That Beyonce Exercise Routine, Black Women & White Feminism, Sagging Pants and Food Stamps

MyBrownBaby Fresh links to stories I was digging this week…

Beyonce Wants to Show You Every One of Her Workout Moves Right Now
Mark Shrayber for Jezebel.

There’s no better time to post a video of Beyonce working out. It’s possible that you’ll watch this video and be inspired to move the same way Beyonce is by Michelle Obama‘s “Let’s Move” campaign (which is celebrating its 5th anniversary). Or, if you’re like me, you may just marvel at her strength and grace as you eat another cookie and contemplate running a 5k. Someday. Just not today. Not right now. Tomorrow, maybe.

Black America’s hidden tax: Why this feminist of color is going on strike
Brittney Cooper for Salon.

But after black women have done all of this labor, all of this reminding white women that our feminist solidarities are not about fighting for white women to have economic parity with white men in a system of white supremacy and all of this reminding black men that our freedom struggle is not just for them but for all of us, and all of this standing in solidarity with other oppressed groups, who will fairly and justly compensate us? And more pointedly, who will stand for us?

When the labor conditions are deplorable and those in power won’t shift these conditions, laborers have the right to withhold work. Asking black women and other women of color always to explain, show and prove to white people what is so wrong about what they have said or done, when we have no guarantees that they will change, shift or grow, is unacceptable. I demand better conditions of work.

Sagging Pants And The Long History Of ‘Dangerous’ Street Fashion
By Gene Demby for NPR.

There’s certainly nothing novel about adults thinking that young people’s fashions are distasteful — indeed, that’s often kind of the point. Full disclosure time: Like an awful lot of people in my generational cohort, I used to sag. Here’s what I’ll say about that: Everyone who thought he was cool as a teenager and reaches his 30s will look back at photos of himself from high school and cringe mightily. But that isn’t specific to sagging, of course. Like goth dress, it freaks out old people, and then most of its practitioners move on to other things. The difference is that the anxieties around something like goth dress don’t get codified into laws that threaten jail time.

Congressman Wants People To Spy On Food Stamp Users At The Grocery Store
By Aimee Ogden for Mommyish.

It’s trash day here in Wisconsin, and today the sack of garbage I’m here to leave on the curb is freshman congressman Glenn Grothman. Grothman, who as a congressman will get paid $175,000 to work just 132 days this year, is concerned about the possibility that welfare and food stamps will make people lazy. His solution? Have his constituents spy on each other to make sure food stamp recipients are buying the ‘right’ things at the grocery store.

100 Years After the Great Migration, Racism Is Still Taking a Serious Toll On The Black Community’s Health
By Taylor Gordon for AtlantaBlackstar.

Despite the purpose of the move being to find better opportunities and perhaps see realized dreams of equality, it’s possible that migrating only exposed Black people to more forms of racism than they had previously experienced. “[Black migrants] were fleeing the violence of the caste system in the South, only to be met with challenges and obstacles in the North,” Isabel Wilkerson, the author of The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration, told Vox. “They were searching for ways to manage in a world that had not welcomed them…where they were met with hostility upon arrival.”