From the Angry Black Woman:
Someday someone will explain to me this fascination America has with the idea that Michelle Obama has white relatives like it’s remotely unusual for a descendant of slaves in America. I notice with all the talk of “So and so was impregnated by X slaveowner” and the rush to interview the white relatives so they can say the obligatory “I’d love to reunite with that side of the family and talk about our history” no one discusses exactly how so many mulattoes came to be born during and after slavery. I know the story of the relationship between Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings has been played as very romantic, but I sincerely doubt that even if it was that way for them, the same is true of Michelle Obama’s great great great grandmother’s relationship with the man that bought her when she was 6 and impregnated her at 15.
Read the rest of this excellent piece here.
Continue reading about Race, Psychology, and Family Dynamics
From nojojojo over at Angry Black Woman:
“…25 million Americans are underinsured and I know full well I’m not the only brown one of those. Consider the number of us who are disproportionately affected by poverty, and compare that against the fact that health insurance premiums keep rising by as much as 150% per decade while wages remain essentially flat (note: PDF). Consider how little media attention, medical research, and government funding is accorded to health issues that primarily or disproportionately affect people of color, like sickle cell anemia. Consider also how the intersection of race with gender or other factors, and the lingering effects of colonialism, cause literal epidemics of poor health care, addiction and/or violence in some PoC communities, like ongoing rape and involuntary sterilization among American Indian women. (See also unusualmusic’s insightful linkspams on women in prison, intersexed women of color, and more.)
This is killing us. It is killing us. The current health care system of the US kills people across the board, yes. But it’s killing more of us. And it’s leaving a greater proportion of us in abject poverty or lifelong trauma if we survive.
So we, especially, need to fight back.”
From Kenyon Farrow at Grio:
When Obama delivered his “gay agenda” speech to the well-fed, well-scrubbed mostly white crowd of gays and lesbians at the Human Rights Campaign’s Annual Dinner on Saturday night, anyone outside of the LGBT community would have assumed by the applause that the entire “gay community” is in agreement that access to serve in the military, gay marriage, and hate crimes legislation are our primary issues. But in reality, HRC’s political agenda is not what I want. It does not speak for me, nor for the lives of many other black, poor and working class LGBT people.
Given the fact that we’re in a long recession where hundreds of thousands of jobs have been lost in almost every month of 2009, and national unemployment numbers are at nearly 10 percent, why are we not talking about the issues that most people are concerned about – health care and the economy – and their impact on the LGBT community? The truth is, for many people at that dinner who could afford the cheapest ticket at $250 a plate, jobs and wages are of little concern.
It’s not as though there is a lack of evidence that supports the idea that LGBT folks are impacted by poverty. A report on lesbian and gay poverty in the US by the Williams Institute this spring showed that lesbian and gay couples were as likely to be poor as straight couples, mostly due to the impact of race and gender.
Read the rest of the piece here.
Continue reading about Black working class gays left out of national gay rights agenda
From Queer Kids of Queer Parents Against Gay Marriage:
It’s hard for us to believe what we’re hearing these days. Thousands are losing their homes, and gays want a day named after Harvey Milk. The U.S. military is continuing its path of destruction, and gays want to be allowed to fight. Cops are still killing unarmed black men and bashing queers, and gays want more policing. More and more Americans are suffering and dying because they can’t get decent health care, and gays want weddings. What happened to us? Where have our communities gone? Did gays really sell out that easily?
As young queer people raised in queer families and communities, we reject the liberal gay agenda that gives top priority to the fight for marriage equality. The queer families and communities we are proud to have been raised in are nothing like the ones transformed by marriage equality. This agenda fractures our communities, pits us against natural allies, supports unequal power structures, obscures urgent queer concerns, abandons struggle for mutual sustainability inside queer communities and disregards our awesomely fabulous queer history.
Ojibwa of Street Prophets and Dailykos writes:
In fact, it was well-known at that time among geographers, astronomers, cartographers, and educated people that the world was round. Anaximander, the Greek founder of scientific geography, had suggested that the world was a globe back in the sixth century B.C., This concept was popularized by the Roman geographer Aurelius Macrobius in the late fourth century A.D. and by the English cartographer Johannes de Sacrobosco (John of Hollywood) in the early fourteenth century. By the late fifteenth and early sixteenth century, virtually all European cartographers ascribed to it.
[...]
At the time Columbus first set sail for the East, no educated person questioned the fact that one could reach the East by sailing west.
[...]
There are some historians and geographers today who question the notion that Columbus was confused about where he was when he landed on an island off the coast of the Americas. If Columbus actually thought he was off the coast of China, they ask, why would he take formal possession of territory that he believed to be under the suzerainty of the Great Khan? It would have been an act of abject madness to land on an island within the Khan’s domain and lay claim to it. Second, why did Columbus load up on glass beads and other trinkets when setting off to see the Great Khan?
[...]
Columbus was not the first European to set foot on the Americas. Scandinavian sea kings, commonly called Vikings, had earlier colonized Greenland, had sailed off the coast of North America, and had attempted to establish a colony on North America.
[...]
Contact between Europe and the Americas was not one way. There are also reports of American Indians “discovering” Europe. There are several reports of Indians in kayaks being blown off course and landing in Ireland and on the European coast. Pliny’s Natural History, written in 100 B.C., reports that Native American merchants arrived in the Netherlands, blown off course by a storm.
In 2004, Micheal Moore went on record:
I don’t agree with the copyright laws and I don’t have a problem with people downloading the movie and sharing it with people as long as they’re not trying to make a profit off my labour. I would oppose that. I do well enough already and I made this film because I want the world, to change. The more people who see it the better, so I’m happy this is happening. Is it wrong for someone who’s bought a film on DVD to let a friend watch it for free? Of course it’s not. It never has been and never will be. I think information, art and ideas should be shared.
I have yet to see Moore’s Capitalism: A Love Story. The fact that Moore did not release his latest documentary under a Creative Commons License, in my view, undermines his credibility, motivation, intention, and message. It’s not like we have the technology to disseminate and distribute films to a wide audience for free.
My view is, if you’re going to criticize an economic system and advocate for a different, more justiciable economic system, then it behooves you as an activist, journalist, and filmmaker to operate within the structures of the more justiciable economic system — especially when those alternative structures already exist. Lead by example. Walk the walk. Get it? What was it that Mahatma Ghandi said, something about “Be the change you wish to see in the world.”
What gives Moore? Why isn’t your latest film released on the internet under a CC license? If you honestly oppose the oppressive structures of capitalism, then why do you continue to prop up those structures?
Continue reading about Michael Moore: pirate my film, please
In the summer of 1996, the dance hit, “Calcutta Woman” made its debut on the North American & European pop charts. The song, with its, Wine Yuh Waist lyrics became an instant hit with both party goers and disc jockeys alike. The success of “Calcutta Woman” helped introduce the music community to the world of Chutney music. Chutney was the name given to the pop/folk music of the East Indians that lived in the Caribbean region. The popularity of “Calcutta Woman” in 1996 provided a giant leap for the Chutney music industry which just three decades earlier did not even have one single recording to its credit. This is a story about Chutney music, and how it has emerged from being an almost forgotten art form to an international money maker. This is also a view into the lives of the artists that make up this industry and how they have used their lyrics to reflect upon the world around them and to inspire a culture far removed from their homeland.
IN THE 19TH CENTURY, the paramount moral challenge was slavery. In the 20th century, it was totalitarianism. In this century, it is the brutality inflicted on so many women and girls around the globe: sex trafficking, acid attacks, bride burnings and mass rape.
Yet if the injustices that women in poor countries suffer are of paramount importance, in an economic and geopolitical sense the opportunity they represent is even greater. “Women hold up half the sky,” in the words of a Chinese saying, yet that’s mostly an aspiration: in a large slice of the world, girls are uneducated and women marginalized, and it’s not an accident that those same countries are disproportionately mired in poverty and riven by fundamentalism and chaos. There’s a growing recognition among everyone from the World Bank to the U.S. military’s Joint Chiefs of Staff to aid organizations like CARE that focusing on women and girls is the most effective way to fight global poverty and extremism. That’s why foreign aid is increasingly directed to women. The world is awakening to a powerful truth: Women and girls aren’t the problem; they’re the solution.
Read the rest of the piece here.
Continue reading about The Women’s Crusade and Economic Inequities
From the AP:
Chile Pixtun, a Guatemalan, says the doomsday theories spring from Western, not Mayan ideas.
A significant time period for the Mayas does end on the date, and enthusiasts have found a series of astronomical alignments they say coincide in 2012, including one that happens roughly only once every 25,800 years.
But most archaeologists, astronomers and Maya say the only thing likely to hit Earth is a meteor shower of New Age philosophy, pop astronomy, Internet doomsday rumors and TV specials such as one on the History Channel which mixes “predictions” from Nostradamus and the Mayas and asks: “Is 2012 the year the cosmic clock finally winds down to zero days, zero hope?”
It may sound all too much like other doomsday scenarios of recent decades — the 1987 Harmonic Convergence, the Jupiter Effect or “Planet X.” But this one has some grains of archaeological basis.
One of them is Monument Six.
Found at an obscure ruin in southern Mexico during highway construction in the 1960s, the stone tablet almost didn’t survive; the site was largely paved over and parts of the tablet were looted.
It’s unique in that the remaining parts contain the equivalent of the date 2012. The inscription describes something that is supposed to occur in 2012 involving Bolon Yokte, a mysterious Mayan god associated with both war and creation.
However — shades of Indiana Jones — erosion and a crack in the stone make the end of the passage almost illegible.
Archaeologist Guillermo Bernal of Mexico’s National Autonomous University interprets the last eroded glyphs as maybe saying, “He will descend from the sky.”
Spooky, perhaps, but Bernal notes there are other inscriptions at Mayan sites for dates far beyond 2012 — including one that roughly translates into the year 4772.
And anyway, Mayas in the drought-stricken Yucatan peninsula have bigger worries than 2012.
“If I went to some Mayan-speaking communities and asked people what is going to happen in 2012, they wouldn’t have any idea,” said Jose Huchim, a Yucatan Mayan archaeologist. “That the world is going to end? They wouldn’t believe you. We have real concerns these days, like rain.”
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Continue reading about President Obama addresses Human Rights Campaign
Anishinaabekwe wrote a beautiful piece earlier this year that I recently came across:
What is beauty? Is beauty defined by a mainstream magazine cover where the models are airbrushed, who eat diets of 800 calories a day, wear toxic makeup and use toxic products to wash and style their hair? To some this is beauty. To me this is a definition of self hate, internalized oppression and empowerment that only reigns on the surface.
In my life I have defined beauty as natural, honoring Mother Earth, honoring the Native tradition of beauty and not falling into the trap of consumerism. The trick of mainstream beauty is consumerism, not honoring Mother Earth and economic poverty for women. This is all related and it distracts women from cultivating inner beauty and true empowerment.
Please read the rest of this beautiful piece here.
Continue reading about Beauty, Consumerism, and Environmentalism
Laura Clawson over at DailyKos has an excellent round-up on the impact VAWA (championed by our own VP Biden) has had on reducing intimate partner violence. While the numbers never tell the whole story, since there is a significant amount of underreporting of DV crimes, especially in communities of color where women of color are loath to report men of color to the historically and institutionally racist law enforcement and criminal justice systems, the numbers are at least encouraging news.
Ojibwa over at Street Prophets has a running series titled “Indians 101.” This week’s installment addresses the notion of American Indian Citizenship. Ojibwa writes:
“Since the very beginning of the United States, the idea of American citizenship for Indians has been a controversial subject. American government is based on Native American models. American democracy was inspired in part by the Indian democracies which the European colonists saw around them. After independence from England, the newly formed United States wrote a constitution which was inspired by the Iroquois Confederacy.
Citizenship for Indians is a unique situation. It is important to remember that Indians were not immigrants to this country and therefore the ways in which they have become citizens are not the same as immigrants from Europe, Africa, Asia, and other parts of the world. Long before there was a United States, Indians were citizens of sovereign Indian nations. Today, many continue to be citizens of these sovereign nations.”
Taking back our power is one of the most crucial tasks that confront us on our way to selfhood. How can we ensure that no one can pull our strings and that we retain our right to self-determination?
A message from elder Floyd Red Crow Westerman.
Continue reading about Indigenous Native American Elders Speak
NLinStPaul of Daily Kos wrote on an amazing piece a couple of weeks ago, titled: “The subtle racism of friends and allies.” She writes:
“Have you ever heard a person of color say that they prefer the open racism of conscious bigots to the subtle racism of us do-gooders on the left end of [...]
Continue reading about “The subtle racism of friends and allies”
Kai from Zuky wrote an excellent piece a couple of years ago: “The White Liberal Conundrum.” Kai writes:
“As I’ve often noted, many white liberals remain oblivious to the depth and breadth of anti-racist work, opting to hide behind the delusion that anyone who votes for Democrats and doesn’t have a pointy hood in the [...]
Sistah Robinswing of Black Kos has a beautifully written, inspiring diary up and running this morning, hitting on a very fundamental, essential, foundational theme about innate power and personhood. She takes the time to remind us all that, no matter what, we must persevere with a smile, never give our innate power away, [...]
Karynthia over at The Angry Black Woman has put together a great list for dealing with classic derailers when discussing race, gender, and sexuality: The Do’s and Don’ts of Being a Good Ally.
Continue reading about Deconstructing Race, Gender, Sexuality
