Over the next few weeks I’ll be doing some work with the Intercultural Cancer Council, who is having their Biennial Symposium in Houston June 26-July 1.  The symposium will focus on Minorities, The Medically Underserved and Health Equity.

I want to start by introducing you to Lovell Jones, PhD., founding co-chair of the Intercultural Cancer Council who launched the conference 25 years ago. Dr. Jones is a professor in the Department of Health Disparities Research at MD Anderson.

Take a look at this video where he talks about the importance of S.T.E.M. (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) Education and getting children involved at a young age.

Donna Summer – the Queen of Disco — died this morning after a battle with cancer … TMZ has learned.

We’re told Summer was in Florida at the time of her death. She was 63-years-old.

Summer was a 5-time Grammy winner who shot to superstardom in the ’70s with iconic hits like “Last Dance,” “Hot Stuff” and “Bad Girls.”

She continued her dominance in the ’80s with “She Works Hard for the Money” and “This Time I Know It’s for Real.”

Summer and her producer Giorgio Moroder defined the dance music era of the ’70s and influenced acts like Duran Duran and David Bowie to enter the genre.

Summer married Brooklyn Dreams singer Bruce Sudano back in 1980. They had two daughters together.

Courtesy TMZ.com

Update: Clark’s rep tells TMZ, the TV icon had been in St. John’s hospital in L.A. after undergoing an outpatient procedure last night. Clark suffered the “massive” heart attack following the procedure. Attempts to resuscitate him were unsuccessful.

Dick Clark – famed TV producer, and “New Year’s Rockin’ Eve” host — died from a massive heart attack this morning … TMZ has learned.

He was 82.

Details surrounding his death are unclear, but Clark had suffered a significant stroke in 2004 — forcing him to retire from his hosting gig at “New Years’ Rockin’ Eve,” which he created in 1972.

Ryan Seacrest took over in 2006. Dick has co-hosted the show ever since.

Before suffering a stroke, Clark told Larry King he suffered from Type 2 diabetes.

Clark has been married 3 times — and has 3 children from his first two marriages. He is survived by his current wife Kari Wigton.

“For now, Dick Clark … so long.”

Black cake, white teeth, a lot of smiling laughing faces in the crowd which look, without any context, like they are making a mockery of black women at the very least.  Just looking at the photo, I totally missed that the head of the cake is of a real person.

The lady holding the fork is Swedish minister of culture Lena Adelsohn Liljeroth.  She’s participating in the opening of an art exhibit at Stockholm’s Moderna Museet.  The art is supposed to highlight the problem of female circumcision.

On the horrid video above, the artist is screaming as people cut the cake. It’s awful all around.

I get that art is supposed to be shocking, provocative and even offensive at times.  But if the goal is to shine the light on genital mutilation and yet the whole conversation is about how racist it is, then the artist missed the mark.

Commentary on genital mutilation should elicit shouts of glee and giddiness.  I saw the image on Facebook posted by Adrienne George Lind from the Black Women in Europe blog, and she says there are groups in Sweden who are lashing out against the event, especially the Minister of Culture’s participation.

Tupac‘s famously protective mother Afeni Shakur agrees with the rest of the planet — the rapper’s resurrection at Coachella this weekend … in the form of an incredibly lifelike hologram … was mind-blowingly awesome.

A rep for Afeni tells TMZ, she was absolutely positively THRILLED with Tupac’s virtual performance – when he appeared alongside Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg during the headlining show at Coachella last night … walking back and forth across the stage like he was actually present.

Afeni didn’t attend the performance — but we’re told she watched it unfold live on the Internet … but while it was thrilling, the entire experience was bittersweet.

The rep says Dr. Dre asked Afeni for approval to incorporate Pac into his performance — and she said yes. As a thank you, we’re told Dre made a donation to the rapper’s charity … The Tupac Amaru Shakur Foundation.

TMZ also spoke with Dre’s crewmate Daz Dillinger — who tells us, Nate Dogg was originally supposed to appear as a hologram as well, but the decision was made at the last minute not to use him. Nate got a video tribute instead.

Story Courtesy TMZ.com

Mary J. Blige says she never signed off on the controversial fried chicken ad that she shot for Burger King– at least not the version that was blasted on the Internet.

In a statement, Mary J. tells TMZ, “I agreed to be a part of a fun and creative campaign that was supposed to feature a dream sequence. Unfortunately, that’s not what was happening in that clip.”

The spot — which Burger King has since yanked from its YouTube site — features Mary singing about a new crispy chicken wrap. The ad drew tons of criticism on Twitter for playing off a stereotype about African-Americans and chicken.

Mary also says, “I understand my fans being upset by what they saw. But, if you’re a Mary fan, you have to know I would never allow an unfinished spot like the one you saw to go out.”

Burger King confirms the ad was released prematurely … “before all of the licensing and final approvals were obtained.” The fast food giant also says, “We would like to apologize to Mary J. and all of her fans for airing an ad that was not final.”

Burger King says the final … approved version will be released soon.

I thought their choice of title was superb. Especially in light of the fact that when I wrote the speech, the latest attacks on Martin’s character had not reached the level we’re now seeing.

I would like to thank the Society of Professional Journalists for the opportunity to speak with you today.  It was my intention to discuss with you some of my thoughts on the state of journalism, as I did when I shared with the local group last year.

As a member of the Advisory Board at the Poynter Institute I’ve had the opportunity to see so much of what’s working and not working in news.

To look at various models that individuals and companies are using to try to generate revenue in these times of struggle and tumult.  I wanted to encourage our young journalists to understand that though they are looking towards a media/news industry whose business model is under duress, the content they produce is becoming more and more valuable everyday.

I wanted to share with you how Google Panda, a change to Google’s search algorithm, is rewarding quality journalism and penalizing sites with poor quality content. I was gonna tell a few jokes.  And I also planned to give subtle hints about how my book Blogging While Black is available on Amazon.com.

Believe me it would have been a great talk. And since I’m working my way up the ranks, maybe the national organization will invite me to share my thoughts on these topics at the national meeting in Ft. Lauderdale.

But I would be remiss if I did not spend the few minutes you’ve been gracious enough to give me today to share a few thoughts on the situation with Trayvon Martin, the 17 year old African-American male who was shot down after a trip to the convenience store.

You know when I started DallasSouthBlog.com in 2006, I thought maybe I would be able to help portray positive images of African-Americans to combat the negative images we often saw (and still see for that matter) on television.

My hope was that we might reach a point where we was a community in Dallas and we as a nation would not automatically judge a young black man by the fact that he’s wearing a hoodie.

I must respectfully disagree with a journalist who I once greatly respected.  Geraldo Rivera said on Friday he would “bet money” that Trayvon Martin wouldn’t have been fatally shot if he had not been wearing a hoodie.  Geraldo went on to say that When you see a black or Latino youngster, particularly on the street, you walk to the other side of the street. You try to avoid the confrontation, Geraldo says.

Back in 2006, there were very few outlets where African-Americans could go to express their outrage at comments like Geraldo’s or injustices like what we’ve seen over the last few weeks with Trayvon Martin, where a neighborhood patrolman cold pull the trigger on kid walking down the street and hide behind a Stand Your Ground Law.

Let me take a second to say from what I heard on the 911 tapes and it sounded like Mr. Zimmerman was not standing his ground, he was staking his ground.  The plight of Trayvon’s parents have been greatly helped by social media.

It serves as a reminder that African-Americans were the first to use the internet and social media as an effective tool for social change.

The reason why I wrote my book Blogging While Black was because I wanted to make sure the history of the Black Blogging Movement was not forgotten.  Before the Tea Party, Before the Arab Spring, before Occupy Wall Street, African-Americans used the internet to express generations of frustration with the media.

The case of a 14 year old black female in Paris, Texas became the tipping point.  When Shaquanda Cotton was reported to have received a 7 year sentence for pushing down a hall monitor at her high school, the story spread across the internet like wildfire. To be fair, the actual sentence was one to seven years, but it was the possibility of serving 7 years for the incident that got everyone’s attention.

Howard Witt of the Chicago Tribune brought the story to national prominence in a March 12 2007 article.  I’d actually heard about the story prior to Witt’s article from a cousin who referred me to the African American News and Issues newspaper.  But it was Witt’s article that brought the incident to national prominence.

The reason I feel the need to revisit March 2007 is because I think it’s easy to forget just how much technology has changed the way we interact, how we report, and how we advocate for the things we believe in.  Shaquanda Cotton’s plight was an aha moment, not just for black bloggers, but for African-Americans in general.  Many of us realized that there were others our there who had the same feeling of frustration with how things were going.

The problems relating to race faced in Dallas, were similar to those in Philadelphia and Los Angeles and in Cinncinnati.  African-Americans across the country used the internet to express their frustration by blogging and commenting and emailing about the events in my hometown.

The Cotton case became a focal point, drawing a line in the sand saying something’s gotta change.  And while the justice system was the main focus, the media came under scrutiny as well.

Why was it the Chicago Tribune that brought this story to national prominence?  Why not the Dallas Morning News?  In the weeks following his initial article, Witt was the first to write about the Black Blogosphere as a collective, chronicling the way African Americans were pushing the story and putting pressure on the juvenile justice system.

As Witt gave updates he actually started reaching out to Black Bloggers to help get  his stories a broader audience.  The night before his articles hit the front page of the Chicago Tribune, Witt had already emailed a link to the story out to bloggers who were discussing and commenting on them before print readers sat down at the table with their morning cup of Joe.

It doesn’t seem that out of the ordinary today for a newspaper man or woman to use bloggers as a source. To use bloggers as a mean to help promote their stories.  But in 2007 this was far outside of mainstream behavior.

Witt used the same formula after writing an article about the Jena 6 in May of 2008.  Black bloggers began to weigh in on the plight of 6 young men who had be jailed after a school fight fueled by racial unrest in the small town.  One of the young men was charged with second degree attempted murder.

For weeks and months the story was kept alive by Black Bloggers and after a day of Blogging for Justice in late August the mainstream media began to take note.  News organizations asked themselves again, why was The Chicago Tribune the only major paper outside of Louisiana to tell this story. The Guardian was reporting about Jena before many newspapers stateside.

After the election of President Obama in 2008, the Black Blogosphere saw a steep decline.  It was as if everyone believed the myth that electing a Black President had solved America’s race problems.

And while it was more difficult to get issues of race heard after the election of President Obama, the real difficulty for bloggers came with the new tools of social media.  When we were writing about Paris, Texas, Facebook was still most popular on college campuses.  And Twitter was celebrating it’s first birthday.

Once Facebook and Twitter became everyday tools for everyday people, Black Blogging lost it’s luster.

Conversations that once took place solely on blogs like Electronic Village and Field Negro and Black and Missing but Not Forgotten were now being held on millions of Facebook walls across the world.

It wasn’t long before many of these sites that had played such a vital role in over the previous two years began to fade into the background.  We didn’t Adapt to the new technologies, at least as tools for activism.

But over the last few weeks, we’ve seen a renewal of the spirit from the Black Blogger Movement.  As Facebook and Twitter and You Tube spread the story of 17 year old Trayvon Martin, shot down in cold blood holding only a bag of skittles and a can of ice tea.

While I have yet to write about the story, I’ve shared updates on my Facebook wall, posted a photo of LeBron James and the Miami Heat wearing hoodies on my Tumblr, and got in a Twitter war of words on the topic with another local writer.

We’ve seen million hoodie marches in New York and Philadelphia.  Yesterday Paul Quinn College honored the slain young man with Trayvon Martin Day.  And on Monday UT Arlington students will host a Justice for Trayvon Martin Hoodie March.

It was almost a year from the time that Shaquanda Cotton was sentenced until Howard Witt wrote his article that stirred the Black Web Roots.  It was nine months between the fight in Jena and the Jena March.  It’s been less than a month since Trayvon Martin was killed by a neighborhood watch patrolman who was told to quit following him by a 911 dispatcher.

I think the media landscape is better than it was 6 years ago.  There are still negative portrayals of African-Americans to be sure.  And missing black women still don’t get the airtime as women of other ethnicities.

But as much as anything else, I believe the mainstream media has come to realize some of their problems.  The institutional biases that still exist from the days of segregation and Jim Crow. The inherent biases that we all bring to stories we write and editorialize about.  And the lack of diversity in newsrooms that has only gotten worse with the recent media turmoil and upheaval.  Though the effort to fix the problems are slow, I think acknowledging the issues are a major step.

Let me say that we still see journalists and reports making the same types of judgements as the trigger happy patrolman.

Maybe it’s not a hoodie that leads to a rush to judgement, but maybe it’s the preacher in a 5 button suit.  Maybe it’s a council person who splits his or her verbs.  Maybe it’s the community leader with a think accent.

While pen to paper or fingers to keyboard may not inflict a fatal wound, character assassinations have real consequences that too few reporters acknowledge these days.  Like it or not, our biases and judgements affect our reporting, and too often people of color are disproportionately affected.  This can be evidenced by the reporter who flippantly calls a Black Police chief a nasty, vile name or by the perpetuation of the Angry Black Woman meme against the first lady.

Yesterday my son and daughter and I were at McDonald’s.  We ordered pancakes and I sent Isaiah to the counter to get a couple of packets of butter.  I noticed he was wearing a hoodie, with the hood pulled up on his head.  I saw a 10 year old boy who loves to have fun, play with his sister, a gifted student who I wish would study just a little bit harder in school.   Trayvon’s been described as being a fun loving kid who loved sports, Avatar The Last Airbender, and still liked to go to Chuck E. Cheeses.  Those same things could be said about my son, a probably the same for many of you in the room who have kids.

As I looked at my son in McDonalds, I realized someone could see him with his hoodie on and let their preconceived notions and bias influence how they treat him.  I thought about how devastated Trayvon’s parents must be, as they ask only that the man who shot and killed their son be arrested and let the justice system decide his fate.

If any of you are ever asked to write a story about my son, about his greatest successes or the inevitable failures that we all must experience in life.  All I ask is that you be fair. Acknowledge the biases that you bring to the story.  Acknowledge the opposing views that may be held by people who do not look like you, who may have had different experiences, whose opinions you may not understand. I ask that you don’t spin the story to sell more paper or entice more clicks.

That you don’t see him as an opportunity for gotcha journalism, passed off as investigative reporting.  Though the business of journalism is hurting, the need for the true principles represented by the profession have never been more valuable.  And the individuals who choose to use the news to make a difference are also more valuable than ever.

Whether it’s for a newspaper, or a website or even a public relations agency, all I ask, is that you be true to yourself, and true to those who need you most.  Someone like my son Isaiah or like soemone like Trayvon Martin.  Thank you so much for the opportunity, and thank you for listening.