 | |
| Created by | Gene Demby |
|---|---|
| URL | postbourgie |
| Launched | 2007 |
| Current status | Online |
PostBourgie was a blog on race, culture, politics and media founded in January 2008 by Gene Demby. Demby also hosted an accompanying podcast by the same name.
| | |
| Created by | Gene Demby |
|---|---|
| URL | postbourgie |
| Launched | 2007 |
| Current status | Online |
PostBourgie was a blog on race, culture, politics and media founded in January 2008 by Gene Demby. Demby also hosted an accompanying podcast by the same name.
Demby founded PostBourgie in early 2008. He had begun blogging a few years earlier, prompted by frustration with the state of media conversations about race. Speaking to ColorLines in 2012, Demby recalled in particular an occasion when a CNN reporter approached him on a basketball court to ask for comment on Bill Cosby's Pound Cake speech at the 2004 NAACP Image Awards. Demby said, "I pushed back on him pretty hard...There are people who think black people's condition in the world would be better if we just looked better. 'Pull up your pants.' It seemed so petty that we were having these conversations." In search of an alternative, Demby founded PostBougie as a group blog, inviting collaborators who shared his desire "to have conversations that assumed that black people were human beings who were complicated and imperfect, a space that wasn't super didactic." [1]
Writing in The New Republic , Jamil Smith situates the origins of PostBourgie in a decade of outlets founded "[a]s the number of black journalists in newsrooms inched up in the 1990s, the number of formal race beats declined. Racial coverage began to migrate to media organizations and websites that covered it full time," including ColorLines, Racialicious and This Week in Blackness in addition to PostBourgie. Smith: "These sites don’t bring in corporate dollars like Vox or FiveThirtyEight, but they have survived and even thrived by concentrating their coverage on issues affecting people of color, and by providing opportunities for writers to write on these subjects with a frankness rarely seen in mainstream publications." [2]
The PostBourgie blog operates as a "volunteer effort." [3]
PostBourgie has drawn notice for its commentary on topics including television, [4] film, [5] [6] music and language, [7] gentrification, [8] hair politics, [9] and race and violence. [10]
Speaking to New YorkMagazine, Jamil Smith cited PostBourgie as one of the blogs that "really set the bar for...spaces that were made available to [African-Americans and other people of color]. Even if you were working for traditional media, you didn’t have the opportunity to offer your perspective, to tell the unvarnished version of the truth that you see every day...it really hearkens back to the tradition of the black press." [11]
In an interview with the Boston Review , novelist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie mentioned her admiration for the "irreverence and un-safe-ness" of PostBourgie's commentary. [12]
In The Washington Post , Alyssa Rosenberg noted PostBourgie's accomplishments in "building a ladder for all its participants. The blog gave the people who wrote there a chance to workshop their voices and refine their ideas for a smart audience, even when they didn’t have paying assignments for an idea. When one PostBourgie writer got a new job, he or she encouraged others to freelance for that new outlet and to apply for fellowships and jobs there." [3] In The New Republic, Smith agreed that PostBourgie "served as a launching pad for celebrated black journalists." Alums have included Shani O. Hilton, now executive editor of news for BuzzFeed, and BuzzFeed writers Joel Anderson and Tracy Clayton. Demby is now lead blogger for NPR's Code Switch project on race and culture, [13] as well as co-host of the Code Switch podcast. [14]
Demby hosts an accompanying podcast, also called PostBourgie, that's been widely praised. Mashable named it to a list of "11 diverse podcasts to give you a fresh perspective on life," saying "PostBourgie's topics run the gamut, but always include intelligent conversation between Demby and various media personalities he invites to chat." [15] Blavity named it one of "23 Black Podcasts You Should Add to Your Playlist," [16] and Buzzfeed to its list of "13 Awesome Podcasts Bringing Black Voices To The Mic," saying "You should listen if: You’re looking for a gabfest that’s rooted in real-world reporting. There’s riffing and jokes, sure, but the voices you hear are sharing from a place of knowledge and journalistic rigor." [17] The American Sociological Association's magazine Contexts recommended PostBourgie to "the sociologically inclined" listener, [18] and the Atlanta Black Star called it "great for fans of The Daily Show and The Nightly Show looking for a Black voice in the news." [19]
In 2009, Demby's PostBourgie won a Black Weblog Award for Best News/Politics Site. [20]
A blog is an informational website published on the World Wide Web consisting of discrete, often informal diary-style text entries (posts). Posts are typically displayed in reverse chronological order so that the most recent post appears first, at the top of the web page. Until 2009, blogs were usually the work of a single individual, occasionally of a small group, and often covered a single subject or topic. In the 2010s, "multi-author blogs" (MABs) emerged, featuring the writing of multiple authors and sometimes professionally edited. MABs from newspapers, other media outlets, universities, think tanks, advocacy groups, and similar institutions account for an increasing quantity of blog traffic. The rise of Twitter and other "microblogging" systems helps integrate MABs and single-author blogs into the news media. Blog can also be used as a verb, meaning to maintain or add content to a blog.
A vlog, also known as a video blog or video log, is a form of blog for which the medium is video. Vlog entries often combine embedded video with supporting text, images, and other metadata. Entries can be recorded in one take or cut into multiple parts. Vlog category is popular on the video-sharing platform YouTube.
This is a list of blogging terms. Blogging, like any hobby, has developed something of a specialized vocabulary. The following is an attempt to explain a few of the more common phrases and words, including etymologies when not obvious.
Ta-Nehisi Paul Coates is an American author and journalist. He gained a wide readership during his time as national correspondent at The Atlantic, where he wrote about cultural, social, and political issues, particularly regarding African Americans and white supremacy.
The Black Weblog Awards was an online awards event which recognizes bloggers of African-American descent for their contributions in blogging, video blogging, and podcasting. The Black Weblog Awards started in 2005 with 11 categories, and grew to include 36 categories. Former Black Weblog Award winners include blogger and radio host B. Scott, comedian and YouTube personality Elon James White, comedian, television host, and New York Times best-selling author Baratunde Thurston, LGBT activist and media personality Keith Boykin, hip-hop artists D-Nice and Kanye West, musician and DJ Questlove, and model/media personality Tyra Banks. Other Black Weblog Award winners have also appeared in traditional media outlets, such as The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, and NPR.
Jamilah Lemieux is an American writer, cultural critic, and editor. She rose to prominence for her blog, The Beautiful Struggler. She has worked for Ebony, Cassius Magazine, and Interactive One, part of Radio One, Inc. Lemieux currently writes a parenting column for Slate, and co-hosts an accompanying podcast, Mom & Dad Are Fighting.
Rembert Browne is a writer who primarily focuses on pop culture, politics and sports. Previously Browne wrote for Grantland, then for New York Magazine.
Gene Demby is an American journalist. He is lead blogger on NPR’s race, ethnicity and culture team Code Switch and cohost of the podcast by the same title. He's also the founder of the blog PostBourgie and its accompanying podcast.
Eve Louise Ewing is an American sociologist, author, poet, and visual artist from Chicago, Illinois. Ewing is a tenured professor at the School of Social Service Administration at the University of Chicago. Her academic research in the sociology of education includes her 2018 book, Ghosts in the Schoolyard: Racism and School Closings on Chicago's South Side, a study of school closures in Chicago. She is the former editor at Seven Scribes and the author of the poetry collection Electric Arches which was released in September 2017. In 2019, she published 1919, a poetry collection centered around the Chicago race riot of 1919. Additionally, Ewing is the author of the Ironheart comic book series for Marvel centered on the young heroine Riri Williams.
Jamil Smith is an American print and television journalist who is an essayist at the Los Angeles Times. His reporting and commentary deal with a range of political and cultural topics, including race, gender, national politics, and pop culture. He has been a senior editor at The New Republic, and a senior national correspondent at MTV News, a senior writer for Rolling Stone magazine, and a senior correspondent at Vox.
Code Switch is a race and culture outlet and a weekly podcast from American public radio network NPR. It began in 2013 with a blog as well as contributing stories to NPR radio programs. The Code Switch podcast launched in 2016. In the wake of the George Floyd protests, it became one of NPR's top ranked podcasts.
Carefree Black Girls is a cultural concept and movement that aims to increase the breadth of "alternative" representations of black women. The origins of this expression can be traced to both Twitter and Tumblr. Zeba Blay was reportedly the first person to use the expression as a hashtag on Twitter in May 2013. Danielle Hawkins soon launched a blog on Tumblr by the same name. In her article for The Root, Diamond Sharp describes "carefree black girls" as an idea that, "[black women] have used to anchor expressions of individuality and whimsy in the face of the heavy stereotypes and painful realities that too often color discussions of their demographic." At Refinery29, Jamala Johns said it was "a way to celebrate all things joyous and eclectic among brown ladies. Cultivated online and driven by social media, it's one telling piece of a much wider development of inspiration assembled by and for black women." Hillary Crosley Coker, a reporter for Jezebel provides specific examples of notable black women embodying the concept. She claims that, "ladies like Chiara de Blasio, Solange [Knowles] and her eclectic style and Janelle Monae's futurism are their patron saints".
In the United States, LGBT youth of colour are marginalized adolescents in the LGBT community. Social issues include homelessness; cyberbullying; physical, verbal and sexual abuse; suicide; drug addiction; street violence; immigration surveillance; engagement in high-risk sexual activity; self-harm, and depression. The rights of LGBT youth of colour are reportedly not addressed in discussions of sexuality and race in the larger context of LGBT rights.
Shereen Marisol Meraji is an American journalist, podcaster and educator. She is an assistant professor of race in journalism at the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism, and is an alum of the Nieman Fellowship at Harvard University. She was the founding co-host and senior producer of Code Switch, a critically acclaimed podcast covering race, culture and identity, one of NPR's highest charting podcasts in 2020.
Rashawn Ray is a Professor of Sociology at the University of Maryland, College Park, and Senior Fellow in Governance Studies at the Brookings Institution. Since 2017 he has been the editor of Contexts magazine, published by the American Sociological Association, with co-editor Fabio Rojas.
Jamil Demby is an American football offensive guard for the Vegas Vipers of the XFL. He played college football at Maine.
Coleman Cruz Hughes is an American writer and podcast host. He was a fellow at the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research and a fellow and contributing editor at their City Journal, and is the host of the podcast Conversations with Coleman.
Michael Ford, known as the "Hip-Hop Architect", is an architect, designer, educator, and keynote speaker whose years of research, publications and lectures seek to fuse his two passions, hip-hop culture and architecture. In hip-hop architecture, Ford provides an alternative to the western canon in architecture and urban theory. This model is not only celebrates diversity, but it is also appealing to young people of color, encouraging them to join the profession and think critically about the built environment they live in. Ford is a professor in the architecture program at Madison College and founder of BrandNu Design.
Food 4 Thot is an LGBT podcast hosted by Tommy Pico, Denne Michele Norris, Joseph Osmundson, and Fran Tirado. The podcast is described as, "A multiracial mix of queer writers talk about sex, relationships, race, identity, what we like to read, and who we like to read."
Angelica Jade Bastién is an American essayist and critic. She is a staff writer for Vulture, where she has reviewed film and written television recaps since 2015. Bastién also specializes in horror and depictions of women and madness. She has published writing in The New York Times, The Village Voice, Harper's Bazaar, Criterion.com, and others. Her work has been cited in outlets including Vanity Fair, Vox, and The Independent.