SANDRA BLAND DIED TWO YEARS AGO TODAY

CHANEL DICKERSON USED HER POWER TO MAKE MISSING BLACK GIRLS MATTER

A repost

Until a few weeks ago Relisha Rudd, the little black girl who disappeared three years ago this month, was the lone black girl on a Washington D.C. Police website for the missing. Now the site has 38 people on the website, mostly black and latino girls. 

Relisha Rudd

This is due to a black police commander named Chanel Dickerson deciding all missing people should receive the same level of police service and media attention. So she made sure that the D.C. police website for critical missings was updated. 

This is when a pattern emerged showing black and brown teens were among the missing, mostly girls. Shortly thereafter citizens in the D.C. area noticed a dozen black girls and latinas all go missing at once, within a few short weeks.

Black and brown residents were horrified as it became apparent that white dominated police and white dominated press were not responding to the disappearances of several black and brown girls the same way they do to missing white women. In fact, some football Jersey got more coverage than the disappearance of the missing black and brown teens

This is not how white women's disappearances are handled. In fact, the dearly missed Gwen Ifill coined the term Missing White Woman Syndrome to describe the response of white run police departments and white run news outlets to one missing white woman.

Since these missing black and brown girls have gotten media attention, the D.C. police said there has not been a spike in black and brown girls going missing. And they've gone further to say that most of the missing girls on the website have been determined to have "walked away."

I'm trying to figure out how you know somebody "walked away" if they're still missing on listed on the website. That is, how can you know somebody walked away for sure unless you've found them?

And I wonder if it matters when somebody 12 to 18 years of age walks away. The 12, 13, an 14 year old cannot take care of themselves no matter where they walked away to. Furthermore, white women who "walked away" with men at bars that weren't even in this country when they did so get a huge police presence and full court press from the media.  

This probably means that the Washington Police still have a problem with how and when they list girls among the critical missing, especially if they are black or brown. 

When white girls go missing, they are assumed to be critically missing or assumed that some foul play might be involved until they are found. I seriously doubt there's a missing persons board in any state in the nation with photos STILL UP ON missing person's boards that are assumed to have "walked away."

So, I'm wondering if skin color is the main thing used to determine that black and brown girls just "walked away" -- and therefore not worthy of an Amber Alert. 

America's 

Missing

Broadcast

Emergency
Response

Being female, while also black and brown, likely also has an effect on police not taking some of the missing seriously. White girls being considered innocent and fragile (race and gender stereotypes meet) leads to no stone being left un-turned. Black and brown girls being seen as anything but innocent and fragile while also stereotypically flighty and hot-tempered are more likely to be listed as "runaways."

The ever present twin supremacies, white supremacy and male supremacy, are probably behind the missing Amber Alerts.

The black and brown girls missing in Washington D.C. remind me of how missing black women were treated on the opposite coast. 

At the front end of THE GRIM SLEEPER case dozens of black and brown women disappeared while the police did little or nothing.  Behavior similar to that of the D.C. police department is, no doubt, what allowed relatively recently convicted serial killer, Lonnie Franklin to hunt down and kill dozens if not a couple hundred black women and black girls over a twenty year period -- all within a tiny section of Los Angeles.

Still, it could be police are right this time. It could be the girls on the D.C. Police Website "walked away" and are properly characterized as runaways. But we shouldn't take white run police departments word for it.  Ever.

If a photo stays up on their missing websites for so long, the residents in any given area should be putting police feet to the fire. 

The citizens in the area need to find a way to make sure police do not characterize black and brown girls as runaways until the girl has either been

(1) contacted,
(2) returned,
(3) or the police have a witness willing to provide a written statement that the girl ran away.

If the police have any one of those three things, then the photo should come off the website, right? This seems obvious to me.

If not, then an Amber Alert should be issued just like it is for white people, just as fast as it is for white females.

Read, See, and Hear More:

http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/video/search-underway-missing-teen-girls-washington-dc-46345200

BLACK WOMEN 

MAKE SURE 

BLACK WOMEN MATTER

Chanel Dickerson deserves our thanks.

BLACKCHICKROCKED.BLOGSPOT.COM

SANDRA BLAND AT 30 and THE PROPOSED SANDRA BLAND ACT

SANDRA BLAND WOULD HAVE BEEN 30 YEARS OLD TODAY

• Sandra Bland was arrested for a failure to signal after, she said, she was tailgated by a police officer. She moved to get out of his way. He stopped her. He provoked a fight on dashboard cam over her continuing to smoke a cigarette. He cuffed her and yanked her around during the arrest then said Bland was the aggressor. Bland had been on her way to a job interview. After two to three days in jail, Bland was found dead in her Waller County Jail cell. 

•  Her death was ruled a suicide by hanging but some have doubts.

State Rep. Garnet Coleman, D-Houston on a proposal that some are now calling THE SANDRA BLAND ACT. Basically THE SANDRA BLAND ACT calls for changes to what it is legal and illegal for cops to do when making a minor traffic stop.

"Although it's legal, it doesn't make sense for someone to be arrested because of a traffic violation or for a stop like Bland's to escalate into an arrest, Coleman said....

If a driver's tail light is out, or they cross over the yellow line, no matter how briefly, "the law says they are jailable offenses, so we have to remove that from the statute....[Encinia] "was well within his right to [arrest Bland], and that's where we're running into the problem...It's baked in the cake. Injustice is baked into the cake."

Other proposals from the committee include eliminating consent searches and raising the threshold for stops to something higher than the current "probable cause" and "reasonable suspicion." "

Read More: http://www.gosanangelo.com/story/news/local/texas/2017/02/04/texas-house-committee-report-lays-foundation-sandra-bland-act/97495578/

MARISSA ALEXANDER IS FINALLY FREE

Feeling Rebloggy 

Marissa Alexander, the Jacksonville, Florida woman jailed in 2012 over a warning shot she fired to defend herself from an attack by her abusive husband, was freed from house arrest Friday.

According to the anti-violence initiative Survived and Punished, Alexander, a mother of three, has completed two years of court-ordered home confinement, after she served nearly three years in state prison on weapons and assault charges. In 2014, following an appeal of her conviction in a jury trial, Alexander accepted a plea deal to avoid [Prosecutor Angela Corey's threatening her with] a potential 60 year sentence behind bars...

Her case drew national notoriety in 2012 because of another case in Florida — the shooting and death of Trayvon Martin in Sanford, Florida — in which self-appointed neighborhood watchman George Zimmerman claimed self-defense as the reason he shot the unarmed black teen. Furthermore, activists say Alexander's case accentuated a persisting inequity for women of color who are disproportionately victims of domestic violence and who decide to fight back....

Former* state attorney Angela Corey, the same prosecutor who charged Zimmerman, said she didn't believe that Alexander meant to defend herself against her admittedly abusive estranged husband Rico Gray.

~MIC.COM

Read More:
https://mic.com/articles/166955/florida-woman-not-allowed-to-claim-stand-your-ground-against-abusive-husband-is-freed#.66Z4VL0Kf


* IT WASN'T LONG AFTER COREY FORCED ALEXANDER INTO A PLEA DEAL THAT BLACK ACTIVISTS GOT THE VOTES TOGETHER TO 
FIRE PROSECUTOR ANGELA COREY  
 (BLACK VOTES ALWAYS MATTER)

Read More:
http://thankherforsurviving.blogspot.com/2016/08/fired-by-voters-prosecutor-angela-corey.html

CHIBOK GIRLS FREED AFTER 2.5 YEARS #SaveOurGirls

Boko Haram kidnapped 276 girls and women, ages 16 to 18, in the middle of the night at a boarding school in Chibok, Nigeria, in April 2014, drawing global outrage. Scores of the girls remain missing...

 

In their first interactions with any media organization, CNN's Isha Sesay met most of the 21 girls at the meeting held at the presidential villa.

They posed for photos and politely but shyly answered questions about their well-being. Although in their early 20s, the Chibok girls appear trapped in their schoolgirl personas, their development seemingly arrested by two and a half years in captivity.

Read More and see more 

http://www.cnn.com/2016/10/19/world/chibok-girls-nigeria/

Twenty-one were released last week. Another 83 girls are due to be released. And they are skin and bone, apparently. They were used as physical labor.

Out of the 276 originally taken an estimated 100 girls were married off then taken away by Boko Haram members early on. A couple of articles I've read have suggested that some girls, another 100 of them(?), have refused to go back to Nigeria because of the stigma they'll face there due to the sexual abuse they suffered. In fact, it has been suggested that the girls that have been returned may be sent abroad to be educated due to the stigma. 
Read More:http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2016/10/chibok-girls-unwilling-leave-boko-haram-161019094349495.html

PEOPLE KEEP ASKING IF WE CAN SEPARATE THE ART FROM THE ARTIST

BUT BIRTH OF A NATION  PROVES THAT IS NOT THE RIGHT QUESTION
-

"You want me to be a tragic backdrop

so you can appear to be illuminated,

so that people can say

"wow isn't he so terribly brave

to love a girl who is so obviously sad?"

You think I'll be the dark sky

so you can be the star?

I'll swallow you whole"

~Warsan Shire

'

A couple of weeks back, I wrote an entire piece on Gabrielle Union's wobbly defense of Nate Parker. But Parker has been putting his foot in his own mouth so often and so fast, I haven't had a chance to really arrange the 10 million thoughts I have on some black women, even some black feminists like Union, automatically defending black men that are indefensible.

However, the main reason I held back on saying anything about Union is because I though it irresponsible to write about the content of "Birth Of A Nation" a movie I hadn't even seen based on one sentence in Gabriel Union's defense of Nate Parker. Yet, I was able to write what I wrote a few weeks before the movie came out because I felt it was pretty easy to guess how Parker would use black women and the rape scene he inserted into his movie. When a man sees black woman as a stereotype instead of real, it's just not that hard.  And now that I've read a couple of reviews, it's pretty clear that I guessed right.

And I guessed right because most people can't really create art that is very far from who they are. 

It was this one sentence that Gabrielle Union wrote about her part in the movie that made me pretty sure that Parker wasn't capable of imagining a three dimensional black woman with agency, much less a rape victim.


Union said,

"I took this role because I related to the experience. I also wanted to give a voice to my character, who remains silent throughout the film."

It was this one sentence of Union's made me remember a piece of a poem by Warsan Shire, quoted above. 


It was this one sentence of Union's that made me remember the countless number of television shows and movies where a man's wife or girlfriend is raped, where it's made to appear that this man's possession is raped and ruined for him, that the male hero's pain is the only pain that matters.  When patriarchy gives birth to rape culture and the rules are told in a story format, these are the stories you get -- stories very similar to The Birth Of A Nation


from USA TODAY 
by someone who HAS seen the movie

How 'Birth of a Nation' mishandles its portrayal of rape

The Birth of a Nation depicts two rapes.

In the first, Nat’s wife Cherry Ann (Aja Naomi King) is cornered by a group of slave catchers. Just a few scenes later, a white guest of Nat’s master Samuel (Armie Hammer) “requests” Esther, a slave played byGabrielle Union.

Neither of these rapes is shown onscreen. Cherry is cornered by her attackers, but the scene cuts away before they touch her. We see her bruised and swollen face later, when Nat goes to visit her sickbed. In the case of Esther, the attack takes place inside a house while the camera stays outside it. The shot lingers on the face of Esther’s husband Hark (Colman Domingo) during her assault. His pain and trauma are the focal point of the scene — Esther is merely a set piece. When she emerges, hurt and crying, she does not speak. He speaks. He speaks in that scene and much more later, when, as a result of what happened to Esther, he joins Nat’s rebellion.

At Nation’s bombastic Sundance premiere, Parker described most films dealing with American slaveryas "desperately sanitized." He said there was an ongoing "resistance to dealing with this material."

http://www.usatoday.com/story/life/movies/2016/10/07/birth-of-a-nation-nate-parker-rape-gabrielle-union/91694398/

When I read that Union is silent in this movie, I went from 95% to 99% sure that Nate Parker was incapable of doing anything but what he did.  

In story form, Parker showed us once more that rape and rape accusations are seen as what one man does to another -- as if the women are just collateral damage in a social war between men. This happens in real life, too. Men do actually see the raping another man's woman as harming that man, as taking away the other man's manhood by proving he can't "take care of his woman." That's why men have gone to war and raped the women of the conquered country so consistently throughout history. 

One of the reasons white men consistently raped black women in the United States during slavery and afterward when black women worked primarily as domestics through 1950s(?) was a declaration of white men conquering black men. The lynching of black men by white men was often based on the rape of a white woman that didn't exist --and I'm not JUST saying the black male rapes of white females didn't happen a lot of time. I'm saying the white woman didn't even exist. I'm saying that who rapes, who gets raped, and who winds up in jail for rape is a game where toxic masculinity and racism mix.  

Rape Accusation: A GAME BEST PLAYED BETWEEN MEN

http://thankherforsurviving.blogspot.com/2016/08/rape-accusation-game-played-best.html

People keep asking if we can separate the art from the artist. That's the question you ask when you want people to go see the movie and television shows of Nate Parker, Matt Damon, Bill Cosby, and Johnny Depp despite crime or ethical violation X. But that's not the right question.

The right question is this: Can the artist create art that is separate from himself.

And I think the answer should be a clear, "No!" 80% of the time, especially if that person is an author, producer, or director.

Think about it. What percentage of white people have successfully created black characters in books, television, and movies? My guesstimate is less than 10 to 15%. White people, as part of the dominant culture, can successfully ignore everything about race, racial perspective, the fact that they have a racial perspective, black  people and black life until they decide to make a movie at 30, 35, or 45 years of age with a black person in it. 

Black and brown people don't have the option to be blind to white people and to the effects of race. In fact, black and brown people have to have a nuanced vision of white people and how they see themselves to even successfully complete school, college, or just get a job. 

And when I think of black characters badly formed and presented as the more ridiculous stereotypes, I'm not talking about something as far back as Amos and Andy  or Sapphire. I'm talking about movies that are a lot more recent like Sandra Bullock's The Blind Side and Kevin Costner's Black and White.  

If white supremacy soaked white people make movies where they minimize the damage white racism does and/or make themselves the heroes in relation to black people what makes you think the rapist-minded sexist male is going to do anything different when he depicts women?

And when you let a rape-minded (or white supremacy minded) artist 

reproduce his vision of black women (or black people), 

as something less than three-dimensional people with agency, 

as possessions rather than persons 

that are just backdrop 

against which the black man (or white person) can shine 

then you let that artist's values 

be presented as normal and acceptable to the general public, 

some of whom are influenced by this art.

That's unacceptable.

How is it even possible that anybody could believe 

that something different could come from a man
that wants to claim 

that the new nuanced definitions of the word "consent"
and the technical definitions of "rape"
is/was so confusing 

that he did not understand 

now or at 19 years of age 

that 

(1) putting his penis into a person that doesn't not want it there OR
(2) putting his penis into a person who is likely to be very angry about you having put your penis inside them as soon as she is sober  

--much less inviting others to do so-- 

is a heinous act

no matter what word you put on it?
There is about as much point debating the meaning of the words "consent" and "rape" and when they came to be defined or redefined as there is debating how racist white people were NOT in the 1700 to 1800 when they were enslaving, torturing, and genocide-ing blacks and First Nations people just because the word "racism" wasn't fully minted until 1879 to 1932.

Racists know what they are no matter what word you put on it when. They weren't "confused." They were simply evil as h*ll. Rapists aren't confused either.


Unlike Gabrielle Union, I do not think ending rape or reducing rape is a matter of education. I think it's a matter of instilling empathy (if that's even possible) combined with a making sure there is long and life-destroying punishment for rape.

This tends to mean that I think Cory Batey (black) got the right punishment at 15 to 20 years while Brock Turner (white) and Austin Wilkerson (white) did not, 3 months and 0 months respectively. Some black men want to complain about how Cory Batey's sentence was not fair. But it was fair. Batey's sentence was the sentence that's right. So all I can say to them about the comparison of Cory Batey to Brock Turner is too bad for for the white community and hurray for the black community.  

Women's lives will matter when 90% men of men guilty of rape go to jail for rape for 15 to 20 years instead of more than 90% never even seeing the inside of a police station. And Black Lives will matter when very similar conditions occur. When cops guilty of murder go to jail for rape for 15 to 20 years instead of more than 90% never even seriously being questioned, cops claiming to be scared because they somebody with dark skin was chewing their gum too loudly will cease.  

At this point, no matter how many people go to see Parker's film and support him, I am glad that so many black people have stood up and said "No!" to Nate Parker. This wouldn't have happened a few years back. That's why Parker is shocked and behaving so badly. 

He expected sympathy for what he went through after having gotten away with bypassing a woman's consent for years(?) 

Parker did not count on the fact that black women have long recognized the phrases like...

"You put yourself in that position" 

and 

"We ran a train on _________" *  

as marking the rapist as a rapist. 

He did not count on these phrases marking a man 

as easily as 

the use of the word "n*gger" marks the racist as a racist. 

The thing that's different now is that black feminists have a stronger voice. We can protest loud enough to be heard by black male run social media by white-dominated main stream media.

Once more, the right question is this: Can the artist remove what he is from the art he creates? And I have explained my answer. It is pretty much a resounding "H*ll No!"


However,  Bill Cosby might be a quasi-exception in that he created Claire Huxtable, pretty much a feminist, despite being what he is. And, I may have to allow that an actor may not be a creator of art of much as the paint an artist like the producer/director uses. Still, there are a few actors that make my stomach churn so much that I can't stand to see them in anything. (I don't want them to have my money anyway. So, it all balances out.)

As previously discussed, white people have not been able to remove their distorted and bizarrely uninformed views of race (due to being racially isolated)** from what they create upwards of 85% of the time when making books, television, and movies about black people.  But, I've only just recently realized just how much black female colorism Bill Cosby has injected into the all of the United States and especially into the black community through the The Cosby Show and A Different World because he couldn't separate himself and his values from his art. 

And now we know that Nate Parker didn't being separate what he is from being the writer, the director, and the star of "Birth Of A Nation" either. His attitudes toward rape, his own rape trial, how lightly he appears to have taken Celestin's initial conviction for rape, and the manner in which Parker inserted rapes that didn't happen into what's supposed to be a historical movie show that the artist spreads his values through his art. 

* - most often code for gang rape that's not seen as a gang rape because rape culture says ho-s can't be raped

**- most articles on the re-segregation of America back to 1968 levels focus on POCs not being able to get into more affluent school districts thus getting a better education. But what you should do is look for articles that look at how sooo very many white children being racially isolated thru age 18 (at school and at home) makes predominantly white schools a breeding ground for fertilizing and continuing white ignorance on race and therefore white racism.
**********

THE GABRIELLE UNION POST WITHHELD
from September 2016 to be posted tomorrow

CAN'T BE A CAREFREE BLACK GIRL WHILE WATCHING "A DIFFERENT WORLD"

In an age where most blacks have, for decades, rejected "There's only one race the human race," a phrase used by whites to negate racism and I have now personally rejected "Oh my Gawd! We're all black!"  and all variations on this phrase used by light-skinned and dark-skinned black people, both, to negate colorism,I cannot believe I never noticed that four out of the five black actresses playing the central female characters, the female studentswere all mixed race or white except one

From Part 1, NO SUCH THING AS A CAREFREE BLACK GIRL

So now, I'm wondering what else I've willfully failed to notice going around me in regards to skin color.

To this day, black people do not like to acknowledge that light-skinned black people started moving on up ala the Jeffersons first, before other blacks, once we were all out of slavery.

Hiram Revels
First Black Senator, elected in 1870

Booker T Washington
Tuskeegee University, founded 1881

And the advantages the light-skinned and recently-mixed-race people didn't end a decade, two decades or three decades after slavery. At least it didn't for black women as a woman's worth is judged by beauty and the white aesthetic is still the standard by which we as black women are judged. One hundred years later, it was not a coincidence that so many of our black female civil rights leaders were very pale, though not necessarily of the recently-mixed-race variety.

So now I'm wondering if A Different World wasn't correct. I wonder if it isn't the pale black girls that you see most often at college, even at an HBCU.

In Chimamanda Adiche's book Americanah her main character is at an a prestigious, predominantly white school in the United States.  One of the first comments this black young woman from Africa makes is about how she is practically alone in having the problem of finding somewhere to get her hair braided because the female part of the small black population attend the school are mostly Aisha's with the good straight or 3A hair.  

Once I read Adiche's book, I started wondering if I had failed to notice this in my own life? Black women who look black, those who you don't have to guess about their heritage have been erased from black television and black magazines for decades.

It's normal for me to not see myself in black media. That's pathetic. But it's true. So I wonder if I missed this during my college days, in real life, as well

During my Oh My GAWD We're All Black phase, during my willful INTRAracial colorblindness phase of my teen years at college, I wonder if I was surrounded by a bunch of Aishas With Good Hairs when in black spaces at my predominantly white Ivy League school too. 

I wonder if the reason the black guys mostly went out with light girls (which I most definitely noticed) was because that's mostly what there was to choose from.
It's entirely possible I missed the fact that there was an over abundance of light-skinned and/or recently-mixed chicks at my school. I was as thoroughly trained to not notice skin color between black people as "good" liberal white people are trained to not notice race. And I recall an incident when my home training kicked in and had to be overcome.

I've told this story before: When I was in my twenties, wound up up at a book signing for Terry McMillan that was hosted by a black political/social group in San Francisco.

I made a small joke (not off color, I don't think) to a pale-ish black woman host while standing on line. When she clutched her pearls in response, I was confused for a moment. I thought my individual bad luck that it was Mrs. McSnooty and not someone else who was doing hall monitor duty while I was on line.  But when she walked off, I looked around and realized that I was the only dark-skinned black woman in a room full of black people at a black event.

I'd already been at the event for an hour before I noticed I was the only darky there. And I wouldn't have realized it at all if it hadn't been for that woman's white-racist-type reaction to my having the audacity to speak to her. I would have gone home with a vague feeling of not-belonging at a black event without knowing why.

And not to be too melodramatic, I'd say that's soul damaging. I'd do anything to make sure a black girl child I was raising did not experience this.

I'm thinking of other black places where I was extremely uncomfortable now. 

I don't think I willfully missed being the only  obviously not-recently-mixed black girl visiting a friend in the black dorm. But maybe there was an over-abundance of Aishas-The-Good Hairs there. 

One of the two black sororities on my campus must have literally used the paperbag test to admit members. I remember one light-skinned black girl named Crystal being the most open, friendly sweet girl when I met her freshman year. She still tried to be the same person once indoctrinated into her sorority, but the sororities and frats work hard to isolate their members from other black people. And she did belong to the one black sorority (of two) that was most definitely using a paperbag test to choose its members.  (The Deltas, on the other hand, were mostly dark as I recall)

It's no wonder I have a  hate-love-hate-hate with black sororities and black fraternities to this day. I've read about the nice and constructive reasons that they were formed (none of which admit to mimicking the worst of elite white people)  And I like the idea of the unity that some speak of finding there.  But since I was a child I've thought that being  10 to 13% of the total population ought to be enough of a exclusive club for anybody. And at a predominantly white school, where blacks are probably only 2%  of the population, it damn sure should be enough.  

And I'm not sure I'd have thought elitism and exclusion were better at a 98% to 100% black HBCU either if the movie School Daze is accurate in any way. 

I guess A Different World never got anywhere near the subject of black fraternities and black sororities because it was a comedy. Or maybe Whitley (Jasmine Guy's character) was supposed to personify the rich elitist sorority girl. But sans the group dynamics that didn't really work, not even in the lightest of ways. 

In the end, re-visiting A Different World through a sociological lens has made me realize the obvious. You can't ignore the values of the producer of a television or movie project because they are both reflectors and shapers of our culture. We, as black people, all know this when it comes to white people making television shows and movies about blacks. But we need to know this about black people reflecting and shaping our culture, too.

Bill Cosby's life choices taken together (prior to the rape accusations becoming acknowledged as likely true) 

- ultra pale wife, - his shaming poor black speeches that came later, - regular Playboy Mansion attendance to see mostly naked white chicks,    

- choosing so many recently-mixed race and one white actresses to represent young black women in one of his "black" television shows  

...might mean that a subtle brain-washing is taking place when you watch "A Different World" 

And did Cosby successfully slut shame Lisa Bonet for wanting to do a movie with nudity in it, to the point that she left the Cosby Show and A Different World?

Are black boys that watching "A Different World" and The Cosby Show for that matter, subtly being told that the most desirable black woman is the pale, recently-mixed one?  

•  Did Cosby also deliberately choose ultra pale actresses to be be his older daughters in so that they would be the ones with love interests explored more in depth? Or did these selections come so naturally to him that he didn't even have to think about it?

Are black girls watching these shows being told they aren't acceptable unless they are Aisha With The Good Hair, looking something like the damn near worshiped, bleached blond Beyonce?

Beyonce is gorgeous and talented. This is true. But is A Different World a piece of the platform that Beyonce stands on right now?

Are there dark-skinned girls we'll never see on a huge forum because we have failed to notice how black people, even INTRAracialy oppressed dark-skinned people, prefer to not notice that we all prefer light people?

We, as black people, know we can't afford to have white people crushing and reforming our images any way they want to. So can we as black people -- especially black women, really afford to not pay attention when black people, whose values we despise, crush and reform our images anyway they want to?

I don't think so.

  

CREE SUMMER SAYS THERE'S NO SUCH THING AS A CAREFREE BLACK GIRL

Do you remember Freddie from the television show A Different World?

Do you even remember A Different World ?



In case you don't remember: 

Lisa Bonet's character Denise Huxtable from "The Cosby Show" went to school at a Historically Black College or University (HBCU) in this television show. And Cree Summer played the carefree air-heady, Freddie on this television show.

Freddie was a character that I recognized as a more naturally white character being played by a light-skinned black actress immediately. Apparently most black people did. That's why her interview with Fusion became popular on the internet via black news and black online magazines. Most everybody who is black instantly knew that her statement is absolutely true. Most everybody who is black knows that Freddie doesn't exist or very rarely exists because it's mostly true that 

 THERE'S NO SUCH THING 

AS A CAREFREE BLACK GIRL

Nothing, like the character she played, Summer is apparently adored and admired by the likes of Amandla Stenberg which ought to tell you something all by itself.

SUMMER SAID, 

"I don’t know a single black girl who’s carefree because it ain’t easy being a girl of color, period. God, I wish we were carefree. A lot of political things would have to dramatically change in this planet for a woman of color to be carefree. But I think what they mean by that is more of an aware black girl, a conscious black girl. The more conscious you are, maybe the less cares you have and maybe the more cares you have as well—it kind of goes hand in hand. Self-awareness and more self-love and also the ability to care for other black women.

It has something to do with being politically aware of where you stand on this planet and I think it has to do with not accepting the definition that’s been given to you by designing yourself. 

READ MOREhttp://fusion.net/story/339815/cree-summer-diversity-animation-carefree-black-girl/

Indeed, I can't even be carefree when watching her show, 25 plus years later, on Netflix because I am woke, now. 

In an age where most blacks have, for decades, rejected 

"There's only one race the human race," 

a phrase used by whites to negate racism 

and I have now personally rejected 

"Oh my Gawd! We're all black!"  and all variations on this phrase 

used by light-skinned and dark-skinned black people, both, 

to negate colorism,

I cannot believe I never noticed 

that four out of the five black actresses 

playing the central female characters, 

the female students

were all mixed race or white except one

The actresses above represent the characters that we, as a young female audience, were supposed to identify with.  These are the actresses that played the female students of "A Different World," a black sitcom

Jasmine Guy

Lisa Bonet

Cree Summer

Chamele BrownMarissa Tomei

Chamele Brown's character was the only black female going to this fictional college who appeared to have two black parents, who was not pale, sans being Aisha with the good hair.  As I recall, Brown wasn't on screen very often. And I'm not sure her romantic relationship was ever on screen for more than 10 seconds-- if she even had one.
 

Think about this casting choice at the same time that you think of the skin color of Producer Bill Cosby's wife and his rape victims.

Now, think about how harmful NOT NOTICING this might be?  

But now I'm also wondering if casting choices for A Different World is accurate even if I don't like it. 

While I've never seen so many recently-mixed-race black chicks in a public setting, in one spot, in real life, I wonder if this isn't more of a reality at a college, HBCU or not?

Somehow we all sort of know the cost of not noticing race and racism when white people say they are colorblind. But do black people know the high cost of not noticing color and colorism when black people say they are intraracially colorblind?

More tomorrow

While you're waiting for part 2, think about who would pay most of this high cost for not noticing skin color preferences in the black community.

I'll give you a hint: It's the people whose outer worth is still tied to looks in this country.  

WHEN I SAY I HAVE A GOOD MAN, THIS IS WHAT I MEAN

Feeling Rebloggy

When some women say they have a "good" man they mean he tells her that he loves her, might buy her things sometimes, may want to marry her, may or may not cheat,has a degree,job or car.   They leave out the entitlement issues,the controlling behavior, verbal abuse...

I don't boast about my man, but when I speak on him being a high quality good man I don't mean any of those things.








CreWisdom's GOOD MAN LIST

• I have never seen him publicly shame women for their sexuality or for being a single mother.

• No entitlement issues.

• Never seen him blame anything bad or mistakes in his life on D'wight man or the devil.  

• The LIST GOES ON.... 

~BookOfCreWisdom.blogspot.com

READ MORE OF THE LIST
SHE LOVINGLY WROTE ABOUT HER MAN HERE:

https://bookofcrewisdom.blogspot.com/2016/08/when-i-say-i-have-good-man-this-is-what.html

WE CANNOT CONTINUE TO OVERLOOK HIGH-FUNCTIONING DEPRESSION

Feeling Rebloggy

I first saw a psychiatrist for my anxiety and depression as a junior in high school. During her evaluation, she asked about my classes and grades. I told her that I had a 4.0 GPA and had filled my schedule with Pre-AP and AP classes. A puzzled look crossed her face. She asked about my involvement in extracurricular activities. As I rattled off the long list of groups and organizations I was a part of, her frown creased further....

I left that appointment with a prescription for Lexapro and a question that I would continue to think about for years.

The answer didn’t hit me all at once; rather, it came to me every time I heard a suicide story on the news saying, “by all accounts, they were living the perfect life.” It came to me as I crumbled under pressure over and over again, doing the bare minimum I could to still meet my definition of success. It came to me as I began to share my story and my illness with others, and I was met with reactions of “I had no idea” and “I never would have known.”

~TheMighty.com 

I don't think "high-functioning" just covers over-achievers with high grades.

I think high functioning depressed women in the black community are called "strong black women."  And "Strong Black Woman" can over-achieve in the areas of being a mother, a lover, a wife, household handyman and cook, CEO, head errand runner, car pool driver --- making it all look like everything's jake while hiding the fact that she's been feeling like she's drowning

...for years and years on end. 

Read More: 

https://themighty.com/2016/05/high-functioning-depression-we-cant-overlook-the-overachievers/