I don't watch movies. Why I'm still sad about Chadwick Boseman

It's been almost four days since we lost Chadwick Boseman. Social media have been replete with tributes to the actor who brought Jackie Robinson, James Brown, and Thurgood Marshall, among others to life in brilliant performances.

I rarely watch movies, but I saw him in 42, when he depicted Robinson and Get On Up, where he portrayed Brown. In both cases, he was, as Major League Baseball described him in their own tribute "transcendent" in both. Even as a non-expert, I could see how great he was.

His best-known performance was of T'Challa, The Black Panther, and his leading role in the film gave so many people a superhero who looked like them, who embodied strength, brilliance, values, and was someone to aspire to.

I may not be a young Black kid, an actor who shared scenes with him, or even an avid moviegoer, but I'm still reeling in grief I'm still trying to process. More than merely being an actor, Boseman was someone who by many accounts was humble at the height of fame, generous with his time, and supportive of fellow actors and others looking to make their mark on the world.

The fact that he shot so many scenes as he battled cancer and continued to remain a powerful, positive force for so many in the wake of a disease that robbed him of weight, and, eventually, his life contributed greatly. The fact that no one outside his family knew how badly he was being weakened was a testament to his strength of spirit and his courage. As a cancer survivor myself, knowing only a small fraction of what he must have gone through and the real uncertainty of life or death makes it even more difficult to take.

The fact that this devastating loss happened during a year replete with tragedy and crisis only served to underscore how crushing this loss was to all the people who were impressed by his talents and his humanity.

In her reminder to people that mourning a celebrity doesn't mean a lack of consciousness after Los Angeles Lakers legend Kobe Bryant died in January, Bernice King, daughter of civil rights leader Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. tweeted that we are all on a short journey in this world, "reconciling life and death," before finishing her tweet with words we all should follow: "Love well."

Chadwick Aaron Boseman may no longer be able to shine his light on a movie screen, but he'll live on in our memories of his incredible performances and in the example he left of courage, of humility, of humanity.

Wakanda forever.

How Toxic Masculinity Attacks Everyone – Including Men

There’s been a lot of attention focused in social media on toxic masculinity. 

Besides the commentary from the usual suspects, typically people who display toxic levels of masculinity or people who seek to combat it, where do we draw the line between simply being masculine and expressing masculinity in a toxic way?

Before anyone makes the mistake of thinking that a criticism of toxic masculinity is an attack on men or on masculinity in general, it’s useful to define toxic masculinity and to delineate clearly between its extreme and what simple masculinity is. According to a definition from The Good Men Project, toxic masculinity is a narrow and repressive description of manhood, designating manhood as defined by violence, sex, status and aggression. It’s the cultural ideal of manliness, where strength is everything while emotions are a weakness; where sex and brutality are yardsticks by which men are measured, while supposedly “feminine” traits—which can range from emotional vulnerability to simply not being hypersexual—are the means by which your status as “man” can be taken away.

Teaching Tolerance Magazine, the source which attributed the definition in a piece on toxic masculinity quickly asserted that using that definition or attacking toxic masculinity was not an attack on men or on masculinity. In fact, the article “ʻWhat We Mean When We Say, Toxic Masculinity’,” written by Colleen Clemens, an associate professor of non-Western literatures and director of women's and gender studies at Kutztown University in Pennsylvania, emphasized the point that the conversation about toxic masculinity was started by men. It referenced a TED talk by Jackson Katz on the subject, which it credited with helping to start the conversation about toxic masculinity.

What makes a brand of masculinity toxic and another brand not? The definition provided by The Good Men Project is a great start. A recent tweet by Scarborough Centre (Ontario) politician Fawzi Bidawi made the ridiculous assertion that “Modern day feminism is an attack on men.” In order to unpack the inherent toxic masculinity of Bidawi’s statement, let’s start by defining feminism. Google’s definition calls feminism “the advocacy of women’s rights on the basis of the equality of the sexes.” 

Long story short: Feminism is an ideology that women have – or should have – equality under the law. Women should be able to make their own decisions about their lives, from whether or not to have children to which career they should pursue, or whether they should pursue a career at all.

In response to Bidawi, I wrote, “[t]oxic masculinity is an attack on everyone, including men.” In an effort to expand on a simple nine-word rejoinder, the fact that so many people have discussed violence in the form of mass shooters or even mass stabbings through the lens of mental health, while a few people have pointed out that the overwhelming majority of mass shootings have been by white men alone should cause us to examine carefully why, for instance, a black woman hasn’t committed a mass shooting at least as of writing this.

Is there a link between shootings and toxic masculinity? I don’t have the resources on hand to study such a link, and with the Centers for Disease Control barred from researching gun violence since 1996, we may never know with complete certainty until or unless the Dickey Amendment were repealed. However, a major element of toxic masculinity has already been broached here. Talk of “being a man” and squelching feelings because men aren’t supposed to express them plays a dangerous role in the socialization of men.

Ridiculing a man for crying, for instance, sets a precedent that a man isn’t allowed the same emotional outlets women are permitted as a matter of course. However, another troubling element of that lack of emotional support includes dismissing women as “too emotional,” although we saw then-Supreme Court nominee Brett Cavanaugh melt down when confronted about potentially sexually assaulting Christine Blasey-Ford during his confirmation hearings in the Senate.

Suicide, particularly among LGBTQIA+ youth has garnered a lot of attention in recent years, and with the National Center for Health Statistics reporting an overall 5 percent increase in the United States in suicides from 2014 to 2016, it’s clear that suicide is a massive problem in general. The American Foundation for Suicide Prevention also noted that men are roughly 3.5 times more likely to commit suicide than women and white males accounted for 7 out of 10 suicides in 2016. 

Relating the above statistics to toxic masculinity may be a stretch to some people who are skeptical about the mere existence of “toxic” masculinity, but if the stigmas against seeking emotional support didn’t exist and men were taught to seek emotional support when they needed it, we’d all be in a much better place.

Men being socialized to avoid seeking emotional support, in particular from other men, may not play the linchpin role in all of society’s ills, but it’s long past time for us all to start creating a more compassionate world for all of us.

Make America Compassionate Again

Consistent news reports of children being kept in cages in squalid conditions without toothbrushes, toothpaste, soap, and warm blankets in cold nights led to Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) calling them “concentration camps.”

This set off a massive controversy from outraged Republicans including fellow Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.), who blasted Ocasio-Cortez's comments, saying, “That’s a comment that is clearly ludicrous [and] clearly something that must be responded to,” Cheney said Tuesday. “I think she ought to apologize for it, and I think that we ought to be in a position where rather than launching attacks like that — which are clearly political on their face [and] clearly misinformed — we all ought to be working to try to help the crisis at the border.”

Social Media's Role in Anxiety and Depression

Anxiety and depression are certainly not new for people who have been suffering from them. Even though it’s a relatively recent phenomenon, social media also isn’t completely brand new.

One question that comes to mind is whether or not social media causes anxiety or depression. Research studies thus far haven’t shown a causal relationship between going on social media and the symptoms of anxiety and depression, but Caroline Miller, the editorial director of the Child Mind Institute wrote that studies have shown that social media use is related in some way to anxiety and depression.

The Royal Society for Public Health studied 14- to 24-year-olds in the United Kingdom. According to Child Mind Institute senior editor Rachel Ehmke, the survey found that the commonly used social media platforms Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Snapchat led to increasing feelings of depression, anxiety, poor body image, and loneliness. 

Ehmke’s article touched on some of the problems. One thing she pointed out is the absence of verbal and visual cues in social media when compared to in person communication. 

“It’s easier to keep your guard up when you’re texting, so less is at stake,” Ehmke wrote. “You aren’t hearing or seeing the effect that your words are having on the other person.”

That isn’t all. The anonymity of the screen or the electronic device means that, “it has gotten easier to be cruel,” Ehmke wrote. “Kids text all sorts of things that you would never in a million years contemplate saying to anyone’s face,” said Dr. Donna Wick, a clinical and developmental psychologist quoted by Ehmke.

The effects also touch on another difficulty that has also affected so-called adults. Wick pointed out that girls are especially reluctant to disagree with each other in “real life” interactions, but her example could easily expand to adults regardless of gender identity or expression.

“You hope to teach them that they can disagree without jeopardizing the relationship,” Wick said, “but what social media is teaching them to do is disagree in ways that are more extreme and do jeopardize the relationship. It’s exactly what you don’t want to have happen.”

Beyond clinical considerations or psychological implications of social media and its effects on its practitioners, there are effects that people who are active on social media see: People who report feelings of anxiety and depression related to interactions on social media and either swear off entirely or take breaks from it.

But what about people who don’t report anxiety or depression either as the result of social media or being aggravated by social media? Pragya Agarwal, a contributor on Forbes.com wrote about ways to overcome social media fatigue geared toward people who already have it, but the methods can also be used by people who don’t report the same levels of anxiety caused by social media.

She suggested taking a break from social media, concentrating on one or two specific platforms that appeal to you, adopting a less is more approach to social media posts by limiting what you share to quality as opposed to posting to meet certain metrics, being creative in ways that don’t involve a computer, a phone, or a tablet, and simply being authentic.

Social media can present a challenge for anyone, young, old, or in between. It has its good points in being able to help forge relationships that otherwise never would have happened otherwise, but it also has its downsides. Learning to navigate social media in a healthful way is a challenge, but it’s a rewarding one.

Unpacking the March for Our Lives from a different perspective

Estimates of the number of people who jammed their way into space in front of the Capitol building in Washington, D.C. for Saturday's March for Our Lives range from as little to just over 200,000 people to over 1 million. 

Organizers expected about half a million people, and anything over that figure would easily make the day a smashing success. Detractors might use the lowball estimate to argue that the rally was a failure. 

The debate about numbers misses the point. From the perspective of someone who was there in the crowd, it sure looked like a lot of people. A lot of people both young and old, a lot of students, a lot of parents, a lot of teachers, a lot of people whose lives have been affected by gun violence.

I'm neither young, nor old. I have no children, and my life has not been directly affected by gun violence as of the time I write this. 

Yet, I was there. Even with a bad leg that's still recovering from a fall, I was there. Even though I didn't lose anyone I know or love to a mass shooting, I was there. Even though I'm single and I have no children, I was there.

I was there because I grieved when Adam Lanza killed 20 children and six staff members at Sandy Hook Elementary School in December 2012. I literally had to log off my phone with tears in my eyes and walk off the floor because I imagined being a parent and learning that my child didn't make it. 

I was there because one of the very first Facebook profile photos I used shows a Maryland Terrapin and the Virginia Tech logo over the saying, "Today, we are all Hokies." 

I was there because I'm tired of the fiction the National Rifle Association continues to peddle. The fiction that gun violence is something we can do nothing about and the right to own a gun outweighs anyone's life. As a reminder, the right of "a well-regulated militia" to responsibly own guns is part of the Second Amendment. The rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness were American ideals before the Constitution was even written. 

I was there, most importantly, because I was inspired. Inspired by the strength and conviction shown by the Parkland survivors. Inspired by their using their privilege to give voice to people all too often kept silent: Black victims of gun violence. Inspired by the persistence of Cameron Kasky in pressuring Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Florida) to answer a yes or no question about taking NRA money, and encouraged by their determination to continue to speak even though some try to ignore them or to dismiss them because some of them aren't old enough to vote. Inspired by seeing other folks my age or older who were also inspired by these survivors.

I was inspired even more in the days leading up to the march when Parkland survivor David Hogg challenged people with "white privilege" to use it to address gun violence in the black and other communities.

"We recognize that Parkland received more attention because of its affluence," Parkland survivor Jaclyn Corin said, according to CNN's article about the march. "But we share this stage today and forever with those communities who have always stared down the barrel of a gun."

 Now that millions of Americans, some barely entering voting age in time for November's midterm elections have been inspired, what's next? As someone who hasn't had to face being dismissed because I'm a kid since the George H.W. Bush administration, I challenge the people in power to listen to these activists. I challenge the NRA to recognize that unfettered access to assault weapons does not equal responsible gun ownership and to support our calls for common-sense gun control legislation. I challenge those on the far right who claim the government's going to come after their guns to realize that President Obama never tried to.

Most importantly, I challenge all of us to inform ourselves of the facts about these and all other vital issues of the day and get out and vote in November.

That's how change happens. That's how America finally got out of Vietnam. That's how we'll finally get common-sense gun control. 

Why I'm endorsing Clinton for President

As a longtime journalist, I don’t often endorse political candidates.

It’s a practice I avoid because I have a problem with it that I’ve outlined before.

When I was managing editor of The Prince George’s Sentinel, it was against our policy to endorse political candidates. Bernard Kapiloff, the newspaper’s longtime publisher, believed our readers were intelligent enough to make their own decisions based on the facts.

I didn’t always agree with him on many issues, but I wholeheartedly agreed with him on that one.

The practice of an organization whose job is to report the news, to present facts, and to inform the public of endorsing a candidate for political office compromises its expected objectivity. In normal times, I would be reluctant to even endorse candidates as an individual.

These are not normal times. Not with the megalomaniac Donald Trump as the Republican Party’s candidate for President. Not with a whole legion of bigots who’ve come out of the woodwork, emboldened by Trump’s racist, misogynistic, anti-Muslim, homophobic, and anti-disabled attacks on anyone he doesn’t like. Not with Twitter rants at 3 a.m. because someone had the audacity to say something that upset him.

I personally endorse Democratic Presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton for President for a great many reasons.

A Trump Presidency would be a singular threat to the world at large, as Trump has made noises about ignoring American allies and embracing enemies. It would be a threat because Trump all too often doesn’t know what he’s talking about and shows a strong disinclination to learn. It would be a threat because Trump has suggested he would play fast and casual with nuclear weapons, threatening to test the notion that the world could face a nuclear winter.

As for Clinton, she isn’t perfect. Her penchant for secrecy is well documented, and has often resulted in a perception she has something to hide. She badly mishandled the issue of using a private email server until it became a full-blown controversy. She has subsequently owned up to her mistakes in that regard, but could have stopped the bleeding much earlier. She comes across as cold and calculating on the campaign trail, although stories about her from people who know her personally paint her as being much warmer than she is perceived to be.

However, Clinton’s faults do not include blame for Benghazi. A Republican-led Congress slashed funding for security for the American compound there, so the multiple investigations into the attacks proved little more than outward manifestations of Republican hatred of President Obama and Clinton.

By many accounts, Clinton was a wildly effective stateswoman as Secretary of State. As a Senator, she showed a tenacity for dealing with constituent concerns, including a personal account from one grateful constituent whom Clinton spoke to personally. 

A couple of papers, notably The Miami Herald on Friday, shot down the notion that Clinton is the lesser of two evils in their endorsement, saying, “the narrative that Hillary Clinton is the lesser of two evils is patently wrong.” The Corpus-Christi Caller-Times went further, saying, “She is not, as has been sold, a mere lesser of two evils. Her experience and intellect would make her a standout in any group of candidates. Like President Obama said and didn’t need to be fact-checked, she’s more qualified than him or her husband.”

Clinton may not be the most qualified person ever to seek the office of President, but her real qualifications make her among the most qualified. None of the other people seeking the White House come close. She has real experience in politics. She has real accomplishments. She deserves to become the 45th President.

On the right of protest

What I'm about to write now will alienate some people.

I don't care.

I can't care. Not when Terence Crutcher is dead at the hands of Tulsa police. An unarmed man with his hands in the air is gone.

Last night, for the first time in over 43 years on this planet, when I had an opportunity to stand for the national anthem and salute, I chose not to.

I was at a bar watching the Monday Night Football game between the Philadelphia Eagles and the Chicago Bears. Most people at bars don't reflexively stand up and salute the flag. Until last night, I did, even drawing ridicule as a teenager for that display of patriotic fervor.

My thoughts during the anthem turned to the losses of black lives when white lives are often preserved.

Meanwhile, people still vilify Colin Kaepernick. He makes too much money to protest. He's an athlete. He should worry more about keeping his job than about social issues.

Bull.

Megan Rapinoe was in the area earlier this month as her Seattle Reign got set to take on the Washington Spirit in a National Women's Soccer League match. She intended to kneel during the national anthem, joining a protest Kaepernick started during a preseason NFL game.

However, Spirit owner Bill Lynch had other ideas. He had the stadium play the anthem while the teams were still in the locker room, preventing Rapinoe from protesting.

Players from various teams ranging from college to high school and earlier have taken to kneeling, some under threat of suspension from school or from the team. John Tortorella, the head coach of the United States's World Cup of Hockey team said if any players sat on the bench during the anthem, they would remain seated for the entire game.

An employer may have the right to impose consequences for speech. That's why people like Lindsey Stone can be fired for flipping the bird and pantomiming screaming next to a sign that asks for silent respect for the fallen, which happened in 2012 near Arlington National Cemetery. However, school systems would run afoul of the Constitution for suspending players who choose to protest.

The Supreme Court ruled in 1943 in West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette that schools cannot force students to stand and salute the flag during the Pledge of Allegiance. As representatives of the state, school systems cannot compel patriotism.

What changed last night? Nothing. And that's the problem.

The system problems Kaepernick's protests seek to address haven't gone away. They haven't even been addressed through anything more than talk. Far too many black children are being shot dead. Far too many black adults are being harassed where white adults are given the benefit of the doubt. For every Cory Batey who is sentenced to 15 years in prison for rape, there's a Brock Turner who serves just three months. The difference? Batey is black. Turner is white. And an Olympian-potential swimmer at that.

What changed last night? Everything. And that's the point.

For 43 years, I fought even the prospect of changing the national anthem. If it weren't for the events that led to the anthem's being written, we wouldn't have a country, I'd argue. The fact that Baltimore repelled the British during the War of 1812 was a matter of pride in my home state.

What changed? Debate over whether the national anthem is racist gives me pause to consider what was not even up for discussion just weeks ago. Ultimately, I still don't think the anthem should be changed, though more out of a sense of needing to learn the lessons of history than a sense of blind fervor.

Rather than directing anger toward people like Kaepernick and Rapinoe for not standing at attention when overzealous nationalists would like to force them to, we should direct our outrage against a system that led them to the point where simply kneeling became the latest shot heard around the world.