Blackness
Listen to this : Avery, Baratunde and me on NPRs "News and Notes" Blogger Roundtable
Little by little I am getting more media traction and, quite frankly, I am down with that. I am going to post about a TV appearance I made on NY-ABC about two weeks ago but right now I am going to point to you to Farai Chideya's show on NPR, "News and Notes". I was on the show's Blogger Roundtable with Baratunde Thursoton in NYC and Avery Tooley in Washington DC shooting the breeze on the black elite's split between Obama and Hillary, on how Obama is redefining blackness and, more somberly, on the LaVena Johson case.
These 20 minutes are, by far, the funnest I have had in a loooong time. I used to be a voice over artist and, quite frankly, if I had to choose between being in front of a camera or microphone and typing, I would go for the talking --because its easier on the body. And as I said that, I still have my issues when it comes to on-camera work, but that's topic for a whole 'nother post.
Black Latinos | Blackness | Celebrity | Class | Ethnicity | Fundraising | Murder | Mysogyny | Race | Rape | 2008 Presidential Elections | Avery Tooley | Barack Obama | Baratunde Thurston | Farai Chideya | LaVena Johnson | NPRs News and Notes
Black and White and Brown and Mixed Like Me
Barack Obama
Amsterdam - say cheese
Three things have prompted me to write this quick essay.
Over the weekened Micah Sifry pinged with a link to CBSNews published decision to close all comments on articles pertaining to Barack Obama because, "stories about Obama have been attracting too many racist comments".
The week before I had read Spencer Overton's A Significant Development for the Blackroots with a bit of amusement. I know some of the people involved in the push to have have the Congressional Black Caucus Institute cancel their sponsorship of the presidential debates that FOXNews was going to telecast. Somehow, I never received an email or a memo from them --and that even includes my friend Chris Rabb.
Then I got an email from a BBC editor through my personal website. They wanted to know if I was an Israeli blogger writing from Jerusalem. That prompted me to write a post about the presumably Jewish origin of my last name.
Which takes me to heart of this post --how immigration an miscegenation are pushing a lot of blacks in the United States to narrow the definition of blackness to the confines of descendants of US African slaves.
This would be outrageous south of the border.
Bigotry Whiteness | Blackness | Empire | Language | Negritude | Prejudice | Race | Barack Obama
A brief history of the "nappy headed ho", brought to us by BlackProf.com
Image found at Jim Crow Museum
of Racist Memoribilia :
Jezebel Stereotype
The power of slaveholders to exploit, expose, and control the sexuality of black women was overwhelming. Slaveholders could keep black women and their children in a state of near-nakedness while asserting that modesty and civility required full clothing. They could and did encourage frequent slave pregnancies through a variety of punishments and rewards. They then interpreted black women’s evident fertility as evidence of their uncontrolled sexuality.
The insatiable, sexual black woman did important work for Southern society. The myth of Jezebel created space for white moral superiority. Because she was a seductress, Jezebel justified the sexual brutality of Southern white men. Jezebel not only protected white men’s morality, so assured the purity of white women by offering a sexual alternative to white prostitution.
The point here is that Jezebel is more than a demeaning and false stereotype of black women [...] Jezebel is a deliberate characterization that does a specific service in the context American politics and society.
Blackness | Exploitation | Mysogyny | Myths | Prostitution | Racism | sexuality | slavery | Stereotypes
