 | | Ash Adams for The New York Times |
|
Where Breaking the Ramadan Fast Includes Caribou |
Last week, Maleika Jones was still waiting for a package of Ramadan decorations. In her preparations for the monthlong holiday, which in the United States begins on Saturday, she ordered festive lights and trimming to hang up for her family's celebrations as they break the fast each night. |
"Of course, even though it's an Amazon order, it takes several weeks to get here," she said. |
Ms. Jones lives in Anchorage, home to Alaska's only mosque — some 6,700 miles west of Mecca, in a commercial district of the city, next to a sports bar and an insulation contractor's office, with views of the Chugach Mountains. |
The mosque — the northernmost in the country — is also the heart of a growing Muslim community that is preparing to gather for Ramadan for the first time since the pandemic began. The roughly 2,500 Muslims in the Anchorage area come from all over the world; they're immigrants, refugees, locals, veterans, students and others, all sharing a faith and a love of food. |
The Muslim community "is quite a diverse population, but then we're all able to come together on the common grounds of our faith and traditions, the core traditions," said Ms. Jones's husband, Gregory Shuaib Jones, an electrician. "The different ethnic groups may have some slight variations in the style of their cooking or the style of their dress, but the core is there." |
The Joneses moved to Anchorage from South Carolina in 2009 with the purpose of teaching people about Islam. Both are members of the Anchorage Interfaith Council, and Ms. Jones is the co-chair. |
Anchorage is one of the nation's most ethnically diverse cities, with more than 100 languages represented in its public school system. People often move to the area as part of the military, as new immigrants or as refugees — many from the Democratic Republic of Congo, Somalia, Sudan, Cuba, Iraq and Bhutan. Most recently, 100 refugees from Afghanistan have settled in the area. |
"I love the fact that there are so many different cultures and people from all over the world, and I think that makes Anchorage a very rich city," she said. "The Muslim community is kind of a microcosm of that. You take that diversity and you kind of shrink it down and that's the mosque." |
Read the rest of the story here. |
 | | Olamide Fagbamiye, a senior at Morehouse College, who has his eye on several items in the Ralph Lauren collaboration with the college.Anissa Baty for The New York Times |
|
Ralph Lauren Goes Back to School |
ATLANTA — Upon arriving at Morehouse College, the prestigious historically Black men's college in Atlanta, students quickly learn that a man of Morehouse must be "well-read, well-spoken, well-traveled, well-dressed and well-balanced." |
These tenets, known as "the five wells," were created by Robert M. Franklin, a former president of the school, and are visible on banners across campus. And though all of the principles are meant to be equally important, many of the school's students said that one certainly feels pertinent to daily campus life: "well-dressed." |
"Personal style and fashion at Morehouse is something we take seriously," said Olamide Fagbamiye, a senior at the college who was wearing Basquiat-edition Doc Martens, rolled up khakis, a white polo and a black cardigan with his fraternity letters. "This is a place to be well dressed. We take clothes and make them our own, we tell our own stories with them and are open to all the different ways our friends make something their own, even if we wouldn't wear it ourselves." |
Mr. Fagbamiye is one of hundreds, if not thousands, of students at Morehouse and Spelman College, the neighboring women's college, who are counting down to Tuesday, when a Ralph Lauren collaboration with the colleges will be released widely in stores and online. Mr. Fagbamiye has his sights on some cardigans and a suit in the collection. "But I am just a college student, so I'll have to see about those prices," he said. |
At Morehouse and other historically Black colleges and universities, personal style is an unofficial part of the curriculum, and even though no grade is handed down for fashion sense, having the drip doesn't go unnoticed. Whether you're heading to class, chapel, a football game or taking on homecoming weekend, each element of an outfit — socks and shoes, ties and jewelry — is intentionally chosen. |
The Ralph Lauren line taps into this spirit. Inspired by looks worn by African American students at Spelman and Morehouse between the 1920s and 1950s, the collaboration was announced earlier this month with a flashy campaign that features students, faculty and alumni as models. A film with interviews with these current and former members of Atlanta's H.B.C.U leaders and a yearbook will also be released. |
Online, among alumni and some current students reaction to the campaign, posted on campus and around Atlanta, was swift, a combination of excitement at the concept and representative imagery, and skepticism about exactly how the collaboration would benefit H.B.C.U.s beyond visual representation. Some people simply didn't like the collection or the era that inspired it. |
But on Morehouse and Spelman's campuses, the skepticism has been largely drowned out by enthusiasm and pride. |
Several students at both colleges said they are eyeing specific items in the collection, even if they are worried that the clothes will be out of their price ranges. Prices range from $20 to $2,498 (for a Morehouse Collection Polo Coat). The collaboration has been discussed in at least one comparative politics class at Morehouse and in one marketing class at Spelman. |
"What I love about the reaction is that it started a conversation," said James Jeter, the director of concept design and special projects at Ralph Lauren, and the Morehouse alumnus behind the collaboration. "It wasn't all negative. It wasn't all positive, but it was the ebb and flows of both, and I think in the end a lot of people arrive at a better place than where they started as a result of those conversations." |
Read the rest of the story here. |
| We publish many articles that touch on race. Here are several you shouldn't miss. | | | | | | |
Invite your friends.
Invite someone to subscribe to the Race/Related newsletter. Or email your thoughts and suggestions to racerelated@nytimes.com. |
|
No comments:
Post a Comment