Our weekly recap highlighting the best feature stories from around the internet.
Riz Ahmed. Photo: Supplied
Typecast as a terrorist – by Riz Ahmed, The Guardian
“As children in the 1980s, when my brother and I were stopped near our home by a skinhead who decided to put a knife to my brother’s throat, we were black. A decade later, the knife to my throat was held by another “Paki”, a label we wore with swagger in the Brit-Asian youth and gang culture of the 1990s. The next time I found myself as helplessly cornered, it was in a windowless room at Luton airport. My arm was in a painful wrist-lock and my collar pinned to the wall by British intelligence officers. It was “post 9/11”, and I was now labelled a Muslim.”
20 Years Later: Tupac Is Hip-Hop’s Prophet Of Rage And Revolution – by Kevin Powell, Vibe
“He, ever the sign of Gemini, was many things to himself, and many things to other people. But at his core, Tupac Shakur was fearless, free, vulnerable, contradictory, and someone forever trying to find himself in a world that did not quite know what to do with a Black male like him.”
I Spent Six Days Protecting Tupac on His Deathbed – by Gobi M. Rahimi, Esquire
“It was the scariest six nights of my life. There were undercover FBI agents, the police weren't helping, I got one of the death threats. The marketing director came up to me on the third day and said, ‘They called the Row, they're going to come finish him off.’ Then he walked away. So I called Vegas PD, and said, ‘Send the troops—they're going to come finish Tupac off.’ The lady came back on the phone and said, ‘Sir, we're a little understaffed right now, so if anything should happen, go get the foot patrol in the hospital.’ Immediately, I was like, Something's a little off here.”
DUKE has a new sports chat show and man oh man is it bad – by Madeleine Chapman, The Spinoff
“DUKE insisted it was a channel for everyone. But even as a fan of sports shows and the dreaded banter, I found nothing for me and my lady brain on Short & Wide. Even the name itself, after the copious sexual references, sounds dirty. In reality, it’s a reference to a piss poor delivery in cricket. Short and wide. What an appropriate name it’s turned out to be.”
And Do You Belong? I Do – by Solange Knowles, Saint Heron
“The tone. It’s the same one that says to your friend, “BOY…. go on over there and hand me my bag” at the airport, assuming he’s a porter. It’s the same one that tells you, “m’am, go into that other line over there” when you are checking in at the airport at the first class counter before you even open up your mouth. It’s the same one that yells and screams at you and your mother in your sleep when you’re on the train from Milan to Basel “give me your passport NOW.” You look around to see if anyone else is being requested this same thing only to see a kind Italian woman actually confront the agents on your behalf and ask why you are being treated this way.”
Who Gets to Be Called a ‘Patriot’? – by Wesley Morris, The NY Times Magazine
“Love of country can be tender, of course. It can also be tough, and that toughness can be expressed zealously, too. Leslie Jones and Colin Kaepernick both amplify the idea that patriotism doesn’t mean much if a citizen can’t ask what it’s good for or examine its elasticity. Kaepernick has vowed not to stand for the anthem until the injustices he has enumerated have been meaningfully addressed. He’s worried for his country. I’m worried for his knees.”
'It's Transformative': Māori Women Talk About Their Sacred Chin Tattoos – by Michelle Duff, Broadly
“For New Zealand Māori women, the moko kauae, or traditional female chin tattoo, is considered a physical manifestation of their true identity. It is believed every Māori woman wears a moko on the inside, close to their heart; when they are ready, the tattoo artist simply brings it out to the surface.”