Last night’s lecture was given at the Islamic Library of Dearborn in Dearborn, Michigan.
The life of unwitting social icon, Rodney King will forever serve to illuminate the shadow of racism that still darkens the world, and his recent passing prompts a painful admission that not much has changed since 1992. Sure the U.S. has a black president which is a huge milestone, but systematic racism is still a fact, attempted genocide is still a fact, hate crimes are still a fact, and supremacy groups protected by constitutional law are still a fact.
Read about Rodney Kings life here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rodney_King
I recently had the displeasure of encountering and addressing some racist behavior that has no place in todays “enlightened” society. I decided to take an extra shift at work last weekend and the result was an ugly confrontation with a co-worker. My co-worker is a fishin, campin, get er’ done type (nothing wrong with that), and while there is a stereotypical ignorance…
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People of color everywhere —struggling with the intropressor…..
Racism has always been a touchy topic. Not only is it present in the various aspects of society,but also variably present in all forms of media. Be it print,television ads or viral campaigns. But this recently launched campaign by Vaseline has pushed the limits of marketing and advertising. Vaseline recently came out with a skin-whitening app (yes, that’s right, an app) to promote “Be Prepared,” a skin-whitening cream for men the company is launching in India. “Be Prepared” promises to get rid of dark spots and to lighten skin tone in just one minute a day.
The app, meanwhile, allows users to lighten their faces in Facebook pictures and share the new pictures with friends.The download is designed to promote Vaseline’s range of skin-lightening creams for men, a huge and fast-growing market driven by fashion and a cultural preference for fairer skin. The widget promises to “Transform Your Face On…
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Below is an interesting talk by lawyer Bryan Stevenson filmed earlier this month in Long Beach, California. It touches on an issue that has always grabbed my attention – identity. Not only identity, but its role in the development of activists and social justice agents. Especially when it comes to the issue of Black identity, a lot of fascinating work has been flooding into popular media lately, including the post-Black art movement, several books blasting traditional notions of Blackness (Womack, Toure, Dickerson, and Thurston), as well as the recent Canadian indie film Colour Me. The bottom line is that there is a generational movement toward expanding what it means to be Black. But there is also an acknowledgment that the reality of institutional racism remains, necessitating caution as we move away from the boxes imposed on Black people’s humanity. I consider this a quintessential…
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A healer in the king’s court faces a unique challenge. To truly be effective, he or she must think critically. This means often ignoring the dictates of the king’s laws, which may be the cause of illness in the first place. Healers must be savvy enough to recognize that although current conditions are obviously not working, it is by navigating within those conditions that the people will be reached and the medicine delivered on time. ~Bakano Warrior
Early in my doctoral studies, I struggled to bridge the worlds of Black and “mainstream” psychology. I found them both lacking when it came to the issues of people who didn’t fit the traditional mold. As a young Black woman – and also a Buddhist, a mom, a wife, an artist, and an activist – I had a hard time finding myself or people like me within the walls of traditional psychological training…
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The Evolvement of “Double-consciousness”
by T.M.K. DeWalt
Ujima– “ The Negro ever feels his two-ness- an American, a Negro, two souls, two thoughts, two un-reconciled strivings…two warring ideals in one, dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder.” These are the resounding words of W.E.B DuBois, author of The Souls of Black Folk, which summoned the notion of “double-consciousness.” This concept suggests that blacks were lodged between their African descent and identity as an American around the early 20th century. DuBois made his assessment regarding the black psyche over a century ago, but the “dichotomy” he alludes to rings true, even today. However, there is a new “double- consciousness” which resides on the very threshold of ruin. We have garnered our very own sense of self and identity since the post-civil rights era. We are no longer as inclined to perceive ourselves through the…
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“My natural hair is beautiful. My natural hair is mine.
I never needed you to tell me this. I’ve known it all the time.
My natural hair is glamourous. My natural hair can do all this.
Who can tell me it matters how I wear it? But I’ve known this all the time.
O me? O my.
My natural hair is out. My natural hair is free.
It matters much now – how I wear it.
O happy me! O my!”
(‘Hair’ – LLAL 21.06.12)
Poster: One Half of All Babies are Born to the Lowest Income Families,” by Birth Control Federation of America, n.d.”
Citation
Birth Control Federation of America, Inc. (PPFA), “Poster: One Half of All Babies are Born to the Lowest Income Families,” by Birth Control Federation of America, n.d.”,” Digital Collections, accessed June 21, 2012, http://smithlibraries.org/digital/items/show/488.
The Negro Project, instigated in 1939 by Margaret Sanger, a member of the American Eugenics Society and was one of the first major undertakings of the new Birth Control Federation of America (BCFA), the product of a merger between the American Birth Control League and Sanger’s Birth Control Clinical Research Bureau, and one of the more controversial campaigns of the birth control movement.
Planned Parenthood Federation of America, Inc., “Pamphlet,”Better Health for 13,000,000,” 1943,” Digital Collections, accessed June 21, 2012, http://smithlibraries.org/digital/items/show/450.
By the late 1930s, the birth control activists began to focus on high birth…
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A Marxist-Leninist Exile from Utopia
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