It Starts As A Dot But Gets Bigger & Bigger (Then Black)

Linked to this topic yesterday, I think:

"Psychic powers don't exist and are just a trick of the brain, claims study"

Mental tricks. 

"This Photographer Thought He Was Documenting the Economic Collapse of Black People. Instead He Watched Them Rise Up."

Maintaining illusions.

"Those who in 2014 are still not self-aware enough to understand the fallacy in their 'I never owned any slaves, and neither did my family' argument (here, lemme help with that one, suburban white girl with good credit chatting with your sister on Twitter: if you are the current beneficiary of any past oppressive system such as hiring practices ensuring your husband will always have a job before anyone else, and you are running around telling people how your stay-at-home-mom tax dollars are paying for some working black lady’s two children, at some point, you will be seen as no different than stereotypical racists screaming free speech free speech when caught on tape saying what 'everyone else' is thinking.) I tend to hide from people like that, safely ensconced in my carefully chosen web of white people: my husband, my editors over at yeah write, a few writers I trust. They aren’t racist, but judging by their social media circles, some of their friends and neighbors sure are. Their being friends with those other people—isn’t that a tacit endorsement? What if my WWP is just really good at hiding its contempt, and I am like its black friend necklace? Its gold open heart collection designed by Jane Seymour for Kay Jewelers. Hanging there with small, white children picnicking and playing below."

Shutting out liberty.

"Like the 1960s black power movement of which he was a figurehead, Amiri Baraka, who died on Thursday aged 79, is widely condemned in America as a promoter of black supremacy, zealotry and violence. The reality is less straightforward."

Encouraging theft.

"In 1991’s The Commitments, the positive black slogan immortalized in music by James Brown in 1970, is used for the Irish, by the Irish: 'I’m black and I’m Proud'. This problematizes the position of actual black (and mixed-race) Irish figures in Ireland at the time, and those who remain subject to acts of racism. The appropriation of black cultural production by white artists can be read as an act of cross-racial solidarity, minstrelsy and masquerade, or exploitation. Indeed, if the Irish adopt political blackness but remain tied to racialised discourses which exclude black agents, then where does that leave the black Irish?"

Making it culture.