Malindi Minute: Black Wall Street, HBCU's, and Amy Sherald

Happy Sunday! Whether you're a new subscriber or an existing subscriber, welcome back. Here are a few articles you should check out from this week!

This week, NVIDIA announced a partnership with Black Tech Street in Tulsa, Oklahoma. The partnership will support startups and workforce development. NVIDIA already has offices in Tulsa and now will be focusing some of its energy on what was formerly Black Wall Street in Greenwood before the 1912 massacre destroyed it all. The goal of the partnership is to make Tulsa a national leader in AI, and possibly a global leader. They will provide AI training, education, and resources to stimulate the AI workforce. Over the last few years, there has been a. renewed focus on developing the Tulsa region. In 2024, the Biden-Harris administration awarded Tulsa $51 million in funds intended for the development and scaling of technology for autonomous systems. Taking this into account, along with the NVIDIA partnership, Tulsa is solidifying its position as a national leader in technology and may be a small step toward correcting past wrongs.

While NVIDIA is giving money to Tulsa, Intel is taking money away from HBCUs. In 2021, Intel made a pledge of $5 million to the North Carolina Central University law school. The pledge was meant to foster more diversity in the legal field. This week, the partnership was formally ended between Intel and NCCU. Consequently, after the U.S. government took a 10% stake in the company. We alreay know that the current administration isn’t diversity friendly and has been systematically stopping all programs that favor diversity. So, this is just another domino to fall in the line of casualties.

Amy Sherald’s exhibit “American Sublime” was initially supposed to be at the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery. After some concerns about censorship by the President due to her painting of the Statue of Liberty as a transgender woman called “Trans Forming Liberty”, she cancelled her show. This week, it was announced that she will still have her show, but it won’t be at the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery. She will be taking her talent and collection of works to the Baltimore Museum of Art in November. The exhibition will be the largest display of her collective works.

NAACP is suing Texas over its recent redistricting, which many critics say violates the Voting Rights Act. The new map will see white voters controlling 70% of the congressional seats, even though the state is only 40% white. The legal definition of gerrymandering is when the map is manipulated to favor one party over another. Gerrymandering has always been a hot topic legal issue, and many federal courts would rule against such manipulation. But in 2019, in a landmark case, the Supreme Court essentially ruled that the issue of gerrymandering is beyond the scope of what federal courts should be deciding. They, in many ways, delegated the responsibility to the legislative branch and gave each state the authority to decide for itself. This has inevitably led us to where we are now. In a position where each state can do as it pleases. And it will undoubtedly lead to disenfranchising voters of color. Hopefully, the NAACP case works out. Their first move was for a preliminary injunction (stopping the action from happening temporarily). We’ll see how it goes.

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Conversations this week

Model Leomie Anderson has a conversation with SHOWstudio about her career.

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