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"
Feeling Rebloggy
[Surprisingly enough to some,] this isn't sugar skull make-up. It's generic skeleton make-up. There is a particular design and aesthetic to sugar skull painting, and it usually involves simple flower designs and bright colors."
~Siboney Ornelas
This is not cultural appropriation.
This is Bad Beti
"The concept around being a "Bad Beti" means bad girl/daughter, because there are so many expectations women have to follow under south asian culture that are actually really harmful and restrictive. So the point of this is to make her look really bad / evil / scary and not your [girl] next door future wife.
The point is to represent yourself as a Desi but bring out that "badness" that is often condemned. So essentially it is depicted by a skeleton drawing on the face... I can see why it looks similar to sugar skull...
After Glenn, the only Asian character on THE WALKING DEAD died, I was “all up in my feelings” for a minute (Read: Days). It wasn't that I was so into Glenn. It was because I am not into horror. And I’m not used to
seeing anything in horror zone. Watching somebody get their head bashed in with
a barbed wire wrapped baseball bat upset me for a few minutes (Days) all by itself.
I’m a chicken. Hear me squawk. However, I was somewhat attached to Glenn's character. He was a sympathetic good guy and I liked they way he portrayed American Masculinity. But it took me a minute (days) to separate being upset the graphic nature of his death and how his character died. All the comments that white article writers make about Glenn's death have to do with the only Asian in an ocean of white characters being killed instead of one of the white characters dying. Some of the semi-conscious white people know the optics of this is a problem but don't sat it out loud; race is rarely ever mentioned. But the simple minded answer to "Why Glenn?" is always, "Well, the television show is just following the comic book. Glenn's death is critical to other scenes later" And the woke person of color's obvious next question is: "Well why did Glenn die in the comic book when there was an ocean of white characters for Robert Kirkman, the writer, to choose from there too?"
Steve Yuen -Actor
Robert Kirkman, writer/creator TWD
Well maybe there's not an ocean's worth of white characters to choose from. There are more people of color main characters on this show than a whole host of other ensemble cast shows that air now or aired in the past. But these people of color characters, even the main characters, are not getting the same treatment as white characters. While I do have an issue with the author of the comic book choosing Glenn to die, what's more of an issue is how Glenn and other people of color have died in this series.
When I stopped shaking I started thinking about what I'd seen in Glenn's death, head dented, an eye popped out, I started
reading other articles. I found out that what I saw was indeed over-the-top
as far as violence goes. One article went so far as to call Season 7, Episode 1
of THE WALKING DEAD “torture porn”
Yet, I still felt like
I was overreacting. Though “THE WALKING DEAD” is technically based on a horror comic, the television show hasn’t really
been about “horror” as much as it has been about civilization versus going wild, survival-of-the-fittest, and how a human being might adapt to a new post-apocalyptic
environment.
So, I
love watching the humanity play out in THE WALKING DEAD. I love it right up until those moments I
hate show up.
And the moments I hate are very likely all related to
something a feminist professor said to our class years ago.
She said the reason
there is no male birth control pill is because men don’t like to experiment on
themselves
She described how complicated and multilayered the female
reproductive system is as compared to male reproductive system. Even if you’ve
never seen a diagram in your life, it makes sense that the body that can carry
a child would have more intricate and complicated workings going on inside. So,
even if you’ve never seen how relatively simple a male reproductive system is,
it ought to be easy for you to imagine that an less complicated reproductive
system should have a less complicated ways of chemically stopping it from
producing sperm – a.k.a a male birth control pill.
And, according to this professor, there would be a male birth
control pill but for the fact that most of the researchers are men and they don’t
like to experiment on themselves. They are squeamish about cutting bodies that look like their own. And aside from the psychological discomfort of experimenting on penises, they don't intend to suffer any side effects either, such as nausea from the pill.
You know what that made me realize? People don't like to experiment on themselves period in any situation. And the white men in charge of television and
movies don’t even like to experiment on characters that look like themselves. They apparently have no intention to experiment with how graphic they can get with a death scene if a character is a white male too.
THE WORST WALKING DEAD DEATHS
When Noah, a black male character gets dragged out of a
revolving door and eaten alive, it horrific. To be honest, you really couldn’t see much (At
least I didn’t. I had my hands over my eyes, looking between my fingers. But it
was a horrific. I knew what was happening even if I couldn't half see it.
Before that there was another
black male character named “Bob” who died, after a devolved, uncivilized group
of mostly white humans cut off his leg and ate it in front of him. The cannibalism, the idea of this was more terrible than what you saw on the television screen.
But Bob and Noah, both, died a horrific victim’s deaths
When Hershel, a very old white man, got his head chopped off
with a sword. It was one quick hit and his head hit the ground. Horrible to
think about. Not that horrible to look at. I didn’t have to really put my hand
in front of my face to watch it. More importantly though, just before Hershel
died, this old white man smiled because another white man he was mentoring,
Rick, found his compassion and humanity again (temporarily) and offered a truce
to an animalistic adversary for the sake of the people on both sides of an
argument.
So though Hershel (a white male - but old) was on his
knees getting his head chopped off, he actually had a toe in the death of a
hero zone.
No such luck for Glenn, who is Asian.
A few minutes before Glenn died, a white character
named “Abraham” also died of a barbed wire baseball bat to the head just minutes before. Like
Hershel, Abraham grabbed a few heroic seconds before he died on his knees.
At
the end of season 6 when a new enemy said he was going to kill one of them as
an example, Abraham raised himself up high as if volunteering – looking his
killer in the face. And when that new enemy chose him to be the one to die at
the beginning of season 7, he said “Suck my nuts” just before his head is
bashed in. You see the bat go down over and over, but you don’t see much (At
least I didn’t)
But when Glenn dies a few minutes later in the same episode,
he is whimpering and crying afraid for his pregnant wife --instead of looking for a moment to volunteer to die for his wife. That is the other way that could have been portrayed. And it would have been had he been white.
Worse than that, unlike Abraham, when Glenn is being
killed, he is hit one time by a white male character. He is left up wobbling instead of gradually going down so you can see much. Glenn still up on his knees, the camera moves back so you can see the damage. With his
head was partially crushed and his eye popped out, he basically tells his wife
that he loves her (“I’ll find you Maggie”). My hands were over my face, I might have missed a little something. But if I’ve seen a more graphic death on television or anywhere I don’t remember it. (Also remember: I don’t really “do horror” So I'm sure others have seen plenty.) But I’m still pretty sure I don’t think there’s been anything worse on AMC since the white men in charge have reportedly been trying to "push the envelope" a.k.a. "experiment"with how much violence they can show on television
Somebody let me know when the white boy television executives start "pushing the envelope”
and tearing apart white male bodies. I don't wanna see it. But I want to know when that starts happening to someone other than people of color. And the cherry on top of the supremacy-of-white-male-character cake is this. Glenn had been on the series for six years -- not white Abraham, not white Hershel. Asian Glenn deserved a hero's exit from the show. He shouldn't have died crying on his knees, head dented, eye hanging out.
Black and brown people need to make their own content. If you're going to have an ensemble cast that looks like America, for now, you're asking for trouble if a white privileged person writes it, produces it, and directs it.
I'm sorry. But white supremacy poisons a lot of stuff. The death of a beloved person of color character motivating a white male character to revenge has been done to death for decades in television, movies and books. But TWD continuing the same ole, same ole while pretending to be "different" is a problem.
And I'm looking for more women of color to do more content and directing too.
There's no way Ava DuVernay would have scheduled Rick and Negan to battle to be hyper-masculinity champ of the episode for 30 minutes out of 45 then rush through Maggie and Sasha's initial shock and grief (Glenn and Abraham's wife/girlfriend) which probably took up a space of 3 to 4 minutes combined.
* * * * * I'm not going to abandon THE WALKING DEAD though.
I may take a week or two break, but the black women are still there. So I'll be back. Michonne seems like she's almost untouchable because she's so popular and stylish with her katana.
However, please note that Michonne would be on every little black girls lips as a hero if it hadn't been white men that created her.
Michonne's entrance into the story of THE WALKING DEAD was so bad I almost stopped watching it the day she appeared on the screen. And when they completed her character's background I almost lost my lunch. But I'm glad I didn't give up. The actress Danai Gurira has gone on to do great things, her history making play ECLIPSED is probably going to be the first of many things she's recognized for.
The United States is home to 5 percent of the world's population.
The United States houses 25 percent of the world's prisoners.
These two statements represent the first statistics you hear in the documentary. And it is President Obama, the first sitting president to visit a prison, that first utters it.
The documentary 13th is ostensibly about the loophole in the 13th amendment that allows slavery to continue in the case of those convicted of a crime. And, I thought this documentary would just be Michelle Alexander's "The New Jim Crow" book but on video and set to music. But 13th covers a lot more than that.
Alexander herself and data from her book are in the documentary, but it also covers some of the details of Black History that don't get talked about too much.
I really liked the part where DuVernay characterized black people as having had to run from the terrorist south. They were like refugees in the Northeast in the and West of the United States. But then the movie Birth Of A Nation" (1915 version)came out and made KKK members of white people all across the country these black people were in danger again. This documentary even discussed, briefly, what it's going to take for Black Lives To Matter in the years ahead. And it also spoke of why vigilance is required in the immediate future as prison populations go down and home incarceration and GPS tracking goes up.
One of the few criticisms I have of the documentary is that, once again, black women's imprisonment is too much in the background.
There were a number of black women interviewed. But how black female victims wind up in the prison system weren't ever in the foreground
I understand that 1 in 3 black men will do prison time over the course of their lifetime as opposed to1 in 17 white men. But black women wind up in prison at 3 to 6 times the rate of white women too. Even if you don't want to get into gender issues, even if you want to remain focused on race, the names of Rekia Boyd and Sandra Bland should have had their own 1 to 2 minute segment as examples of black injustice too. I shouldn't have been able to miss their names altogether when they popped up in a still photograph if I had blinked.
Even though I know there's tons more footage of black men being killed by police, I expect black feminists to try to break Black Lives Matter away from the implied Black Male Lives Matter every single chance they get.
But the documentary was still excellent. The other criticisms I have are regarding the documentary not being longer.
The next criticism
I probably wouldn't have at all
if 13th hadn't been released a month before
the next presidential election
AND
I didn't know that
a lot of people are black history deprived.
In the documentary, DuVernay interviews a couple of people that make it clear that black people supported some of the policies that made incarceration of blacks for drug use/distribution multiply out of control. But she didn't make it clear how the economic situation in black neighborhoods at the time (need for alternative economy) plus crack led to a generation of young men scaring the hell out of their own black neighbors.
One of the interviewees says, with shame, that black people were "afraid of our own selves" as if there wasn't some justification for that.
I know a guy that says he is one of the two or three surviving members of an entire high school class in Los Angeles. IN LOS ANGELES, not some small podunk town in the mid-west with a graduating class of 20. He said the rest of them died in the crack game of the 1980s.
The term "super predators" is racist, of course. But it's not that some of these kids weren't scary. They weren't "super predators" because they didn't have the power to truly prey on anybody. They didn't have the power to import, distribute across the country like white people did. Those black kids couldn't do anything but do some minor b.s. on the street. ALEC, as described in the documentary, qualifies as a "super predator" (And they wrote some of the worst Clinton legislation too -- when they wrote for republicans 95% of the time)
But these baby crack dealers? The fact that they were young 13, 14, and 15, trying to prove they were men (toxic masculinity) was the thing that made them dangerous as hell, not their blackness.
A black man of 30 or 40? If you come across him as a criminal doing criminal activity, he might shoot you for some logical reason -- you're witnessing a murder or something. He's not going to shoot you just to prove he's got the stones to do it.
The reason this was an important thing to leave out is because it's important to show that black people desperate to support Charlie Rangel and other black politicians that supported the Clintons were not stupid. The black people these black politicians represented had something real to be afraid of.
I remember someone, a person of color, having me on the verge of thinking that the 3 strikes law was a good thing. But, once I read the details of the law I understood a person could wind up for life for something stupid.
Kiting checks is a felony, ya know? So if one felony out of three felonies is shoving somebody during a robbery (violence like Mike Brown's?) a person could wind up in jail for life. Even the most hard core law and order person, that's not a closet racist, should be able to see that our prison system cannot bear such a thing. There aren't enough judges, prisons or prosecutors.
It is important to know that the blacks supported Clinton legislation that wound up incarcerating a lot of black people for life. Because once you understand just how fear based this republican controlled country was, you also understand that Bill Clinton was interchangeable for any other white politician.
Law and Order was what people white, black, and brown wanted to hear when crack came to town.
But if this life were a game? Donald Trump would be interchangable with a bunch of Presidents from 1972 and earlier and Ronald Reagan too. There's a reason DuVernay plays snippets Trump's speeches over the worst abuses of black people during various uprisings and riots of the civil rights movements and before. There's a reason you hear Trump talking about the good ole days when white crowds could and would beat and kill black people with a lot more impunity than you can now.
If that section of the documentary had been longer, had covered the crack cocaine era with a bit more detail, you'd know why she ultimately seems to find Donald Trump a frightening prospect
I've said it before. I'll say it again. I don't believe anybody is free from bigotry. I don't believe in anybody's purity. We're all living and breathing white supremacy -- even black and brown people score as prefering white perspective on implicit bias tests. But white people score higher when testing for white bias. So we know that white people, on the left or right side of the aisle, are rarely ever free from anti-black racism.
But all white racism is not created equal.
Hillary's is normal
Trump's is a KKK version
Ronald Reagan's was a KKK version, white supremacy model too, as quiet as it's kept. White mob violence increased dramatically when he was president. All you have to do is read the black history of 1980s New York State* alone to know that. The only other black family on my street had a cross burned on their lawn once Reagan was elected. If you could bring Ronald Reagan back from the dead and he saw the power of the fear of the poor uneducated white people. he'd be a trifle more subtle than Trump. But he wouldn't be using the dog whistle anymore. Believe it.
*****
If you haven't watched 13th yet, watch it now on Netflix.
When it comes out on DVD, buy it. Put it on the shelf next to Eyes On The Prize. I think you should watch both, once a year, with your own children or somebody else's children --especially if you aren't black.
*Look Up White Mob Violence in 1980s NY. The words Howard Beach, Bensonhurst, Michael Griffiths, Yusef Hawkins, Willie Turks should get you some details. What happened to the Central Park Five is also Reagan affected because Ronald Reagan made overt white racism fashionable again By the way, it kind of irked me Newt the-Grinch Gingrich was the white republican sounding all reasonable. He was one of the scariest white @$$hats in the country for a long time.
Feeling Rebloggy NORTH DAKOTA VS STANDING ROCK TRIBE
"The origins of the state's overreaction can be traced to a lawsuit filed by the oil pipeline company—Dakota Access—against protesters in federal court to stop demonstrations near its construction sites. To sway the court's decision and likely public opinion, too, the pipeline company claimed it feared violence from protesters was imminent because of a few vague threats posted on social media and an anonymous email. Protesters have been arrested for pushing through police lines to stop construction equipment, but incidents like these in no way support declaring a state of emergency and militarizing the state's response."
Africans are laughing at the US elections on Twitter.
Allegations of sexual assault, high-level corruption and vote rigging are normally found in less stable countries, but this year's presidential race is testing the resilience of America's electoral system. Nigerians in particular have found the irony of the world's foremost democracy slipping into embarrassing feuds and demagogic threats too hilarious to resist.
Thousands have been picking events apart on Twitter under the hashtag#Nov8AfricanEdition - a reference to the date of the election.
The television show Survivor’s Remorse has become this powerful beam, highlighting all that TV has yet to touch on, even during this Golden Age of peak TV. Serial killers, presidential affairs, mobsters, ad men, monsters in parallel universes—all these and more have come to the small screen, and one of the most surprising things on TV right now is a show offering up a storyline about one of the most common aspects of life… at least for black people.
Teyonah Parris
[August episode] “Photoshoot” (written by Ali LeRoi) centered on Missy Vaughn (Teyonah Parris), now Cam’s Media Consultant, booking a photoshoot for her client. She finds herself under attack after firing the light-skinned model who was hired to replace the dark-skinned model she originally booked to pose with Cam.
Parris brilliantly delivers Missy’s point of view, as a business woman who wants to be well-respected for her work, and as a black woman who knows that, if she doesn’t take a stand and use her position to address problems she knows exist, she won’t respect herself after the work is complete. In fact, the work itself lacks relevance, the moment she can’t use it to address an issue that has plagued her since her youth—dark skinned girls are, in so many ways, invisible. From the cotton fields and big houses, to the rap videos and lyrics, to the movies and magazines—dark skinned girls are less than, and deserve the same...
In the interests of refusing to support colorism, this is how you look up the entire cast of a show:
1) Go to google images
2) Type in television show name PLUS the word "cast" 3) A string of photos like this should pop up. 4) For me? The number of medium to dark-skinned sisters should outnumber the light 2 to 1 (I'm experimenting. I may go to 1 to 1)
The article below is an ancient review about a movie that's now ancient by some standards.
I bring it to you now because it comes shows feminism in its truest complicated and loving form; because it tells a smidgen of the story of a naturally acquired black feminism and black female history; and because it's written in a Joan Morgan style, in that the author, Heidi Lewis asks herself, like Joan Morgan herself in the short book, "When Chickenheads Come Home to Roost: A Hip-Hop Feminist Breaks It Down"
“Can you be a feminist and admit out loud that there are things you kinda dig about patriarchy?”
Feeling Rebloggy
I remember reading [Joan Morgan's] book for the first time almost 15 years ago, and it’s still comforting to be reminded that I’m not alone.
I’m a young black woman in America. It ain’t often that I get to watch films on the big screen that feature a black man trying to come rescue my ass.
Yes, brotha—come GET me!
I think I feel this way, in part, because my black feminist foremothers taught me that the black superwoman myth often hurt us more than it helps. In “Black Man, My Man Listen!,” Gail Stokes writes, “You are dependent, very dependent, upon my proddings, my ideas, my dreams, and at first I am glad that you need me so. I eagerly and happily feed you from the plate of motivation knowing that it is difficult for you to help yourself. But, then at times you cause my arms to grow weary as I work harder straining myself in order to build you up.” Yes, brotha—come get ME!
In Ain’t I a Woman?: Black Women and Feminism, bell hooks writes, “Most black women have not had the opportunity to indulge in the parasitic dependence upon the male that is expected of females and encouraged in patriarchal society […]
The social equality that characterized black sex role patterns in the work sphere under slavery did not create a situation that allowed black women to be passive.” Yes, brotha—come get ME!
Colorism is a hot topic right now, so Im'ma tell y'all a story about when it really settled in [for] me how f***ed up it is. My mom was good friends with a black woman at work who had children that I grew up playing with. We ended up calling each other cousins.
My cousin "T" was my age, also a girl, and very dark. Anywhere we'd go together it seemed like someone would comment how dark she was. She would always respond by laughing or making a joke of it. It got to the point where by the time we were in high-school together she would get to making jokes about her skin before anyone said anything. People would laugh.
She was super funny and likable, and attracted a lot of white friends who felt comfortable making jokes about her too.
She began to become more depressed. Every time she reached out her family would just say she wanted attention. I started seeing bleaching cream in her bathroom.
Every time we went out guys only talked to me and completely ignored her. They might even talk shit about her as we walked by. I could tell it bothered her a lot and it also really bothered me. At [some] point, every time we hung out, I started getting uncomfortable with the overall vibe.
She would tell me I'm pretty in the saddest voice and it'd break my heart.
I remember she was a fantastic writer and would write these stories that were interesting but was always about a lighter skin girl who was wanted by everyone.
Back then I didn't realize how much being dark affected her everyday life.
She distanced herself from me and others in the course of a year and dropped out of school randomly. I got a hold of her a couple times and she seemed sadder than ever, telling me she didn't want to be around white people anymore.
I didn't hear from her [for] a year.
One day I got a PM from a guy she used to date online. She had talked to him for several years and even made plans to see each other but each time it somehow fell through. She talked of him often and always mentioned how he liked her for her.
[So,] he messaged me one day (I've never spoken to him before) and said "Y'all are really f*cked up. This whole time you let her play this game with me. You just kept giving her photos knowing she was playing me? So f*cked up something wrong with both y'all"
I'm extremely confused. I reply "I have literally no idea what you're talking about, I swear. Are you talking about T? What did she do?"
After he was convinced I wasn't in on whatever he was talking about, he told me that since day one when he met T online years ago, she has been posing as me. He said she used tons of pictures of me, my family. Anytime he asked her to video chat she'd make sure i was around and just film us together being dumb and not really talking to him.
[Then,] I remembered that she would ask me randomly for pictures and I'd send them over, having no idea they were being used to catfish her online boyfriend. I asked him how he found out and he said she revealed it to him that day. He said he told her he never wanted to speak to her again. The next day, I get a call from her. Her voice is weak and she says she overdosed and is going to die but she loves me. I rush to go get her and me and two friends help her into the truck and drive to the hospital. She ends up being okay. I knew it was about her revealing what she had been doing, and that guys reaction. I never said anything though, never asked about it. All I felt was guilt.
* * * * *
Black men should never, ever be left out of any colorism discussion whether it be on a structural level or a personal level. Not Ever.
It has been six years since all of that and I still haven't said anything about it.
It is so hard knowing that she was suffering the whole time, hating herself and disguising it with humor. And to know that I was contributing in ways I didn't even realize to her pain makes it all the worse. Even though I didn't have a name for it then, I've seen countless instances of colorism happen to someone I love. I wish I could talk to her about it but she's doing well these days and I don't want to open those wounds.
Someone pointed out to me today, that Benghazi marks the first time that Americans have been killed abroad where America and more specifically, the Secretary of State, was blamed instead of the terrorists themselves being blamed.
I think she might be right.
Funny what you get blamed for when you're not white or not a man these days. Hillary is in for a hell of a ride.
We'll see if it's as bad as President Obama's.
Some think it's automatic that black men are less respected than white women. I don't. I don't think it's an accident or happenstance that President Obama snatched the presidency from Hillary Clinton eight years ago
Sexism and mysogyny sticks men together, regardless of race, on a bunch of issues: Denial or rape; denial of sexual harassment; the belief that women are emotional and less intelligent are just a few thing upon which they agree. And that last one is probably why black men got the vote before white women.
From where I sit, a lot of white men like white women just fine...so long as those white women are walking three steps behind them. The sentencing of Brock Turner and Austin Wilkerson should also tell you how much white men care for white women that are not labeled "wife" (attached to a white man) or "mother" (attached to a white man's child).
Except for feminists, I think people are severely underestimating how much Hillary will be punished for not being a man.
Of course, she's experiencing it already. I just didn't see the Benghazi crap as part of it.
Please don't think it's Hillary's baggage, of which she has plenty, that makes the conservatives hate her and progressives wary. They hated her the minute Bill Clinton took office
I was living in a small white republican town when Bill Clinton became president. So I know the republicans hated Bill too. The republicans were powerful in 1990s, seemingly unstoppable and cohesive. The dog whistlers had their racists on a least for the most part back then. And when they got off the leash, they were so far removed that the republicans just feigned confusion about the uncivilized white folks killing black and brown people. And since they were powerful, they fully expected they would have the presidency, the House, and the Senate forever going forward.
The republicans were that arrogant. So the repubs resented Bill Clinton's win. But they hated Hillary MORE. And that was before she said or did anything.
I saw the hatred. And it was savage, instant, and pure. My mother, who doesn't notice these things, said to me just a few days ago, "They hated her because she was smart and had a career and because she wasn't at home with kids like Jackie O or something."
Yup, that's all it took.
Hillary Clinton broke the First Lady gender role and they've been punishing her for it ever since.
Compare Michelle Obama:
It looks to me like Michelle saw what happened to Hillary and took the hint. After all, Michelle's an attorney too. But she pulled herself way back from her career when Barack Obama won. And for the first four years of his presidency she focused almost exclusively on children's physical fitness. She was damn careful not to say anything that sounded like policy. And she still got pounded by white conservatives. I can't imagine what they'd have done to her if she had tried to work on a project (healthcare reform) like Hillary did in the 1990s. The racism and sexism combined? I don't even want to imagine it.
When Hillary is president, she going to be considered "the leader of the free world" by those in America.
A woman.
So, I can't wait to see how the white male resentment plays out this time. Can you? One thing Hillary has in favor? She's battled the Tangerine Colored Trump and could still think and speak coherently despite the continuous stream of babbling b.s.that was coming out of his mouth.
This ought to mean Hillary can take anybody. But I can't wait to see how it plays out.
"Domestic violence is the willful intimidation, physical assault, battery, sexual assault, and/or other abusive behavior as part of a systematic pattern of power and control perpetrated by one intimate partner against another. It includes physical violence, sexual violence, psychological violence, and emotional abuse. The frequency and severity of domestic violence can vary dramatically; however, the one constant component of domestic violence is one partner’s consistent efforts to maintain power and control over the other.
Domestic violence is an epidemic affecting individuals in every community, regardless of age, economic status, sexual orientation, gender, race, religion, or nationality. It is often accompanied by emotionally abusive and controlling behavior that is only a fraction of a systematic pattern of dominance and control. Domestic violence can result in physical injury, psychological trauma, and in severe cases, even death. The devastating physical, emotional, and psychological consequences of domestic violence can cross generations and last a lifetime.
For anonymous, confidential help available 24/7, call the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-7233 (SAFE) or 1-800-787-3224 (TTY) now."
A) Colorims is a daily Marginalizing System like racism and sexism
B) SIDE NOTE TO LIGHT SKINNED WOMEN "I am not taking away your blackness..."
C) STUDIES ON DARKER VERSUS LIGHTER-SKINNED WOMEN
1) Socio-economic status is higher for lighter women than darker women
2) Housing you're allowed to live in is different for lighter versus darker women
3) Access to Education has historically been easier for lighter versus darker women
4) Success in running for public office is different for lighter versus darker skinned women
5) "Straight Outta Compton" Colorist Hiring List
6) Marriage Rates for darker skinned vs light
7) Income of the black man a woman marries is higher when a black woman is lighter
Black Power Couples after the VMA AwardsIMAGES LIKE THESE NEVER GETS TALKED ABOUT WHEN
YOUNG BLACK GIRLS START RUNNING FOR LONG STRAIGHT WEAVES AND BLEACHING CREAMS
8) Darker-skinned girls are punished more harshly in school
9) Darker-skinned women receive longer prison sentences
10) Low income women with medium to darker skin are more likely to experience suicidal ideation
All the studies mentioned prove things were already known by black women and the people that actually love them.
In the video below, Kimberly Foster makes a good case for how vigilant we have to be if we're going to make an effort to stomp colorism out or at least reduce it. But I'm going to go a step further and say we have to stop contributing to it ourselves. We have to vote for what we want to see with our dollars.
What we see regularly is what we reproduce. I don't care how smart some of us think we are. What we see in our entertainment matters.
It's not likely I'm going to run to see anything that has Zendaya in either.
I'm not boycotting Zendaya or the new crop of light girls. But I'm not making an effort to support Zendaya or any other light women unless there's a darker-skinned black woman in it too. Again, I don't hate Zendaya or any other light skinned actress. But I've supported the careers of Halle Berry and Vanessa Williams for decades.
Been there. Done That. And done.
Light-skinned women ought to be grateful to me and a lot of black women like me.
Yet, we ought to be grateful to the light-skinned sisters in entertainment and in every other profession too because light-skinned women broke the white glass ceiling for black women. They always do. But it's time to stop light-skinned women being 90% of the ones that benefit from the ceiling being broken when they probably represent less than 10% to 20% of black women.
It's 2016. Light-skinned black women have dominated black female roles in movies and television since 1960 at the very least. It's time for this to be over.
So, I'm going to reserve my dollars and my time for Lupita Nyongo, Aja Naomi King, and Danielle Brooks shaded sisters. I'm going to go to the movies to see black women who are more average in shade, just like black men go to see movies about themselves where the black actors are quite a bit more average in shade.
By the way --> As much as I want to see the movie Moonlight it irks me, once again, that black men always get darker skinned black men to represent themselves but don't notice when all the women, except the shady politician -- a rich role for Alfre Woodard, I'm sure -- are light-skinned in respectability politics soaked television show Luke Cage.
For Harriett Video - Let's Get Real About Colorism With Research References You Look Up!
