Pakistan's Female Prez Didn't Make It's Sexism Go Away

"Sure, Iraq is important but, you seem concerned about events closer to home."

Talking race with whites can feel like conversing with a child: 

  “Crack,



Look at blacks who came to the US from the Caribbean. They came to the Caribbean as slaves much the same as those who came to the US,....



Colin Powell (Jamaican parents), Eric Holder (Barbadan ancestry) are two who come to mind,...



Yet they succeeded pretty well.



How come?



John Henry”

Were Colin Powell and Eric Holder separated from the Civil Rights Movement?

Of course, if whites read more than that one line from MLK's "Dream" speech, they'd already understand how a few blacks succeed in a racist environment while others don't. From Amiri Baraka's 1962 essay “Tokenism: 300 Years for Five Cents”: 

  “There are almost 20,000,000 Negroes in the United States. One of these 20 million has been given a two-dollar raise and promoted to a clerical job that my two-year-old daughter could probably work out without too much trouble. And we are told that this act is symbolic of the ‘gigantic strides the Negro has taken since slavery…."

It's not over simply because laws were made to stop whites from saying "Nigger" in public.

At this rate, considering white's ignorance, it's going to be a long time before they understand where this movement is going,…

 

Amiri Baraka: "Why Is We Americans?" On Def Jam

The former Poet laureate of New Jersey:

Conservatism should've never have tried to come between me and mine.

I love my people waaay too much for that,…

 

African-AMERICAN

"Amiri Baraka was already the people’s poet when he answered to the name LeRoi Jones. We had a very famous photograph taken in 1991 by Chester Higgins, Jr. The photograph appeared in the New York Times. At the time the legend under said in effect, two of America’s great poets dancing a traditional African rite dance over the remains of Langston Hughes at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. I telephoned Amiri Baraka and said were you doing traditional African dance, he said, 'No, I was doing the jitterbug.'"

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.

This Message Is All Mixed Up (Like The One I'm Getting)

“Pew shows the following things are true about bosses, as compared with the average workers:

-They are happier with their work lives.

-They are happier with their home lives.

-They are happier with their financial situation.

-They make more money.

-They are more likely to be white.

-They are more likely to be male.

-They are more likely to be Republican.”

“Gov. Palin Proves Christians Can Do Yoga”

“Amiri Baraka—author, cultural critic, revolutionary, professor and intellectual—passed away today in New York City after a long illness.”

"What can Madison [Wis.] do about its race problem? Address its privilege problem.”

“Work that does eventually transcend time and space usually emerges from the highly specific circumstances of a place where art is of immediate and urgent concern. That at least is the story of New York, Paris and Florence. Why not Detroit?”