Talk:DeRay Mckesson

Deletion

What would it take to get this article deleted? This guy is a sham after 15 minutes of fame by taking part as a paid protestor and rioter. Watch his interview on Hannity (I can't even stand fox news channel, but oh my gosh it was so terrible). His claim to fame is complaining about how he never got paid like he was supposed to for his rioting in Ferguson. This is not a serious notable figure. He doesn't get past being equal to the woman who has her temporary noteriety because she said on the news "ain't nobody got time for that". Shall we create a page for her too? There has got to be a limit to the stupid on this site. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 108.83.177.138 (talk) 02:45, 10 June 2015 (UTC)

• McKesson had enough coverage to where this article does not qualify for speedy criteria. You can nominate this for deletion via WP:AfD if you are so inclined. Tokyogirl79 (｡◕‿◕｡) 03:49, 10 June 2015 (UTC)

Declined speedy

@Dodger67: I've declined the speedy since there was enough assertion of notability to warrant the article passing notability guidelines. The only real option for this right now would be AfD, but there's been just enough notability asserted here to where I think it would probably pass. I think that the best option here is to just monitor the article for now. Tokyogirl79 (｡◕‿◕｡) 09:30, 2 May 2015 (UTC)

@Tokyogirl79: Thanks, but a claim of notability without the backing of WP:IRS is simply handwaving allegation. This article needs proper sourcing. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 10:49, 2 May 2015 (UTC)

• Well... the thing about speedy deletions is that they're really only supposed to be placed on articles that really and genuinely fail notability criteria beyond a reasonable doubt. The sources don't have to be in the article per this line at WP:A7: "The criterion does not apply to any article that makes any credible claim of significance or importance even if the claim is not supported by a reliable source or does not qualify on Wikipedia's notability guidelines." For instance, if the article had not included the last paragraph and didn't mention the CNN appearance, I likely would have deleted it because it wouldn't have anything that would give off the impression of more coverage. However a CNN appearance gives off the impression that there would likely be more sources out there and it's the type of thing that would likely cause many at deletion review to send the article back to the mainspace and to AfD. I always try to think about whether or not DRV would overturn a speedy deletion (assuming I wouldn't restore it) and if I think that there's a good chance that they would, I do a quick Google search to see if any news articles pop up in the first two pages, which they did. Tokyogirl79 (｡◕‿◕｡) 03:35, 3 May 2015 (UTC)

• The only exception to that part of A7 is if the claim is so ridiculous that it would be fairly easily disproved with a search, however the CNN appearance came up in a Boing Boing article, one of the first hits in the search. Tokyogirl79 (｡◕‿◕｡) 03:36, 3 May 2015 (UTC)

capitalization of last name: McKesson-also-spelled-Mckesson , not Mckesson

Right now the article-title and the article-text are using Mckesson. Many sources use Mckesson (upper-lower), but some use McKesson (double-upper), and some use a mixture. For example: uses McKesson [1], uses Mckesson in article-text but McKesson in photo-caption [2]. Based on the linked in page, I believe that "DeRay McKesson" is probably the actual spelling -- I'm not sure if the lowercasing sometimes seen is intentional, or just an artifact of technology, e.g. his twitter name usually publicized as @deray all-lower-case and his profile-name there is "deray mckesson" again all-lower-case ... but twitter also accepts @DeRay so it is unclear whether the lowercasing is intentional or not. Unless anyone has objections, suggest changing the article-title to DeRay McKesson , and the article-text to McKesson, but note parenthetically in the first sentence the spelling-variation found in reliable sources: DeRay McKesson (sometimes written DeRay Mckesson and deray mckesson).... See also, the shorter formulation below. Thanks. 75.108.94.227 (talk) 20:39, 3 July 2015 (UTC)

Just about everywhere he indicates his own name and doesn't use the bell hooks style, it's "DeRay Mckesson": eg Facebook, Vine, HuffPo blog byline, TFA profile. "McKesson" seems to be a hypercorrection. Someone should just ask him on twitter. Opabinia regalis (talk) 21:55, 3 July 2015 (UTC)

job title: school administrator in the United States, not American educator

Sources:

• school administrator[3]
• school administrator[4] , also calls him: Black Lives Matter activist ... prominent young civil rights campaigner ... outspoken figure in the Black Lives Matter movement
• (does not mention previous job) [5] ... among the most widely recognized and respected young black civil rights activists ... key Ferguson activist[s] ... one of the creators of the Ferguson Protester Newsletter ... one of 10 people followed by Beyoncé on Twitter ... Fox News host Sean Hannity and his guest Kevin Jackson on Tuesday accused Mckesson of being a "professional protester."
• 29-year-old former school administrator [6] , also calls him: black social media activist[s], protestor... who has spent much of the past nine months attending and catalyzing such protests from Ferguson MO last summer and fall, to New York City and Milwaukee in December, to North Charleston SC in April ... his 85,000 Twitter followers ... "Mckesson and a core group of other activists have built the most formidable American protest movement of the 21st century to date. Their innovation has been to marry the strengths of social media -- the swift, morally blunt consensus that can be created by hashtags; the personal connection that a charismatic online persona can make with followers; the broad networks that allow for the easy distribution of documentary photos and videos -- with an effort to quickly mobilize protests in each new city where a police shooting occurs. We often think of online activism as a shallow bid for fleeting attention, but the movement that Mckesson is helping to lead has been able to sustain the country’s focus and reach millions of people."
• One of the most prominent activists to emerge from Ferguson was DeRay McKesson, at the time a school administrator in Minnesota[7]

Change:

Thus, I suggest that the first sentence "DeRay Mckesson is an American educator and civil rights activist" should be changed to read instead:

DeRay McKesson (sometimes spelled Mckesson) (born 1985 or 1986[8]) is a school administrator and civil rights activist in the United States.

Explanation: currently the article says he is an "American educator" which is not 100% correct, even though it is true he was a teacher for a couple years. On his linkedin page he describes himself as being in the "Education Management" field, however. He says was a community organizer in Baltimore from 1999-2003 while attenting Catonsville High School, then went to Bowdoin College from 2003-2007 for a B.A. in government. His first adult job after graduation was as a junior-high-level math teacher, during the 2007/2008 and the 2008/2009 school years with Teach for America at Frederick Douglass Academy VIII. However, starting in summer 2008 he was an HR advisor to Countee Cullen Community Center in NYC, and by summer 2009 he was an education manager (aka school administration -- in McKesson's case he was primarily in human resources it looks like) in Baltimore, with job titles of center director / training manager / human capital strategist / human capital special assistant through December 2013, after which he moved to Minneapolis-St Paul to work as human capital senior director for Minneapolis Public Schools. These are all WP:ABOUTSELF from https://www.linkedin.com/pub/deray-mckesson/13/231/145 , but I don't think they are contentious and thus could probably be included in the article. Most of the major sources don't mention his high school years as a community organizer, or his couple years as a TFA teacher just after graduating from college, they simply call him a school administrator, sometimes noting that he quit his job recently, or saying former school administrator.

Note that I changed "American" to in the United States, per wikipedia manual of style guidelines, and changed educator to school administrator. Also note that I was forced to fiddle with the bluelink for school administrator, to point at human resources, because the more-obvious bluelink of simply school administrator is currently flat out incorrect on wikipedia (at the moment anyways -- if anybody would like to start fixing that please go right ahead). From reading his resume, McKesson's job was basically an HR manager, for personnel in high schools -- he worked on stuff like salary and benefits packages presumably[9][10], and per his resume also did training sessions for employees and such. School administrator is a redirect to headmaster-in-UK-english, aka school-principal-in-USA-english, but the school-principal is only the most common type[11] of school administrative personnel. All school-principals are also school administrators, but the converse doesn't hold logically, and in the particular case of McKesson (with the possible exception of his 2009/2010 job as Center Director which might be equivalent), definitely is very much untrue. McKesson's official job title as of 2010-to-2013-or-so was human capital something-or-other, and we have an article on that, but it is VERY steeped in academia-jargon, so instead of that mess I linked to HR for the purpose of this article about McKesson (that article in turn links to human capital for anybody interested in the academia-details). Other possible choices which I rejected were Education Management which currently redirects to a failed corporation by that name, and school administration which also incorrectly redirects to headmaster/principal just like school administrator, as well as Academic_ranks_(United_States)#Officers_of_the_corporation which is somewhat close but seems to entirely speak of universities rather than regular schools where McKesson was employed, and makes no mention of HR-related employees like McKesson (entirely concerned with deans/provosts/etc).

Final note, since he is 29 methinks we need not say "former school administrator" (and most of the sources don't explicitly use that adjective), although many of the sources do specifically make WP:NOTEWORTHY mention that McKesson recently quit his job as school administrator so he could devote more time to his activism. Wikipedia cannot predict -- and ought not try to predict -- whether McKesson will go back to school administration, or will find some alternative mode of employment, or what exactly. The sources say he was a school administrator, and is now an activist, so that is what we should reflect. I'd also suggest thinking about putting civil rights activist first, followed by school administrator, since he is wiki-notable for the former events (and only wp:noteworthy for the latter job title). If you dislike the "born 1985 or 1986" verbiage then we could instead say "age 29 as of 2015" but the former is more typical of BLP articles. 75.108.94.227 (talk) 20:39, 3 July 2015 (UTC)

Done Stickee (talk) 04:39, 6 July 2015 (UTC)

Gay

I realize some people may disagree, but I think his being gay is noteworthy enough to include in the article. He has connected it to his activism before. And it was included in a New York Times profile of him, so he's out. 71.198.174.42 (talk) 02:17, 19 July 2015 (UTC)

He's very much gay (Advocate story w/ clip to his YouTube speech); though what defines him is not so much his gayness, but what he does and what he's achieved as an activist and organizer. -Mardus /talk 11:52, 24 December 2015 (UTC)

@Koavf, why did you remove the article from Category:LGBT African Americans? -Mardus /talk 16:33, 7 February 2016 (UTC)

@Mardus: It was unsourced. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 05:38, 8 February 2016 (UTC)

• I've re-added the tag. He's pretty openly gay. He gave a speech at the GLAAD Gala where he talked about his personal experiences as a gay black man. This could probably be added into the article since it does factor into his activism to a certain degree. Tokyogirl79 (｡◕‿◕｡) 06:00, 8 February 2016 (UTC)

• Support. Because I'm busy researching information for another article right now. -Mardus /talk 07:05, 8 February 2016 (UTC)

Image

I've added an image to the infobox. As it happens, it was one of only two on Flickr that could be found with Deray's name in its description area, and which has a license permissive enough for Wikimedia Commons. -Mardus /talk 02:32, 5 February 2016 (UTC)

What is the criteria for being a civil rights activist?

Seems like saying he's a journalist, board director or podcaster is objectively true, but "civil rights activist" is less objective. 2604:3D09:D78:1000:F8E2:21C9:45DD:BA95 (talk) 12:09, 16 April 2024 (UTC)