Hasta La Gadget!

If there’s one thing Tyra Banks knows in this world it’s smizing.  

So, it’s no surprise that she passed on her greatest contribution to our culture ― besides the iconic “I was rooting for you” GIF ― to her offspring, who might just out-model his mom one day. 

Banks shared a photo of her 16-month-old son, York, on social media Sunday to celebrate Father’s Day. The supermodel welcomed her first child with Norwegian photographer Erik Asla, who regularly appeared on “Americas Next Top Model,” via surrogacy in January 2016.

“To all the amazing daddies out there that love their kids unconditionally like my mommy’s daddy and my daddy, too,” she wrote in the caption. “HAPPY FATHER’S DAY!”

For the record, Banks hasn’t ruled out a future modeling career for York, revealing that she would encourage her son to go into the business if he so chooses. 

“I’d be like, ‘Baby, of course you can model. You can do whatever the hell you want to do,’” Banks told Entertainment Tonight. “Unfortunately, male models, you know, their success and their pay is not like what my pay was as a model. There’s such a huge disparity.”

We can’t wait to see York posing in a greek feta salad or with a spider on his face on “ANTM,” because that show will outlive us all. 

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Nabra Hassanen was a Muslim. She was a woman. She was a person of color. And her tragic death is another reminder that carrying all of these identities in America today can be a heavy, heavy burden.

Hassanen, a 16-year-old Muslim, was brutally murdered early Sunday morning after participating in Ramadan prayers at the All Dulles Area Muslim Society (ADAMS) Center. According to reports, Hassanen and her friends were confronted by a motorist who was driving past in a car. The suspect apparently exited the vehicle holding a baseball bat, causing the girls to scatter. Hassanen was reported missing, and around 3 p.m., investigators found her body in a nearby pond. 

Police have charged a 22-year-old man, Darwin Martinez Torres of Sterling, Va., with the murder. The case is not being treated as a hate crime, and detectives suggested on Monday that a “road rage incident” could have led to the teen’s murder.

Regardless of the motivations behind Hassanen’s tragic death, the crime is a stark reminder of the vulnerable space Muslim women of color occupy in American society.

There’s a reason that despite the police’s assessment, the teen’s parents remain convinced their daughter was targeted because of her faith.

“I’m sure the guy hit my daughter because she’s Muslim and she was wearing the hijab,” Sawsan Gazzar told The Washington Post. “I don’t feel safe at all anymore, as a Muslim living here now. I’m so worried about sending my kids out and their coming back as bodies.”

The American Muslim community has experienced a dramatic uptick in Islamophobic attacks in recent years. Just last month, two men in Portland were killed after trying to stop a white supremacist from harassing a Muslim teen and her friend.

Margari Aziza Hill, director of the Muslim Anti-Racism Collaborative (MuslimARC), told HuffPost that she felt it was too early in the investigation to speculate about why Hassenen was killed, but said that the crime brought up the feelings of fear and vulnerability that plague the American Muslim community, and specifically American Muslim women. 

“What I do know is that Muslim women are often the target of Islamophobic attacks,” Hill said. “To be a visible religious minority and person of color and a woman adds layers of vulnerability to power-based violence or hate-based violence.” 

Donna Auston, a black Muslim scholar, told HuffPost that even if the police investigation concludes that Hassanen’s death was not a hate crime, Muslims can be and often are the victims of crimes that are not motivated by Islamophobia. 

“While I do not discount the very real possibility that a visibly Muslim girl was targeted and murdered near a mosque because of her religious identity ― especially in this political climate ― we also have to be mindful of the fact that Muslim women and girls in the U.S. are also subject the the full range of dangers from the violence that surrounds each of us every day,” Auston said. “That violence might be gender-based or racially motivated; it might be a result of living in an area plagued by structural poverty and an accompanying abundance of guns, or simply a tragic occurrence of opportunity for something like sexual assault or robbery. It may be more than one or all of these things at once.”

Muslim women and girls in the U.S. are also subject the the full range of dangers from the violence that surrounds each of us every day.
Donna Auston

Hassanen’s death is a reminder of the fact that young women like her occupy multiple identities that can make them targets for violence.

The interlocking forces of misogyny, racism, Islamophobia and the toxic masculinity that often fuels senseless physical violence are predicated on the objectification of the “other.” After all, when you see people as props rather than people, it becomes far easier to harm them. 

Some of the most vocal anti-Muslim voices try to hide their bigotry behind the claim that they’re trying to protect women. Anti-Muslim activists, such as the ones who organized nationwide anti-Sharia marches earlier this month, promote the idea that Islam is inherently discriminatory towards women. But as these people proclaim to be saving women, they ignore the voices and narratives of real Muslim women, who vehemently reject the idea that they need to be saved in the first place.

Amani Al-Khatahtbeh, founder of MuslimGirl, believes that at its core, “Islamophobia is gendered.”

“The Islamophobia industry strategically uses Muslim women’s bodies to perpetuate hate against Islam, such as by saying that Muslim women are oppressed to justify violence against both Muslim men and women and affirm racist ideologies against Muslim countries,” Al-Khatahtbeh told HuffPost. “The result is that already vulnerable segments of Muslims ― women that wear headscarves ― become even more polarizing and visible targets to the hate. Anti-Muslim bigots literally transform [Muslim women] into the walking symbols of everything they hate.”

This also means that Muslim women experience the brunt of Islamophobia. According to a 2017 poll from the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding, Muslim women experience more fear for their personal safety than Muslim men (47 percent vs. 31 percent) and say that they suffer emotional trauma at a higher rate than Muslim men (19 percent vs. 9 percent). Muslim women are also more than twice as likely to sign up for a self-defense course than Muslim men.

And to be a black Muslim woman in America is to be questioned about your identity from all sides ― from outside the Muslim community and within it. 

Hill told HuffPost that being a black Muslim woman in America has meant facing violent threats from white supremacists while she was studying in college. These threats left her with a sense of constant anxiety.

“Often people take these things lightly, and without hard proof, our stories are dismissed,” Hill said, adding that it’s up to allies to show up and create an environment where Muslim women are able to feel safe.

“We must see it as our responsibility to intervene and offer targets safety,” she said. “More people must work to humanize women of color, religious minorities, and those who face multiple oppressions that dehumanize them and make them targets for power based violence or hate incidents.”

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An Australian broadcaster is under fire after asking an Asian journalist, “Are you yellow?” during a contentious interview.

Red Symons, who hosts a morning show on the Australian Broadcasting Corp.’s Radio Melbourne station, apologized Monday morning for comments he made while being interviewed by colleague Beverley Wang for her new ABC podcast, “It’s Not a Race.”

During the chat, Symons told Wang he wished he could host a similarly themed podcast, “What’s the Deal With Asians?” according to HuffPost Australia.

Wang replied, “OK, let’s tackle that. What is the deal with Asians, Red?”

“No, I ask the questions. First question is, are they all the same?” before claiming the question was “a useful, general question about the nature of our culture and how one should interact with people who have a different cultural background.”

Other questions weren’t useful at all, like when Symons asked Wang, “Are you yellow?” according to News.com.au.

Symons also questioned if Wang was Chinese and seemed surprised when she explained she had a Taiwanese background but was born in Canada.

Symons: “Do they speak Mandarin or Cantonese?”

Wang: “Who’s ‘they’?”

Symons: “The people in Taiwan.”

Wang: “They speak Taiwanese and they speak Mandarin. And in Canada, where I’m from, they speak English and French.”

Symons: “I knew that. You’re probably from the west coast of Canada.”

Wang: “Why do you think that, Red?”

Symons: “Because it’s closer to Asia.”

The interview was enough of a train wreck that the Australian Broadcasting Corp. removed the podcast from its website Friday and apologized “for the content going to air,” according to The Guardian.

Symons apologized for the interview Monday morning on his radio show.

“I came across as racist, and I was wrong in the way I conducted the interview,” Symons said. “This is not who I am, and I acknowledge that on this occasion I caused offense and hurt not only to Beverley but to our listeners.

“The plan was to take on a serious topic, race and culture, and talk with Beverley about a range of related issues. I offer my sincerest apologies. We need to talk about these issues but be careful how we consider them.”

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The insurance industry’s annual confab last week was supposed to be a dry, stoic affair.

Instead, anti-coal protesters stormed the 44th Geneva Association conference at a ritzy hotel in San Francisco, plastered the bathrooms with slogan stickers and slipped fliers under the doors to executives’ rooms. A plane toting a banner reading “unfriend coal” circled the high-rise where the executives held their closing dinner and cocktail party.  

The activists’ demands were twofold: Insurance companies should divest from coal projects and stop underwriting the fossil fuel.

Insurers have raised the alarm on the risk posed by climate change in recent years, forming international coalitions aimed at preparing for the increased floods, storms and heatwaves that come with a warming planet. But of the 16 companies on the board of the Geneva Association ― the insurance industry’s think tank ― just one told HuffPost it cut off both funding and insurance for coal companies.

AXA Group, France’s largest insurer, in 2015 announced plans to divest from companies most exposed to coal activities. This April, the firm said it would no longer offer property or casualty insurance to mining companies or utilities deriving 50 percent of their sales from coal.

“Coal is often a low-cost form of energy, and is widely available to a large proportion of the world’s population,” the company said at its annual shareholder meeting on April 26. “However, coal is also the most carbon-intensive energy source. AXA, like many investors, believes coal both poses the biggest threat to the climate and its business is the most likely to be constrained.”

On the opposite end of the spectrum is XL Group, whose chief executive, Mike McGavick, is the Geneva Association’s current chairman. His Ireland-based firm has refused to divest from coal companies and continues to cover them with casualty and property insurance, calling such moves “nonsense.”

Other firms have followed his lead, including Japan’s Tokio Marine, the United Kingdom’s Lloyd’s, Brazil’s SulAmérica Seguros, Canada’s Intact, Switzerland’s Zurich Insurance Group and the People’s Insurance Company of China, known as PICC. (Berkshire Hathaway, the U.S. insurance behemoth led by billionaire Warren Buffett, underwrites and invests in coal, though the firm is not on the Geneva Association’s board.)

Italy’s biggest insurance company, Assicurazioni Generali Group, has yet to divest or curtail coverage for coal, but a spokesman told HuffPost it was completing an internal audit to determine the scope of its exposure to the fuel.

“Generali is currently performing an in-depth analysis of its exposure to coal infrastructure both from an investment and underwriting perspective,” Matthew Newton said by email. He did not respond to questions about when the audit would be complete, but suggested it could be a first step toward the company divesting and ending insurance policies for coal.

Coal divestment campaigns have gained steam in recent years as hundreds of cities and universities pull their pension funds and endowments out of the industry. The fuel faces fierce competition from natural gas and renewable energy, and its use is on pace to peak in the next decade. But scientists warn that a business-as-usual approach to the industry that’s disproportionately responsible for planet-heating emissions rapidly causing Earth’s climate to change jeopardizes any hope of averting the worst effects of global warming. 

Peter Bosshard, who coordinated last week’s protest for the activist group Unfriend Coal, said convincing insurers to abandon coal would hasten the industry’s demise.

“It’s the one critical fact that’s been left off the hook,” Bosshard, who works for the global warming advocacy group the Sunrise Project, told HuffPost on Monday. “Insurance is a precondition for any major project to go ahead. It’s one thing to divest, but more important is to stop insuring coal.”

Some companies don’t offer any insurance for coal projects. These include New Jersey-based giant Prudential, Canada’s Manulife Financial, the United Kingdom’s Aviva and the Netherlands’ Aegon.

Aviva and Aegon also have moved to pull money they manage out of coal companies. Germany’s Allianz, France’s SCOR and Switzerland’s Swiss Re similarly have committed to divest, but have stopped short of cutting off insurance coverage for coal-heavy clients. None of these firms responded to HuffPost’s request for comment on Friday.

“Given the clean energy transition underway, all insurers should assess their risk exposure to carbon-intensive fossil fuel industries ― including oil, gas and coal ―- and disclose this information, along with their plans to reduce their fossil-fuel risk exposures, to industry regulators and other stakeholders,” Cynthia McHale, insurance director at the sustainability shareholder advocate Ceres, told HuffPost. “Coal rapidly is being replaced and eclipsed by clean, renewable energy. The market growth opportunities are with renewables, not coal.”

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