Black Woman Takes Initiative, Creates Sunscreen Made Exclusively for Melanated Babies
Dalaise Hickey couldn’t find a sunscreen that properly blended in on her dark-skinned children so she created her own.
Hickey is the creator of BabyDonna, a sheer, reef-safe, mineral sunscreen sticks for Black and Brown babies, toddlers, and children. The mother of two couldn’t hold back on what was important for her children’s safety so her company was launched in 2022 in Shelton, Connecticut.
“We’re on a mission to simplify this process for parents of color by offering an option with broad spectrum sun protection, that’s both pediatrician and dermatologist approved, but that doesn’t leave a thick white residue,” Hickey told the Shelton Herald.
BabyDonna sunscreen is made in stick form as an easy applicator for babies, toddlers and kids. Her formula doesn’t leave that sticky white residue, and is a vegan, non-toxic product that isn’t greasy.
The sunscreen application is good for 80 minutes of water resistance and protection from UV rays. The former social worker said she spent years searching for the perfect sunscreen, with chemicals in sprays and lotions being a major red flag.
It wasn’t until the COVID-19 pandemic hit that she found the time to focus on her passion project. “I began to see the value of my time…and I began questioning what I was doing,” Hickey said. “I realized I wanted to do something I’m passionate about…It’s exciting…a dream coming true.”
As her business grows, Hickey hopes to work directly with different communities to develop programming and events to provide aid for these children. With her social work background, her goal is to provide internships to at-risk youth to give them employment opportunities.
“This is my passion. It’s a great way for me to not only create a product for Black children but also create a platform to help vulnerable children,” Hickey said.
Black Oscar-Winning Animated Series ‘Young Love’ Will Debut On HBO Max This Fall
Max delivered a diverse and inclusive lineup of adult animation shows at the 2023 Annecy International Animation Film Festival and Market.
The Black animated series, Young Love, claimed a spot in Max’s queue of new series.
The series follows a millennial couple, their daughter, and her cat. “Young Love,” created and executive produced by Matthew A. Cherry, will feature the voices of Scott “Kid Cudi” Mescudi, Issa Rae, Loretta Devine, Tamar Braxton, Harry Lennix, and Brooke Monroe Conaway, per Animation Magazine.
Adult viewers will get an intimate look into what life is like for Black families. Suzanna Makkos, executive vice president of original comedy and adult animation for Max spoke about the new series in a Warner Bros. Discovery press release.
“We’re always looking for hard comedy with heart and edge, diverse and inclusive shows with underlying thematic resonance, and character design that showcases the hand of the artist.” Makkos said, “I am so excited to share these incredible series with the world, and continue to show why Max is a great home for adult animation.”
The original Max series comes from Cherry’s Oscar-winning animated short, Hair Love, a comedic look at a Black father’s attempt to do his daughter’s hair for the first time.
The filmmaker said at the time, “You don’t see the Black family dynamic that often in mainstream animated projects. I hope that this film will help change that.” Rae worked with Cherry as the voice of the mother in Hair Love.Young Love will follow the same characters. The short film was written by Cherry. He also directed Hair Love alongside Everett Downing Jr., and Bruce W. Smith.
In 2020 Variety reported Max would release Young Love as a 12-episode series. It will debut in fall 2023, according to a statement released by Warner Bros. Discovery.
‘Still Ghetto’ Candace Owens Takes Shots At Juneteenth Celebrations And Gets Schooled
Instead of celebrating Juneteenth, Candace Owens took to Twitter to mock the new federal holiday.
The conservative podcast host mocked the celebration that honors the day Union soldiers brought the news of freedom to over 200,000 enslaved African Americans who were still in bondage in Galveston, Texas, two years after the Emancipation Proclamation was signed.
“Juneteenth is still ghetto and made up,” Owens tweeted. “Hope everyone enjoys it!”
Owens has been critical of the holiday since President Joe Biden signed the bill making Juneteenth a federal holiday in 2021, Newsweek reports. She described it as “emotional programming for Black people that choose to opt into the perpetual victim mentality.”
“Juneteenth is soooo lame,” she tweeted on June 17, 2021.
“Democrats really need to stop trying to repackage segregation. I’ll be celebrating July 4th and July 4th only. I’m American.”
Some Twitter users took the time to explain why Owens should be uplifting the holiday instead of putting it down. Professor and host Marc Lamont Hill reminded her that most holidays are made up, and schooled her on her beloved “Independence Day.”
“ALL holidays are made up. You honor July 4th, which commemorates “independence” despite the fact that Black people were still enslaved,” Hill tweeted. “You celebrate Thanksgiving, which whitewashes indigenous genocide. Yet you’re bothered by Juneteenth, which celebrates Black freedom? Why?”
ALL holidays are made up. You honor July 4th, which commemorates “independence” despite the fact that Black people were still enslaved. You celebrate Thanksgiving, which whitewashes indigenous genocide. Yet you’re bothered by Juneteenth, which celebrates Black freedom? Why? 🤔 https://t.co/tiyHgAJW63
“You’re a joke, and no one’s laughing,” @Mansa_Godson said.
Comedian Terrance Williams just sent several laughing emojis. Another user renamed her “Klandace Owens.”
Owens’ attempts to put a damper on the holiday fell on deaf ears as there were numerous celebrations held across the country. Cities such Charlotte, Philadelphia, New York and of course, Galveston had parades, cookouts, block parties and more.·
9-Year-Old Performs The Heimlich Maneuver And Saves His Classmate’s Life
A nine-year-old boy used the Heimlich maneuver to help save a classmate on the last day of the school year at Leith Walk Elementary School in Baltimore on June 19, 2023. According to WMAR, fourth-grade student Jace Wiggins performed the life-saving technique while attending a class party.
Wiggins learned the Heimlich maneuver from his mother, Charlie Gilliam, a certified instructor who also taught him CPR (Cardiopulmonary resuscitation) when he was seven years old.
Wiggins told WMAR about the incident saying, “We were just having fun in the music room listening to music. She went to go have a drink of water, and the next minute she was chewing on a cap and drinking water, and it must have went down.”
After several attempts to get the cap out of her system, he succeeded and saved her life.
“When she was gasping for air, and she was trying to get out what she was saying, she was trying to say help, but we couldn’t understand it, but I kind of heard it.”
The school acknowledged his heroic efforts, and Wiggins will join his mother this summer when she teaches young children how to perform CPR and use AED (automated external defibrillator).
In a similar effort, Buffalo Bills player Damar Hamlin recently started a multi-city tour titled the Chasing M’s Foundation CPR Tour. The first stop was the Bills’ home field, Highmark Stadium, and he will continue to hit several different cities as he intends to help teach people how to perform CPR techniques similar to the one that helped save Hamlin’s life in January 2023.
The football player suffered cardiac arrest and was resuscitated on the field during a Monday Night Football game in front of a nationally televised audience. Kudos to this young scholar for taking the initiative and jumping in at the right time to help save another child’s life.
How U.C. Berkeley Tried to Buoy Enrollment of Black Students Without Affirmative Action
In the 25 years since California voters banned all consideration of race in college admissions, the state has spent more than $500 million to help create diverse student bodies across the University of California system – with some success. Yet in classes at the University of California at Berkeley, philosophy major James Bennett, who is Black and Filipino, sees almost no one who looks like him.
“I’ve only met two other Black students within all of my classes that I’ve been in,” said Bennett, who enrolled at the system’s flagship school in 2021.
The U.S. Supreme Court is expected to rule this month in a pair of cases that could end affirmative action in college admissions nationwide. If that happens, universities that have used race-conscious admissions to boost enrollment of minority students will look to California, one of nine states that already prohibits such considerations at its public colleges.
California has pioneered race-blind efforts in college admissions by using factors such as socio-economic status and location to identify disadvantaged students, many of whom are from immigrant or diverse ethnic backgrounds.
Those efforts helped the state’s top public colleges make up much of the ground lost in diversity in the years right after California voters passed the ban on affirmative action in 1996.
Black and Hispanic student enrollment at many U.C. campuses still lags the state’s general population, however.
Berkeley, the system’s most elite school based on high school GPA, offers the starkest example of the struggle to boost their numbers, particularly for Black students. In the fall 2022 freshman class, just 228 out of nearly 7,000 students – about 3% – identified as Black.
Femi Ogundele, Berkeley’s associate vice chancellor of enrollment and dean of undergraduate admissions, who joined Berkeley from Stanford in 2019, said the U.C. system needed to better reflect the broader demographic breakdown of the state, one of the most diverse in the nation.
According to the latest census data, the state’s population is 6.5% Black, 40% Hispanic, 35% white, 16% Asian and 1.7% Native American.
“I’m really proud of the gains we’ve had so far,” said Ogundele. “But I would also say we have a lot of work to do.”
The dearth of Black students has itself complicated recruitment efforts to expand their ranks, despite its distinction as the top public university in U.S. News and World Report’s list of Best Global Universities, and the campus’ reputation for progressive politics. Many Black families worry their students will feel isolated and opt to send them elsewhere, administrators and college counselors said.
Ogundele, who has made improving diversity a centerpiece of his work, came to Berkeley to bolster recruitment and diversity.
Senior Tyler Mahomes, a Black, Puerto Rican and white student from suburban Los Angeles, said he didn’t realize before he arrived at Berkeley how few Black students would be there.
“When you come to campus, you see Black athletes on the walls and stuff like that, and it kind of almost creates this illusion of how diverse the campus is,” he said. “But then when you get on the campus and you’re one Black student in a class of 80 people, it’s like, okay, what’s going on? Where are more people that kind of look like me?”
RECRUITMENT EFFORTS
In the fall of 1998, after the Proposition 209 ballot initiative banning affirmative action went into effect, the number of Black and Hispanic students immediately dropped across U.C. campuses.
The impact was greatest for the system’s two most selective schools, UCLA and Berkeley, where enrollment of Black and Hispanic freshmen was cut in half, the university system said in an amicus brief filed on behalf of the universities in the Supreme Court case in 2022.
Despite some improvement in the years since affirmative action was banned in California, the sparse presence of students from underrepresented backgrounds impacts the experiences of everyone on campus, the brief said.
“Many students from underrepresented minority groups, particularly those at UC’s most selective campuses, will often find themselves the sole student of their race and/or ethnicity in a class,” the brief said.
With diversity still allowed as a goal, the universities focused on expanding the pool of applicants and on recruitment efforts aimed at enrolling minority students once they were admitted. Top students often have many choices of where to attend.
Outreach programs were set up to help prepare public school students for college and guide them toward applying, with particular focus on schools with high numbers of pupils of color.
At Berkeley, the state-funded bridges Multicultural Resource Center has worked to increase applicants from under-represented backgrounds and then offer food, counseling and other support once they arrive.
Allexys Cornejo, born to a teenage mom in a Salvadoran refugee family and a C-student in high school, said outreach from the bridges program while she was attending community college helped her get into Berkeley – and offered the support she needed to graduate this spring with a sociology degree.
Freshman enrollment of Hispanic students across the nine U.C. campuses stood at 27% in 2022, up dramatically from 15% in 1995 before affirmative action ended, but still well below population figures. Berkeley’s figures last year were among the lowest in the system.
Black student enrollment across the system – which hovered at 3 or 4% for decades after the affirmative action ban – last year rose to 5%.
While other campuses in the system have struggled to enroll Black students, the issue has been particularly painful at Berkeley, which under affirmative action had exceeded the system overall in enrollment of Black students. Even with its efforts in recruitment and retention, Black students represented only 3% of the incoming 2022 freshman class, or about half of what they represented in 1995.
Asian students made up 43% of Berkeley’s freshmen in the fall of 2022, up from 37% in 1995. White students accounted for 20%, down from 30% under affirmative action.
TOUGH ODDS
Exactly why Black and Hispanic enrollment has lagged at Berkeley is complex and not entirely known, administrators said.
For one, factors such as economics and a school’s location are no longer as useful for recruiting Black students, Ogundele said.
While more than 500 California public schools are 40% Hispanic, fewer than 30 are 40% Black, he said. Social mobility, gentrification and immigration waves have changed the demographics of neighborhoods that once had larger Black populations, he added.
Financial aid is also an issue. Berkeley is competing with top private schools like Stanford or Harvard, which have large endowments and can offer more in scholarships, while also using affirmative action to admit students of varied ethnic backgrounds.
Sacramento-based college counselor Judith Painter said she recently worked with a high-achieving student from a disadvantaged Cambodian immigrant background who passed up both UCLA and Berkeley for Yale.
“But that’s more the power of the brand than anything to do with UCLA or Berkeley,” Painter said. “Yale is Yale.”
UCLA, which has surpassed Berkeley in Black admissions in recent years, has tapped its broader pool of wealthy alumni who can help the public university offer more scholarships, said john a. powell, a law professor and director of Berkeley’s Othering and Belonging Institute.
Last fall, Black students made up 7% of UCLA’s freshman class, the same as before affirmative action was banned.
Berkeley does not have the same pool of wealthy and famous sports, entertainment and business figures among its alumni as Los Angeles – and some Black Berkeley graduates are hesitant to recommend the campus to young people who will find themselves in a small minority, he said.
His own daughter chose Emory University in Atlanta over Berkeley for graduate school because of her desire for a larger Black community.
Shereem Herndon-Brown, a college counselor and co-author of the book “TheBlack Family’s Guide to College Admissions,” said Berkeley’s experience should serve as a warning to other schools of how they will struggle without affirmative action.
“They’re trying their hand at equity, but it’s failing,” he said.
NBA Baller Damian Lillard’s ‘Fake’ Sneaker Purchase Prompted His Latest Business Investment
Portland Trail Blazers star Damian Lillard is already successful on the basketball court. Like many of his peers, there is also a goal to succeed in business. In a recent Forbes interview, the point guard expressed why he decided to invest in a Hong Kong and New York City-based e-commerce company, Kicks Crew.
The seven-time NBA All-Star stated that a pair of “fake” sneakers he purchased online prompted his venture into investing with a company he knows he can trust.
“I’ve had my own shopping experiences with shoes, and just knowing how it goes, knowing how often things go wrong…it’s not all about just trying to ‘make the dollar,'” Lillard said. “It’s about the customer service, where integrity is involved, and character is involved.”
Kicks Crew is the first startup investment in Lilliard’s portfolio. The e-commerce company has headquarters in New York City and in Hong Kong. In November 2022, he was involved in the company’s $6.2 million Series A funding round. Along with Gobi Partners, Hong Kong billionaire Richard Li’s Pacific Century Group, and Complex China, that round brought the total amount of funding up to $7.2 million.
Although Kicks Crew was founded in 2008, the company shifted towards e-commerce once the pandemic started. On the website, there are many brands to choose from, including sportswear giants Nike and Adidas and luxury brands like Fendi and Louis Vuitton.
Through his investment with Kicks Crew, Lilliard was able to connect “on a real level” with people in Asia. In June 2023, Lillard coached high school students in gyms across lower-income areas of Kowloon.
“I want people to feel a part of something, and I want them to feel connected to something that’s not just transactional,” he says.
“My career was built on forming that community of people that appreciate and respect what I do and how I do it,” Lillard says. “My role [at Kicks Crew] is being a part of creating that type of community and then just growing it from there.”
Lillard added that through his partnership with Kicks Crew, he will remain in the game to “steer the potential of the company.” Based on his prior experience, he wants to ensure the products from Kicks Crew are authentic to the consumers, especially in a market with a significant problem with counterfeit consumer goods.
According to Sports Illustrated, Lillard is rumored to be traded, but has expressed that he wants to stay in Portland.
Family Sues Akron and 8 Officers Who Shot Jayland Walker
Months after a grand jury declined to indict eight police officers in Akron, Ohio, who shot dead Jayland Walker, a 25-year-old Black man, his family is seeking at least $45 million in a federal lawsuit – $1 million for each bullet that hit him, the lawsuit says.
The case, filed Friday in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Ohio, says that excessive force was used, and sues eight officers, the City of Akron, Mayor Daniel Horrigan and Police Chief Stephen Mylett, alleging systemic misconduct and failures in the department.
Neither the police chief nor the mayor could be immediately reached by Reuters. A spokeswoman for the city told the Akron Beacon Journal that there would be no comment on the litigation from the city.
In a press conference on Friday, Bobby DiCello, the family’s attorney, said that the lawsuit will begin to tell the “true story” of what happened to Walker that night.
“Jayland Walker’s death has been mischaracterized as his fault,” DiCello said.
The officers pursued Walker on foot after an attempted traffic stop in June 2022 and shot him dozens of times, including five times in the back, police officials said.
Police opened fire after mistakenly thinking Walker reached into his waistband for a gun, Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost said during an April briefing to announce the grand jury’s decision.
“Only then did the officers fire believing Mr. Walker was firing again at them,” said Yost, whose office was asked by local prosecutors to investigate the shooting.
Earlier, while driving his car with officers in pursuit, Walker had fired at least one shot at them, but he left the gun in the car when he fled on foot, Yost said.
State law allows officers to use deadly force against a deadly threat to themselves or others, he added.
Walker’s death garnered national attention and roiled the city amid heightened tensions with police over the killing of another Black man, after a spate of such deaths across the United States.
This week, police in Minneapolis came under federal oversight after a Department of Justice (DOJ) review found routine use of excessive force against Black and Native American people, ending a two-year investigation prompted by the police killing of George Floyd.
In March, the DOJ found similar problems in the Louisville, Kentucky, police department, following the 2020 shooting death of Breonna Taylor.
Walker’s mother, Pamela Walker, attended the press conference, breaking down in tears as she hugged her attorneys. She declined comment to Reuters when reached later by telephone.
The city has not released the names of the officers involved in Walker’s shooting. A media lawsuit seeking the names of the officers is pending before the Ohio Supreme Court.
Black Father And Son Launch 4th Annual Online Summer Camps To Teach Financial Literacy
Kevon Chisolm and his 16-year-old son, Kamari, the founders of Junior Wallstreeters, Inc. a non-profit, are offering online summer camps for children for the fourth year in a row. Their camps are great for preventing learning loss and offer fun environments for students to learn wealth-building concepts with other like-minded students.
Kevon comments, “In addition to topics like budgeting, banking, and investing in the stock market, our camp goes beyond others by exploring community wealth building through investment clubs.”
He adds, “Our goal is to teach financial education to address the wealth gap by showing young people how to properly use money as a tool.”
Recent calculations by Federal Reserve data, show only 34% of African American households owned any stocks and 24% of Latino households owned any stocks, while 61% of white households did.
Kevon and Kamari believe that one way African Americans and Latinos can address this disparity is by becoming more financially literate at an early age. These camps are not only for African Americans but all underserved communities.
One child that participated last summer wrote: I absolutely loved the Financial Literacy Program with Mr. Chisolm and Ms. Goslee. It has given me some experience with the stock market and showed me new things that will help me as I become an adult. This class is perfect for kids and teens. It teaches you not only about the stock market, but also about African American history, credit and debit cards, and insurance. As someone who never got the chance to learn about insurance in a regular school setting, this made a big impact on me. I look forward to doing more classes like this in the future.
In addition to the basic financial literacy camp from the last two summers, Junior Wallstreeters is offering the following: 1) Introduction to Cryptocurrency and NFTs; and 2) Advanced Stock Analysis and Advanced Investment Clubs. The financial literacy and investing session is a prerequisite for these advanced sessions.
The schedule for summer 2023:
The Financial Literacy and Investing Camp will be held virtually every two weeks for six weeks between June 26th-August 4th, from 10:30am-3:30pm EST with a 1-hour lunch break. The Introduction to Cryptocurrency will be held from July 10th-14th from 10:30-3:30pm EST. The Advanced Stock Analysis and Advanced Investment Clubs Camps will be held July 24th to August 4th from 10:30am-3:30pm EST. Each student that registers for the Introduction to Cryptocurrency and Advanced Stock Analysis summer camps will receive cryptocurrency and a gift card to purchase shares in a company.
Students must be between the ages of 12-21 and have a computer with Internet access. The cost of the two-week camp sessions is from $300 to $325. This fee includes an electronic student handbook and daily course access. Junior Wallstreeters have secured several scholarships for underserved students to attend the financial literacy and investing camps.
Kevon asserts: “We want to give as many students the opportunity to obtain a financial education regardless of their parent’s financial situation.” Families interested in obtaining a scholarship to attend the camp should visit the official website for the scholarship application.
Young Black Fempreneur Reveals How She Turned a $100 Investment Into $200K With Dropshipping
Shonae Jones, a successful dropshipper and the young CEO of The Fempreneur Agency, is empowering a new generation of women entrepreneurs with her inspiring story of how she turned a $100 investment into $200K in less than a year.
Like many individuals, 34-year-old Shonae felt trapped in a job that she didn’t like and actively sought a way out. She started her first ecommerce business several years ago designing themes for Blackberry phones. When Blackberry stopped manufacturing devices, Shonae turned to designing cases for iPhones. This worked for a while but was short-lived because she didn’t have the resources or manpower to grow the business. So, when she learned that dropshipping allowed her to skip inventory, she didn’t hesitate.
Dropshipping is a business model of fulfilling eCommerce purchases without stocking products or owning a physical location. The seller purchases only what is needed from a wholesaler. When an order is received, the wholesaler ships the order to the customer.
An entrepreneur at heart and blessed, Shonae was excited about the prospect of dropshipping. She comments: “I was only making 30K a year as a legal assistant, so my budget to begin marketing was only $100. I needed to drive traffic to the store to make sales, so I used the same marketing strategies from when I was selling the phone cases. It worked! I utilized the strategy consistently and re-invested in the business with my 9 to 5 money as I went along.”
She adds, “Within 2 months, I was making 3K per month and within the next 4 months, I was making 10K-15K per month. By the end of the year, I had made 200K and was able to quit the toxic legal job I hated.”
Realizing the depth of her success with dropshipping, Shonae’s friends began asking her for help to start their stores, which birthed the idea for The Fempreneur Agency.
Touted as The Beyonce of Dropshipping, The Fempreneur Agency is a web design agency that creates expert Prebuilt Shopify Stores coupled with marketing strategies for women that want to fast-track their way to e-commerce success. The websites are completely customizable, and owners can choose from a range of products to sell- from luxury hair and handbags to sleepwear and baby clothes. Moreover, each website comes preloaded with 20 bestselling products that are ready to sell and fulfilled by USA-based suppliers.
Since launching The Fempreneur Agency, which is based in Richmond, Virginia, Shona has helped over 3,000 women start and grow thriving e-commerce businesses. One customer, Shameria J. said: “I’ve been trying for 5 years to start a drop shipping business on my own and wasn’t able due to not having the time to research. I was skeptical at first but decided to take the chance and invest the money to have to set up a store for my little girl’s 9th birthday. They did not disappoint at all. She made $297 in less than 48 hours with her store. I’m ready to purchase your services to add more stores.”
The Fempreneur Agency’s Prebuilt Shopify dropshipping store is affordably priced at $239. For further information, visit FemprenAgency.com.
Strikeout: New Study Shows Black Representation in MLB Continues to Plunge
The number of Black Major League Baseball (MLB) players is at an all-time low, according to a recent study.
Per The Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport at Central Florida (TIDES), Black players accounted for 6.2% of the total number of MLB players on rosters for opening day of the 2023 season. TIDES’ racial and gender report card for MLB revealed that representation for Black players in the league dropped from last year’s record low (7.2%) by one percent. The report card gave a C-plus overall, according to the U.S. News & World Report. A B was given for racial hiring, while a grade of C was given for gender hiring.
The MLB is hopeful that Black youth might become more interested in the sport. TIDES director Richard Lapchick said, per the U.S. News & World Report, “I think that if it’s possible that the player number is going to be reversed, then it’s going to happen because of the efforts [MLB is] putting into it.” The league’s efforts to diversify the sport include the MLB Youth Academy, the DREAM Series, and a 10-year pledge of $150 million with the Players Alliance.
Per MLB’s website, 34% of youth participating in its Reviving Baseball in Inner Cities program are Black or African American. This number is the highest, with Hispanic or Latino youth coming in second (31%).
Diversity remains a major focus for the league on and off the field, and indeed TIDES gave the league an A for diversity initiatives. Billy Bean, senior vice president of diversity, equity, and inclusion for the MLB,said, “We are encouraged by the progress being made at various levels of the pipeline. Diversity remains a top priority for our entire industry and we are committed to this as a long-term effort.” Per the league’s website, women account for 20% of diversity in MLB’s networks, clubs, central office, and advanced media. Within the MLB central office, 10% are Black or African American.
BLACK ENTERPRISE reported in 2022 that there were no American-born Black players in the MLB World Series for the first time in more than 70 years.
