WHITE AMERICA'S CHANNELLING OF A WEAK, FLATTENED MEMORY OF MLK

 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."

CLICK HERE TO READ MORE OF Chauncy DeVega At DailyKOS

CLERGY MARCH DURING THE BALTIMORE UPRISING:

NEWS ON BALTIMORE THAT YOU DIDN'T GET TO SEE DURING PROTEST

They put themselves between protesters and police. They took the message of disenfranchisement with them into the streets as well.

THE CHEAP COP OUT THAT IS "ALL LIVES MATTER" & CALLS TO RETURN TO A PSEUDO-PEACE

SARAH O'NEAL RESPONDS
TO THE FLAT, BLOODLESS,
PSEUDO MARTIN LUTHER KING
THAT WHITE AMERICA
KEEPS REINCARNATING
FOR THE PURPOSES OF REINSTATING
A PSEUDO PEACE AT
THE EXPENSE OF BLACK PEOPLE

MLK WAS NEVER SO RIDICULOUS
OR
COMPLETELY LACKING IN EMPATHY

Sarah O'Neal for Films For Acton 

http://www.filmsforaction.org/watch/poet-sarah-oneals-powerful-response-to-those-who-fail-to-understand-blacklivesmatter/

ON THE T-WORD and Black Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake

Black Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake Calls Protesters Thugs

I turned away from her when she said it. Mad. And I wasn't all that impressed with what President Obama said either. Just a tinge too much catering BEFORE he got to the disenfranchisement part

Black leaders are between a rock and a hard place when protests go a little south (and I mean a LITTLE compared to the 1968 King Assassination Protest)

But the word "thug" shouldn't have left her lips. Sorry.

I here she's back peddling.  I can kinda see the heat of the moment thing...especially if she was defending the protests as the uprising became more volatile.  But slip of the tongue or expressing her dyed in the wool respectability politician sentiments she needs to beg for forgiveness.

DATE RAPE BEER? JUST SAY "NO" TO RAPE CULTURE ADVERTISING

"Anheuser-Busch has apologized for a message on bottles of Bud Light that said it is



 The labels are no longer being produced.


The label had promised Bud Light was "the perfect beer for removing 'no' from your vocabulary for the night." But that's exactly the word that occurred to many people who say the message recalls alcohol's troublesome connection to sexual assaults."

FROM NPR, BILL CHAPPELL

http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2015/04/29/403030019/bud-light-pulls-label-with-message-that-sparked-backlash

Let's break this down in hetero-world:

1) Bud Light - The name of the beer alone represents advertising centered on women who are more often watching the calories

2) Notice it says remove from "your" own vocabulary instead of "no" from "her" vocabulary.  So clearly the advertising message is NOT [directly] about a man disabling a woman's consent.

3) Notice it says remove from "your" own vocabulary instead of "no" from "her" vocabulary. The  advertising message is about a woman disabling her own consent -- because women can't just decide to have sex without "losing their inhibitions"

TRANSLATION: Women need this drink because women who don't really own their sexuality  They REALLY always mean "yes" --- if they can just lose their inhibitions.

WELCOME TO RAPE CULTURE MENTALITY

When a woman says she's been raped even if it's clear she was not drunk off her ass, the first thing she is asked is "were you drinking?" And this is asked AS IF it would be okay for a man to have sex with a person that's not conscious (Check out the link below if  this confuses you or if you're confused about the accusations against Bill Cosby or what happened to that Steubenville Girl) 

If  a woman who has been raped says she has had a full two glasses of wine some will imply that  her"crying rape" is just an expression of "buyer's remorse." 

This 1950s mindset STILL believes in 2015 that women are incapable of choosing sex COMPLETELY consciously. And this  Anheuser-Busch ad proves that this thinking is still present among us.

I actually had a man use these old, old words, "buyer's remorse," to describe the first few women who came forward to accuse Cosby of drug-em and rape-em.  He said, "The women had a couple of drinks, had sex, and had buyer remorse in the morning." I wonder if he moved on to defending Cosby with "It's a Conspiracy!" once the number of women making the same accusation over multiple decades moved into the two or three dozen range?


Click Here to READ TEA FOR TWO:  Rape Culture for Dummies


Click Here to Read Ta-Nehisi Coates on the Bill Cosby Rape Cases

bcuz i didn't love myself - Saddi Khali

there is so much i've blamed on my ex's that was really on me. there r so many times i held them responsible 4

my fatalistic approach,
my fear-based dismantling,
my lack of trust,
my unromantic engagement,
my constant-warrior stance,
my dismissive nature,
my hyper-critical gaze,
my maintaining an escape hatch,
my failure 2 communicate &
my seeking defeat,
bcuz its all i believed was available 2 me.

i created beautiful love fantasies
i held up against them,
while putting no energy or effort
into making them real.

i manufactured martyrdom.
i didn't recognize that i came bearing cancer &
smeared it all over everything i did w/ them.

i didn't realize i had no expectations of success w/ them &
was just tryna lose on top.
i didn't understand that
i had already destroyed those relationships from the start.
& even what i thought i knew,
i had no idea of how great
the degree of destructive impact
bcuz i didn't love myself.

its a fascinating thing

2 really open my eyes & see myself,

2 see that i set my life up on a premise of pain,

2 see that fear guided me away from loving in any healthy way,

2 see that i sold dreams
built on a foundation of self-abuse.
these ridiculous tendencies have begun
2 reveal themselves bcuz they've begun 2 leave.

4 the 1st time, i'm meeting people & not looking 4 every reason it won't work.

4 the 1st time, i'm seeing things 2 address or compromise on, insteada things i don't like.

4 the 1st time, i'm not immediately holding up a list of deal-breakers, insteada relaxing & not making everyone the future mother of my kids (or nah) in the 1st 10minutes of knowing them.

4 the 1st time, i'm really coming 2 the table w/ all the great things i bring, insteada all of the things i think i lack.
.
i'm reserving my need 2 tell folks i meet whats wrong w/ them & instead,
.
i'm listening 2 them, then sharing the things i'm working on in me.
.
i'm remembering how much i enjoy being sweet & just how beautiful romance feels.
.
i'm remembering i am so much more than my fear & when i overwhelm my fear w/ the rest of me, i end up conquering the fear & putting something great in its place.

i'm feeling good, knowing that even my previous wackness had a reason & a purpose, knowing that i can get rid of the tendencies that don't serve me, knowing that even as i improve, the best of me is yet 2 come.





CLICK HERE TO CHECK OUT THIS PHOTOVANGELIST'S  WEBSITE

BRING BACK OUR GIRLS NEWS: Nigerian Army Rescues More Than 200 Women and Girls

These aren't the Chibok School Girls. But the Nigerian Army did rescue other women and girls from Boko Harem. 

According to testimony from escaped captives, girls and women abducted by Boko Haram are often raped, forced into marriage, or sold into sexual slavery. Sometimes they’re forced to become soldiers and attack their own villages. Some have despaired of finding the Chibok girls together, since Boko Haram leaderAbubakar Shekau promised to “sell them on the market” shortly after they were abducted last year.

CLICK HERE TO READ MORE AT TIME MAGAZINE 

BEN AFFLECK Didn't Do Anything YOUR CHILD'S HISTORY BOOK Hasn't Done 1000x

SO IF YOU'RE GOING TO BE ANGRY, BE ANGRY ABOUT THAT

BACKGROUND:

Henry Louis Gates has a show on PBS called "Finding Your Roots" where he tells people, mostly stars, about the research he's done on their ancestors

An educator to the bone, Gates goes over quite a bit of where those ancestors fit in United States History. Beyond that,  Gates reports on a DNA trace so that each star can know what section of the planet their ancestors came from before they were brought to or came to the United States.

The history part put the show into the edu-tainment category of television along with a number of of other PBS TV shows. But it is the white washing of the history section of this show that concerns me.

This should concern us all because Ben Affleck refusing to talk about his slave owning ancestor then winding up all smiles on the show as he discusses the war hero ancestor is just one example of millions of examples of  "focusing on the positive" of white history and erasing the negative impacts of that white history on everyone else. This incident is symbolic and also contributes a tiny piece to the whole, incomplete pseudo-history that has been pouring over us all since grade school.


Do you think the erasure of white-negative-action toward black and brown stopped at the days of slavery? It didn't. The erasure of the uglier side of white history and current events has been constant in this country. All you have to do is review the true-er story of Miriam Carey's death in 2013 to refresh your memory.

It is shocking how much worse our schools history classes are in the 21st century, worse than when I was a kid. And I didn't think e-race-sure could get worse than that. But I was chatting with people the other day that didn't know that the Japanese were rounded up during WWII and held in U.S."internment camps." Those of you that did know, did you also know that a number of Japanese men volunteered from within those internment camps to prove their loyalty to the U.S., to prove their worth?


Did you know that black men did the same thing? They volunteered to fight for this country, to prove their worth and loyalty during...


- the Revolutionary War,

- the Civil War,

- WWI

- WWII

- etc



Did you know that, while still just a lawyer, the second President of the United States John Adams defended the white British soldiers that killed Crispus Attucks  --the black man who has been reported as the first man of any shade to die for this country?  And last I checked, the "John Adams" white washed historical record on wikipedia doesn't mention the Crispus Attucks connection to the second president of the U.S.


If you didn't learn any one of these things in school, it should be clear to you that is both normal and standard operating procedure, for human beings to hide ugly things in their history, personal or collective. And it should be crystal clear to anybody that's been paying attention that it is also standard operation procedure for white people to erase the uglier parts of white history.  School books, many of them written, produced in Texas, make sure history books for schools don't contain anything controversial (white racism) in them.


It is absolutely unacceptable that our PBS station, supposedly liberal in tone, is continuing the tradition of white washing history for adult edu-tainment. This concern of mine isn't just about erasure or incompleteness either: This select-a-view approach to history is connected to who lives and who dies in the here and now.

Negative white history has been erased to the point that large swathes of white population are extremely ignorant of the actions of the racial history of this country and history of their own ancestors. This leaves them believing everybody started out on equal footing...10 seconds after slavery was declared illegal. Therefore, the resulting racism should actually be expected.


If you, as a white person, are told over and over again that everything your white father, grandfather, and great grandfather was great and your white cousins, white friends, and white co-workers were all told the same thing THEN doesn't it's going to appear to you that everybody is country started out equal and/or have had equal chances for success for a very long time now?


And since this erasure of white racism is continual from 1600s to now, doesn't it look like the U.S. is a meritocracy where blacks and browns are simply failing to pull their own weight?

And since the erasure of white racism, including Ben Affleck's white slave owner ancestors, also includes the erasure of white violence toward black and brown people, doesn't this make violence of white policeman toward black people seem like it sprang up outta nowhere instead of it being a continuation of the same old behaviors?

During black history month I read a paper that hypothesize that police forces might have sprung from the groups of poor white men known as "paddy rollers" or runaway slave catchers.

And wouldn't the paddy rollers to police force connection explain some-tons about the black dead that were killed by white police while unarmed?

In the end, PBS has a lot of blame for this. But Henry Louis Gates knows all of what I just shared here and 10x more. Gates had to know that Affleck was motivated by all the usual pieces of human frailty in general and white fragility in the specific. Unless Gates was completely over-ridden by PBS, and it doesn't look like he was, he gets the lion's share of the blame for contributing to this white washing because he knows that human being do not like to tell on themselves in general and that white people are resistant to telling ugly history since forever. The entire racial climate of the United States is based on these two types of duck-and-cover.

Black man Gates should have been the gate-keep on the truth. He should have told Ben Affleck, "Sorry buh-BYE" He's had so many stars on his show, how could Affleck have been missed? How?

Regardless of who is more responsible for this particular sin-of-omission, Henry Louis Gates and PBS owe us all an apology for their contribution to the bigger racial picture.

Or maybe PBS should  just change the name of the show. "Finding Your Roots" could be changed to "Hiding Your Roots" with a couple keystrokes. And we'd be back on SSDD Street in no time at all.



CLICK HERE for more on BAD HISTORY LESSONS and RACISM CONSTRUCTION


CLICK HERE FOR SONY HACK GATE: BEN AFFLECK HIDES SLAVE OWNING ANCESTOR

ACKEE & SALTFISH EPISODE 4 The Job Interview

THIS IS HOW YOU'RE GOING TO DO ME" - with a British Accent! I've heard it all. LOL

"Ackee & Saltfish: The Web Series" is a web series

directed and written by Cecile Emeke,
 starring Michelle Tiwo as Olivia,
and Vanessa Babirye as Rachel.

The web series is a comedy that explores the everyday interactions of the two friends. The series was inspired by the desire to capture the small, random, golden and banter-filled moments between friends.

CORETTA SCOTT KING Happy Birthday!

"Coretta Scott King – When Scott King died in 2006, America lost a powerful voice for black civil rights, but also GLBT and women’s rights. She campaigned on behalf of the Equal Rights Amendment and sat on the board of the National Organization for Women (NOW) [-a feminist organization built as a result of many events, one of which was the treatment of black women put their lives on the line but were not allowed to speak at The March On Washington] Scott King was a champion for equality who understood how oppressions intersect:

'Freedom and justice cannot be parceled out in pieces to suit political convenience. I don’t believe you can stand for freedom for one group of people and deny it to others.' ”

READ MORE http://www.clutchmagonline.com/2012/04/feminism-101-its-not-just-for-white-women/

CORETTA SCOTT KING

http://profeminist.tumblr.com/post/108618095457/coretta-scott-king-and-feminism-coretta-scott



I can't believe Coretta Scott King was gone for nearly a decade before I knew just how strongly she stood up for women's rights. I knew she carried on in her husband's place after he died. And I knew she was brave: In 1985, she and some of her children were arrested for protesting against apartheid. But I didn't know that she stood up for women's rights in a way her husband never did.

Not only was she on the board of N.O.W. but she showed up and spoke out of women's rights and LGBT rights. She showed up "Christian Feminist Mother" C. Delores Tucker's National Political Congress of Black Women Annual Brunch every year. And before she left us, she put her stamp of approval on a book or two on Black Women's History.

This is what she had to say about a book on the The Montgomery Bus Boycott, the mass protest that led her husband into the national spotlight for the first time.

Regarding:  Jo Ann Gibson Robinson's Memoir, "The Montgomery Bus Boycott And The Women Who Started It"

"This valuable first-hand account of the historic Montgomery Bus Boycott, written by an important, behind-the-scenes organizer, evokes the emotional intensity of the civil rights struggle. It ought to be required reading for all Americans who value their freedom and the contribution of black women to our history."

--Coretta Scott King

http://books.google.com/books/about/The_Montgomery_Bus_Boycott_and_the_Women.html?id=J7rN-aVXprwC

E-RACE-SURE: BLACK WOMEN'S LIVES DON'T MATTER? Black Community/Social Media / Main Stream News

"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

...at least not right away.


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