The Takeaway

The name “Moore Kismet” means “more than fate.”

Moore Kismet also known as Omar Davis has accomplished quite a bit for a 17 year old. In both 2021 and 2020, they were featured in Billboard's 21 Under 21 and in 2020 Dancing Astronaut named them the Breakout Artist of the Year. 

Last year, at the age of 16, Moore Kismet became one of the youngest artist to ever play a set at Lollapalooza.

The festival in Chicago's Grant Park hosts an estimated 400,000 people each July and sells out annually, and it is considered one of the longest-running in the United States and one of the most iconic music festivals in the world. Last year, Lolla dropped rapper DaBaby from its lineup after he made homophobic remarks on July 25, 2021 at Miami's Rolling Loud Festival. A month later, he apologized at Hot 97 Summer Jam. Instead, Young Thug, creator of the 2016 original album "JEFFERY" performed.

At the time of its release, the album caused some buzz online because some fans found it quite subversive that a rapper with the monicker Young Thug chose to cover an album with a photo of himself in a designer dress (which to be fair was designed by a man and originally modeled by a male model), but this was a little overblown. It's not just the Alessandro Trincone designed dress Young Thug wears, it's his view that matters. In a Calvin Klein’s Fall 2016 campaign Young Thug said, “In my world, you can be a gangsta with a dress or you can be a gangsta with baggy pants. I feel like there’s no such thing as gender.” 

Black artist defying gender norms and heteronormative ideas of what it means to be Black is nothing new in music, but it is becoming more prevalent in genres like hip hop where topics like homosexuality have long been taboo. This is evidenced by the rise of openly Queer artist like Lil Nas X and TikTok rapper Dellie Boe. Their prominence in a genre that has often shunned openly queer voices reveals the push and pull of progress within hip hop, a music industry that has always depended on Black creativity.

It also shows the push and pull of culture as generational and demographic shifts occur. More and more people are openly identifying as LGBTQ+ nationally and globally. According to Gallup, 7.1 percent of the U.S. is now openly queer. Data suggest that nearly 15.9 % of Generation Z, already noted for its immense racial diversity, also identifies as LGBTQ+, making it the most openly queer generation yet.

But there's always an attempt to roll back what's been pushed forward.

As we see a record number of people openly identifying as queer, state legislatures across the country have filed nearly 240 anti-LGBTQIA+ laws in the first three months of 2022. Most of these laws target trans and nonconforming people, who are often the most vulnerable to discrimination and hate, especially Black and Brown trans youth.

Proponents of these bills say they’re about parental rights, protecting children, religious freedom or a combination of all three. However, opponents contend that it is discriminatory and about scoring political points with conservative voters rather than protecting constituents.

Today, a new generation of unapologetically Black, openly Queer and nonconforming musicians and creatives like Moore Kismet AKA Omar Davis have emerged.

They are pushing the boundaries of R&B, hip hop and dance music while re-centering the Black queer legacy in house and techno music. We got the chance to speak to them about telling the stories of young, Black, queer love and how they're taking the dance and electronic music industry by storm in this special edition of Black.Queer.Rising. 

Want to hear more of Kismet and artist like them?

If so, check out our first Black.Queer.Rising. playlist which features mostly Black queer artist whose music is redefining the sound and feel of hip hop and dance music.

Since the start of Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson’s Supreme Court confirmation hearings, one of the most pernicious lines of attack from Republican senators has been Judge Jackson’s history of sentencing with child pornography cases.

Senators including Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz have taken examples from Judge Jackson’s career out of context to paint her as extreme on this issue, when in reality, the sentences she’s issued in the past have been entirely within the mainstream compared to other federal judges. We’re taking a moment to offer some context into the GOP attacks with Melissa Murray, Law Professor at NYU, faculty director of the Birnbaum Women’s Leadership Network and co-host of the legal podcast called “Strict Scrutiny.” 

Continue watching the the hearings live. 

To celebrate the 10th anniversary of the Disney animated series Doc McStuffins, we meet the real life inspiration behind the character, Dr. Myiesha Taylor, board-certified emergency medicine physician specialist and a fellow of the American College of Emergency Physicians. Dr. Taylor joins us to talk about her path to emergency medicine and the importance of representation in the media.

Senate confirmation hearings got underway on Monday for Supreme Court nominee Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson. In some ways, Judge Jackson has had similar path to the Supreme Court as several other sitting justices, including being a Supreme Court clerk. It is an experience shared by 6 of the 9 current justices and one that Judge Jackson addressed in her opening statement when she thanked retiring Justice Breyer for the experience of serving as his clerk.According to a report by the National Law Journal, from 2005 to 2017, 85 percent of Supreme Court clerks were white, and two thirds were male. To help us understand a little more about clerking, and how we’re slowly moving towards a federal judiciary that is more diverse in various ways, we spoke to Cecillia Wang, Deputy Legal Director at the National ACLU and director of the Center for Democracy, and Cecillia clerked for Justice Harry A. Blackmun (working in the chambers of Justice Stephen G. Breyer) from 1996-1997.

In recent years, there’s been a lot of media coverage surrounding head trauma among football players, but there's been little attention paid to another group that also experiences serious head trauma at an alarming rate: domestic violence survivors.

In fact, research shows that they may experience head trauma even more than football players but are unfortunately often undiagnosed. According to some estimates, 1.6 million survivors of domestic abuse will experience brain injuries annually.

For more on this, The Takeaway spoke with Rachel Ramirez,  the Founder and Director of The Center on Partner-Inflicted Brain Injury, a project of the Ohio Domestic Violence Network, and Eve Valera, associate professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and a leading researcher on traumatic brain injuries among survivors of domestic violence. 

Plus, The Takeaway hears from Davine Manson, a volunteer with the nonprofit PINK Concussions. She's also starting her own organization to help women who’ve experienced domestic violence.

In an effort to restrict abortion access, similar to the Texas abortion ban, Missouri Representative Elizabeth Coleman has introduced a bill that would allow citizens to sue anyone helping Missouri residents get an abortion in or outside of the state. The bill would also prevent access to medicated abortions.

We speak with Rachel Rebouché, Interim Dean of Temple University Beasley School of Law and the James E. Beasley Professor of Law, about the constitutionality of this bill and what states and the federal government could do to protect reproductive rights.

Senate confirmation hearings for Supreme Court nominee Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson begin this week. 

Watch the hearing live, starting Monday March 21st at 11 a.m.

We speak with Fatima Goss Graves, president of the National Women’s Law Center, about Judge Jackson’s judicial philosophy, her experience as a federal public defender, and what these bring to the high court.

Why are the cases of missing Black women and girls not covered as extensively as other missing people?

We talk with Soledad O’Brian, creator of the four-part HBO documentary series Black and Missing, about why this disparity exists and what one organization is doing to fix that.

Last week, President Joe Biden called Vladimir Putin a “war criminal” for Russia’s violent invasion of Ukraine. One day later, Secretary of State Antony Blinken agreed with the president’s assessment.

While proving that a state leader committed a war crime is a complicated process, the label is a charged one that carries significant weight coming from a U.S. leader. The Takeaway speaks with Leila Sadat, professor of International Criminal Law at the Washington University in St. Louis and director of the Crimes Against Humanity Initiative, about the process of proving a war crime has been committed and whether more accountability is needed for all nations, including the U.S., who violate the laws of war.

In March 1972 Gary, Indiana hosted the very first National Black Political Convention. Attendees included Black Panther co-founder Bobby Seale and US Presidential Candidate Shirley Chisholm. Artists and athletes like Muhammad Ali and Harry Belafonte also attended.  The convention produced a foundational document titled The Black Agenda.

Here at Gary we are faithful to the best hopes of our fathers and our people if we move for nothing less than a politics which places community before individualism, love before sexual exploitation, a living environment before profits, peace before war, justice before unjust “order”, and morality before expediency (The Black Agenda)

The Takeaway Melissa Harris-Perry and co-host Dorian Warren take a Deep Dive into the political gathering that changed Black politics, asking how it affected the women leading locally today. Melissa and Dorian talk about Gary with former Gary, Indiana mayor Karen Freeman-Wilson about the anniversary, her current work as the President and CEO of the Chicago Urban League, and the importance of Women Leading Locally.

Throughout March for Women’s History Month, The Takeaway is joining forces with the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University to bring you the stories of Women Leading Locally. Professor Wendy Smooth is Associate Professor and Associate Dean at Ohio State University. Her scholarly work includes Perceptions of Power and Influence: The Impact of Race and Gender in American State Legislatures, which examines the impact of race and gender on the distribution of power and influence in U.S. state legislatures. She joined to discuss the importance of women in leadership positions on the local level and her advocacy work to insure more women are elected to office.