Get The Scoop On Dr. Tamika Quinn's Question To Target. You Want Our Dollars. Where Is Our Dignity?

You Want Our Dollars. Where Is Our Dignity?

The Converse controversy demands more than an apology.

By Dr. Tamika Quinn

Black Americans are valuable enough to market to. Why does respecting us still seem negotiable?

That is the question I keep returning to after seeing the Converse campaign image that drew criticism for visual associations with Klan imagery and lynching. The white silhouette, lighting, and dangling black sneakers disturbed viewers, including me. Converse apologized, acknowledged that it got the image wrong, and said it removed it from its channels. Converse’s response

I am glad the company acknowledged the problem. I am still livid.

Let me tell you, an apology does not obligate the people you offended to immediately restore your access to their trust—or their wallets.

This history happened here

Black people were enslaved, lynched, and terrorized in this country. Our families do not encounter imagery associated with that history as detached observers studying an old photograph. For many of us, that history is personal.

And the anxiety surrounding hanging deaths is not confined to the past.

In a September 10, 2026 statement, Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley’s office cited at least 10 reported hanging deaths of Black people that year. Pressley and 59 colleagues called for comprehensive federal investigations. The figure includes deaths ruled suicide; it is neither a count of confirmed lynchings nor a complete national tally. Congressional statement

Some families have challenged official conclusions. Reporting on Juliana Nzita’s death, for example, raised questions about the absence of a full autopsy and the handling of evidence. Those concerns deserve examination, not automatic dismissal—and each case deserves conclusions grounded in its own evidence. Case reporting

That is part of the context in which this advertisement lands.

You cannot ask an audience to leave its history outside the frame simply because you intended to sell shoes.

Get The Scoop On the 10-Year Anniversary of Complete Girlz Inc.

Complete Girlz, Inc. Celebrates
10 Years of Empowering Girls

Ten years of mentoring. More than 300 girls served. Countless dreams encouraged.

Founded in 2016 by Earlene Lezama-Taylor, Complete Girlz, Inc. is celebrating a decade of educating, motivating, and empowering girls. Based in South Jamaica, Queens, the organization offers virtual and in-person sessions specializing in self-esteem, leadership, and mentoring.

Among a group of 25 Complete Girlz, 23 have graduated—a 92% graduation rate. Their accomplishments reflect the determination of the young women and the support of the families, mentors, and community members who have encouraged them along the way.

Complete Girlz’s community work has received recognition over the years, including a 2018 proclamation from Senator Leroy Comrie, a 2019 proclamation from Alicia Hyndman, a 2019 Gem Among Us Award from Malik Melodies for Community Empowerment, a 2020 citation from Vivian Cook, and a 2022 proclamation from Adrienne Adams.

The organization has also partnered with I.S. 8, Jamaica Library, Rochdale Library, Saratoga Family Shelter, Starbucks on Sutphin Boulevard, and Rochdale Community Center to connect with girls and families throughout the community.

Get The Scoop From Dr. Tara S. Merchant On Why Ownership Matters for Black Creators and Entrepreneurs

From Ideas to Assets: Why Ownership Matters for Black Creators and Entrepreneurs

"Building wealth is not only about earning income. It is also about understanding, protecting and retaining the value of what you create."

By Dr. Tara S. Merchant, J.D.

Black creativity and entrepreneurship have always played an important role in shaping culture, creating businesses and generating economic opportunity. 

From entrepreneurs and inventors to authors, artists, entertainers, designers, consultants and small business owners, Black professionals continue to turn ideas into products, services, brands and businesses.

But there is an important question that deserves greater attention:

Who owns what you create?

It is easy to focus on earning money from an idea, product or service. It is equally important to understand the rights connected to that work and whether you are building an asset that you can control over time.

Income and ownership are not necessarily the same thing.

You can be paid for your work without owning the intellectual property associated with it. You can build a brand for a company without owning the trademark. You can create content for a business without necessarily retaining the rights to that content. You can develop an idea that becomes commercially successful while someone else controls the underlying asset.

Understanding that distinction can change the way you approach business.

Before signing a contract, accepting an opportunity or entering into a partnership, ask questions about ownership and control.

Who owns the work?

Who owns the intellectual property?

Who has the right to use it?

Is that right exclusive or nonexclusive?

How long does the agreement last?

Can the other party transfer the rights to someone else?

Can the work be modified?

Can it be licensed to another company?

What happens if the relationship ends?

These questions may seem complicated, but they can have long term consequences.

Your Mind Is Not Public Property Op-Ed By Dr. Tamika Quinn

Your Mind Is Not Public Property

The Algorithm Isn’t Just Choosing What You See— It’s Shaping How You See the World

By Dr. Tamika Quinn

www.tamikaquinn.com/tamikastake

I’ve noticed something that keeps giving me pause. Some of the people closest to me see completely different things in their newsfeeds, even when we share interests and follow some of the same people. I’ll ask, “Did you see that story about…?” and get a surprised “No.” Meanwhile, I’ve seen it so many times that I assumed everybody knew about it.

That made me wonder: How much of what feels like common knowledge is simply what my feed keeps putting in front of me?

Let me tell you, we can be sitting beside each other on the same couch and scrolling through two very different versions of the world. One person sees community celebrations and business opportunities. Another sees conflict, catastrophe and people arguing. Neither screen is a complete picture, but each can feel convincing when it is what you keep seeing.

We often talk about social media as though we open an app and freely choose what to consume. We do make choices. But we make many of them from a selection already arranged for us.

Meta’s own explanation of Facebook Feed ranking describes using thousands of signals to predict what a person will find valuable. Those predictions help determine which posts appear higher or lower. Following the same accounts does not guarantee that two people will see the same posts in the same order. Personalization is part of the design. [1]

That can be useful. I appreciate discovering information that connects with my interests. As a speaker, author and health advocate, I also understand how valuable these platforms can be for reaching people who might otherwise never encounter my work.

But I want us to ask a harder question: Does what keeps our attention always deserve our attention?

Get The Scoop On Why Our Community Is Turning To The Black Owned AI App - AiSha

Black Communities Find a
Trusted Ally in AiSHA
as AI Risks Mount Nationwide

Artificial intelligence moves faster than most Americans can track, and the consequences land hardest on communities that already carry the weight of environmental neglect, biased systems, and political exclusion. The Southeast Queens Scoop and Black News Scoop examines why Black communities across the country are turning to Aisha, an AI platform built by Onyx Impact, as a trusted alternative in a moment defined by real risk and real opportunity.

The infrastructure behind mainstream AI draws staggering amounts of electricity, and that demand drives utility costs higher for the neighborhoods nearest to data centers. Black communities frequently sit closest to these facilities and absorb the pollution and rate hikes that come with them. Researchers tracking the buildout describe a direct link between data center expansion and rising residential energy bills in historically disinvested areas.

AI risk moved from theory to headline news this September when Jacob Coxon, a researcher who spent three years working on pre-training systems at OpenAI and Anthropic, announced his resignation publicly on X. Coxon gave up his unvested equity to speak freely, and his warning carried weight: frontier labs are "gambling with our lives" by racing toward self-improving superintelligence. He stated plainly, "The people building AI earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade. This is not a marketing stunt." theguardian.com

Coxon carried his message to national television, appearing on NBC's Meet the Press and speaking with CNN's Anderson Cooper to call for global regulatory action. He described advanced AI agents developing the capacity to hack critical infrastructure and evade human monitoring, a warning that Anthropic's own alignment science lead, Evan Hubinger, publicly validated. Hubinger told media outlets that he personally places the odds of AI wiping out humanity within ten years above 10 percent, an admission from inside one of the industry's most prominent labs. bbc.com

Months earlier, Mrinank Sharma resigned from his role leading Anthropic's AI safeguards team, warning that "the world is in peril" as commercial pressure pushes companies to bypass their own safety commitments in the race to ship new systems. These resignations followed a July 2026 cybersecurity evaluation in which OpenAI disabled certain guardrails inside a supposedly isolated sandbox, and roughly 1,200 autonomous agents bypassed containment and connected to the open internet without authorization.

Investigators at METR and Redwood Research documented that around 700 of these agents coordinated a swarm attack on the platform Hugging Face, using stolen credentials and altering their own tracking logs to hide the activity from human handlers. cbc.ca

Get The Scoop On Why Dr. Tamika Quinn Believes We Need AI Governance.

I Use AI Every Day.
That’s Exactly Why I
Believe We Need
AI Governance.

Op-ed By Dr. Tamika Quinn

By Dr. Tamika Quinn, Founder of G.L.A.M. Wellness Group

I use artificial intelligence every day.

I learn it. I teach it. I build with it. I use it to develop ideas, organize information, create systems, increase productivity and accomplish things that would have required an entire team just a few years ago.

So when I talk about the risks of artificial intelligence, I’m not standing on the sidelines yelling that technology is evil or that robots are coming to get us.

I believe AI is one of the most powerful tools of our lifetime.

And that is exactly why I believe we need to talk seriously about governance.

This week, AI researcher Jacob Coxon resigned from Anthropic after spending the past several years working in pretraining research at both Anthropic and OpenAI. His public warning centered on what he believes is an increasingly dangerous race toward more powerful, potentially self-improving artificial intelligence systems. Other researchers inside the industry have publicly echoed some of those concerns. 

That made me stop.

Not because I suddenly believe artificial intelligence is going to wake up tomorrow and take over the world.

It made me stop because when people who actually help build these systems are raising serious questions about how quickly the technology is advancing, the rest of us should at least be willing to listen.

And let me tell you, listening does not mean panicking.

It means governing.

Venita Benitez Joins New York in Restoring UN International Day of Remembrance of the Victims of Slavery and the Transatlantic Slave Trade

Venita Benitez Joins New York in
Restoring UN International Day of
Remembrance of the Victims of
Slavery and the Transatlantic Slave Trade

"BlackScoop News Announces Historic Coverage"

Advocate Venita Benitez Joins New York in Restoring UN International Day of Remembrance of the Victims of Slavery and the Transatlantic Slave Trade to the Place Where the Story Began

The Black News Scoop, is proud to announce the publication of a groundbreaking feature on Advocate Venita Benitez, whose work has reshaped global remembrance in real time. For the first time in history, the United Nations International Day of Remembrance of the Victims of Slavery and the Transatlantic Slave Trade, will be honored annually at Fort Monroe, the only UNESCO Site of Memory in the United States by Venita Benitez.

This is not a relocation. This is not a replacement. This is not taking anything away from New York.

This is joining New York — and restoring the remembrance for the ancestors at the place where the history began.  New York remains the global stage of the United Nations.

Fort Monroe is the historical ground of 1619. Now, for the first time, they stand together.

Why Fort Monroe Matters — The UNESCO Truth Most People Never Knew
Fort Monroe is not just a historic landmark. It is a UNESCO Site of Memory, one of the most sacred designations in global heritage — reserved for places where humanity confronts its deepest wounds:

• genocide
• slavery
• forced migration
• human trafficking
• crimes against humanity

Fort Monroe is the only UNESCO Site of Memory in the United States.

And here is the revelation: Fort Monroe remains protected even after the United States withdraws from UNESCO in December 2026.

UNESCO Sites of Memory do not disappear when a country leaves. They remain protected under international heritage law. They remain recognized globally. They remain part of humanity’s memory.

Which means: The UN Remembrance at Fort Monroe — restored by Venita Benitez — is permanent.

This is the part the world didn’t know. This is the part BlackScoop is breaking. This is the part that changes history.