Category Archives: Black and Race Blogs

Farewell Brother Elombe φ The Pan-African Community Honors Elombe Brath

by

In Remembrance of Brother Elombe

Playthell Benjamin
Commentaries On the Times

Pleading the cause of African Peoples

Praise Song for a Tireless Pan-African Soldier φ

A more committed fighter for black liberation

Has yet to be born

And his mother is dead

Now that he has danced and joined the pantheon of honored ancestors

We shall never see his like again

For when the Gods fashioned Elombe Brath

They smashed the mold

I first met Elombe Brath at the Speaker’s Corner, which was at the intersection of 125th Street and Seventh Avenue in his beloved Harlem, 52 years ago. There was no state office building there at the time, and Congressman Adam Clayton Powell Jr. – for whom the building is named and whose statue now stands on that spot, – was alive and well and giving the southern redneck crackers hell…… in the halls of Congress. Where the State Office building now stands was Michaux’s book store – which displayed a sign over the entrance that announced: “The House of Proper Propaganda!”

There one could purchase every book on black history and radical political thought in print. It was a worthy annex to the Schomburg Collection, the largest collection of materials on the black world to be found anywhere. It was here that leaders of the newly liberated African nations and revolutionary movements fighting to rid Africa of all vestiges of European colonialism on the continent spoke to the people of Harlem.

Kwame Nkrumah, who led the first Ghana, sub-Saharan African nation to independence spoke there; Robert Mugabe spoke there just before he negotiated the independence of Zimbabwe at Whitehall in Britain, and the great Madiba, Nelson Mandela spoke there right after he was released from the prisons of the Apartheid South African government. Elombe was the Master of Ceremonies on that great day and he invited Duruba bin Wahad, an Afro-American revolutionary who had spent 27 years in the prisons of racist America, just as Mandela had done in South Africa, to speak.

This corner was also where home grown Pan-Africanist revolutionaries like Carlos Cook – who first tutored Elombe in Black Nationalism – “Pork Chop Davis,” Malcolm X, and Drs. Ben and John Hendrik Clarke held forth in grand orations that recounted the African past, envisioned the redemption of the motherland and called for a renaissance that would create a modern African culture capable of producing a mighty civilization that could defend African peoples against European domination everywhere. It was an incubator of revolutionary freedom dreams, a place where revolutionaries came for spiritual fortification and freedom highs.

It was here that a curious Vietnamese sailor – who visited New York on a French freighter and was chased uptown by white racist who told him his place was in Harlem – accidentally stumbled upon a rally where the great orator and Black Nationalist leader Marcus Garvey was holding forth. He was so inspired by what he witnessed on this corner that he went home and began organizing a nationalist movement in his country. When white folks heard of him again he had crushed the French army at Dien bien Phu, and was known to the world as Ho Chi Mien!

This is the corner where Elombe and I first met. I was up on a ladder, as was the custom at the time, running down an impassioned Marxist rap. Standing below me checking me out with a blasé stare was this sharp dude, a Harlem hep cat who looked to smooth to move. He held a stack of what seemed to be magazines under his arm, and he was accompanied by another dude fumbling with a camera who kind of favored him and I surmised that they must be related.

I thought I was really droppin science, the “Science of Society,” as I had been told by my political tutors – a very impressive group of older black radical leftist intellectual/activists that Queen Mother Moore had recently introduced me too. But when I came down from the ladder, the guy with the magazines said “Where you from Jack….that stuff you talkin went outta style in the forties here in Harlem. Revolutionary Pan-African Nationalism is what’s happenin now brother….you got to check out George Padmore Brother…Pan-Africanism or Communism!”

He introduced himself as Ronnie Brathwaite, and the other guy as his brother Cecil – they would later become Elombe and Kwame. Before I could recover from his cavalier dismissal of my speech, he dropped a copy of the magazine on me; which turned out to be a softback book of cartoons titled “Color Us Cullud.”

I took the book and when I got back to Philadelphia, where I was living at the time, I gave it a close reading and was thoroughly fascinated by its contents. To say that I had never seen cartoons of such power and irreverence is an understatement. I had seen scandalous cartoons before, such as the notorious “Tijuana Bibles,” which featured all of the most popular cartoons from the nation’s newspapers and animated shorts in the movie theaters that preceded the feature films, performing pornographic acts.

But these cartoons were irreverent in a different way: they were incendiary political statements. I can still remember some of those cartoons as if Elombe gave them to me yesterday, such was their power. In fact, one of his biggest fans was Malcolm X – even tho he took a little swipe at them too.

Although most people know Elombe as a tireless activist, compelling orator and walking archive of the African revolution who seemed to have the entire history of the modern African struggle against European colonialism neatly filed in his head, and could call it up in detail at will…the Griot of the African revolution. He was all that and more.

Yet Elombe was by training and sensibility an artist. He was the first person I ever met who viewed art as a potent weapon for liberation and knew how to wield it with the devastating effect of a Zulu warrior with an assegai. Since Elombe was a Black Nationalist he was naturally skeptical of, and even hostile to, the integrationist ideology that was the dominant trend in the mid-twentieth century.

He belonged to a tradition that had been the reigning ideology of black Americans in the mid-19th century, a time when secular black intellectuals like Dr. Martin Delaney and Robert Campbell as well as scholarly clergymen like Bishop Alexander Crummell and Edward Wilmont Blyden were all ardent nationalists and emigrationist that actually travelled to Africa on a mission of redemption. They were Pan-Africanists before the term was invented.

The great scholar on this subject, Professor Wilson Jeremiah Moses, tells us in his seminal book, “On the Wings of Ethiopia,” that Black Nationalist ideology was so pervasive during this period, when millions of Africans in America were regarded as livestock under southern laws crafted by slave masters, that it is virtually impossible to distinguish black Christianity from Black Nationalism.

This is the tradition that Marcus Garvey inherited and plugged into when he arrived in Harlem from Jamaica during the second decade of the 20th century, and explains why he was able to build a mass movement based on Black Nationalist ideology among the black minority in America and not in the West Indies where there was a black majority.

Elombe Brath belonged to this tradition and forged and ideology that was much like that of Kwame Nkrumah, who defined his philosophy of liberation as being part Garveyism and part Marxist. I think Dr. Clark pegged him just right when he said “Elombe is a good Garveyite and a middling Marxist.”

Hence Elombe’s political cartoons reflected his nationalist ideology and contempt for integrationist doctrine, just as Bishop Crummell expressed his contempt for integrationist in the 19th century by constantly referring to the great Abolitionist Frederick Douglass as “that mulatto showman!” For instance, among Elombe’s drawings was a cartoon of SNCC activist marching with a big banner that read “Masochism is our Stick Baby!”

His thinly veiled reference to Dr. King as “Reverend Eat A. Chicken Wing,” or his series of caricatured images of Sammy Davis Jr. under the headline “Sammy Davis Jr. is a Race Man…racing after white women, racing after white society, etc were poignant statements that raised the art of the political cartoon to a high level.. It is a testament to the power of these images and their biting witty scandalous captions that I remember them so graphically after half a century!

It was Elombe’s remarkable understanding of the power of art to inspire and fuel a movement for liberation that led him, in conjunction with his brother Kwame, to found the African Jazz Art Society in 1956 and recruit the great Jazz artists Max Roach and Abby Lincoln – the First Couple of what would soon become the Blacks Arts Movement in the 1960’s – to join them in their effort to create and promote a revolutionary black art. There are some highly influential art movements whose origins can be traced to a particular time and place.

For instance DaDa, – a European art of random choice born of a loss of faith in organized modern technological civilization in the aftermath of the barbarism of World War I – can be traced to the Café Voltaire in Geneva Switzerland. And the Bebop revolution, in which Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Thelonious Monk, and Kenny “Klook” Clarke transformed modern western music, can be located in Minton’s Playhouse here in Harlem.

Thus the Black Arts Movement of the 1960’s, which changed the cultural consciousness of African Americans, began with the founding of the African Jazz Art Society in New York City. While others have emerged in popular lore as “The Father of the Black Arts Movement,” the real fathers of the movement are Elombe, Kwame and Max Roach. For the record, when these Brothers founded the African Jazz art Society, Leroi Jones, who would become Amiri Baraka over a decade later, was happily married to Hettie Cohen, living in Greenwich Village, and was a leading poet in the Beat literary movement.

By virtue of the fact that Elombe was an artist he saw the black struggle in visual terms, and he was well aware that black people everywhere were inundated with racist images designed to degrade us, to portray us as less attractive than the lighter races. If virtue itself was white, and God was a blue eyed white man with long flowing blond hair, then where does that leave those of us who are “of the deepest dye” – as the 18th century black scientist and designer of Washington DC Benjamin Banneker described himself in a letter to Thomas Jefferson, accompanied by a mathematical treatise, defending the intellect, indeed the humanity, of the African.

Elombe, like the great Afro-Brazilian scholar/activist Abdias do Naciemento, saw attacking the white standard of beauty as fundamental to the psychological liberation of black people who had suffered centuries of slavery and racial discrimination. Do Nascimento addressed the problem by organizing beauty contests for black women and mulatto women in Brazil, and The African Jazz Art Society, which combined jazz performances with exhibitions of visual art, added fashion shows by the Grandassa Models, stunning black women with Afro hair styles and Afrocentric clothing.

They would host shows with titles like “Naturally 63.” I remember when they came to Philadelphia to do a show and I thought I had stumbled into an African wonderland, where Black was unquestionably beautiful. It was a revelation to many people. Hence the slogan “black is beautiful,” natural hair styles and Afro-centric dress all started at the African Jazz Art Society, and spread across black America…and then the black world, like wildfire.

I know whereof I speak because I witnessed it! What is all the more remarkable is that Kwame and Elombe were teenagers when they first came up with some of these ideas. They began by promoting Jazz concerts in the Bronx and their first artist was the great Betty Carter – which is a demonstration of their exquisite artistic taste. And furthermore they did this without following the dictates of some well formulated theory, figuring it out as they went about. When they encountered obstacles they just improvised like the performances of the Jazz musicians they so admired.

Like Duke Ellington, who came to New York as an art student at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn but found his greater calling in music, Elombe would find a greater calling in revolutionary struggle. And just as Duke’s training as a visual artist greatly influenced the character of his music, Elombe’s essential artist’s soul affected his approach to politics. Both Duke and Elombe were brilliant autodidacts, self-taught men who made highly original contributions in their chosen field of endeavor.

In this sense Elombe belongs to a larger tradition of the broadly learned activist autodidact. The tradition of Frederick Douglas, CLR James, J. A. Rogers, Hubert Harrison, John Hendrik Clarke, Queen Mother Moore, James Boggs, Harold Cruse, James Baldwin, Malcolm X, et al. Although Elombe never got a college degree, I don’t know any academic that had a greater command of the facts regarding the African liberation movement, and its relationship to the world revolutionary movements of the 20th century.

I say this having taught African history and politics in the WEB Dubois Department of Black Studies at the University of Massachusetts, alongside Chreif Guelal, who was a central committee member of the Algerian National Liberation Front, that fought and won one of the greatest revolutions in the twentieth century, and had served as an aid de camp to Dr. Franz Fanon, one of the most profound black revolutionary thinkers of the 20th century.

The liberation of African peoples is an amazingly complex subject that requires knowledge of European, Asian, and Latin American history and political affairs. The program Elombe hosted for many years on WBAI, “Afrikalidescope,” was a vital forum for serious informed discussion of African issues that has no counterpart in American media.

As an activist we can only marvel at the scope of his interests and the source of his energy. He was a soldier in the struggle 24/7. It is as if he felt that the weight of the entire black world was on his shoulders. I remember being at a party once and Elombe disappeared. When I asked where he was, somebody said “He’s probably in the bathroom holding a meeting!”

It is nothing short of amazing that, working without any kind of foundation or philanthropic support, Elombe managed to carry on the work of providing support for leaders of African liberation movements exiled in the US. For half a century! Beginning in 1975 this work was conducted under the auspices of the Lumumba Coalition, an organization Elombe founded and named in honor of Patrice Lumumba, the assassinated leader of the independence movement in the Belgium Congo who became its first Prime Minister. Some of the African revolutionaries Elombe supported became important government officials after winning independence.

Thus he could have left the US and spent his later years as an honored guest in Africa, but he never abandoned our struggle. He visited Africa, basked in the abundant accolades, yet he always returned to the protracted struggle on the home front, much of it as a member of the December 12th Coalition, and remained a fighter until the end – a noble warrior carried out on his shield. Remarkably, commitment to the struggle for the advancement of the black working class seems to be encoded in the genes of this family.

In Barbados, the ancestral home of the Braithwaite family, Elombe’s cousin, Clenell Wickham, waged a long fight in behalf of black workers from his position as an Editor of the Herald, a local newspaper, during the era of British colonialism. Yet throughout his many years in the fight, Elombe maintained a job as a graphic artist at WABC television, where he was a strong union man and shop steward, going in to work on the graveyard shift after a day of movement activity.

He was there when Gil Nobel came to ABC to host Like It Is; he reached out to Gil and his contributions to the character of that show is beyond measure….and was responsible for much of its popularity among serious movement people. Elombe was responsible for virtually all of the coverage of African issues, after all before coming to ABC Gil was a newsman on black radio. He, like most of the black newsmen in major white media at the time, was hired as a result of the black urban rebellions when white reporters were afraid to go into black communities to cover the story.

Gil Noble had not spent his life dealing with African issues and radical Afro-American American movements like Elombe; hence Gil was mightily instructed by their association. The fact that both of them were Jazz lovers – Gil was a pretty good pianist – no doubt helped to cement their relationship.

Any remembrance of the life of Elombe must point out that, unlike all the so-called “revolutionaries” who claim they were too busy making the revolution to marry their baby’s mama and raise their kids, Elombe was a steadfast husband and father who along with his wife of many years, Helene Normsa Brath, a former Grandassa Model, raised seven sons in Harlem. His wife homeschooled some of them and they went on to college, none of them went to jail!

If this were his lone achievement in these trouble times, it would be worthy of sustained applause. My standards for heroes are rigorous; hence I have few of them. Elombe was at the top of my list, a hero worthy of our youths; the highest expression of manhood. A mighty tree has fallen in Harlem….and we are all poorer because of it. So I say to my departed comrade: Hail and farewell!

**********************

Playthell Benjamin

Harlem New York

May 27, 2014

**Photos of Elombe by: Kwame Brathwaite

Photo of Kwame by: Playthell Benjamin

The Lies We Tell Black Boys and the Truth They Deserve to Hear φ CHRISTOPHER “FLOOD THE DRUMMER®” NORRIS

by

The Lies We Tell Black Boys and the Truth They Deserve to Hear

MAY 15, 2014 BY CHRISTOPHER “FLOOD THE DRUMMER®” NORRIS

black boys-AfroDad-flickr

We need to stop teaching our black boys how to survive in a world not designed for them, and instead show them how to design a world that will allow them to thrive as individuals.

—

I never realized how hard it was to get people to view black men and boys as assets until I asked them to actually do it. In countless conversation I’ve had with peers about black male achievement—from philanthropy to politics, to the environment and education—the question has always been: “how do we help black boys achieve?” and not: “how do we leverage the value and agency of black men and boys who are already achieving to inspire others and transform the spaces they live, work and play?”

In my opinion, the reason the latter doesn’t gets asked as often as it should is because most people believe that black men and boys are problems that need to be solved; a disease that needs to be cured. Decision and media makers pretend the answer is as easy as getting the “thugs” to pull up their pants and not tattoo their faces.

Well-intentioned teachers and mentors often express that if black boys wear suits, ties, and carry books instead of bullets, that the probability of being accepted by, and achieving in, the “real world” will increase dramatically. Parents of black boys—just wanting them to come home in one piece—indoctrinate them religiously with the “do’s and don’ts of being black in public.”

And all the while, during of all these lectures, the black boys who we want to grow into proud black men are slowly but surely feeling humanity slip right out of their finger tips. With a skewed perception of their self-worth, chances are those black boys grow into insecure black men who feel the need to measure their accomplishments and assets to their white-counterparts, ultimately seeking validation outside their race before accepting what makes them unique.

What we should be telling black boys, and more importantly, what they deserve to hear is that the “real-world” is f*cked up and is filled with sick people who will hate them regardless of whether or not they are wearing a hoodie or a Brooks Brothers suit. They need to hear that the problem is the world and not them; that they exist to improve the world, not succumb to its bullsh*t. Black boys deserve to know that their elders will fight for their right to walk or run down a street of their choosing—regardless of their clothing—without the fear of being intimidated by a police officer who doesn’t view them as a human being.

We need to stop teaching our black boys how to survive in a world not designed for them, and instead show them how to design a world that will allow them to thrive as individuals. We need stop preaching respectability politics and tell our black boys what they deserve to hear, which is the sky is not the limit, it’s the starting point.

CLICK HERE to pledge to see the good in black men and share their stories so that others may do the same. 

– See more at: http://goodmenproject.com/featured-content/the-lies-we-tell-black-boys-and-the-truth-they-deserve-to-hear-cnorris/#sthash.XZqFn3xn.1C2M93Pi.dpuf

 

Thanks for reading. Until next time, I’m Flood the Drummer® & I’m Drumming for JUSTICE!™ DOWNLOAD NOW: The Black His-Story Book: A Collection of Narratives from Black Male Mentors, presented in part by GoodMenProject.com.  – See more at: http://goodmenproject.com/featured-content/the-lies-we-tell-black-boys-and-the-truth-they-deserve-to-hear-cnorris/#sthash.XZqFn3xn.1C2M93Pi.dpuf

Talking about white Privilege is not Profound, its just for profit. φ Dr. Tommy J. Curry

by

1

curryvoicesTalking about white Privilege is not Profound, its just for profit.

By: Dr. Tommy J. Curry

There is a growing economy for discussions about white privilege in this country that are employing Black and brown intellectuals and whites who profess anti-racism, to be the missionaries that save white souls. white privilege, or the idea that white individuals are born with unearned benefits and advantages, over others has been making its way through out the public media as well as the classroom. On the face of it, this seems like a radical conversation. Black, brown and some white people calling out white liberals and conservatives for their racism, and starting “real” conversations about race that air on MsNBC,CNN and even the Huffington Post. But conversations about white privilege are not really conversations about race, and certainly not about racism—its a business—WHERE BLACKS MARKET THEMSELVES AS RACIAL THERAPISTS.

See the first discussions of white privilege like W.E.B. DuBois’s Black Reconstruction (1935) or George Lipsitz’s The Possessive Investment in whiteness, or even Cheryl Harris’s “whiteness as property,” came from the radical Black intellectual tradition (race-crits, Black nationalists, Pan-Africanists) that did not believe that whites would simply donate their power and act against their global racial interests to be good people IN THE EYES OF BLACKS, people they owned and still imprison. DuBois, and Lipsitz understood there is an antipathy and power in being against Blacks. Like George Jackson said, regarding the ILLUSION many Black academics have in romanticizing their ability to solve racism, “the white race, the economic elites of America, are not going to let themselves be educated out of existence. But today, you sound radical, progressive and insightful by MARKETING YOURSELF as a therapist for whites, and know nothing about the actual conditions, structures, and ills that concretely affect the lives of Blacks. You can even talk about white privilege and not even know the names of the Black thinkers, the literature, the context, or the history the term comes from, and get acclaim for only citing white celebrities like Peggy McIntosh or Tim Wise.

It’s not genius to say in an oppressive society there are benefits being in the superior class instead of the inferior class. That’s true in any hierarchy, being on the top is better than being on the bottom, but the speaker of white privilege gets to pretend that America is not oppressive, they love America, they just want whites to surrender their privilege so we can be equal. See the revolutionary doesn’t have white friends: the government killed MLK, Assata is called a terrorist, Derrick Bell is erased from a field he started, because they spoke about the actual racial and economic tyranny of corporations, governments, the military and the white public, but the for profit revolutionary wants to be commodified by whites…that Black friend that feels like they cured the racist white, while that same white person gets to point to these very relationships as proof they are healed and show to other whites they are the “white ally.”

Conversations about white privilege are simply moral appeals to the conscience of whites who have shown themselves to be committed to racism and social inequity IN THE IDLE HOPE THAT THEY change their mind. The implication of talking about privilege suffers from a childlike naiveity, it suggests that simply exposing racism and the privilege of whiteness to the white mind motivates whites to no longer act in their own self interest. See like the liberal utopia born out of integration, there is an unjustifiable assumption that telling whites about their social position means they are willing to surrender their power to appease a pop culture account of oppression. Think about the dishonesty of this approach. Black people, oppressed people, know there is a fundamental difference between being oppressed/Black and not oppressed, a citizen, white. We call for “national conversations on race,” where these public intellectuals get credit for starting conversations that amount to little more than allowing white America the opportunity to deny the actual realities Black America suffer from. And regardless of the outcome they come out LOOKING LIKE PROPHETS. This issue is white supremacy, and anti-Black death…trying discussing that…and see if your oppressor recognizes you then.

I remember at a recent APA I sat next to a feminist of color trying to get her white male student who couldn’t get a job in the white figures he studied and wrote a book on, and never studied race, racism, or Black philosophy, a job. This professor felt comfortable telling him if you start talking about white privilege, where she claimed the field was going, he could land a race job easily. Think about this. So all the Black, Brown, and Indigenous scholars who study the raw histories of oppression and resistance lose out because they don’t want to give white liberals and conservatives a guilt trip. This is a powerful example of how as an academic discussion white privilege distracts the oppressed, and empowers the oppressor class to be employed in discussing systems they have no real interest in dismantling.

Dr. Tommy J. Curry, The Nationist

9-14-13 Curry4

 

Has Civil Rights Activism Been Replaced by Endless Panels? Φ Crew of 42

by

Has Civil Rights Activism Been Replaced by Endless Panels?

Posted On 09 Apr 2014
By : 
  Ask yourself: Have you ever seen a photo of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. sitting on a panel? On the eve of the 50th anniversary of the signing of the Civil Rights Act we should ask ourselves: Has activism been replaced by “paneling” and hot air?

At every annual convention.  At every luncheon.  At every conference. There is the panel discussion as the centerpiece of the “agenda.”  And for the most part, these sessions repeat already known information and no calls to action.

Where the centerpiece of the American civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s was results based physical activities such as marches, boycotts and civil disobedience, the centerpiece now appears to be lots and lots of talking.

The activities of five decades ago yielded big results — like the Civil Rights Act — few of those big results and political victories can be seen today. And the problems, for the African American community in particular, are getting larger. 

Can panels create change and get results at a time when the wealth gap between black and white is the worst in 40 years and the dropout and incarceration rates remain at crisis levels?  Can marches get the same results they did in the 1960s as a more money and tech driven political landscape drives agendas?

Were it not for Rev. William Barber’s Moral Mondays there would be no consistent activism at all.  But even with those events one has to ask: Are the marches yielding tangible results?  It’s likely Dr. King didn’t have time for panels.  The actions Dr. King took got results and won victories.  Like the signing of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Lauren Victoria Burke is the creator of the blog Crewof42 and is the Managing Editor of Politic365.com. Ms. Burke has enjoyed employment with USAToday.com and ABC News and holds a B.A. in History from The American University. Contact: LBurke007@gmail.com. Twitter: @Crewof42

– See more at: http://www.crewof42.com/slide/has-civil-rights-activism-been-replaced-by-endless-panels/#sthash.onItQYKK.dpuf

Pessimistic Themes in West’s Necrophobic Aesthetic by Dr. Tommy J. Curry

by

curryvoicesPessimistic Themes in West’s Necrophobic Aesthetic

: Moving Beyond Subjects ofPerfection to Understand the New Slave as a Paradigm of Anti-Black Violence.(Forthcoming The Pluralist)

by  Dr. Tommy J. Curry

This intersectional allusion to the bourgeois Black woman, her indemnification against all critique, has long been the unquestionable norm operating within the political assertions of Black feminism and the allegedly conceptual pluralization had in claiming intersectionality as a method. Carole Boyce Davies describes this tendency as condification; “a project perhaps, a behavioral process which marks the rise of a certain neo-colonial elite in the U.S. imperial context, operating for the benefit of the dominant state and its rulers” (14). Davies argues that “Condification marks the limit …but can also be seen as the ultimate manifestation of a domestic black and/or feminist bourgeois discourse” (14), and presents a concrete crisis for Black feminist calls for social, economic, and political equality, since there is no accountability to the buttressing up of empire and inequality in their march towards capitalist freedom. Davies is not alone in this analysis of Black feminism; Elaine Brown has gone as far as to say: “feminism,” assuming this word, which I don’t assume (let’s just call it that for now, women’s liberation, the liberation of all human beings), is part of my agenda. If you take their analysis, as strict analysis, you can end up having a woman like Condoleezza Rice. So they are incorrect in their ideological commitment. Condoleezza Rice would be the ultimate Black feminist icon. So they’re wrong” (3). Power within the system is justified as gender progress, and rationalized as the necessary trajectory of political progress. There are no criteria for liberation, only the accumulation of representatives that are Black and female who command the recognition of systems previously blind to their existence. The now common practice of lifting the immaterial subject, the ideal abstraction of the (Black) feminist self, represented by the mere utterance of race, class, and gender, destroys our ability to truly understand the suffering of Black people. The Black man, the Black woman, and the Black child who survive in the bare conditions of wretchedness nurtured by anti-Blackness—the poverty, death, and violence of racial oppression—are never seen. They are spoken about as factors, but never considered to be the primary subjects motivating study. Intersectionality, its synonymy with the ideal bourgeois Black woman, is an errant axiom that denies Black study for the elevation of one (powerful, Black, female) identity taken to be the finality of all Black morality.”

Introduction

The release of Kanye West‘s Yeezus  was indelibly marked by the provocation of his song entitled the ―  New Slave ,‖ which introduced a  pessimistic terminology deployed against the paradoxical condition that Black freedom from enslavement only recaptured Black people psychically in the neo-liberal entanglements of poverty, servitude, and corporatism. His analysis,not unlike currently en vogue theories of Afro-pessimism, or Critical Race Theory‘s  (racial)realist lens maintains that despite all the rhetoric and symbols of progress to the contrary, Black people are simply not free in America. West‘s  performance of ―New Slave,‖on Saturday NightLive was only amplified by the  Not For Sale  insignia projected behind him.
 As a symbol ofindependence, disengagement; a resistance against commodification, West announced hisconfrontational posture towards the industry; a posture which ignited the Hip-Hop communityand academia alike over this artistic radicalism. However, such a provocation, despite itsrhetorical flare and allure, was immediately cast as disingenuous and inauthentic. Kanye West isa Black man torn at moments by his brilliance and at times by his banality. His work is not beinganalyzed in Hip-Hop Studies and philosophical aesthetics because it is not worthwhile;
 — his analysis of anti-Black death, corporatism, and neo-liberal aspiration is enough to warrant morethan one serious study of his art. West is not studied because he lacks sufficient correctness orexhibits minimalist thoughts about the world around him, rather West is not studied because his body, his Black male body, lacks the symbolic currency to motivate reverence for his thinking.The New Slave implicates all arenas of knowledge and political production hailing from theacademy, and while his life and public proclamations are at tension with some of his work, itnonetheless necessities serious study, rather than sophistry and condemnation. This article is anattempt to draw out some of the themes concerning anti-
Black racism in West‘s ―New Slave and the double meaning this work has given that it was co-
authored with Che ―Rhymefest Smith.
It is my view that West‘s work establishes the continuity of enslavement beyond the artificial political and social changes that are attributed to racial progress and social equality.

READ AND DOWNLOAD THE FULL AND  FINAL PAPER 

 

ABOUT Dr. Tommy J. Curry

Professor of Philosophy, Texas A&M University

Tommy J. Curry’s work spans across the various fields of philosophy, jurisprudence, Africana Studies, and Gender Studies. Though trained in American and Continental philosophical traditions, Curry’s primary research interests are in Critical Race Theory and Africana Philosophy. In Critical Race Theory, Curry looks at the work of Derrick Bell and his theory of racial realism as an antidote to the proliferating discourses of racial idealism that continue to uncritically embrace liberalism through the appropriation of European thinkers as the basis of racial reconciliation in the United States. In Africana philosophy, Curry’s work turns an eye towards the conceptual genealogy (intellectual history) of African American thought from 1800 to the present, with particular attention towards the scholars of the American Negro Academy and the Negro Society for Historical Research.

In Biomedical ethics, Curry is primarily interested government regulation, the ethical limits of government intervention in the practice of medicine, and democratic potentialities that arise from collaborative doctor-patient diagnoses and regenerative medicine like stem cells. Currently his research focuses on the linking the conceptualization of ethics found in the Belmont Report to Civil Rights and social justice paradigms.

Subscribe to The Nationalist and read more of Dr. Tommy J. Curry

Follow him on Twitter

 

5 Reasons Why The Black Community Is Still Enslaved To White People >>Urban Intellectuals

by

5 Reasons Why The Black Community Is Still Enslaved To White People

by  | Jan 17, 2014 | Opinions |

5 Reasons Why The Black Community Is Still Enslaved To White People

 

You might not want to hear this, but it is time for the black community to have a dose of cold reality. We are in a position today where we don’t control our own destiny and are effectively still slaves to white people. Hopefully, this article we can open the dialog and minds to get out of this situation before it is too late.

This opinion isn’t about bashing white people or telling you to hate them. It is about pointing out our behaviors and things we are allowing to continue to happen to us 150 years after the Emancipation Proclamation. We have lawyers, politicians, doctors, PhDs, business owners and so called intelligent people in the black community. We have many material things in our lives and “freedoms”, but in many ways are in a worse position than we were 100 years ago. Isn’t it time to recognize and admit it is time to do something different as a community?

slavery photo

With that said, let’s dive into the reasons we still haven’t gotten from under the thumb of our captors and still have a long uphill battle to fight. Despite some of us having the markings of success, we still have a long way to go as a people.

The White Educational System And View Of The World Dominates The Black Community

Because the black community doesn’t control their educational system, our children will forever see the world through the perspective of white eyes. This is what is meant when people say one has black skin, but white eyes. The individual looks like a member of the black community, but thinks like a member of the white community. Meaning, they see everything as sacred that comes from the white community and negates thoughts, sciences, businesses and everything else that comes from their own people.

During the indoctrination years, I mean formal education, the black community is being conditioned to love, honor and respect white history, people and where they come from on the planet. Blacks know everything about white people, but only take one month, February, to learn anything about the black community. And if you are awakened, then you know these are controlled lessons that only emphasis what you are learning the other 11 months of the year.

Black People Are Infatuated By White Culture & Europe

This is a by product of the reason above, the educational system. Why wouldn’t you love, honor and respect white or Western culture when you have been formally indoctrinated into the system? It only makes sense. It becomes what you are familiar with and identify with at the same time.

On the other hand, if you are all in on Western culture, then you must be ignoring your own culture, history and people. Sure, you don’t mean for this to be the outcome, but it is nevertheless unless you are blessed enough to have someone in your life to help the scales fall from your eyes.

However, most in the black community are not so fortunate. We end up living a life dreaming of visiting Europe to see and experience the history we endear growing up first hand. The black community is infatuate with white culture, people and Europe.

Nothing Is Validated In The Black Community Until It Is Approved By Whites

Building on the education and the infatuation the black community has with white people, you know nothing is given the stamp of approval until someone white gives it the thumbs up. It hurts my heart to say this in public, but it is true and you know it.

breaking the chainsValidation comes to businesses, athletes, students, children, our intelligence, medicine, inventions, political policies, and everything else the black community can dream up when someone from the white community says it is good. This is a hangover from slavery as discussed by Dr. Na’im Akbar in his epic book “Breaking the Chains of Psychological Slavery”. We need white validation.

Blacks Embrace White Jesus And Their Religion

I know I’m going to lose a few of you from the this point forward. However, I don’t care. This is very important. Dr. John Henrik Clarke talks about if you take a man’s identity out of his God, then he will always see himself as inferior because he will identify the other with the deity, blessed people and not himself. This is exactly what happen to the black community and we bought it hook line and sinker.

For hundreds of thousands of years, we have controlled our visions of God, the Universe and our spirituality. Post slavery, we do not control this image and continue to struggle from turning over this basic human right.

Blacks Spend All Their Money With Whites Continuing To Make Them Rich At The Expense Of Themselves

It makes me sick that we are economically foolish enough to spend our $1 trillion dollars in annual spending power almost exclusively with white businesses. We have no concept of how important it is to spread our money around our community a few times before allowing it to leave. In fact, we are the only community in the country that does this and because of our Mis-Education, Carter G. Woodson’s book reference. What is worst is we don’t even understand the error in this practice, nor care to learn.  At this rate, we will definitely forever be slaves to white people.

Obviously, the black community is no longer in physical chains, but to the awakened mind it is clear the psychological chains still exist. We turn over all power and assets back to the white community without resistance and need to make a serious change in our behavior and beliefs.

What Are Your Thoughts and What Reasons Are Missing From the List Above?

Lupita Nyong’o >>Essence Magazine Black Women In Hollywood Breakthrough Performance Award Acceptance Speech

by

Lupita Nyong’o >>Essence Magazine Black Women In Hollywood Breakthrough Performance Award

Lupita Nyong’o won the Essence Magazine Black Women In Hollywood Breakthrough Performance Award. In a beautiful speech at the ceremony, she said: “What is fundamentally beautiful is compassion for yourself and for those around you. That kind of beauty enflames the heart and enchants the soul…” At 30 years old, Nyong’o credits other #Black / #African women, including her mother and Oprah Winfrey , for inspiring her to believe that anything is possible., and thanks them for breaking barriers in their lives and empowering the next generation to do the same.

Read the Essence Magazine Article: http://www.essence.com/2014/02/27/lup…

America vs. the World >> Margaret Kimberley, Freedom Rider

by
Published on Thursday, February 27, 2014 by Black Agenda Report

America vs. the World

The word imperialism fell into disuse in recent decades. If it seems slightly retro, that is only because there aren’t enough Americans committed to telling the ugly truth about their government.

During the Cold War era we were told that communism increased in influence via a domino effect, knocking down nations one by one and forcing them into Moscow’s or Beijing’s orbit. In the 21st century there is a new domino theory which puts every part of the world into America’s cross hairs.

Barack Obama has succeeded in expanding America’s influence in ways that George W. Bush and Dick Cheney could only dream about. The neo-conservative project for a new American century has reached full fruition under a Democratic president, who now has many notches on his gun. He and the rest of the NATO leaders began the trail of destruction with Libya, tearing that country asunder under the guise of saving it.

Using lies and their servants in the corporate media, they constructed a tale of a tyrant and a people yearning for protection. That evil success emboldened them and their Gulf monarchy allies further and they decided that Syria would be the next domino.

That plan didn’t work quite as well as Obama and the rest of the murder incorporated team thought it would. When the British parliament said no to new military adventures Obama was left sputtering on national television. He was forced to back down from an adamant position he had taken just days earlier.

The semi-comedic setback was only temporary because the monster must be fed at all cost. The system can no longer sustain itself and brute force is the only out. There is nothing old fashioned about imperialism. This malevolent force is still alive and well.

George W. Bush made efforts to overthrow the democratically elected Bolivarian revolution in Venezuela when he plotted with the opposition against the late Hugo Chavez. Obama is clearly more committed to violence than his predecessor and has helped to stir up right wing Venezuelans who want to rid themselves of Nicolas Maduro. Maduro has been weakened by the ginned up protests and is now forced into talks with an opposition that won’t be satisfied until he is dead and gone too.

The Venezuelan people have voted for their revolution numerous times. The U.S., a country that never ceases to call itself a democracy, has thwarted their clearly expressed will time and time again. But that is the essence of empire after all.

While armed force against Syria was temporarily blocked, the West, the Persian Gulf monarchies, Israel, and jihadists have not given up their effort to topple the Bashir al-Assad government in Syria. The savage war has made thousands of Syrians homeless and starving refugees, all because the empire needs its next domino.

Not only does the United States meddle in its own backyard, it also relentlessly interferes on the other side of the world in far away Ukraine. Popular discontent against that country’s president became a successful effort to bring that country into the western sphere of economic influence but with the awful strings of austerity attached. Ukraine has the choice of going bankrupt or being bailed out and dying a slow death à la Greece.

While the machinations were afoot, president Obama warned Vladimir Putin away with threats of sanctions. The scenes of sometimes violent street protests in Ukraine made a fortuitous tableau for the United States which claimed the infamous “responsibility to protect” which never protects anyone who actually needs help and which has brought so much suffering to people around the world. Every invasion, occupation and disruption in recent years can be laid at the feet of the United States and its allies. Iraq has been destroyed quite literally, Iran has been destroyed economically. Libya was taken out and Syria is on the brink.

The United States quite openly makes it clear that it wants to have its way in the world. If Russia attempts to use its influence then it is vilified and caricatured as a cruel dictatorship controlled by a tyrant. No matter how many elections Chavez and now Maduro won, they are called dictators by American talking heads.

A superpower can foment conflict anywhere it wants to at anytime it chooses. Venezuelans must knuckle under or face the prospect of more turmoil and violence. Ukraine must sign onto economic policies which have already proven disastrous. The United States leaves its fingerprints in these and many other places and that is the essence of imperialism. It is all about control with the rawest brute force available.

The United States hasn’t officially made Venezuela or any other a colony but it doesn’t have to do that. It just has to show that it is boss and the dominos will fall wherever it chooses.

© 2014 Black Agenda Report
Margaret Kimberley

Margaret Kimberley’s Freedom Rider column appears weekly in BAR. Ms. Kimberley lives in New York City, and can be reached via e-Mail at Margaret.Kimberley(at)BlackAgendaReport.C

The 5 Things Black Women Must Do in 2014 to Live Happier, Healthier, Healed Lives

by

 The 5 Things Black Women Must Do in 2014 to Live Happier, Healthier, Healed Lives

Posted: 12/27/2013
The funny thing about stereotypes is that they often have some measure of truth to them. As black women in America, no group has been more stereotyped, or misunderstood, or more devalued than us. As we begin the countdown on the year that was 2013, it is time for us as black women to look toward our future in the New Year that is 2014.

As someone who has traveled the country for the last two years, talking and engaging almost exclusively with black women in corporate America, in universities, in our sororities, in industry, in our organizations, in the media and in our churches — I think it is time that we, as black women, faced some challenging truths about ourselves. What I’m about to say will be hard. And it may offend some of you. But that is okay, because the truth always hurts us before it heals us. Years before I wrote my award-winning book Black Woman Redefined, I founded an organization: I Am My Sister’s Keeper.

This organization, was dedicated to helping college-educated professional black women to better navigate their careers, their health and wellness, their spirit, their finances and their relationships. The organization took off and grew much greater than I ever expected, and was nationally recognized by media outlets like CNN and The Washington Post as the go-to organization for Black women’s personal development and wellness for over six years. The organization was the catalyst for the book Black Woman Redefined: Dispelling Myths and Discovering Fulfillment in the Age of Michelle Obama.

One of the things that I have discovered about living life as a black woman in America, and by talking to and engaging with literally tens of thousands of black women throughout the United States, is that we have some very negative self-destructive patterns that we need to own, face and be courageous enough to fix if we want to have happy, healthy and healed lives. It is my goal in this column to challenge us as a sisterhood of women to take the necessary steps, to heal ourselves, both individually and collectively. Before we get into the steps that I believe are necessary for us to truly get to the places that we desire in our lives as black women, I ask you to keep an open mind, try not to get defensive, and share the steps in your sororities, clubs, and workplaces so that other black women can benefit. Sometimes it is as simple as people NOT knowing better so that they can do better.

The steps that I have outlined below, are based on qualitative and quantitative research, focus groups, coaching and speaking at large women’s conferences, HBCUs and interactive workshops I have conducted throughout the country over the past several years:

1. We must deal with our unresolved pain, wounds and baggage that often result in angry eruptions, broken relationships, failed relationships and unrealized dreams. This is a huge stumbling block for us in our interpersonal relationships. We carry lots of stuff, and lots of people on our backs and in our spirits. It results in us being weary, tired and frustrated.

2. We must stop doing emotional violence and damage to other black women. Other black women are not the enemy. Other black women are struggling and fighting the same battles that we fight every day, no matter their station in life, no matter what you think they may possess in terms of wealth, status or lifestyle. We have to stop “hating” on other sisters. It is just wreaking havoc on our emotional wellness and sisterhood. “We are all we have,” as First Lady Michelle Obama once said. Let’s start acting like it!

3. We must love ourselves enough to take care of our physical bodies and learn to eat healthier, sleep better, exercise more, tend to our feet (for diabetics) and wean ourselves off of generations of destructive emotional eating (comfort foods) that has literally millions of black women in America stuck in a pattern of diabetes, hypertension, obesity, depression and heart disease.

4. We must learn to teach people how to treat us with value, respect, love, honor, dignity and peace by showing them that we live by a WOMAN CODE that honors the very same values in our own lives and in how we treat other people.

5. We must commit to engaging in healthy, functional, committed and loving relationships with the men in our lives. Where those relationships are unhealthy, abusive or destructive to our soul’s landscape; we must be willing to put an end to those relationships immediately. We have got to stop making excuses for other people’s abusive treatment of us and toward us. It is NOT acceptable, sisters. We have got to put an end to the pain we feel because our fathers left us or were absent. Or the pain that we feel because the men we love betrayed us, cheated on us, raped or beat us. We have to believe that there are still good, loving, healthy and functional men regardless of their race, who will see our value, our worth, our beauty and our possibilities. And when they find us, we must commit not to run away, push them away or punish them for what our fathers, brothers or uncles did to us.

The truth is, there is no magic checklist for getting any of us the life that we desire. But there are critical life steps that we can take starting right now, and right here to helping us as black women to heal. And sisters, we need to heal.

Far too many of us are walking around with a smile on our face, with beautiful clothing, with our hair perfectly coiffed and with expensive handbags and shoes to make us feel valuable. When deeply inside, we are simmering pots waiting to erupt. We look so good on the outside. But some of us are badly broken on the inside. And we are killing other black women with our venom.

And for those who have been courageous enough to do the work on themselves, it is time for us to be our sister’s keeper. I am not asking you to burden your life with another woman’s pain, I am not asking you to save another woman’s life, what I am asking you to do, is to be kind to other black women. Reach out. Care. Show some empathy. Be a mentor. Be a friend. When other black women try to help you do not treat them as the enemy. When they are there for you say thank you. When they have stuck with you in the trenches and storms of life honor them. When they have your back, don’t stab them in theirs. When they bless you with their gifts for free, support your causes, organizations, and the like or help you and your family in desperate times of need, don’t later discard them because you believe that you no longer need them. It is just immoral. It violates the WOMAN CODE.

Sisters, this will be the last column that I will ever write on the issue of us as black women. I’ve grown tired and weary. I love us, but the world is bigger, more global, and sisterhood is about all women coming together to lift, heal, inspire and change the world. We need to do the work on us so that we can fully participate in that global sisterhood and all the benefits of it.

I have, like many others before me, devoted the last decade of my life to helping the rest of the world try to see us as the beautiful, fabulous, fierce, loyal, kind, nurturing, intelligent, committed and loving women that we are. But in the last year, in particular, I’ve experienced first hand, and heard far too many stories from good black women, from all walks of life, about other black women who have cursed them, cut them off, betrayed them, manipulated them, stolen from them, slept with their men, slandered them, ruined them, fired them and literally broken their hearts with treachery for the smallest of offenses, or for no offense at all.

We love to do what I call “The Go Off.” It is what we do when anyone dares challenge us, correct us, upsets us, or in some cases, tries to love us. Sisters, you have no right despite whatever kind of pain you may be in, to heap abuse on another black woman. The most disturbing part of this “go off” mentality, is that we feel entitled to do it most of all against one another. We don’t do it to the men in our lives who mistreat us and abuse us. We would never do it to the “other” people in our lives or at our workplaces. But we will do it to the sister in church, the sister who has taken us into her home, the sister who has been with us through hell, the sister who has lent us money, the sister who bathed us when we were too sick to bathe ourselves, or cared for us when we were sick. Sisters, it’s time to heal (see my 2012/2013 series for essence.com: “Sisters Heal,” it will bless you).

In the final analysis, each of us must determine her own journey for herself. Each of us must do the work that is required, for us to rise above the pain that was unfairly inflicted upon us as children, as young girls and women, and now as grown middle-aged or aging women. It is never too late to fix yourself, if you are willing to do the work. It is never too late to apologize, to make amends for the wrongs that we do and to forgive those who have wronged us. Sisters, it’s time for us to stop pointing the finger at everyone else and take a long hard look in the mirror at the woman was looking back. If your life is not what you imagined it would be, or if you are unhappy. The change has to start within. You can never skip doing the work. It will destroy your destiny.

If you want 2014 to be different than 2013, then the work has to start now. Your life will only become what you want it to be, when you find the courage to love yourself. And when you learn to love yourself, I promise you that you will learn to love, respect and honor other black women.

Sophia A. Nelson

Award Winning Author; Corporate/Personal Development Coach, Cultural & Political Columnist for The Daily Beast, NBC’s theGRIO, Essence Magazine, & USATODA

THE PROBLEM WITH BEYHIVE BOTTOM BITCH FEMINISM

by

1

THE PROBLEM WITH BEYHIVE BOTTOM BITCH FEMINISM

Beyhive Booty

In Pimp Theory, a “bottom bitch” is the one in the whores’ hierarchy who rides hardest for her man. She’s the rock of every hustler economy and her primary occupation is keeping other ho’s in check and gettin’ that money. She isn’t trying to elevate the status of her sister ho’s. She isn’t looking to transform pimp culture. The bottom bitch is a token who is allowed symbolic power, which she uses to discipline, advocate for, represent and advance the domain of the stable.  In pop culture, she represents the trope of the chosen black female, loyal to her man and complicit in her own commodification.

In hip hop vernacular she has emerged as the “Boss Bitch” or “Bawse”, titles you’ll hear used liberally across urban/pop discourses – from the streets to rappers to the hip hop, basketball and ATL housewives.  What she represents is an appearance of power within a structure of male dominance, but in reality this “power” is merely vicarious and not a positional power in and of itself.

Admittedly, bottom bitch is an unfortunate metaphor to use for framing conversations about Beyonce, but when you’re married to “Big Pimp’n” and his cameo on your new self-titled album, coined a “feminist masterpiece,” is all about how he gon’

Catch a charge, I might, beat the box up like Mike…

I’m like Ike Turner

Baby know I don’t play, now eat the cake Annie Mae

Said, eat the cake, Annie Mae

you leave us no choice. When elements of the feminist community rise up to applaud your simplistic, pro-capitalist, structurally violent sampling of feminism, the metaphor becomes even more relevant. Moreover, we’re concerned that the capitalist ethics of mainstream hip hop has seduced feminist allies into flirting with bottom bitch feminism in their silencing of those who would critique Bey and the systemic violence she represents.

To this we ask: Is a feminism sponsored by the corporate music industrial complex as big as we can dream? Is the end game a feminism in which the glass ceiling for black women’s representation only reaches as high as our booties? Can’t we just love Bey as an amazing corporate artist without selling out the hard won accomplishments of our black feminist and womanist foremothers?  Can we not love her for the gorgeous and fierce mega pop star she is without appropriating her for some liberal, power feminist agenda?

These questions asked, we do understand the terror and mistrust some black women may feel when confronted with representations that reflect us to ourselves as brilliantly beautiful.  We also get the impulse that these same women may have to criticize and destroy such images. But this is not that. Our critique of Bey as a feminist doesn’t come from a place of fear. Indeed it may even be more a critique of the black feminist blogosphere. Our real fear is of a bourgeoning cadre of institutional gatekeepers of “appropriate” black feminist politics going in hard with their facile analyses, shaming and silencing black women with alternative reads of B.

Real Colored Girls are not here to promote or co-sign the idea that to critique Bey’s “Flawless Feminism” is to hate black women.  We reject the idea that love for the folks equals blind loyalty. Our deep and abiding love and respect for the ancestors will never permit an image of feminism wrapped in the gold chains of hip hop machismo.  We ain’t throwin’ no (blood) diamonds in the air for ‘da roc, no matter how many feminists you sample over a dope beat. We’re smarter than that. We’re worth more than that.

Insisting on a rank and file consent and approval to these ‘terms of engagement’ is a form of bullying and in the spirit of Audre Lorde we remind you that silencing dissent will not protect you.  We feel strongly that it is our duty and imperative to engage multiple perspectives in the marketplace of ideas, supporting open discourse, lest we find ourselves guilty of policing one another into a dishonest respectability.

Our work is not done. Beyhive Bottom Bitch Feminism does not replace nor is it even in the realm of the critical work of black women writers and artists across the discursive spectrum, as some folks have proclaimed across social media. As womanists and black feminists, we have a responsibility to bring it with our cultural work which we will infuse, at all times, with an ethic of care and responsibility. The coontocracy of assimilationist corporate negroes is in full effect, riding for patriarchal capitalist agendas and having us believe that somehow Bey’s success is a step toward some dystopic vision of progress for Black women. There may be empowerment for some folks but by and large it is a false hope steeped in capitalism and individualism, supporting the escapist desires of rampant pornographic consumerism.

This essay does not come from a place of ‘who gon’ check me, boo?’. We would like to invite dialogue, conversation and a multitude of perspectives. We’re thinking that our next conversation will be about how Beyonce has opened the door for further discussion around black female sexuality. We’ve been feelin’ this quote by bell hooks from her essay “Selling Hot Pussy”:

When black women relate to our bodies, our sexuality, in ways that place erotic recognition, desire, pleasure, and fulfillment at the center of our efforts to create radical black female subjectivity, we can make new and different representations of ourselves as sexual subjects. To do so we must be willing to transgress traditional boundaries. We must no longer shy away from the critical project of openly interrogating and exploring representation of black female sexuality as they appear everywhere, especially in popular culture.

What are your thoughts?

#RealColoredGirls

#BottomBitchFem

REAL COLORED GIRLS  Who Are They ?