deerstalker

Group chats can be a haven since they’re comprised usually of people you love or grow to love. They’re a place you go to share your wins, your losses, a funny thing you have seen on the internet, to ask whether or not you should make a purchase, be it big or small. Group chats are an intimate sounding board. They’re what can save you from yourself, affirm you, and hopefully nourish you in ways you may not get elsewhere. Harley Quinn: Birds of Prey is a personification of a group chat. The movie takes us from the initial formation of the chat to how it beautifully blossoms into something we all have in our chats.

I imagine Harley Quinn had been playing Fantasia’s “Free Yourself” for weeks on repeat before we meet up with her in the movie. She should have been humming those lyrics before destroying that chemical factory. Harley is the friend who you’ve been praying finally wised up and realized her self worth wasn’t tied to the fucc boi she spent so many emotionally draining years with. When she finally has her Beyoncé Irreplaceable moment, you can’t do anything but celebrate. The newly freed Harley Quinn is in serious need of a new support system, the perfect time to start a new group chat. Harley is also that one friend who seems to know everyone and their business. She provides the 411 on Detective Montoya, Black Canary, Cassandra Cain, and Black Canary, so it makes sense that she would be the curator of the group chat.

All who are added as she goes along, of course, originally want absolutely nothing to do with it but have their individual reasons for sticking around long enough to help make it something that everyone can appreciate at the end of the day. Black Canary, Detective Montoya, Cassandra, and Huntress all want nothing to do with Harley. It’s their lives being inconvenienced by men that keep them all from possibly killing Harley. Detective Montoya is dealing with men stealing her shine at work and constant disrespect. Black Canary is just trying to pay her bills and works for an eccentric sociopathic jackass with an equally sociopathic best-boyfriend. Cassandra can’t even lay her head down at home because her foster parents ain’t shit, especially the dad. Meanwhile, Huntress’s entire family was killed by you guessed it, men. Sometimes a group chat just needs everyone to find common ground to start building a foundation. How many times have you started a group chat with strangers on the internet because of something that happened on a social media platform, and you all shared a common stance on it? Right.

Harley brings most of the drama to the group chat. There is always that one person. In the movie, we see how the conversations play out by way of top tier fight choreography. The eff men conversation had in the last 20 mins of the movie as the women work together to keep Cassandra Cain away from Black Mask is beautifully violent. The classic group chat “hype your friend up” moments happen as they beat the brakes off the men Black Mask send after them. They become helpful resources for one another. Harley providing Montoya with the bulletproof waist trainer that saves her life, and she gives Black Canary the hair tie she needed badly. An exaggerated version of someone in the group chat sharing helpful resources for those who need it.

Huntress takes time out from killing dudes to make sure Cassandra is okay and gives Harley the assist to in the final chase scene. Not only are they a murderous bunch, but they’re a thoughtful bunch. Hopefully, no one is killing anyone in regular everyday group chats. Still, the spirit of being there for one another is something that should always be present, and the movie reflects that. By the end of the movie, everyone has gone from hardly knowing one another to affirming Huntress that her name is as dope as she is. The camaraderie and the growth are there like any group chat worth staying in.

Harley Quinn: Birds of Prey isn’t perfect, but what group chat is. It’s the imperfections mixed in with the sincerity that makes you want to stick around and pop in from time to time. Plus, there is always the option to make a smaller group chat from the original one and end up with just the Birds of Prey version.

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The post Harley Quinn: Birds of Prey is Peak Group Chat Atmosphere appeared first on Black Nerd Problems.

OneUnited Bank has released a limited-edition Harriet Tubman Visa Debit Card to celebrate Black History Month! And, I honestly don’t think that Harriet would approve.

In a news feature published on OneUnited Bank’s website they wrote:

We have the power to place Harriet Tubman on a global payment device in celebration of Black History Month and in tribute to the many others who freed enslaved people. This symbol of Black empowerment in 2020 will pave the way for the Harriet Tubman design on the $20 bill.

The Harriet Tubman Visa Debit Card is the first limited-edition card offered by OneUnited Bank and will only be available in 2020. The card image is from the painting “The Conqueror” by the internationally acclaimed artist Addonis Parker. If you obtain the Harriet Tubman Card in 2020, you can carry the card design for life.

In addition to its limited-edition Harriet Tubman Card, OneUnited Bank will promote the “Right to Vote” theme for Black History Month to elevate the #BankBlack and #BuyBlack Movements to the next level and beyond. For more information visit www.oneunited.com/HarrietTubman.

Harriet Tubman’s legacy supersedes the fictional kingdom of Wakanda.

On Feb. 13, the bank tweeted about Tubman.

Harriet Tubman is the ultimate symbol of love – love that causes you to sacrifice everything, including your own life. The gesture is the sign language symbol for love. It’s so important that we love ourselves.

— OneUnited Bank (@oneunited) February 13, 2020

Take a look at how others are reacting:

@oneunited, please contact me. This could have been avoided.

— TyreeBP (@TyreeBP) February 13, 2020

There’s aren’t enough languages to say “this ain’t it”.

— Frederick Joseph (@FredTJoseph) February 13, 2020

FAM NOT THE WAKANDA SALUTE TOO pic.twitter.com/jeQOM1YfjO

— THE KID MERO (@THEKIDMERO) February 13, 2020

pic.twitter.com/L1J7W1KURt

— L-Dub (@MsWilliamsWorld) February 13, 2020

Well, there you have it.

The ideas and opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author’s and not necessarily the opinion of Black Enterprise.

Amazon Prime Video’s upcoming series Hunters immediately intrigued fans with an ambitious premise. creator David Weil teamed up with Jordan Peele’s Monkeypaw Productions to bring this show to fruition and, if the first episode is any indication, it’s going to be a brilliant mix of heartbreak, vengeance, humor, and mystery all wrapped up in one.

The plot follows Jonah Heidelbaum (Logan Lerman), a teenager who lives in Brooklyn with his Holocaust survivor grandmother Ruth in 1977. His life changes when Ruth’s murder introduces him to Meyer Offerman, a rich man who was in a concentration camp alongside Ruth. Jonah discovers that Ruth and Meyer started The Hunters, a group of skilled people who are on a mission to stop Nazis living in the United States from starting a Fourth Reich.

Hunters builds its foundation with a movie-length premiere that properly establishes a few main players. It kicks off with a chilling opening scene, then works on building the relationship between Jonah and Meyer, played by the incomparable Al Pacino.

The layers quickly begin to build as Jonah’s desperate investigation into Ruth’s life and death parallels FBI Agent Millie Malone (Jerrika Hinton) and an odd case that cracks the door to a harrowing discovery. The actors all slip into their roles with ease, establishing their motivations and shaping their engaging personalities. Will Jonah be a beloved protagonist? Probably not. But, his shortcomings leave room for reality checks and maturation.

via GIPHY

Unlike many shows and films that attempt to rationalize or create empathy for Nazis, Hunters has no interest in a crafting a rosy narrative. The antagonists vary widely from those who are outwardly menacing and violent to others who have learned to put on a trustworthy persona to mask their true nature.

It’s incredibly unsettling and will have viewers wondering about full extent of this Nazi network. There are also disturbing looks to the past that dive into the psychological torture experienced by Jewish people and how it affects their current state of affairs 30 years later.

via GIPHY

Jonah and Meyer’s conversations about life, the present, and what it means to seek justice strike an emotional chord and open the door for deeper conversations. And, as expected, there are an abundance of breadcrumbs, minute details, and themes established early in Hunters that beg to be dissected by eagle-eyed viewers. Hunters does a lot of work to quickly give several characters layers before it expands its world and it’s going to be thrilling to see how all the pieces mesh together.

Meyer’s words describe the show’s premise best: “This is not murder. This is mitzvah.” The Hunters are on a mission to stop mayhem before it unleashes on society and there’s nothing (or no one) who can prevent their revenge. Jonah has the motivation to join the hunt, but the premiere will leave viewers wondering if it will be enough to step across a bloody line.

Featured Image: Amazon Prime Studios

The post HUNTERS Is a Riveting and Righteous Revenge Drama appeared first on Nerdist.

Though diverse in taste and texture, cornbread has had a ubiquitous presence on American dinner tables across the nation—from North to South to East to West. While regional food sources and cultural dynamics have evolved the African-Americans diet, some things like cornbread persisted through time, migration and more. But why?

“The most popular rations that were given out to enslaved people as inexpensive staples was cornmeal,” says Dr. Frederick Douglass Opie, professor of history and foodways at Babson College in Babson Park, Mass. “Corn is something that the Portuguese

The post The History Of African-American Kitchens From Past to Present appeared first on Essence.