of repeat visits and its been a great relationship. It feels like you are working alongside each other towards something when you have that level of familiarity, comfort, learning, mutual interest, and confidence.

Bernard Lumpkin: Its exciting to see a conversation about diversity, equity, and inclusion, and how to better represent art history, how to tell a fuller, more inclusive story of contemporary art that has been brewing among curators and museum directors spill out. That conversation has resulted in the hiring of more curators of color, more women curators, the recruitment of more people of color to museum boards where the decisions around exhibitions and acquisitions happen. I always tell collectors that collecting work is the price of admission to something much larger if you want to embrace it. Its a community. There is work to be done that can make a difference to the life of artists now and in the future.

Tunji: Its important for people to understand the breadth and scope of blackness, the black identity, and the black experience. I think the tendency before this incredible, prolific moment has been to broadly categorize all Black Art as being one singular thing. Whats cool when you have a collection like this on display is that it includes such a vast array of artists coming from different backgrounds in that space of blacknessits amazing to see it all together in one place. Thats similar to what I experienced during my residency in Senegal [as part of the inaugural year at Kehinde Wileys Black Rock in Dakar]. Its a fuller understanding of the multiplicity of the experience.

Kara Walker, Untitled, 1995. Paper collage on paper. 52 x 60 3/8 in. Kara Walker.

Bernard:The strongest collections are ones that showcase the vision of the collector. For me, the focus comes from a personal place: my family and stories having to do with my father being African American and my mother being Sephardic Jewish from Morocco, as well as the experience of being mixed race. I had been collecting art but not with the focus on artists of color. Then my father became sick with cancer and I was spending a lot of time with him. He told me stories about his family, growing up in Watts, wanting to be a scientist and make his way in the world. I became interested in bringing that conversation back into my work, especially after my father had passed away.

Tunji: Being in a collection like this gives me hope. As a first-generation British born Nigerian coming from London, you dont see as many close and invested collector-artist relationships as you do here. Its a special reassuring feeling that is incredibly encouraging, inspiring and very helpful. [I met gallerist Nicelle Beauchene through Bernard]. We all looked at each other like, We trust this other person so it will all work out very well. Things rarely fall into place like that, and the results have been incredible.

Bernard: The art world has many different roles and people, and I always am reassured and gratified when an artist I believe in connects with a dealer, a curator, or another collector who will support the artist. Thats a positive part of the Black Art moment that were in. One of the things I have learned from Thelma Golden, Director of the Studio Museum where Im on the board, is how for many years before museums, gallerists, curators, and auction houses were laying out the welcome mat to black artists, there was a network of collectors who took it upon themselves to steward and preserve the work, telling these artists stories, and setting the stage for the moment were in now. For many people, its a Black Art moment but the reality is artists like Alma Thomas and Howardina Pindell have made work and had collectors for a long time; now the larger art world is coming to the party.

Chiffon Thomas, A mother who had no mother, 2017. Embroidery floss, acrylic paint, and canvas on window screen. 57 x 44 1/2 in. Chiffon Thomas

Tunji: Accessibility is a really important thing to address in the art world. To have that opportunity to see emerging artists in the early stage of their career in conversation with mid- and late-career artiststhat curation and that dialogue has the potential to be life-changing. I would have loved to see a show like this in college.

Bernard: My father was a professor and my mother was a teacher, so education has always been a part of what people do in my family. It wasnt enough for me to be a collector and enjoy it for myself. The collection had to have a larger focus and impact. When it came down to planning this exhibition, I took it upon myself to say, Why dont I use this as an opportunity to bring the art to people in places that might not otherwise get to see it? People can come and see themselves on the wall, whatever your background is.

Young Gifted and Black: The Lumpkin-Boccuzzi Family Collection of Contemporary Art is now on view at Lehman College Art Gallery in the Bronx through May 8, 2020. While the Lehman College Art Gallery is closed until further notice, the showwill travel to Manetti Shrem Museum of Art in Davis, CA (07/2012/20 Lehigh University in Bethlehem, PA (01/2105/21), Pomona College Museum of Art in Claremont, CA (01/2205/22), and Columbia Museum of Art in Columbia, SC (09/2212/22). A book of the same name will be published by D.A.P. on July 3, 2020.

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'Young, Gifted and Black' spotlights the multitude of black artists defining the contemporary art scene - Document Journal

A former McDonald's worker has been ordered to stand trial on a felony charge of willfully poisoning food after she allegedly spit on a hamburger before serving it to a police officer.

Tatyana Hargrove, then 21 years old, was arrested last November in Bakersfield, California, and is due in court March 23.

She is accused of rubbing a hamburger bun on the floor of the restaurant and then spitting in it while preparing an order for a uniformed police officer using the drive-thru, KGET-TV reported.

Hargrove also allegedly shouted, "Black lives matter" and "f*** the pigs!" during the incident.

The investigating officer, Deputy Carly Snow, testified that Hargrove admitted to yelling the insults because she knew the burger was going to be served to a police officer, according to testimony from a preliminary hearing.

The officer who was served and shouted at reportedly did not become ill from eating the burger.

During the preliminary hearing, Hargrove's attorney, Lexi Blythe argued that there is insufficient evidence to prove her client willfully mingled poison or harmful substances with food, as the felony charge requires.

Blythe said that it's unknown when the last time chemical cleaning products were used on the floor and that Hargrove's back was turned away from the surveillance camera when the alleged crime was committed.

The prosecutor in the case, Gina Pearl, argued that another McDonald's employee heard Hargrove drawing saliva into her mouth while she prepared the order, and that Hargrove can be seen wiping her mouth afterward, according to surveillance video.

When asked if saliva can be considered a harmful substance, Pearl said, "My position is saliva is absolutely a harmful substance. Look [at] what's going on in the world right now with coronavirus," according to Bakersfield.com.

Prior to the November 2019 incident, Hargrove claimed to be the victim of police brutality in a lawsuit filed against the Bakersfield Police Department in 2017. The suit went to a trial but the jury ultimately sided with the police department.

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McDonalds worker allegedly rubbed a bun on the floor, spat on it, then served it to a police officer. Now she is facing a felony charge. - TheBlaze