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“If you can make it here, you can make it anywhere,” New Yorkers often say. New York City aka The Big Apple is a birthplace of dreams for some and a sobering wake-up call for others. However, for nine small business owners, the city’s bright lights are shining just fine.
NYC Boss Up has announced its inaugural list of grantees who will receive $20,000 to support their entrepreneurial endeavors and free business development classes. All winners are also current inhabitants of New York City Housing Authority residences, which provides affordable living to those needing assistance. Selected from a pool of 279 applicants, each applicant was required to pitch their business proposals and plans for growth in a Shark Tank-style competition to a panel of judges at the Brooklyn Museum. To guarantee fairness, the panel employed the help of a standardized rubric to select the strongest submissions.
The Boss Up Program was founded by the Ron and Kerry Moelis Family Foundation, which has donated $1 million to further the mission of fostering positive and enduring change in the tri-state area and helping individuals and families build generational wealth. “Even if you have a great idea, getting a successful business off the ground is incredibly challenging, and this program is designed to provide some of our city’s budding entrepreneurs with a boost by helping them financially and strategically,” Moelis said in a statement.
Winners in this initial round of funding include Sarah Adams of West Indian Foods, Tamika Walker of Blac Beuty No9, Jaquay Wilder off ATBPartySupplies, Michael Watson of Fable Jones Studios, and Michelle Covington of Liyah Michelle Collections. All winners were awarded $5000 upon winning the competition and an additional $15,000 upon completion of business development classes aimed at helping the entrepreneurs grow and maintain their business’s success.
Documentaries have the ability to educate, inspire, and open windows to our past. Through the lens of talented filmmakers, we can be transported to places we never thought possible, or re-live moments in history we would never otherwise see. Black documentaries offer rich insight into our society and culture, connect us to some of our proudest and most shameful moments in American history, and remind us of just how far we’ve come.
The following are 12 Black documentaries that are a must to add to your watch list. From places to travel to celebrating Black women, and so much more.
International travel and diversity consultant Martinique Lewis takes us on a journey to visit historically listed Green Book locations and modern Black travel destinations. The Negro Motorist Green Book was published annually from 1936 to 1966, and served as a must-have guidebook used by Black families and business people, listing hotels, rooming houses, and restaurants where Black travelers would be welcomed and safe. The stops are more than just hotels and restaurants, though. Lewis delves into the history of the locations and talks with people who remember how Black people used the Green Book.
Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson’s debut as a filmmaker is so, so good. This documentary is part music film, part culture and fashion, and part historical record surrounding the Harlem Cultural Festival that took place in 1969, just 100 miles from Woodstock. Summer of Soul focuses on the importance of history to our well-being and the healing power it has during times of unrest. There are performances by Stevie Wonder, Nina Simone, Gladys Knight & the Pips, Mahalia Jackson, and many more.
Black Is King is a musical film co-written, executive produced, and directed by none other than our favorite queen Beyoncé Knowles-Carter. It is a visual companion to the 2019 album The Lion King: The Gift, curated by Beyoncé for the film The Lion King. It tells the story of a young African king who is cast out into the world as a baby — and grows up to return home to reclaim his throne. It’s so visually stunning that you’ll find yourself watching it again and again.
High on the Hog: How African American Cuisine Transformed America
If you’re anything like me, you love all types of food. So, I was excited about this one! But it’s so much more than food. It’s reframing our history through the lens of Black people’s food. It’s history lessons and incredible food rolled into one. Food writer Stephen Satterfield hosts this series, and the best part is that second season is coming on Netflix.
Michelle Obama will always be our forever First Lady. If you’ve read her book, then you will love this documentary. It takes an intimate look at her life and connection with various people during her 2019 book tour for Becoming. Obama speaks openly about the balance of maintaining her sense of self, along with the endless scrutiny every First Lady finds herself facing once she becomes the most recognized woman in the world.
In 1972 in Los Angeles, director Mel Stuart captured all the performances of the Watts Summer Festival, organized by Stax Records. It was a gathering of musicians and entertainers from the Black community, brought together to remember the Watts Riots from seven years prior. Performances include comedian Richard Pryor and singers Isaac Hayes and Luther Ingram. Stuart also presents shots of the Watts streets and community along with the festival footage.
This is a biographical film about Nina Simone, one of the greatest artists of our time. She lived such a fascinating, brutally honest life and was a classically-trained pianist and Black power icon. This documentary features never-before-heard recordings and rare archival footage.
In 1993, one of my favorite authors, Toni Morrison, was the first Black woman to win the Nobel Prize for Literature. Her novel, Beloved, was the first time a Black author dared to speak about the horrible foundation of American society: slavery. The documentary explores the significance of Morrison’s work in an America still struggling with racist violence.
In 1979, James Baldwin wrote a letter to his literary agent describing what his next project, Remember This House, would be. The book was to be a personal account of the lives and assassinations of three of his close friends: Medgar Evers, Malcolm X, and Martin Luther King, Jr. When Baldwin died in 1987, he left behind only 30 completed pages of this manuscript. Filmmaker Raoul Peck took those pages and envisioned the book James Baldwin never finished. The result is this open and honest documentary.
After reading The 1619 Project, I felt like I had been on the most emotional roller coaster I’ve ever had reading a book. The 1619 Project film, created and spearheaded by journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones, continues this journey of crucial information regarding the history of Black people in America. It’s the history we never knew but have so desperately needed.
This documentary is a PBS Original three-part series that gives a unique perspective into how Rhode Island’s Black community draws upon joy as a source of strength. Through food, the arts, and mental health, each episode explores the rich history, tradition, and legacy of joy and its essential role in persevering through hard times.
Rise Again: Tulsa & the Red Summer
Washington Post journalist DeNeen Brown investigates the Tulsa, Oklahoma, and Elaine, Arkansas, massacres. This documentary is a worthy introduction to a horrific but fundamentally important part of American history that is conveniently ignored in the history books. The camera follows Brown as she speaks with community activists and massacre descendants both in Tulsa and Elaine, Arkansas, where what was likely the deadliest massacre of the Red Summer took place. In Tulsa, Brown watches archeologists in the distance at work in the Oaklawn Cemetery, where a mass grave is eventually discovered in late 2020. In Elaine, she discovers that somewhere out there is a mass grave from the massacre; it is thought that hundreds of Black lives were lost in just one September night in 1919 at the hands of white supremacist rioters, although massive efforts to cover up what happened and then deny the massacre even happened mean the true numbers will never be known.
I am a little behind on the times, but I have spent the last month working my way through Marvel’s Midnight Suns. The initial release was plagued with performance issues, but that has since settled and even optimized for the Steam Deck. So when it was on sale, I picked up the combination tactical strategy and card based roleplay game, and I can genuinely say I enjoyed the game. Out of the 100 in-game days I spent, the vast majority was doing random side quests just to play with the different decks of different heroes. Occasionally, I participated in a weird Persona-esque social link system that featured several weird occurrences including throwing Magik a surprise birthday, participating in a book club with Blade so he could hook up with Captain Marvel, and solving the secret of the Salem Witch Trials. And throughout all of this narrative, at various points in time I was required to respond with certain answers designated as “Light” and “Dark” aka a morality system.
The Light/Dark morality system and its partner the binary karma meter is older than dirt. The concept of alignment has been around since at least the original Dungeons & Dragons, and even then, I think many of my contemporaries would point to Mass Effect as reigniting the popularity of the system. Now, here’s the thing. In Marvel’s Midnight Suns, the morality system has absolutely no impact on the narrative whatsoever. At best, it causes minor fluctuations in the arbitrary friendship meters in exchange for greater rewards for certain playstyles. At worst, it’s a completely superfluous system that adds absolutely nothing to the great narrative and only changes things on the most basic cosmetic level. For all of the pontificating, the meditations of harnessing dark magics, the absorbing of dark essence, greater goods, lesser evils, none of it mattered. The story played exactly the same and if I did a second playthrough…well honestly…I would probably skip every single cutscene and mash A as quickly as possible selecting, but I would do so with the dark aligned options just to try the different cards and watch as my gruffer Hunter proceeds to do everything relatively the same with a little bit more snark. It’s not even the illusion of choice, it’s the illusion of choice of choice.
Part of this stems from the mechanical ties that a morality system has. There are clear benefits for always selecting the option aligned to you, and there is very little reason to deviate. Whether it’s any of the Star Wars games, Infamous: Second Son, Mass Effect, or even going back to the original Paladin in Dungeons & Dragons, it doesn’t make sense to be morally gray. Paladins in D&D are probably the most egregious example as actively straying away from the Lawful Good (or whatever alignment your variant Paladin is) would strip them of their powers entirely. But outside of that, most of the systems incentivize consistency which makes to a degree, but it also makes for a much more linear gaming experience.
And while I’m not one to sing any praise to Mass Effect: Andromeda, a game best described as “okay” and “not quite the worthy successor to the pedigree of the franchise it bears,” one of the nicer changes in pace was that the dialog options did not have clear cut decisions. There was no clear flag or signposts. The decisions had impact, and it actually felt like your Ryder was a more complex person than just the upstanding Paragon Shepherd or the brooding Renegade Shepherd.
This binary format also impacts non-RPGs if we take a look at visual novels and visual novel-esque games like the original Telltale games although in a slightly different way. When designing a game with multiple branching, intersecting paths, all of those paths have to be defined…lest you end up with a Bandersnatch. But one of the things that designers have noticed is that there were several occasions where the overwhelming majority of the player-base opted to take the less moral option.
What the Walking Dead games ended up with splits that idea even more when it comes to morally grey zombie apocalypses; however, here are some fun statistics from the first Batman:
- 70% of players gave Falcone pain medication to ease his suffering.
- 92.8% continued to fund Harvey’s campaign despite Harvey having to abandoned ties
- 68% assured that Alfred wasn’t at fault for the sins of Thomas Wayne
And it gets to a point where an equal development time has to be devoted to a path that the vast majority of the players won’t ever experience because of this faux level of critical thinking. And at least the Telltale games are designed with this plethora of choices in mind, and even though key events will always play out in similar ways, there is enough differentiation in the smaller choices that I don’t have much qualms.
But too often, the light/dark morality system is shoehorned into games as an afterthought, a superficial layering that detracts more than it adds. And there are games that have successfully implemented these systems (Dishonored, Red Death Redemption), but if Midnight Suns is any indication, the system and the novelty are worn out. It’s gotten to the point where this trend has impacted how I approach teaching new players about Dungeons & Dragons. I ask them not to view alignment as dogma for the character but as a baseline for the actions. It certainly helps that the typical player always manages to make the buck wildest decision in the name of whatever their current motivation is, and I haven’t had a Paladin PC in ages. However, the point stands that the arbitrary 3×3 grid summarizing morality is not useful.
If incorporated into the design, morality system can add a layer of complexity (Undertale being one of the more modern prime examples and deconstructions), but if we are going to go down that route, I urge designers to branch out from the well-trodden paths. Griftlands relationship centric system serves as a great example of making individual choices matter within context as the different NPCs you interact with have different factions, and it creates a tangled web of choices. Furthermore, newer TTRPGs such as Tales of Xadia and Avatar: The Last Airbender offer individualized scales that the player opts into as part of character creation. Morality systems are clearly crucial in society, but in games, I think we can shift focus just a little bit.
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The post It’s Time to Abandon Morality Systems…in Games appeared first on Black Nerd Problems.