Darlingniki821

The more you know. NOT. O___O

The trickles and leaks of information from the grand jury investigating the killing of the unarmed black teenager Michael Brown by the white police officer Darren Wilson in Ferguson, Missouri have turned into a flood.

This "new" information suggests that Darren Wilson will not be held accountable for shooting an unarmed person multiple times in broad daylight. It was already a fait accompli that Darren Wilson would not be arrested for the killing of an unarmed black person: any other outcome would be outside of America's long tradition of extra judicially murdering black and brown people.

The news media is also complicit with framing and circulating the leaked information in such a way as to exonerate Darren Wilson.

For example, the Washington Post has presented a one sided, rumor filled, and carefully framed story about Brown's autopsy as representing definitive fact--as opposed to information leaked by Wilson's defenders and a corrupt prosecutor's office.

Ultimately, what is the needlessly complex theater surrounding the death of Michael Brown at the hands of Darren Wilson can be crystallized down to one essential truth. Darren Wilson killed Michael Brown for the "crime" of being black and walking in the street.

This is not a new crime in the United States. Under the white racial terrorist regime of Jim and Jane Crow, black people were bullied and murdered for violating similar rules.

The present day version of this "crime" in the Age of Obama is demonstrated by Wilson's harassment of Michael Brown for "obstructing traffic".

Several decades ago, what is a very recent past in the highly polarized and racially segregated community of Ferguson and its surrounding area, this crime of violating white public space was known as "bumptious contact".

For this crime, black people could be arrested, beaten, and even killed for being on the sidewalk near a white person. Bumptious contact was part of a racist legal regime that included other crimes, both formal and informal, such as "reckless eyeballing", not yielding to white people at four way intersections, and asking to be paid a previously agreed upon price for one's labor.

In 1838 when William Hendry of Greene County, Tennessee drew up his will, he included this passage: “It is my will and desire that Nancy McEfee have $300 in place of a Mulatto girl named Delfey [that] I once gave her as a legatee and McEfee gave her back and gave her mother a bill of sale for the girl that she might have [a] chance to free her for which above named $300 McEfee holds some obligation to me to be paid at my death.” [McEfee sometimes appears as McFee.]

I’ve written about Delfey (also spelled Delphia) before. She’s one of my maternal great-great-great-grandmothers and was born about 1808. By all accounts, she is the daughter of William Hendry (b. 1760) and Rose (b. 1790), a woman he owned. Because Delphia was his daughter–and because he seems to have promised Rose that he would eventually free Delphia–he made arrangements in this document and in others to carry out that commitment.
Seeing the $300 valuation made me curious. What would the equivalent amount be today?

It turns out that a valuation can be interpreted in many ways. MeasuringWorth.com, a website that strives to provide accurate historical data on economic aggregates, distinguishes three categories: 1) the cost or value of a commodity 2) income or wealth and 3) a project (an investment or the construction something like a canal or cable network).

Here is how Measuringworth.com shows the relative worth today for 1838′s $300

$7,750.00 using the Consumer Price Index
$6,620.00 using the GDP deflator
$68,800.00 using the unskilled wage
$144,000.00 using the Production Worker Compensation
$161,000.00 using the nominal GDP per capita
$3,150,000.00 using the relative share of GDP

Breaking it down in even more detail and comparing the value as a commodity and as income or wealth:

COMMODITY
The real price of that commodity is $7,750
The labor value of that commodity is $68,800 for an unskilled worker and $144,000 for a production worker
The income value of that commodity is $161,000

INCOME OR WEALTH
Historic standard of living = $7,750
Economic status = $161,000
Economic power = $3,150,000

After divvying up his assets to his sons and various other relatives in amounts of $50 for some and $150 for others, Hendry also wrote: “It is my will and desire that the rest of my estate after Sally McCray’s heirs have one hundred and fifty dollars as above named and Nancy McEfee gets her above named $300, which I promised McEfee to leave to her at my death in place of Delfey, the Mulatto girl and for selling Delfey to Rose as she might have a chance to free her…”

Just to put things in perspective: In 1808, the year Delphia was born, a man named Stephen Kirk puchased 202 1/2 acres in Baldwin County, Georgia for $450.00. I’m still looking for some Greene County, Tennessee sales so I can make a more direct comparison.

So many questions. What a conundrum to own one of your children and to place a value on her as you would a plow or a horse and yet to have bucked custom and provided a legal path for her freedom. What convoluted calculations determined that this child was worth $300 while the bequest to your sons was $50? Who was Nancy McEfee and why was Delphia conveyed to her and then returned?

As I have learned through the years from other Hendry descendants and relatives who have generously shared documents and information, there is much more to Delphia Hendry’s story.

A few months ago, Robert Purvis, reached out to me through Ancestry.com. He and I share William Hendry as a great-great-great-great-grandfather. Robert, who is a descendant of one of Hendry’s sons, directed me to a page on the Race and Slavery Petitions Project website that included a petition filed on October 19, 1833 (five years before William Hendry’s will) for Delphia’s freedom.

Greene County Tennessee Petition 11483304 read: Twenty-five residents of Greene County represent that William Hendrey gave John McFee, his son-in-law, “a Cartin Calored Gal by the name of Delfe” in 1827 and that said McFee “Sold hur to hur mother a black woman for the Sum of thre hundred Dollars”; McFee “gave hur mother a firm bil of Sail for Delfy and She was to Set hur free.” The petitioners point out that said mother cannot emancipate her daughter owing “to an act of the General assembly prohibiting the amancipation of Slaves.” The petitioners therefore pray “your Honourable body to pass a law authorising the County Court of Green to emancipate the sd Delfey.” They further avow that Delfy “is a garl of good Charactor.”

Greene County, Tennessee in 1888.

I knew from the emancipation certificate, which my grandfather had lovingly saved and given to me almost forty years ago, that Delphia eventually was freed in 1841, twenty-three years before the Emancipation Proclamation of January 1, 1863. But as the 1833 petition shows, there was incredible resistance to her emancipation.

The journey to freedom seems to have been formally set in motion in 1827 when Delphia was 19 years old. It was then, as the 1833 petition says, that William Hendry, gave Delphia (“a certain colored gal by the name of Delfe”) to his son-in-law, John McEfee, husband of Nancy Hendry McEfee, one of his white daughters. McEfee, in turn sold Delphia to her mother, Rose, for $300. McEfee, according to the 1833 petition, then gave Rose “a firm bill of sale” that was to allow Rose to set her daughter free. But because Tennessee had a law “prohibiting the emancipation of slaves,” Rose was prevented from freeing her child.

Five more years were to pass after Rose’s purchase of Delphia without Delphia actually being freed. In the 1833 document, 25 residents of Greene County Tennessee signed a petition requesting that the county authorize a law to emancipate Delphia. Even though that law was passed, it would take another nine years before Delphia would be emancipated.

More answers simply bring more questions. How in the world did Rose get $300 in 1827? Or was the $300 a credit Rose somehow had accumulated toward some debt Hendry owed her? Did Hendry give his mulatto daughter to his white daughter and son-in-law to settle a debt? Who were the 25–presumably white and free–citizens who vouched for Rose and Delphia?

I do not have any images of Delphia, only this emancipation document that my grandfather, Marion R. Perry–Delphia’s great-grandson–had preserved and had laminated many decades ago:



This photo is of her son, Henderson B. Robinson, my maternal great-great-grandfather, who was born in 1835 in the midst of these legal battles.

Delphia’s son, Henderson B. Robinson, was elected sheriff of Phillips County, Arkansas during Reconstruction. When he and other black elected officials were pushed from office in 1878, he moved his family to Oberlin, Ohio.

He later would move to Ohio (Ripley and Oberlin), to Memphis (where my grandfather said he “worked with Robert Church”–Mary Church Terrell’s father–though I have no details of that) and then to Arkansas where he would become superintendent of prisons in Helena, Phillips County, and a member of the Arkansas state legislature during Reconstruction. In the 1880s he moved his family to Ohio and enrolled his children at Oberlin.

I continue to ponder and to search and to fill in the blanks, not so much about Delphia and Rose and their relationship with William Hendry–which I will never really know–but about how Delphia prepared her son, Henderson, for the world that lay ahead and how Henderson and his wife, Adelaide, taught their children to navigate America during the late 19th century.

Privilege is the ability to deny reality by creating a bubble of willful ignorance around oneself. This is true of white privilege, male privilege, heterosexual privilege, and all of the other ways that the dominant and the in-group benefit materially and psychologically from a culture that is designed to bend the world in the service of their will.

The mainstream media has, for the most part, moved on from the murder of Michael Brown and the gross violations of the black community's human rights by the police in Ferguson, Missouri. The twenty-four hour news cycle has a limited attention span; the corporate news media does not serve the public interest as it is first and foremost beholden to profits over people and truth-telling.

I will continue to write about and discuss the events in Ferguson because what has and is transpiring there is emblematic of America's national problem and sickness that is white supremacy. Ferguson is a petty fiefdom of meanness, cruelty, and racism; there are many Fergusons in the United States.

Yesterday, the Washington Post and the website Mediaite featured two news items about Ferguson that together constitute a textbook and ideal typical example of white racism in the post civil rights era.

Of course, the comment sections on both stories feature white racists publicly masturbating with their own political feces as is their preferred habit.

Nonetheless, both pieces are very revealing.

The Washington Post's story, "For some Ferguson whites, racial fault lines exposed by shooting come as a surprise", focuses on the ignorance and faux racial innocence that typifies Whiteness as a political and racial ideology.

"For some Ferguson whites, racial fault lines exposed by shooting come as a surprise" is also a clinic in aversive and symbolic racism.

But since the death of an unarmed black teenager at the hands of a white police officer, some African Americans are calling it segregated and racist. Now Singen has found herself talking in terms of “us” and “them,” “we” and “they.” 

“I didn’t have any problems with anybody or any color, and all of a sudden it feels like we are being held responsible for something that’s not our fault,” Singen, 70, said as she left Faraci Pizza, a 46-year-old Ferguson business that has become a focal point of racial tension. “I don’t get it.” 

That sense of shock is common here among Ferguson whites in the wake of 18-year-old Michael Brown’s death and the explosive protests in the days that followed. 

Hart has lived here most of his 47 years. He was class president at McCluer High School. More than a third of the students were minorities then, and he said he could not recall a racist incident. He believes in building communities and the good of people — which made it possible to think that his town’s troubles could be helped, if not solved, by a slice of pizza.

The first time I felt this pain, I was six years old. It was the first time I was called a “nigger.”

My parents had brought me with them to an important financial meeting at the bank. I was the only child entertaining herself in the waiting area when another family came in with their three children. At six, I was too young to understand the difference between us was more than cosmetic. They had pale skin; I had brown skin. They had straight, blonde hair; I had kinky, black hair. None of this mattered, because I was a child, bored and in need of friends.

The defenders of Darren Wilson, the white police officer who repeatedly shot an unarmed black teenager named Michael Brown at least 6 times in Ferguson, Missouri claim that “the facts” will clear their champion of any wrongdoing.

As reported by the St. Louis Post Dispatch, new public opinion research by the Remington Research Group has revealed that 62 percent of white St. Louis county residents believe that the killing of Michael Brown, an unarmed black teenager who was shot multiple times while surrendering with his hands in the air, by a white police officer named Darren Wilson, was justified.

The support by white St. Louis county residents for the killing of Michael Brown is not just a simple matter of a difference in public opinion regarding how individuals locate matters of public concern within their own cognitive schema.

Instead, their attitudes are formed in relation to a given social and historical context. Consequently, the political attitudes of Darren Wilson's white supporters reflect a society that is organized around a racial hierarchy which privileges Whiteness.

Remington’s poll is part of a larger constellation of data on white racial attitudes in response to the Ferguson incident, specifically, and the realities of white on black racism in the post civil rights era, more generally.

In August, a poll by Pew Research found that:

A New York City police officer put his arm around Eric Garner’s neck and choked out his life as he screamed “I can’t breathe!”

A police officer in Ferguson, MO aimed his gun at Michael Brown, an unarmed African-American teenager and shot him multiple times while he reportedly pleaded, “I don't have a gun. Stop shooting!”

Recent articles about Iggy Azalea’s offensive tweets have left me unsettled, not because yet another celebrity has publicly said something stupid and hurtful, but because as much as this happens, many of these artists and their fans still rush into defensive mode instead of learning from their mistakes.

If Iggy isn’t racist or homophobic, the evidence Piggy Azalea has collected against her doesn’t look good. However, what irks me more than Iggy’s comments (or blatant Black appropriation) is her belief that she has no reason to apologize, that those who take offense are “immature” (as if “Indian chief” jokes are the peak of sophisticated humor). As with many other stars, Iggy’s fans go quickly to the “She’s not racist, she has a black (boy) friend” defense. (By the way, being attracted to someone does not mean you regard him as an equal.) If Iggy is not prejudiced, she should know one doesn’t have to be prejudiced to say something prejudiced. That prejudice includes racism, homophobia, sexism, etc. and you are not exempt from saying offensive things because someone you love happens to fall into those “othered” categories.

It took me years to understand this. I first learnt the term “gay” at eight years old. It was on the cover of a Catholic News in my house. The headline read, “POPE: GAYS NEED LOVE TOO” and I asked my mother what it meant. She explained simply, “Sometimes instead of a man falling in love with a woman, he falls in love with another man or a woman falls in love with a woman.” The key word I extracted here was “love.” I was old enough to understand that you can’t help whom you love. I was also young enough that I said, “if it’s okay with the Pope, it’s cool with me.” (Thankfully I grew up under John Paul II). I always considered myself pro-gay rights but I still had homophobic preconceptions. In high school I often said—to my one openly gay friend’s dismay— “that’s so gay,” meaning, “that’s so dysfunctional.” When he expressed hurt, I simply said “You know I don’t mean it like that.” I was willfully ignoring reality: I was perpetuating an idea that gay was dysfunctional. I was raised Catholic in the Caribbean which still holds many homophobic attitudes that I did not recognize at the time. I’ve grown up since then and can only continue to evolve as the LGBTQ community and society as a whole do. I was ignorant. Not malicious.



Everyone, malicious or not, is capable of ignorance. Absolutely nobody knows everything about everyone. In trying to understand, we sometimes fumble (See Jen Polachek’s epic fail). Here is the problem: as humans we are often too proud to admit what damage we’ve done; we would rather let our pride get in the way of the lesson than begin to heal our mistakes. We insist that because we are not acting out of malice that that excuses our behavior. As Melissa Harris- Perry explained, this isn’t the case. Additionally, we can be afraid to acknowledge that what we said was prejudiced because we think it means labeling ourselves as prejudiced. What we need to do when we hurt someone, be they individual or group, is see things from the other’s perspective. When we don’t, we may dehumanize them, believing that a person’s feelings are not valid because they do not align with our own.

Generally when someone’s feelings don’t align with our own, it is because that person’s experiences do not. Do I think Julianne Hough is racist for dressing up as her favourite OITNB character? No. Is what she did hurtful and problematic? Most definitely: it shows a fundamental lack of understanding of the painful history blackface symbolizes. Before the backlash, she had probably known a little about blackface but never had to learn its agonizing history in depth (very few people are willing to teach it, as we recently saw) She probably had never seen an actual minstrel show, read an essay on the subject or watched Spike Lee’s Bamboozled. She likely did not see her makeup as a problem because it was not a problem to her. She hadn’t realized (and I stress I am projecting here) that dressing as a Black person was one of the many brutal psychological ways that Whites dehumanized African- Americans. She meant, I believe, to celebrate a fictional character. However, in doing so she forgot to recognize the humanity in other real African-Americans by seeing something from their perspective. She wore something that, much like a Confederate flag or a swastika, represents hatred and disdain for a group of people. She used a racist symbol. She is not necessarily racist.

What is important when we do things like this is, that we acknowledge the hurt and educate ourselves as to why our behavior is not acceptable. Privilege may get in the way of our understanding. Egos should not. At some point, we are all ignorant about another culture. The important thing is that we are willing to learn.
Daria-Ann Martineau was born and raised in Trinidad and Tobago and holds an MFA in Poetry from New York University. Her poetry has appeared in Narrative, Kinfolks Quarterly and Almost Five Quarterly.

By Guest Contributor Phenderson Djeli Clark, cross-posted from Media Diversified UK

When, long ago, the gods created Earth
In Jove’s fair image Man was shaped at birth.
The beasts for lesser parts were next designed;
Yet were they too remote from humankind.
To fill the gap, and join the rest to Man,
Th’Olympian host conceiv’d a clever plan.
A beast they wrought, in semi-human figure,
Filled it with vice, and called the thing a N*gger.

– H.P. Lovecraft, On the Creation of N*ggers (1912)

I had come to believe that by now the racism of H.P. Lovecraft, the celebrated author of horror and fantasy, was a settled matter — like declaring Wrath of Khan the best film in the Star Trek franchise. Arguing against such a thing should be absurd. I certainly thought so after the matter was thrust into the spotlight in December 2011, when author Nnedi Okorafor won the esteemed World Fantasy Award — whose statuette is none other than H.P. Lovecraft’s disembodied head. Okorafor had been unaware of the depths of Lovecraft’s “issues,” until a friend sent her his 1912 poem,On the Creation of N*ggers, where blacks are fashioned by the gods as “a beast … in semi-human figure.”

This was no one-off, some “misspeak” by the author. Lovecraft’s racial biases ran deep and strong, as evidenced by his stories–from exotic locales with tropic natives lacerating themselves before mad gods in acts of “negro fetishism” (Call of Cthulhu), to descriptions of a black man as “gorilla-like” and one of the world’s “many ugly things” (Herbert West — Re-animator). This was no abstract part of Lovecraft’s creative process, where he was trying to imbue his work with some hint of realism. Rather, these were expressions of his foremost thoughts, a key part of his personal beliefs, most notably his virulent xenophobia towards an increasingly diverse American society emerging outside of his Anglo-Saxon New England.

Yet many of Lovecraft’s modern-day fans seem unable, or perhaps unwilling, to deal with this ugly side of his life. A few years back I was on a forum where someone was discussing Lovecraft’s storyThe Rats in the Walls, where one of the characters is a cat called “Nigger Man.” It so happens that Lovecraft owned a “beloved” feline by the same name. Feeling the need to explain after dropping the N-bomb, the post made it clear that quite likely Lovecraft was just using some politically incorrect colloquialism “of his times,” and probably did not mean to demean anyone’s race. While acknowledging that Lovecraft had some “disturbing notions on race,” the post went on to state this was likely an unfortunate result of the author’s isolated upbringing.

Seriously? That’s the argument we’re going with now? H.P. Lovecraft was just channeling his inner Mark Twain? He was isolated? His “notions” of race were “disturbing?” He really wasn’t trying to demean anyone? I guess this is what we mean by accidental racist.

It’s always perplexing to watch the gymnastics of mental obfuscation that occur as fans of Lovecraft attempt to rationalize his racism. Yes. His racism. Not his “disturbing notions.” Not his “peculiar thoughts.” Not his “racialisms.” His unabashed, full frontal, in-your-face racism. Lovecraft was a racist. Period. No qualifiers necessary. Sure he was other things as well–among them a great writer with an amazing imagination. But he was a racist too. And he was very good at it.

In his 1919 short The Street, the United States is represented as being colonized by “good, valiant men of our [Anglo-Saxon] blood who had come from the Blessed Isles across the sea” until ominous newcomers arrive, “swarthy, sinister faces with furtive eyes and odd features, whose owners spoke unfamiliar words ….”They brought with them alien thoughts, and had come to “tear down the laws and virtues that our fathers had exalted; to stamp out the soul of the old America – the soul that was bequeathed through a thousand and a half years of Anglo-Saxon freedom, justice and moderation.” These swarthy men living in “rotting edifices” were “the brains of a hideous revolution” and “at their word of command many millions of brainless, besotted beasts would stretch forth their noisome talons from the slums of a thousand cities, burning, slaying, and destroying till the land of our fathers should be no more.” Eventually, the sinister hordes are destroyed when their squalid homes (referred to as an infested “nest” filled with “stench”) collapse, burying and killing all their kind in a genocidal apocalypse.

A similar story of foreign contagion, The Horror of Red Hook, goes full tilt into the race-baiting, with such wonderful descriptive characters as “an Arab with a hatefully negroid mouth.” Charming. One only needs look at Lovecraft’s personal letters to catch the influences for these fantastic tales of race-war and extermination. In them he recounts a 1920s trip to New York, where he is repulsed by being jostled in the subway by “sneering, greasy mulattos” and terrified at the sight of “hideous negroes that resemble gigantic chimpanzees.” Similar to his stories, he goes on to rail against what he sees as the real-life “mongrelization” of America’s finest cities:

The New York Mongoloid problem is beyond calm mention. The city is befouled and accursed—I come away from it with a sense of having been tainted by contact, and long for some solvent of oblivion to wash it out! … How in Heaven’s name sensitive and self-respecting white men can continue to live in the stew of Asiatic filth which the region has become — with marks and reminders of the locust — plague on every hand—is absolutely beyond me. … There is here a grave and mighty problem beside which the negro problem is a jest—for in this case we have to deal not with childlike half-gorillas, but with yellow, soulless enemies whose repulsive carcasses house dangerous mental machines warped culturelessly in the single direction of material gain at any cost. I hope the end will be warfare … In New England we have our own local curses … in the form of simian Portuguese, unspeakable Southern Italians, and jabbering French-Canadians. Broadly speaking, our curse is Latin just as yours is Semitic-Mongoloid, the Mississippian’s African, the Pittsburgher’s Slavonic, the Arizonian’s Mexican, and the Californian’s Chino-Japanese.*

- Letter from Lovecraft to Frank Belknap Long, August 21, 1926.

Disturbing notions indeed. During a visit to Chinatown in 1922, Lovecraft declared it a “filthy dump” filled with sub-human ‘swine … a bastard mess of stewing Mongrel flesh without intellect, repellent to the eye, nose and imagination.” He goes on to wish for a “kindly gust of cyanogen [cyanide]” that might “asphyxiate the whole gigantic abortion, end the misery and clean out the place.”

America’s black inhabitants presented Lovecraft with a most peculiar problem — a group too numerous to erase with a genocidal whiff of poison gas, and too entrenched to send packing. He ruminated on this on more than one occasion:

Now the trickiest catch in the negro problem is the fact that it is really twofold. The black is vastly inferior. There can be no question of this among contemporary and unsentimental biologists — eminent Europeans for whom the prejudice-problem does not exist. But, it is also a fact that there would be a very grave and very legitimate problem even if the negro were the white man’s equal. For the simple fact is, that two widely dissimilar races, whether equal or not, cannot peaceably coexist in the same territory until they are either uniformly mongrelised or cast in folkways of permanent and traditional personal aloofness. … Just how the black and his tan penumbra can ultimately be adjusted to the American fabric, yet remains to be seen. … Millions of them would be perfectly content with servile status if good physical treatment and amusement could be assured them, and they may yet form a well-managed agricultural peasantry. The real problem is the quadroon and octoroon—and still lighter shades. Theirs is a sorry tragedy, but they will have to find a special place. What we can do is to discourage the increase of their numbers by placing the highest possible penalties on miscegenation, and arousing as much public sentiment as possible against lax customs and attitudes—especially in the inland South—at present favouring the melancholy and disgusting phenomenon. All told, I think the modern American is pretty well on his guard, at last, against racial and cultural mongrelism. There will be much deterioration, but the Nordic has a fighting chance of coming out on top in the end.

– Letter from Lovecraft to James F. Morton, January 1931.

We could do this all day. Lovecraft wrote in copious amounts, and seemed to have no filters. His words. No need to take them out of context. No need to puzzle out their subtle meanings. He could be quite blunt and forcefully direct. Still, label Lovecraft a racist and some in the geek-o-sphere waver, erupting into spasms of denial and a plethora of excuses.

“Keep in mind, he was just a man of his time,” goes the most familiar argument, ignoring that victims of racism were also men and women of those times. Privileging the perpetrator by trying to reason away his/her actions doesn’t mean one whit to those on the receiving end, then or now. Further, we’re well aware that white thinking of his era was backward and retrograde. So quit with the white-splaining already. Early 20th Century America was no doubt a time where white supremacy reigned supreme. But let’s be clear. Lovecraft was no average Joe who happened to go see Birth of a Nation or spoke in quaint terms about the “Negro’s propensity for music.” He went above and beyond the more normalized requirements of whiteness, veering into the hateful and obscene. Most whites of his day likely held poor views of ethnic and racial minorities; however, most did not speak (quite repeatedly) in such vile and at times frightening exterminationist language.

Or there’s the, “well we have to separate his personal life from his works” defense. Yes, because as writers we slip out of our skins, wipe our brains blank and pluck ideas from some non-personal non-reality based ether. In reality, understanding Lovecraft’s personal bigotry sheds profound insight into his writings. His racist fanaticism, eugenic pseudoscience and xenophobia lay behind the many horrors and unknown encroaching fears in his works, all lurking on the edge of human existence and threatening utter destruction.

Apologists look for any sliver of hope in Lovecraft’s life that might point away from his rampant biases, such as the fact that he married a Jewish woman. Yes, and Strom Thurmond, segregationist and believer in black inferiority, fathered a child with a black woman. Lovecraft’s random act does little more than prove that racism is illogical, contradictory and filled with psychosexual complexities of Freudian proportions. Besides, one of the reasons cited for the eventual divorce from his Jewish wife, according to her letters, was his virulent anti-Semitism. She claimed he enthusiastically devoured Mein Kampf in one sitting, and that she often had to remind him that she herself was Jewish whenever he launched into one of his diatribes.

The more desperate defenders, grasping at the fine straws, point out that Lovecraft disavowed Nazi doctrines and were he to have lived to see the Holocaust, he most certainly wouldn’t have agreed. Of course, what’s left out is that Lovecraft’s initial thoughts on Adolf Hitler and the Nazis were much more complicated, veering between a displeasure with tactics but admiration of their goals:

[Hitler's] vision is of course romantic & immature, & colored with a fact ignoring emotionalism … There surely is an actual Hitler peril–yet that cannot blind us to the honest rightness of the man’s basic urge … I repeat that there is a great & pressing need behind every one of the major planks of Hitlerism–racial-cultural continuity, conservative cultural ideals, & an escape from the absurdities of Versailles. The crazy thing is not what Adolf wants, but the way he sees it & starts out to get it. I know he’s a clown, but by God, I like the boy!

– Letter from Lovecraft to Donald Wandrei, November 1936.

There’s no evidence Lovecraft ever declared himself a Nazi. Nor was he a member of any of the Nazi parties that sprang up in 1930s America. In fact, his moderate Hitler praise appears to have dropped off abruptly in the last year of his life (1937), after a German acquaintance (recently returned from the country) told him of seeing Jews beaten in the streets. Still, if one’s measuring stick of racism is where one draws the line in praising Adolf Hitler, something is seriously wrong with your argument. Besides, as Lovecraft’s personal letters remind us, his very hate-filled and raging anti-Semitism predated the Nazis:

The mass of contemporary Jews are hopeless as far as America is concerned. They are the product of alien blood, & inherit alien ideals, impulses, & emotions which forever preclude the possibility of wholesale assimilation… On our side there is a shuddering physical repugnance to most Semitic types … so that wherever the Wandering Jew wanders, he will have to content himself with his own society till he disappears or is killed off in some sudden outburst of mad physical loathing on our part. I’ve easily felt able to slaughter a score or two when jammed in a N.Y. subway train.

– Letter from Lovecraft to Lillian D. Clark, January 1926.

When properly riled, Lovecraft could let his white supremacy freak flag fly with reckless abandon:

Of course they can’t let niggers use the beach at a Southern resort – can you imagine sensitive persons bathing near a pack of greasy chimpanzees? The only thing that makes life endurable where blacks abound is the Jim Crow principle, & I wish they’’d apply it in N.Y. both to niggers & to the more Asiatic type of puffy, rat-faced Jew. Either stow ‘em out of sight or kill ‘em off – anything so that a white man may walk along the streets without shuddering nausea.
- Letter from Lovecraft to A.E.P. Gamwell, February 1925

Given all of that, it seems an introspective look at Lovecraft and his place within geekdom (in all its forms) is more than warranted.

Certainly there’s a way to appreciate his imaginative contributions while confronting his virulent and hateful beliefs. But for some Lovecraft fans, it would be more preferable to go swimming with the Deep Ones than mar a single hair upon the author’s hallowed head.

In 2012 sculptor Bryan Moore (whose film credits include Nightmare on Elm Street and Jumanji) launched the The H.P. Lovecraft Bronze Bust Project on kickstarter, dedicated to “the preservation and celebration of the famous author’s literary legacy.” As Moore noted, Lovecraft’s “cosmic imagination has influenced every region of pop culture including video games, comic books, music and film,” and he urged contributors to give “the Dark Prince of Providence the bronze monument he so rightfully deserves.”

Yes. He really said “Dark Prince of Providence.”

Yet that same year, when a group tried to launch what was described as “a book inspired by H.P. Lovecraft, but critical of his politics and racism,” Moore was having none of it.

“Why on earth this group wants to demonize Lovecraft for his “racism” is beyond me,” Moore lamented at the Facebook H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society,  “Screw that. I wouldn’t give these people a penny.”

Moore continued to hold forth, declaring,

“I’m all for projects that celebrate HP Lovecraft in all forms, but I draw the line when I see the PC hypersensitive cult of victimhood of today thrust upon him unfairly. We cannot put our moralistic standards of today on a man who was from another time. If he was burning crosses in a Klan uniform, fine. But, he wasn’t. He was echoing sentiments quite common for the day whether we agree with it or not by today’s social mores. I don’t like anything that trashes HPL for it’s own socio-political agenda.”

Moore echoes much of the (mostly white) fan-base of H.P. Lovecraft. Celebrating him is fine. But any form of criticism when it comes to race is silenced, erased or met with bitter rebuttals. In a way, it mirrors the whiteness that pervades much of science fiction and fantasy fandom. If non-white, non-male bodies are often excluded or unwelcome in such spaces, their concerns warrant even less empathy. For Moore, the real problem isn’t Lovecraft’s views but rather his modern day critics, with their politically correct (read as non-white, women, and marginalized groups) who ruin things for white male fans like himself. What’s more, he asserts there might even be value to Lovecraft’s racism:

“I could care less about his personal views as they don’t change his great fiction in the least,” Moore states, “but they shape who the man was and I don’t see any tragedy if he didn’t recant those personal views based on the hysterical PC rantings of today.”

I’m not really against the Lovecraft bust. This is America. My predominantly African-American and Latino middle school was named for a Confederate commander. And the guy who wrote that Declaration of Independence and came up with such great ideas like the separation of church and state, was not only a slave owner and believer in black biological inferiority, but once fantastically wrote that “the Oranootan [orangutan]” was sexually drawn to black women “over those of his own species.” Not sure what that made him. I have stood in the shadow of long dead and celebrated racists and endured it my whole life. It is what it is. Conflicting. Vexing. Dubois. Double-consciousness. All that.

Neither do I have to devalue Lovecraft’s literary and imaginative genius, in order to name him a racist. He is without a doubt one of the “greats,” a giant whose influence cuts across varied genres of speculative fiction. It has been source material for everyone from Joss Whedon to Mike Mignola. Being a PoC and into geekdom, you are bound to have some rather disgusting white racist grandpas; don’t really have a choice. Figure that goes for everyone else.

But I ain’t sugar-coating who and what he was. And I don’t take kindly when someone tries “splaining” to me why I’m “misunderstanding” his work. Lovecraft spoke loud and clear. If you can’t hear him, you’re just not listening. Or perhaps you really don’t care. Not all of us however are afforded that privilege.

Moore managed to surpass his goal of $30,000 for the Lovecraft bust in little over two days. Impressive. Obviously a lot of Lovecraft fans out there. A national treasure this guy. The bronze sculpture now has a permanent home at the famed Providence Athenaeum Library. At the face of the base is a small plaque that reads: “I am Providence,” with the author’s own signature beneath. If I had put the bust together however I might have tagged it with something slightly different:

H.P. Lovecraft
Beloved Racist & Anti-Semite
Also wrote stories.

Read more by Phenderson Djeli Clark or find him on twitter @pdjeliclark

The post The ‘N’ Word Through The Ages: The ‘Madness’ Of HP Lovecraft appeared first on Racialicious - the intersection of race and pop culture.

I would like to thank the folks who have contributed to our annual fundraiser here on We Are Respectable Negroes. Your support is very appreciated.

If you like what we are doing here on WARN, and are able to throw in a few pieces of copper or silver in the begging bowl, such an act of generosity would be very much appreciated.

Have you watched this segment from the BBC in which a black German woman confronts Neo-Nazis and KKK members? If you have watched the clip, what are your thoughts and feelings about it?

In the United States, the triumphs of pluralism and a liberal democratic consensus around the color line as forced into being by the long Civil Rights Movement, and a centuries-long Black Freedom Struggle, ought to be celebrated. Black and Brown folks forced the United States to live up to the democratic creed promised by a full and inspired reading of the Constitution: they saved the country from its own wicked origins as a racial state and a white racist "democracy" founded upon the twin sins of black chattel slavery and genocide against First Nations peoples.

A celebration of this history by its warriors who are still alive and with us, through the voices of the ancestors which we can still hear if we choose to listen, and as lived by the heirs of the Black and Brown Freedom Struggles, can be intoxicating. However, as offered by Dionysus or Pan, it is very easy to get drunk on the ambrosia and other intoxicants offered up by post racial, post civil rights era, America.

The obvious. A black man in President of the United States of America. Why not gloat a little bit...or perhaps even a great deal?

Liberal anti-racist Schadenfreude can be very tempting.


White racists are reduced to shooting cockroaches on their walls with BB guns. The KKK claims it is "misunderstood". White Supremacists are profiled on TV shows like 60 Minutes and their young sons shoot them dead.

Outliers and throwbacks like Cliven Bundy and Donald Sterling are mocked and subsequently run out of town on the proverbial rail. Overt White Supremacy is considered such a thing of the past that a significant number of white Americans actually believe that they are somehow "oppressed" in the Age of Obama.

The latter is of course an absurd claim with no empirical support; however, the ridiculousness of such language is an ironic indication of how the Black Freedom Struggle has been so triumphant that foolish and stupid beliefs about the existence of a thing called "reverse racism" are now entertained and accepted as reasonable claims by too many Americans on both sides of the color line.

Throwing rocks and garbage at white caricaturized bigots is easy sport. But, what of the frightening fact that White Supremacists have evolved, remain very dangerous, and the triumphs of the Civil Rights era and "multicultural" America may just be a lull, a moment of detente, in a battle that is still being fought but by other more quiet and stealthy means?

The color line continues to over-determine the life chances of white people relative to black and brown Americans. The evidence is abundant. In almost every sociological and demographic category, from wealth and income to life expectancy, institutional White Supremacy has structured American society such that those who are considered "white" are advantaged relative to people of color.

The number of white hate groups has increased in the United States since the election of Barack Obama.

While the frontstage of White Supremacy--the KKK and other racial terrorist organizations--are depicted as anachronistic outliers of an antiquated racial age by the mass media, the White Right has succeeded in fully taking over the Republican Party, and has refashioned it as the premier White identity advocacy group in the United States of America.

The Republican Party is a White Supremacist organization, and a party in government (one of the only two main political parties in the United States) whose resonance with its public is based upon the whole union of White Supremacy and Conservatism. Moreover, the Tea Party GOP, the most extreme faux-populist element of the Republican Party, are an AstroTurf organization comprised of useful idiots who are doing the bidding of the Koch brothers.

The latter are plutocrats who can trace their political lineage back to the White Supremacist John Birch Society and White Citizens Councils of Jim and Jane Crow America.

The following observation is a truism, a cliche, and a bit of folksy wisdom which persists because it explains so much about the world: the devil's greatest trick was convincing mankind that he (or she) did not exist.

The danger of liberal Schadenfreude in the face of White Supremacy is that too many folks are celebrating a grand victory in the war against white racism fought by their parents, grandparents, and other ancestors which this generation inherited...but did not spend blood or treasure to secure.

The reporter who interviewed KKK members and Neo-Nazis should be applauded for her courage.

However, could it be that White Supremacy evolved, its most dangerous agents either working actively or in passive agreement through banking, police departments, government, finance, real estate, human resources departments, the military, and the educational system to consciously (and subconsciously) maintain and protect White Privilege, as well as the material and psychological privileges that come with being "white" in America?

I doubt that such people would agree to appear in a news clip or documentary where they are outed for the benefit of the viewer who wants to believe that White Supremacy and racism are political dinosaurs of some long ago past.

I wonder, is it possible to celebrate the past victories against White Supremacy in the United States (and elsewhere) while still keeping a keen eye and focus on how those elements remain a clear and present danger in the present?

According to this report, Cliven Bundy's armed "militia" is now harassing the residents of Bunkerville, Nevada.

Democrat Congressman Stephen Horsford, who happens to be African-American, has requested that local law enforcement intervene and stop Bundy's armed hooligans from causing mayhem in and around Bunkerville, Nevada.

I offer the obvious counter-factual: what if a white Republican congressman wrote an open letter to local law enforcement demanding that they do their jobs and stop a group of black or brown insurrectionists from brandishing weapons, setting up checkpoints on public roads, and harassing white people?

Moreover, if Fox News and the Right-wing media were laid out on their collective fainting couch by two members of a group called "The New Black Panthers", they whose "crime" was having the temerity to stand outside of a polling area while holding sticks and looking "mean", what madness would ensue if Bundy and his brigands were people of color (or even white "liberals" or "progressives")?

The feeble response by the federal and state government to Cliven Bundy's welfare king revolt is both fascinating and important because it is one more example of how white skin privilege, Right-wing populist authoritarianism, conservatism, and white supremacy have helped to create a protected class of people in the United States.

Privilege consists of all those day-to-day things that a given person does not have to think about.

In the context of Cliven Bundy and the rise of the White Right in the Age of Obama, white privilege consists of the freedom for white conservative protesters and militia members to point guns at federal law enforcement agents--and to do so with the reasonable expectation that you will not be shot dead.

Moreover, if said white conservative was shot dead for brandishing a weapon and/or threatening the life of a federal law enforcement agent, white privilege almost guarantees that they will become a martyr and hero for movement conservatism.

White men like Cliven Bundy and his ilk can commit acts of domestic terrorism, shoot up schools, or openly defy the legitimacy and authority of the country's first black President (and Attorney General--this latter point is central and critical to the White Right's histrionics in the Age of Obama) and there will be no national discussion about Whiteness and White Masculinity. Why? They are just individual outliers who in the (White) popular imagination tell us nothing about "the ways of white folks".

Like Obi-Wan Kenobi's Jedi mind trick in Star Wars: A New Hope, in such instances, Whiteness tells its owners and adherents that "there is nothing to see here, move along".

Local law enforcement in the United States are heavily militarized. This had led to the abuse of citizens, murder, illegal and unlawful invasions of privacy, and excessive force in black and brown, as well as poor white communities. Consequently, the local and state police in Nevada should be able to neutralize Cliven Bundy's thugs with relative ease.

A complication.

What if Bundy's "patriots" were part of a larger movement that succeeded in taking over a town, city, or region?

Drawing on operational doctrines and Pentagon war plans, Small Wars Journal explored how the United States military would navigate the political and legal challenges of putting down a domestic revolt.

Cliven Bundy's antics, and those of the broader White Right in the Age of Obama, reveal the prescient nature of the scenario explored in "Full Spectrum Operations in the Homeland: A Vision of the Future":

In May 2016 an extremist militia motivated by the goals of the “tea party” movement takes over the government of Darlington, South Carolina, occupying City Hall, disbanding the city council, and placing the mayor under house arrest. Activists remove the chief of police and either disarm local police and county sheriff departments or discourage them from interfering. In truth, this is hardly necessary. Many law enforcement officials already are sympathetic to the tea party’s agenda, know many of the people involved, and have made clear they will not challenge the takeover. The militia members are organized and have a relatively well thought-out plan of action. 

With Darlington under their control, militia members quickly move beyond the city limits to establish “check points” – in reality, something more like choke points -- on major transportation lines. Traffic on I-95, the East Coast’s main north-south artery; I-20; and commercial and passenger rail lines are stopped and searched, allegedly for “illegal aliens.” Citizens who complain are immediately detained. Activists also collect “tolls” from drivers, ostensibly to maintain public schools and various city and county programs, but evidence suggests the money is actually going toward quickly increasing stores of heavy weapons and ammunition. They also take over the town web site and use social media sites to get their message out unrestricted.

When the leaders of the group hold a press conference to announce their goals, they invoke the Declaration of Independence and argue that the current form of the federal government is not deriving its “just powers from the consent of the governed” but is actually “destructive to these ends.” Therefore, they say, the people can alter or abolish the existing government and replace it with another that, in the words of the Declaration, “shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.” While mainstream politicians and citizens react with alarm, the “tea party” insurrectionists in South Carolina enjoy a groundswell of support from other tea party groups, militias, racist organizations such as the Ku Klux Klan, anti-immigrant associations such as the Minutemen, and other right-wing groups.

The insurrectionists will be defeated by the United States military. "Full Spectrum Operations in the Homeland: A Vision of the Future" details the process and its aftermath:

Federal forces continue to tighten the noose as troops seize and secure power and water stations, radio and TV stations, and hospitals. The final phase of the operation, restoring order and returning properly elected officials to their offices, will be the most sensitive.
Movements must be planned and executed more carefully than the operations that established the conditions for handover. At this point military operations will be on the downturn but the need for more politically aware military advice will not. War, and the use of federal military force on U.S. soil, remains an extension of policy by other means.

Given the invocation of the Insurrection Act, the federal government must defeat the insurrection, preferably with minimum force. Insurrectionists and their sympathizers must have no doubt that an uprising against the Constitution will be defeated. Dealing with the leaders of the insurrection can be left to the proper authorities, but drawing from America history, military advice would suggest an amnesty for individual members of the militia and prosecution for leaders of the movement who broke the law. This fictional scenario leads not to conclusions but points to ponder when considering 21st century full spectrum operations in the continental United States.

The Right-wing media helped to birth Cliven Bundy and the rise of the White Right in the post civil rights era. His armed insurrectionists are part of a cabal that includes a murderer's row and rogues gallery of the most contemptible elements of the Right-wing such as the militia movement, the Koch Brothers, Fox News and its echo chamber, the Tea Party, white identity organizations, as well as Christian Dominionists and Reconstructionists.

These elements constitute a Venn diagram of civic ugliness and a collective threat to the Common Good.

Ultimately, when a white male conservative takes up arms against the federal government it is an act of "patriotism" and "courage": Cliven Bundy is the myth of the American founding and frontier channeled through a violent, aggressive type of white masculinity which wraps itself in the vestments of the Constitution, the Bible, and the American flag.

Historically, when black and brown folks have taken up arms in self-defense against state tyranny and racism their deeds are reframed by the mainstream media and the (White) popular imagination as treason, rebellion, thuggery, and a threat to "law and order".

If Cliven Bundy and his compatriots in armed insurrection were people of color (allowing for the occasional black or brown conservative token and human prop), he and they would quickly learn that Uncle Sam has little to no patience for those who openly defy his power and authority.

Prison, death, and/or the hospital bed would be their reward.

Check out the latest video from the multi-talented Mali Music. Known for his inspirational tunes, the California based singer doesn’t disappoint with “Beautiful”..

Bursting on the scene as a gospel artist, he now takes a non-traditional approach with his latest sounds.

For more info on Mali, visit his official website.

What would Amy Chua say?

This hidden camera footage of a son who happens to be black playing a prank on his father where the former confesses that he impregnated an underage teenage girl is hilarious. At the end of the clip, said young man's father grabs the Vorpal Broom of Black Respectability Politics and prepares to teach his wayward son a lesson in common sense.

I do believe that pops ought to be made into a high-end action figure. I would most certainly shell out the money to purchase it.

Whenever there is racism against people of color, or white vigilantism such as the kind encouraged by Stand Your Ground laws, a standard Right-wing bloviating talking point is that African-Americans have broken homes and communities, and that "the failed black family" is responsible for white people shooting and killing black thugs young people for the crime of being "uppity" and "disrespectful" to White Authority.

White vigilantism against random black strangers has nothing to do with whatever sociological and communal dynamics may be occurring among some homes and communities in some parts of these United States.

Moreover, the deflection of reasonable and factually grounded observations about enduring white supremacy through tired appeals about how black folks have "bad culture" is very curious: by comparison, there is no acknowledgement of the "failed" white family. There is also no discussion by these same members of the White Right about how white people are also sucking on the proverbial government tit in both the form of the submerged state and (more obvious and publicly stigmatized) welfare programs.


The father in the lede clip is not atypical in the black community as I know, see, and have experienced it. I grew up with parents and other people in my life who would have used (and in some cases did) the Vorpal Broom of Black Respectability Politics if I brought shame to me, them, the broader community, or my family. And yes, some of them were white folks.

I am convinced that those white conservatives--and others--who deploy the "broken black family" and "bad culture" talking point as a Swiss Army knife carry all utility tool that they use to simultaneously deny white racism, while wallowing in white victimology, do not personally know any black people outside of perhaps those buck-dancing shoe shine black face political race minstrels known as The Black Conservative.

White conservatives have gleamed their racist understandings of "black people" and our "pathologies" from cartoon and real Uncle Ruckus and Clarence Thomas types. Instead of acknowledging how black folks in mass are moral, dignified, and that we simply have the good sense to realize that the Republican Party is a White identity organization--thus our not voting for Republican candidates--it is far easier to listen to black conservative liars and enablers who tell their white masters that African-Americans are "confused" and stuck on some type of "Democratic Plantation".

Black fathers such as he who was about to wield the Vorpal Broom of Black Respectability Politics on his supposedly libidinous and irresponsible teenage son are not outliers or anomalies. Of course, those who receive their understanding of black authenticity and humanity from the mass media believe otherwise.

We cannot change such a perspective; narratives of black inferiority pay huge dividends for the psychic wages of whiteness. One has nothing but "white" skin in the game, quite literally, and he or she gets a nice emotional and self-righteous boost to the ego and self-esteem.

Who would not accept such a bargain?

Most importantly, where can I buy that action figure?

By Guest Contributor Sky Obercam, cross-posted from Clutch Magazine

Comic book enthusiasts, here’s an eye-catching list inspired in part by creative comic trailblazer Jackie Ormes. It’s time these stunning, ass whoopin’ superheroines got some shine.

Storm

“Goddess. Weather Witch. Mutant. Ororo Munroe has been known by many names and identities. Born to an American Mother and African father who died in her youth, Ororo was left to her own devices and survived as a thief. When her mutant abilities manifested, she was feared as a witch by some and praised as a goddess to others. Eventually joining Charles Xavier’s X-Men, she became Storm, one of the X-Men’s most powerful members.”

Arguably the most well-known Black super heroine, Marvel introduced the descendent of Kenyan royalty in May 1975.

Captain Marvel (a.k.a. Photon and Pulsar)

“Monica Rambeau was a lieutenant in the New Orleans police force. A friend of the family, Professor Andre LeClare, had been forced to create a device which would harness other-dimensional energies. In the process of helping to destroy that device, Rambeau was bombarded with those energies and found that she could, as a result, transmute her body to energy and back again at will. She eventually became a full-fledged member of the Avengers and inherited the name Captain Marvel from the press. She is one of the most underrated characters in the Marvel Universe, yet one of its most powerful.”

Bumblebee

Creator of a slick, powerful super suit, scientist Karen Beecher-Duncan is a former member of the Teen Titans and a current member of the Doom Patrol.

“First appearing in Teen Titans #45 (December 1976), Karen adopted the Bumblebee identity three issues later, becoming DC’s first Black female superhero. Karen was working as a library assistant and studying physics, computers and politics. She developed a cybernetic suit for herself, capable of flying, receiving radio transmissions, shooting electric energy and even offering protection against low caliber bullets.”

Thunder

“Anissa Pierce is the daughter of Jefferson Pierce, the hero known as Black Lightning. She was a medical student and did very well in school and her father didn’t want her to ruin that by becoming a vigilante. She respected his wishes and waited until the night she graduated before putting on her costume and becoming Thunder.”

Revealed as a lesbian, Thunder has the ability to control her density & is a recruit of Nightwing’s Outsiders.

Misty Knight

“Misty Knight’s a highly-decorated police officer, those former days on the force jarred to a halt when she lost her right arm to a terrorist’s bomb. Tony Stark arranged for her to receive a bionic prosthetic replacement limb in recognition of her bravery. Against taking a desk job for the police, she resigned and became a private investigator, with her friend Colleen Wing.”

The two became a crime-fighting duo under the title Knightwing Restorations Ltd, a.k.a. Daughter of the Dragon. In March 1972, Marvel introduced the superheroine.

Vixen

Born Mari Jiwe McCabe, Vixen arrived to the in Action Comics via DC Comics back in ‘81.

“Mari McCabe was born in Africa (though the actual country is often changed depending on the story.) She is the daughter of Reverend Jiwe who later possessed the magical Tantu Totem. This is a magical artifact, supposedly created by Anansi the Spider which bestowed the wearer the same powers as Anansi. Soon, Mari found herself as an orphan after her mother was killed by poachers and her father was killed by Maksai, his half-brother. She then moves to NYC where she began a career as a model. She later returns to Africa to reclaim the totem. Vixen was originally slated to become the first African American female superhero to lead her own series, yet the series was canceled before its publication (though these issues were later printed in a collection.) This was during an event known as the DC Implosion.”

Although her series had been canceled, her character was eventually inducted into the Justice League.

Marie Laveau

Marvel Comics explains:
“Born in New Orleans in 1801, Marie was a Creole beauty who treated victims of warfare and epidemic. In 1819, she married Jacques Paris and, after his disappearance, bore Christophe Glapion five children, the first also named Marie. Allegedly inducted into the Voudou (Voodoo) faith by houngan John Bayou and/or manbo Sanite Dede, Marie supplied clients with mystic charms and led ceremonial dances, her namesake joining her at adulthood. Marie held mystic and political power, reportedly helping slaves escape and opposing religious oppression. Reported dead in 1881, Marie survived via sorcerer Cagliostro’s potion but continued aging. Her good deeds were slandered, but Cagliostro’s secret may have corrupted Marie in truth. Little is known of her for over a century, but the tales grew taller and darker. Finally, she captured Dracula, whose vampire blood, in Cagliostro’s potion, restored her youth.”

Valkyra

“A member of the new gods race who reside on New Genesis and are adversaries of the gods of Apokalips. Valkyra is one of the most skilled warriors of her planet having trained Orion who can go toe to toe with both Superman and Wonder woman. With an unknown god she gave birth to Vykin who was called before the highfather at a young age along with five other children and given personalized Mother Boxes with which they were encouraged to bond. As a warrior she trained her son in the ways of a warrior but he instead developed an affinity for machines and technology. This caused the two to drift apart which worsened when he left New Genesis with the forever people.”

DC Comics introduced Valkyra in 1997.

Crimson Avenger

“Jill Carlyle, the black female version of the Crimson Avengers (there are three superheroes that go by this name) used firearms to take revenge on those who kill innocents. She has an ever-bleeding bullet hole in the center of her chest. The guns don’t need ammunition, therefore never run out of ammunition and have no triggers – they are fired with mind power. Until her time as the avenger is up, she remains immortal, at which time she immediately dies from her wound.”

Silhouette

“Silhouette is a Marvel Comics character who first appeared in the New Warriors comic (vol.1) #2 August of 1990. Real name Silhouette Chord, has the power to become a shadow and teleport. Silhouette is also very proficient in martial arts and has superhuman strength, speed, agility and heightened sense. Silhouette and her brother Midnight’s Fire were operating as independent vigilantes in the streets of New York City, when they met Dwayne (before he had become Night Thrasher), and the three began an organized effort to take down various New York City street gangs. This partnership ended when Silhouette was shot and paralyzed from the legs down in a sting gone bad. Undaunted, Silhouette utilized her braces in combat and joined Night Thrasher’s New Warriors.”

Check out Comic Vine, World of Black Heroes and All Black Woman to learn more about these and additional fierce fantasy heroines.

There was an ugly epilogue to that strange crime. A drunken Motlow shot and killed a conductor on a passenger train in 1924 and beat the murder charge through a crudely racist, and high-priced, defense strategy...

On March 17, 1924, after a visit here for a brief court appearance, Motlow had drinks with friends before heading to Union Station. He stumbled unsteadily onto the Louisville and Nashville night train for the trip home to Tennessee.

Sleeping-car car porter Ed Wallis asked Motlow for his ticket. He didn’t have one and became irate that Wallis, who was black, dared to challenge him. Conductor Clarence Pullis, who was white, intervened. As the train chuffed through the downtown tunnel toward the Eads Bridge, Motlow pulled a pistol and fired twice, striking Pullis once in the abdomen.

Pullis, of Kirkwood, died in a hospital in East St. Louis. Motlow was charged with murder.

In the era of Trayvon Martin, Troy Davis, and ominous Stand Your Ground laws, the above account is painfully familiar.

by Elyse A. Minson

I recently came across a few statistics about black women and religion that weren’t surprising, but certainly can have surprising implications. According to one poll, Black women make up the most religious group in the U.S. This is no revelation—one can rarely see a movie about “black life” that doesn’t feature some sort of “Come to Jesus moment” or a climactic scene scored with a moving gospel tune.  Another study found that 55% of black women say that they view scripture literally, and since most Black women who are religious are Christian, I experienced a record-scratching moment when I considered the harm that biblical literalism has caused and continues to cause black folk, namely black folk who are not heterosexual males.



But let’s talk about the women… the same women who fill up most of the pews in the Black church; the same women who experience a call to ministry but are told, “women are not to speak in the church” and “were any of the twelve disciples men?” (overlooking Mary Magdalene, and other women, who had to convince these men of Jesus resurrection and were the first to discover this good news); the same women who have thought-provoking ideas and when they voice them are told they are displaying a “take-over” spirit or a “Jezebel” spirit; the same women who are diminished and over-looked in the place where they give their all.  Those women. Maybe, you.

But before I do, let me say that I find it quite hard to believe that 55% of black women view scripture literally. According to biblical standards, women are property and can be given by fathers in exchange for a dowry. Women are protected in the Bible and fought for, but often as a possession of her husband. Not coveting a neighbor’s wife has less to do with honoring her or her husband, and more to do with not being down with O.P.P. That being said, I don’t think most of us view scripture literally. For all the church functions I’ve attended, I see that the people have not taken the anti-polyester and anti-pork sentiments of the Bible literally. And why not? Likely, because they do not make sense in our society and because many of us like pork and shrimp and catfish, and many of us know we are not property, but daughters of God.

So, I ask myself, why do women take literally scriptures that are used to oppress them? Why isn’t there a need to consider more fully the witness of the biblical text instead of cherry-picking to suit certain persons’ (generally those who have power and wish to maintain it) agendas? I have to admit, I only notice the Bible taken literally when it comes to (1) certain principles that it is clear are right and just (forgiveness, not murdering and being kind to the poor, etc.), and (2) in a much more dismal scenario in which women and members of the SGL (same-gender loving) community are discriminated against. Isn’t it funny that preachers rarely speak about the fat shepherds that God will punish for “fleecing the flock,” or that we hear that women should submit more than we hear husbands should love their wives as Christ loved the church (he died for the church according to what the Bible literally says)? Isn’t it funny that many people will say homosexuality goes against the Bible, including those who rarely engage the Bible, without considering the context of those passages and what they should mean for us today? Why should the black church favor interpretations that harm and create a patriarchal paradigm in which only heterosexual black men, particular those who are in leadership, favor?

This is reminiscent of the way that enslavers used the Bible to try to convince enslaved blacks that they were inferior, and that slavery was actually a blessing to save their savage soul. They quoted, “slaves obey your masters,” no doubt, but the discerning enslaved black woman and man knew something was fishy about this and many clung rather to a God who liberates and loves them, rather than oppresses them in the way of their earthly persecutors. Our foreparents serve as examples to us—women, blacks, men, wives, heterosexuals, lesbians, cisgender, bisexuals, husbands, gays, transgender, and many more—to rethink what we’ve been told, and challenge oppression in whatever form it presents itself believing the God of the oppressed is with us.

Related:

Confessions of a Former Judgmental Christian: How I Retired My Gavel and Robe
Black Women Preachers Call for Equity and Justice in the Black Church
Why Some Black Women Are Walking Out on Religion

2013 has been a FANTAWESOME (fantastic and awesome) year on AwesomelyLuvvie.com. My traffic tripled from last year, with more people discovering my work and more opportunities came my way. I definitely hit my jig just thinking about it.

As a space that covers pop culture, TV/movies, technology and social issues, my blog is where I come to rant and rave about what I care about, what I enjoy and what I’m about (and I created a Luvvie Glossary)! So it’s just dope to know that I can connect with folks on a grand scale through my randomness! And your HILARIOUS comments have made writing here a blast!

Below are the top 10 posts I wrote this year based on how many people read it (not counting any of the Scandal stuff), in case you missed it:

1. #PaulasBestDishes: Best Twitter Hashtag Ever – After details of Paula Deen’s bigotry surfaced through a lawsuit, Twitter roasted her for hours with this hashtag.

2. USA Today Called The Best Man Holiday a “Race-Themed” Film – Because any movie with Black people has to be about race, right? FAIL. O__o

3. When the Internet Calls You Teef Keef and Teef Sweat, You Lost – This dude not only tricked folks into thinking his daughter was kidnapped, but he had the nerve to have veneers in his mouth that looked like white refrigerators. The roast of his teeth made me laugh until I cried. He was also called Mouthful Luther King, Jr. and Toother Vandross. LMAO!

4. Halloween Has a Blackface Issue and It’s a Racism Problem – Because this year, folks more than TRIED IT with their Halloween costumes. Blackface was EVERYWHERE but it is more than a Halloween issue.

5. The Bitstrips Abuse on Facebook Must Stop – Besides the fact that people are posting Bitstrips cartoons every 4 seconds on FB, if you’re gonna create a cartoon of yourself, make it look like you.

6. Michelle Obama Let a Protester Have It and I Approve! - While speaking at private fundraiser, Michelle Obama was interrupted by a protester who had demands for the POTUS. But FLOTUS was not there for that. OOP.

7. Jessica Alba’s Honest Company is Trying to Bully Honest Toddler – Honest Company asked Honest Toddler to delete its social media accounts or it “could get costly.” Now they’re blocking Honest Toddler’s trademark app. SHAME!

8. Stages of Twitter Dealing with a Beyoncé Event – Every time Beyoncé does anything (sneeze, take a pic, perform), Twitter descends into multi-hour long messfests, with her stans dragging any and everyone.

9. Falling is a Habit for this Poor Graduate – The moral of this story: Learn to embrace flats, especially when you’re walking across a football field. And only rock shoes you can walk well in.

10. Whose Mighty Mouse Swag Brother is This? Featuring Roast From My Readers – Because rocking jeggings and a lycra bodysuit in real life when you’re built like the Incredible Hulk and Mighty Mouse’s baby is probably not a good idea.

So check out what you’ve missed, share the ones you like (on Twitter, Facebook, Google+, Tumblr etc.), and keep telling folks to check this site out. Your support is why my words have travelled further than ever before and I’m so thankful for it. You’ve all really allowed Awesomely Luvvie to become an eHome.

Many of you have told me that I’m your friend in your head. Well, the feeling is mutual. You know we go together! *HUGS*

See you in 2014, y’all! I’m back and ready to write!

What has been your favorite post on my blog from this year?

Follow the Awesomely Luvvie FB page | The post The Top 10 Awesomely Luvvie Posts of 2013 appeared first on Awesomely Luvvie.

The above image from the NY Times story "Invisible Child" about the life of an 11-year-old girl named Dasani and her family is rich with meaning and context.

The commenters here on We Are Respectable Negroes routinely offer up many great insights. I like to acknowledge those smarts. Consequently, I feature readers' comments when appropriate in order to move our conversations forward.

There was such an exchange about the Santa Claus Fox News Megyn Kelly silliness regarding if fictional characters are "white" or 'black" that are worth exploring in more detail in response to this post.

Yes, the faux debate about the racial identity of fictional and mythological character is on the surface, very, very silly. However, the "Santa Claus Whiteness Debate" is important because of what it suggests about bigger systemic and institutional issues related to white supremacy in the United States, and the West, more generally.

In our dialogue about racism, Santa Claus, and Jesus Christ, the following comments were spot on.

Black Sci-Fi made a great intervention as he observed how:

The whole Santa/Jesus = white men meme is really just an online click-bait trap for the toopid. Rather than waste more precious electrons on a fake issue, why don't we (liberals?) figure out how to increase employment in the USA. 

Race Baiting by Fox News is how they've been able to keep their ratings high. They find no shame in saying the most vile things about our President because it increases viewership, even among so-called liberals. Why? Because they aren't serious about anything except creating "high paying" sensation, not reporting news. Their entire news operation is simply "CLICK-BAIT. GET A CLUE and stop supporting their madness. If you want to stop the madness then stop buying products made by Koch, Inc and other products advertised on FOX. In America, if you want to change something, put your money where your mouth is. Imagine the headlines that would follow a successful boycott of Fox advertisers. Anything less is BS and making a noose for your hangman. 

SANTA? JESUS? REALLY?
STOP FEEDING THE MONSTER...!!!

by Chesya Burke

Although we have met in real life, you and I have gotten acquainted through Facebook, which it seems is where all true friendships go to die. We have not spoken in years, but respond every now and again to each other’s post. But we are “friends” in only the way that modern 21st century folks can be.

I link to a blog post which calls out White feminism and their behavior towards Michelle Obama. You reply and preface your statement with a comment about your Native American ancestry to, I suppose, establish your non-White authority—which only adds to your White authority, so you have all bases covered now. You disagree with the author stating that White women have been in a power struggle with White men, because you say White women rank “below” all men and then you go on to boil the conversation down to “feminist bickering.”

You are, you admit, “ignorant” of feminism, but you are adamant that until men treat all women as equals nothing will change.

Others chime in to express their disagreement. Some point out the history of Black men and White women and the threat of rape. Some mention class. Others discuss patriarchy. It’s a lively, but interesting discussion.

You respond a few times, mostly stating that “the fight shouldn’t be against other women.” In other words Black women you should start fighting the real enemy: men, not White women. You do not see this as your argument, but those who have a history of feminism have seen it many many times before. You see, when suggesting that groups get along to oppose only the most dominate group, the minority group’s voice is always drowned out. Their priories are ignored. Minority women know this because they have been asked to do this too often in the past.

Someone expresses the frustration that your ideology is part of the problem and you get indignant, angry. You write, delete and rewrite a comment stating that you have been insulted. You, quite frankly, make this entire conversation about yourself. It’s about your feelings, your hurt at seeing the struggles of White women diminished, your pain at being associated with those oppressive White women, despite your Native roots that you so desperately cling to.

Seeing that this is getting out of hand, I quickly, but carefully explain the history of feminism to you, although you could not be bothered to research yourself. I do the heavy lifting for you, which I have often done. But, hey, we’re “friends,” right? I say: “White feminist have always asked Black and other minority women to “stop fighting against them,” or to toe the line. Of course we should all just be fighting against misogyny. Let’s just ignore racism, and more importantly, let’s just ignore the racism that White women themselves often perpetrate against minority women.”

You get it. For a moment.

Then you’re indignation makes you angry. Are you that White woman? You need to know. You comment, then email me demanding for me to come clean, to absolve you of the connection to the dreaded White woman who has done all of those terrible things.

You tell me that you are not responsible for the way that I have misinterpreted your words, and yet you want to make me responsible for the way that you have misinterpreted mine.

You are a smart woman. MA. PhD. M.D. All of the important initials behind your name, you carry them proudly. You’ve earned them. You’ve fought for every single one. And so you believe that I have committed an “ecological fallacy” every time I call Whites racist simply because they are White, not understanding that I see racism as a system. That I, unlike you, have studied this. I’ve lived it. That I understand that although individuals can be racist, it is the systemic structures of racism that oppress groups of people. Systems, as we were talking here, such as feminism, which has too often ignored and even endorsed racism against Black women and minority peoples.

But now I cannot be bothered. I have done this before. Many many times, in fact. I do this monthly, weekly, daily sometimes. I am often “that” friend. The Black friend. The woman. The Black woman to whom many of my White acquaintances request I absolve them of history’s past, asked to bear the guilt that they feel, told that I’m mean or angry or bitter if I refuse.

So I respond, without responding:
I believe the meme is cute, non-aggressive, and expresses my own frustration with you and your demands of me. (Of course, you probably did not notice that I never made any demands of you. I did not expect you to justify my own ideologies. I am not privileged enough to expect this.)

You get angry. You unfriend me. Then you take to your FB page. You call yourself a “cracker” to gain sympathy, although that’s a term I never used. You misquote me (whether deliberate or not, I’m not sure), but you invoke the equivalent of online White women’s tears. Your tears, you believe, are true. They are clear, pure, genuine.

Mine do not exist.

You get your sympathy. The White men (and women) come to comfort you. Of course in comforting you, they disparage me. There cannot be one without the other. They express their disappointment in me. You see, I am not the person they wish I was, that they want me to be. I am not quiet, do not acquiescent, cannot be submissive. I am not that Black woman. The Black woman they would have me be.

In the mist of it all the message is lost. The sisterhood that you sought is quickly thrown aside in favor of that familiar connection with the dominate status quo. My behavior, you believe, is representative of my hypocrisy. I didn’t toe the line because I had my own thoughts and ideas that did not fit in line with yours. That makes me a hypocrite.

To you your anger is justified. Mine does not exist.

It doesn’t exist because I’ve done this before. I’ll do it again in the near future. Probably this month, week, or even tomorrow. While you, you can go on and believe that that mean Black woman will never be happy until she understands that White crackers are just a “little salty” sometimes, if never really hurtful.

My pain, you see, is invisible.

---

Chesya Burke’s 2011 fiction collection, Let’s Play White, was featured in i09 and received praise from Samuel Delany and Nikki Giovanni. She is also recognized for her critical analysis of genre and race issues such as her articles, Race and The Walking Dead and Super Duper Sexual Spiritual Black Woman: The New and Improved Magical Negro published by Clarkesworld Publication. Chesya is currently getting her MA in African American Studies at Georgia State University and is a juror for the 2013 Shirley Jackson awards.

We know Black Girls Love Books, and this was a great year for Black women in literature. We've picked a few books released by Black women in 2013 for you to curl up with. This list is by no means exhaustive. Leave your favorites of the year in a comment.



Kweku Sai is dead. A renowned surgeon and failed husband, he succumbs suddenly at dawn outside his home in suburban Accra. The news of Kweku’s death sends a ripple around the world, bringing together the family he abandoned years before. Ghana Must Go is their story. Electric, exhilarating, beautifully crafted, Ghana Must Go is a testament to the transformative power of unconditional love, from a debut novelist of extraordinary talent.


UPDATE: Yes, we did miss Edwidge Danticat's "Claire of the Sea Light." Now you've got 11 phenomenal books to read!

Claire Limyè Lanmè—Claire of the Sea Light—is an enchanting child born into love and tragedy in Ville Rose, Haiti. Claire’s mother died in childbirth, and on each of her birthdays Claire is taken by her father, Nozias, to visit her mother’s grave. Nozias wonders if he should give away his young daughter to a local shopkeeper, who lost a child of her own, so that Claire can have a better life.

But on the night of Claire’s seventh birthday, when at last he makes the wrenching decision to do so, she disappears. As Nozias and others look for her, painful secrets, haunting memories, and startling truths are unearthed among the community of men and women whose individual stories connect to Claire, to her parents, and to the town itself. Told with piercing lyricism and the economy of a fable, Claire of the Sea Light is a tightly woven, breathtaking tapestry that explores what it means to be a parent, child, neighbor, lover, and friend, while revealing the mysterious bonds we share with the natural world and with one another. Embracing the magic and heartbreak of ordinary life, it is Edwidge Danticat’s most spellbinding, astonishing book yet.

Purchase: Claire of the Sea Light

New research from Kerry O’Brien, Walter Forrest, Dermot Lynott, and Michael Daly in the journal PLS One suggests that there is a relationship between a person's levels of "symbolic racism", gun ownership, and support for concealed carry laws.

They detail how:

After adjusting for all explanatory variables in the model, symbolic racism was significantly related to having a gun in the home. Specifically, for each 1 point increase in symbolic racism, there was a 50% greater odds of having a gun in the home (see Table 1), and there was a 28% increase in the odds of supporting permits to carry concealed handguns (see Table 3)...

Opposition to gun control in US whites is somewhat paradoxical given the statistics on gun-related deaths, and such opposition may be undermining the public health of all US citizens. This study examined for the first time whether racism is related to gun ownership and the opposition to gun control in US whites. The results support the hypothesis by showing that greater symbolic racism is related to increased odds of having a gun in the home and greater opposition to gun control, after accounting for all other explanatory variables. 

It is particularly noteworthy that the relationship between symbolic racism and the gun-related outcomes was maintained in the presence of conservative ideologies, political affiliation, opposition to government control, and being from a southern state, which are otherwise strong predictors of gun ownership and opposition to gun reform.

These findings will be misread and misunderstood. This results because many people do not understand how social scientists construct knowledge and make truth-claims. This outcome is also a function of how political opinion has become conflated with empirical facts and reality in the 24/7 news cycle.


Kerry O’Brien, Walter Forrest, Dermot Lynott, and Michael Daly are not suggesting that beliefs about guns are caused by (modern) white racism. Likewise, they are not arguing that having a gun necessarily makes one more likely to be a racist. O'Brien and company are not claiming that all conservatives are racists or bigots; nor, does their research indicated that all gun owners are racists.

"Racism, Gun Ownership and Gun Control: Biased Attitudes in US Whites May Influence Policy Decisions" narrowly focuses on the relationships between attitudes, values, beliefs, and yes, in some cases, behavior.

This is sound social science because the authors takes a well-documented and researched phenomenon, "symbolic racism", and relate it to an important issue of public concern. Surprising and counter-intuitive research findings are an essential part of creating knowledge and shifting paradigms forward. Research that further explores and enriches what we should already know--symbolic racism emphasizes a narrative of black criminality and white victimhood; thus, attitudes about guns should be central to that story--is invaluable because of how it buttresses existing knowledge while also suggesting areas for further investigation.

The public and the media want simple, "yes" or "no" answers to the questions surrounding complex political issues. They have great difficulties is understanding that sometimes the answers to complex social questions are "yes", "no", and "perhaps something else or a combination of the two".

Kerry O’Brien, Walter Forrest, Dermot Lynott, and Michael Daly signal to this in the following passage:

Finally, the correlational nature of the study clearly prohibits causal inferences. While a view that racism underpins gun-related attitudes is plausible and supported by evidence on other race-related policy decisions [18], [23], it could be argued that there are other plausible but unmeasured variables that could explain the pattern of relationships we find here.

Their research is especially powerful because it highlights how white racial attitudes are not separate and apart from politics. In a post civil rights era when racism and conservatism are very much the same thing, these relationships and dynamics are going to be further exaggerated and out-sized.

What researchers call the "new" and "old fashioned" types of racism, help to structure an individual's more general political worldview. Moreover, racial attitudes are so powerful that they influence beliefs about ostensibly "race neutral" policy matters such as foreign policy, government spending, taxes, and the like.

"Racism, Gun Ownership and Gun Control: Biased Attitudes in US Whites May Influence Policy Decisions" is being met with complaints and denials. This is predictable. However misguided the thought process, for many people, guns are integrally tied to their sense of personal identity, masculinity, and notions of "freedom".

As I discussed with professors Richard Slotkin and Ann Little, attitudes about guns and gun ownership are also central to America's history of racial Apartheid and formal White Supremacy.

The suggestion that white people's levels of racial resentment may be related to gun ownership also arouses white grievance mongers and white victimologists.

The following point is a subtle, but very important one. Contemporary conservatism is extremely anti-intellectual: empirical research and "science" are to be treated with immediate suspicion. In the Right-wing political imagination, the academy is a bastion for its traditional enemies, those "intellectuals", "feminists", "gays", "liberals", and "multiculturalists" who are "anti-American" and "don't love the country".

As demonstrated by their positions on global warming, tax policy, the economy, and other matters, because the Tea Party GOP is possessed by a "hallucinatory ideology", they immediately reject any information that does not confirm their own twisted view of political and social reality.

In all, empirical claims about guns and race are a mix of highly combustible elements in contemporary American politics.

Racism remains a social force that over-determines the life chances, negatively, for people of color in the United States. Gun violence is a public health crisis. Solving these problems will require an embrace of the sociological imagination, and all of the insight and richness it can provide. Unfortunately, the public discourse in the United States is highly polarized, anti-intellectual, betrayed by a failed 4th Estate, and where conservatives hide behind twin ramparts and redoubts of cultivated disinformation and misinformation.

"Racism, Gun Ownership and Gun Control: Biased Attitudes in US Whites May Influence Policy Decisions" demonstrates how white racism and attitudes about guns are tied together. We have made great progress in fighting the former. Yet, we are unable to stop sacrificing our children to the gun gods, or putting an end to the blood ritual that is gun violence. America defeated Jim and Jane Crow. Yet, the United States cannot find the national will to beat back the power of the National Rifle Association. This failure of will is a national tragedy.

By Guest Contributor Lisa Wade, Ph.D.; originally published at Sociological Images

“Next to being a Hollywood movie star, nothing was more glamorous.” This breathless statement, quoted in Femininity in Flight, was uttered by a flight attendant in 1945.  At the time being a stewardess was quite glamorous.  Like motion pictures do today, airlines trafficked in “the business of female spectacle.”  They hired only women who they believed to represent ideal femininity. Chosen for their beauty and poise, and only from among the educated, and slender, they were as much of an icon as Miss America.  And they were almost all White.

Victoria Vantoch tells the story of the first African American flight attendants in a chapter of her new book, The Jet Sex.  Patricia Banks was one of the first Black women to sue an airline for racial discrimination.  She graduated from flight attendant training school at the top of her class and applied to several airlines.  But it was 1956 and the U.S. airlines had never hired a Black woman.  After 10 months of trying, an airline recruiter pulled her aside and admitted that it was because of her race.  Which, of course, it was; airlines disqualified any applicants that had broad noses, full lips, coarse hair, or a “hook nose” (to weed out Jews).

Banks sued. After four years of litigation, Capital Airlines was forced to hire her.  She postponed her marriage and took the job (airlines only hired single women as flight attendants). When she put on her uniform for the first time, she said:

After all I had gone through, I couldn’t believe I was finally wearing the uniform. I had made it. I was going to fly. It was such an accomplishment.

Individual women weren’t the only ones pushing to integrate the flight attendants corps.   International surveys showed that citizens of other countries knew that America had a “race problem” and this was a problem for then-President John F. Kennedy and Vice President Lyndon Johnson.  They needed to do something flashy and they turned to flight attendants to do it.  If they could make Black women the face of such an iconic and high-profile occupation, they thought, it would help restore America’s reputation.  According to Vantoch, Johnson “made stewardess integration his personal cause.”

That was 1961; in 1964 Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act mandating equal treatment in the workplace.  The following year, in response to even more lawsuits, approximately 50 Black women were hired by airlines.  This would make them 0.33% of the workforce.

Patricia  Banks and her fellow first African American flight attendants, including Mary Tillerand Marlene White, would continue to face racism, now from co-workers, passengers, and supervisors.  Banks would quit after one year, citing exhaustion in the face of emotionally draining feminine work and a constant onslaught of racism.  She was a great flight attendant, though, and proud to show the world that a Black woman could shine in the occupation.

Here’s Patricia Banks, telling the story in her own words at Black History in Aviation. It’s worth a watch; she’s amazing:

Cross-posted at VitaminW.

Lisa Wade is a professor of sociology at Occidental College. You can follow her on Twitter andFacebook.

Bryan Cranston as Walter White. Image via Green Bay Press Gazette.

Demographically, the viewers AMC wants are more likely to do a lot of pills than unscrew a light bulb to smoke some ice, even if the substances are chemically similar. There are plenty of expert scientists making tons of money cooking up and selling amphetamines, but they’re not robbing trains or toting guns. Big Pharma brings in a $250 billion annually in the U.S. alone, much of it from the same chemical compounds in White’s lab. When it’s 89 percent pure, it’s illegal meth; when it’s 99 percent pure, methamphetamine is sold by Lundbeck Inc. under the trademark name Desoxyn, for “the short-term management of exogenous obesity.” Walter isn’t making crank; he is manufacturing black-market pharmaceuticals.

A “Breaking Bad” in which the street dealers were diluting the product would have had Walter and his partner Jesse Pinkman competing with every local operation, struggling to set up a larger distribution network without costly middlemen and, well, interacting with meth users a lot. But “The Wire on Ice” isn’t sexy enough to sell a Dodge, and a teacher slanging to his fucked-up former students would turn stomachs, not open wallets. Suffice to say it would be a darker show.

Which brings us to the other thing that sets White and Pinkman apart from their competitors: color. And I don’t mean blue.

The white guy who enters a world supposedly beneath him where he doesn’t belong yet nonetheless triumphs over the inhabitants is older than talkies. TV Tropes calls it “Mighty Whitey,” and examples range from Tom Cruise as Samurai and Daniel Day Lewis as Mohican to the slightly less far-fetched Julia Stiles as ghetto-fabulous. But whether it’s a 3-D Marine playing alien in “Avatar” or Bruce Wayne slumming in a Bhutanese prison, the story is still good for a few hundred million bucks. The story changes a bit from telling to telling, but the meaning is consistent: a white person is (and by extension, white people are) best at everything.

- From “Walter White Supremacy,” in The New Inquiry

[h/t Rania Khalek]

By Sharisse Kimbro

Can three scarier words be spoken, especially by a black woman?

I. Need. Help.

You need help. We all need help at one time or another. Life is hard. None of us can make it on our own. Challenges come knocking to everyone’s door. Knowing this universal truth, why is it so hard to ask for help? Why are we so committed to suffering in silence and pretending that everything is always okay, even when at times, it is so terribly not.

Is it that we have all bought into a collective myth of hyperbolic achievement—of being “super” -- Superwoman or Supermom or Superwhatever to the point that we are embarrassed to raise our hand and admit that we aren’t really Super at all, that we don’t have it all together, that, in fact,

We. Need. Help.

Maybe we are afraid that if we ask for help, if we admit that we cannot do it all, all by ourselves, that those we ask will think less of us, or will interpret our request for assistance as a sign of weakness. Or perhaps, our greatest fear is that our request for help will be flatly denied. “No, I will not help you.” “No, I cannot help you.” “I see you in a state of vulnerability and need and I refuse to provide you with the assistance that you seek.” So in our fear, we remain silent and we hold our tongues instead of reaching out to admit to another person that

I. Need. Help.

Where did this reticence to share our wounds, our hurt, and sorrow come from? Could it have been from our mothers and grandmothers and great-grandmothers for whom sadness and pain and sorrow were luxuries they could not afford to fully experience because they were too busy working, rearing, struggling and surviving? Could it have been that we, as black women, have always been so committed to ensuring everyone else was okay—our mothers, brothers, fathers, daughters, or sons—that we simply forgot how to ask?

No matter the root of this habit, the results are devastating. Heart disease. Diabetes. Stress. Depression. Ulcers. Physical, emotional and spiritual exhaustion. Anger. Self-medication with food, alcohol, sex, bad relationships, gossip, or religion (yes I said it). By refusing to ask for help when we need it, by shouldering everyone’s burdens and toiling to make life work for others, we drain and deplete ourselves. We neglect ourselves. We stuff and suppress the complete truth of our lives. We keep our heads down and keep going, keep working, keep caring and keep giving. Until we don’t anymore. Until we can’t anymore because

We. Need. Help.

And then we become shells of ourselves. We are only a shadow of the vibrant, alive, healthy, beautiful souls we were intended to be. We walk around in parallel paths of unspoken sadness, never reaching out to one another, never sharing our stories, feeling isolated and alone, never understanding or availing ourselves of the transformative power of the feminine bond because we have lost the words to even articulate the fact that

We. Need. Help.

How liberating would it be to admit to ourselves and each other that we cannot do it on our own, everything is not perfect and we are not “Super” anything (at least not all the time) and ask for the help we need?

Sure, there is a risk. There is the chance that you will be judged, mistreated, ignored or denied, but there is also the awesome possibility that the request will be met with grace, kindness and humility and the result will be liberation for both parties.

The recipient of the request is encouraged because her sister trusts her enough to ask for help. The woman who asks for help provides the other woman with a glimpse behind the false shield of perfection. In that intimate sharing, both women can exhale in the knowledge that neither one of them is alone, that everyone needs help sometimes, and the two can be bonded in a mutual spirit of increased understanding. After all, who doesn’t want to be seen/heard/felt/received? We all do.

Let’s decide in our generation that every woman can lay her burdens down, that we can share the load and no one will be put-down for not being able to do everything all at once. Instead, let’s finally admit to each other and ourselves that

I. Need. Help.

And get it.

Film is a space for a society to work out its anxieties, fears, and worries. Film is also a space in which society is "talking to itself about itself".

The election of Barack Obama, the United States' first black president, was not supposed to happen. The history, law, traditions, a racialized founding where the Constitution is stained with the "birth defect" of black chattel slavery, and white supremacy as habit, law, and tradition in America, deemed Obama's election a system shock.

Thus, film is a site for this lived-impossibility made real to be negotiated and processed by America's collective subconscious. Movies such as The Butler, Lincoln, and Django Unchained are examples of this phenomenon. The upcoming movie 12 Years a Slave by Steve McQueen promises to be an even more direct and challenging depiction of the brutality of black slavery in the West.

As we discussed extensively here on We Are Respectable Negroes, white folks are the primary audience for Django Unchained. While I love the film and admire Tarantino's vision, by his own admission, Django Unchained is a fantastic tale, one that offers a sanitized version of the horrors inflicted on black people by the white slaveocracy in America.

In all, Django Unchained is a slave liberation fantasy filtered through a post civil rights era white racial frame: the white slavers and overseers are caricatures; Django is an extraordinary individual and black Superman; Dr. King Schultz is the "good" white character which white audiences could identify with in order to free themselves of any culpability with the events on screen; the movie itself is presented as speculative history, a move which makes it a safe space for exploring depictions of black revenge on white bodies.

The Jewish Holocaust has famously been described as an example of "the banality of evil". Chattel slavery in the West was the casual social institutionalization of day-to-day violence and cruelty in an effort to make black people into a group deemed "socially dead".

Unlike Django Unchained, 12 Years a Slave is using a "true" story to depict the horrors visited upon Black Americans held as human property:

Django Unchained gave its audience an escape hatch: discomfort at seeing the violence perpetrated by whites against blacks on screen could be processed and compartmentalized by Tarantino's use of a counter-factual/speculative history narrative frame. If early reviews are any indication, 12 Years a Slave is not providing that out:
I wonder, at what point will the revival of (the relatively few at this point) movies about American slavery be met with hostility and fatigue by white and black audiences? Will the former become resentful? Will some among the latter feel that "accurate" depictions of the horror of American slavery and legalized violence against black folks on screen is somehow insulting and demeaning?

Yet, for all of the angst and shock and perhaps worry by some about how the violence against black humanity by the American slaveocracy is depicted on screen, as a medium, film can only offer a mediated experience. What we are seeing on screen (and excluding some documentaries...and even in that case, similar questions about "truth" remain) is not "real". We are watching images of actors and actresses on a sound stage, with digital enhancement and special effects, projected onto a screen by light.

Django Unchained is not real. 12 Years a Slave is not real. Roots was not real. However, in total, they create a type of truth for the audience.

I have mentioned the Jim Crow Museum of Racist Memorabilia at Ferris State University several times here on WARN. Its curator is doing great work. David Pilgrim has added a new section to the museum's website where he and his colleagues answer questions about America's slaveocracy, and its aftermath, in an effort to separate fiction from fact.

Did whites use "human leather" made from black slaves? Were black babies used as alligator bait?

Many of the answers there will not make it into any Hollywood movie, for the reality is just too horrible for the general public to accept.

What are the American people afraid of? And doesn't the truth set you free?