A Site For People Who Value Independent Black Women Who Need Equality Without Sameness, along with Interdependence, Reciprocation, and Respect From Those That Love Them In Order To Thrive....
Black American Women have always been feminists. It's just that they were called "having an attitude" instead of "feminists"
FOR HELPING BEN AFFLECK LIE ABOUT HIS SLAVE OWNING ANCESTORS
(Yes, a lie of omission is a lie) Feeling Rebloggy
"I want to thank PBS for its thoughtful internal review. I sincerely regret not discussing my editing rationale with our partners at PBS and WNET and I apologize for putting PBS and its member stations in the position of having to defend the integrity of their programming. Throughout my many years of producing genealogy documentaries, I have always operated with rigorous ethical standards.
We have been working with PBS and WETA to create new guidelines to increase transparency going forward..."
TheRoot.com
I didn't watch "FINDING OUR ROOTS" that often. But it was pretty cool when I did. More than that I learned something.
When I first started watching it, I THOUGHT, the black people had more Native American Ancestors than they do. You can't throw a stick in a room full black people and not have it hit someone that claims a Native American ancestor.
I have a great, great, great light-skinned grandmother in there somewhere with hair all the way down to her backside because she was mostly Native American. Don't you?
But DNA testing doesn't lie. We have a lot fewer romantic, Indian lovers in our heirs --that would have taken great, great, great grandma as a young black slave girl away from the plantation if he could have when he ran for his life-- than originally supposed. DNA tests of several black hairs from several black stars revealed that we simply have a lot more white massa rapists in our collective ancestry than I originally thought.
Oh well...
I hope the show comes back. And I hope PBS screens everybody a bit more carefully. This shouldn't have happened.
Well, there may be some black or brown people in this flick. But the trailer had all the diversity of a klan meeting for sure --which tends to mean all the main characters are will be white.
Exhibit A
CAST OF CINDERELLA 2015
Cinderella is probably the worst story to read a girl if you want to raise a future feminist. But the story can, and has been, adjusted to fit a woman of brains, character, and action in the past. And I hope this Cinderella is a little better than old-Cinderella as well.
But think about all-white fairy tales in general. Fictional characters. Inclusion would be easy. Inclusion is rarely a goal of white producers. And sometimes I wonder if anti-diversity is the goal of some white producers. You may not remember but one of the few (if not THE ONLY) black female characters to grace the screen during the first season of ABC's "Once Upon A Time," was Cindi's Fairy God Mother. And she was killed off in less than 20 seconds. (Not even kidding. See video below)
So, what is a black mother to do?
Do you skip all the fairy tales brought to life on the big screen?
Do you stick with reading the story to your child so she can stick herself in the story as she sees fit?
Do you take your girl child to see in the theater to see a film populated with 100% white girls then get home and say "black girls are pretty too" AS IF your words going to leave more of an impact on her heart and psyche than one and one-half hours of white female beauty driving all the action in a storyline that just left her giddy with thoughts of happily-ever-after?
And why the hell do we still have to talk about this in 2015?
"This isn’t an indictment on the soundness of the film — it might be very good — but I’m less than excited because I don’t care about films that show a world without my family in it. I dedicate my time to family movies that dedicated theirs to consider the messages they send to children, and include inclusiveness and beauty, because yes, they’re that important. If you want to see a classic Cinderella with little sign of modernity or progressiveness, this one’s for you. But if you want your children to see the world through a prism of identities, shapes, sizes, and abilities to be represented and celebrated, this may not be the movie for yours"
Yes, I think first about how these things affect little black girls. But we need to think more about how all white movies (e-race-sure) affect white children too. And sometimes I'm not sure it doesn't affect them even more.
Some white children, either not used to seeing black and brown people at all in real life or fictional spaces will become fearful adults, some of whom become judges. Some white children never seeing, hearing or thinking of black and brown people as heroes rather than zeroes (contained in stereotypes that wash over them day in and day out without notice) will become policeman. And still other white children never seeing, hearing, or thinking of anybody but white people as heroes will grow up to be people who write textbooks for grade schools.
But what is the absolute worst thing to realize is that e-race-sure can result in black children thinking all of the very same things that white children do...only they'll be thinking it about themselves.
Changing our fiction, changing the way our stories look and feel, changing the stories we tell ourselves is part of anti-racism too. And it is not a small, insignificant part either. Repetitive messages about the heroes and zeroes are being transmitted there. Taking black and especially white children to these all white movies have had lasting effect on all of us precisely because they seem insignificant and beneath our notice.
Nearly subliminal?
I don't think these effects are necessarily limited to children either. That's why I've gotten to the point that I refuse to watch movies and shows with a large ensemble cast, where to 1/3 down to 1/4 isn't made up of non-white characters -- just like the United States. I don't want these all white TV shows and movies to survive, so I don't give any oxygen.
Not always easy. I have made exceptions for family dramas in particular. But I have to admit that this was a pretty easy call with "Once Upon A Time" As agency-diminishing as "Cinderella" was, femnistingly speaking, it was one of my all time favorite fairy tales as a kid. But watching one and only person that looks like me come and go in 20 seconds as Cinderella's Fairy God Mother ticked me off rather permanently. I can't imagine what I would have said if I had a 5 year old black girl sitting next to me when that happened.
I was a little surprised and disappointed to see that Kenneth Branagh* directed Cinderella 2015. He was at the forefront of race-less(?) casting a while back. I mean, he cast Denzel Washington and Keanu Reeves as brothers sans any explanation at all. I think he did this kind of thing more than once, too.
Frankly, race-less casting felt a little weird. But I was hoping it would catch on anyway. After all, a whole bunch of fictional stuff I saw in reruns of "Lost in Space" and "Star Trek" wind up becoming our reality in the form of minivans, video conferencing, and cell phones. Why not put the idea of better racial relations out there in the fictional atmosphere too?
Of course, there need to be some real depictions of the real race friction, especially since white people are raised to be ignorant about their own racial identity and the racial identity of others. No racial reality in fiction? No acknowledgment of the race hurdles in fiction? Then no progress in real life either, right? But I think race-less casting has its place in the mix.
Bottom Line: I'm really tired of these huge, all white ensemble casts in the movies and television and the attitudes they reproduce in our culture. And, I hope you are too.
In the meantime, take your little black, brown, and white girls to see Keke Palmer play Cinderella on Broadway if you live in New York. If not, let's hope for something new. Let's hope for black, fairy-tale, battle princesses that get sh*t done then later fall in love with a prince a heck of a lot more going on than appreciation for her beauty.
KEKE PALMER PLAYING CINDERELLA ON BROADWAY IN 2014
*=Does this mean Branagh's anti-racism via "colorblindness" was a fad he tired of? No acknowledgement of hurdles. No progress.
In Order To Dismiss The Reason Behind The Baltimore Uprising
"There is a ritual that accompanies these moments of protest by black Americans, and the wholly predictable urban unrest that follows the repeated killings of unarmed black people by police.
The high priests of public opinion take to the TV, radio, and Internet and summon the memory of Brother Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to condemn black folks who are "rioting", for the latter are violating the sacred covenant of "non-violence" that King, as one of America's greatest leaders and martyrs, supposedly died for. The man and woman on the street participates in this act of American civil religion as well. They mutter some basic understanding of Dr. King's dream, spittle accompanying a phrase about the Civil Rights Movement, as they shake their heads in consternation at the violent protests in Baltimore and elsewhere. The high priests of public opinion on the dais, and those who sit in the pews of Dr. King and the Civil Rights Movement as civil religion, are engaged in futile acts of conjuring. They are trying to channel a weak and flattened memory of a man, one that has been reduced to selling fast food in January and February, made into an onerous statue at Washington's mall, and reduced to a paragraph that is ripped from a towering speech."
"Fact: According to Huffington Post during the last 15 years 20% of people killed by the police were Black women."
"There were recent rallies in New York and Chicago. According to the For Harriet post, only 20-50 people in New York City, one of the world’s largest cities, showed up for Rekia Boyd’s rally. What is wrong with that? Well thousands showed up in the cold, in the heat and rain for Black men who were killed by law enforcement. There were marches, rallies, tee shirts, hoodies, think pieces and hashtags for their unjust murders and rightly so. But what gets me is that more people will show up for a pair of sweat shop made Jordan’s than for Rekia’s rally. More people will stand in line for a movie than Rekia’s rally. More people will stand in line for overpriced coffee than show up for Black women and girls. We shouldn’t be surprised. Our actions are a reflection of our priorities and in the Black community, Black women and girls don’t matter." from BOUGIEBLACKGIRL.COM
The low show, no show turn out for the REKIA BOYD protest in New York City made many-a black women some variety of sad, bitter, and disappointed. But the sadness, bitterness, and disappointment were incredibly low key because most of black women that pay attention to their own issues on a regular basis were not surprised.
However, the thing that absolutely enraged me was NOT the comment by a black woman on a black feminist website. The comment below was born of self-esteem trodden into the mud repeatedly. I understood that immediately. But the thing that made me want to run, jump, scream and shout was the fact that nearly 350 black women who like to consider themselves strong and undefeatable clicked "like" on her response to the news that no more than 40 or 50 people showed up at the protest for Rekia Boyd.
The quote:
"Nobody cares. Nobody cares about us alive...do you think they give a f**k about us being dead.WE as Black women don't even support each other. We rip each other second asses over light skinned vs dark skin, natural or weave. White college vs Black college. I am so f****n angry right now. I am so angry at a lot of shit. I see why Black women are killing them selves. I really do.
Nobody cares about us. Then 12 words later, it's black women's own fault anyway. It's the victim's own fault. This ought to sound familiar. There's a significant percentage of white people saying this about black men like Trayvon Martin and Eric Garner. But you know who is NOT saying this about black men? Other black men.
This is where we, as black women, and black men differ. But we shouldn't.
A few days before this was written, a white woman in an anti-racism group asked me if black women hate themselves.
In hindsight, I should have said, 'Yes, we often do. We do hate ourselves, but only because we've been brain-washed into believing we are petty enough and stupid enough, simply via being absent a penis, to just instinctively hate each other instead --as if craving light skin and long hair are something some of us want independent of attracting the attention of black men.
And some women simply do not understand that hating self is very different and a lot more poisoness than hating one another. In fact, we need to bring some honest hate into our love for one another - so we can communicate what's really going on between us and use what there is to use or let it go.'
Compare the arguments of black men: Cornell West and Michael Eric Dyson have been at each others throats for a while now. They've been called petty themselves but they have not been pointed at and used as an example of how all black men are petty, just one example of millions of black men bringing black men down, so far down they don't even show up for another when they are shot... and in fact that's why they are being shot <------ (Extreme Sarcasm. But do you see how messed up and self-defeating this type of logic is?)
Black women don't hate one another either. Not really. We hate our individual selves for not being enough. And we hate ourselves without even realizing it. This is very different from actually hating one another. Furthermore, when we don't get support when we should we move onto kicking our collective selves - much like a child blames herself for being physically abused (All I have to do is behave better.) The quote above is a perfect example of this.
Until black women get honest
- about where our desire for light-skin is being reinforced
- about where our desire for long, straight hair is being reinforced
- about being so desperate for the attention of black men that we hopped, jumped, and skipped over one another to support black men's views on supporting Clarence Thomas over Anita Hill. (A gift that STILL keeps ON giving)
- about being so desperate for the attention of black men that we hop, jump, and skip over one another to support their views even after we see a woman get cold cocked on video by a man 3 times her size. (Whiny voice: 'Well...we don't know what happened before the video" ala Eric Garner)
-about being so desperate for the attention of black men that we support them with zero demands for reciprocation
....then the low turn out for the NYC Rekia Boyd protest is what we should expect. Most of the black women who will not stand up and be counted as feminist or womanist will continue to be desperate enough for the attention of black men that they will NOT show up where black men do not show up. And that's probably true for at least half of those of us who identify as feminist or womanist too.
In short, our love is mis-spent for the most part.
Women of every race are competitive about things having to do with attracting the attention of men That's universal, unfortunately. However, as black women in the United States we need to rise a step above. We have oppressions others do not have. We need to turn our disappointment and bitterness with the f**kery outward. And I don't mean we need to aim it at black men either
