“…socially despised and yet artistically esteemed…”
This quote from Alain Locke can be applied to every non-Black person. Non-Black American people included.
Our subcultures, regional cultural characteristics (especially Southern Black American culture) are sooo extracted and copied, emulated and imitated, gleaned from while simultaneously being ridiculed, mocked and degraded.
Southern identifies, dialect and accents are belittled yet are modeled after and mimicked.
The specific disdain and shame for Southern Black American culture is truly something (which has really been highlighted since the announcement of this album).
And yeah, Beyoncé soo country! Been country! Is country and never shied away from it!
So excited to announce the launch of my project [unhurried] {witness}!
A curation of digital memories, this piece was created under my mentor, Marisa Parham, during the 2022-2023 Scholar-Artist Residency Program of the African American History, Culture, and Digital Humanities (AADHum) Initiative at the University of Maryland (UMD).
[unhurried] {witness} was conceived during lockdown to explore Black play as a form of healing and collective witness of Black American culture, and was envisioned as MySpace meets Tumblr meets your Grandma’s house; ASMR for the soul; community memory exercise; interfacing intimacy; an archive of play; and, ultimately, an ephemeral object of cultural witness.
✨slow play as ritual/alchemization of emotions + analog experiences in a digital space✨
More inspirations included:
-web 1.0
-Covid play
-inside/outside
-adulthood/childhood
-play/work
To experience and explore the project, click here: https://unhurried-witness.aadhum.org.
Designed to be interactive, a series of questions on your memories of the digital experience can be found here and here. All answers will be recorded anonymously and displayed in the guestbook here.
Statement from the African American History, Culture, and Digital Humanities Initiative at University of Maryland on the project:
Welcome [unhurried] {witness}!
Seren Sensei’s #BlackDH project creates a “a digital exploration and a visual representation of analog games such as card games, dice, dominoes, paper crafts, and rhyming hand games/hand motions, as healing cultural process among Black Americans.”
✨ You can learn more about [unhurried] {witness} at https://aadhum-news.umd.edu/unhurried-witness/
✨ You can visit the site at https://unhurried-witness.aadhum.org
Burna Boy answers "Why is it important that the diaspora come home?"
This shit goofy.
How you center an ethnic group in a global question...and offer a recycled, baseless stance as if that specific ethnic group who’s at home is root-less with a lost identity...🙃
Race is a construct; ethnicity is fixed. The identity of an ethnic group is defined by their culture. Black Americans are Black Americans. Simple. We’re Black beyond some melanin. We’re an amalgamation of people making us a specific ethnic group (Black) w/ well-documented genealogy, Black culture, and Black history. We’re on our ancestral land.
“They don’t know their grandparents or where they come.” Since when? lol... Take me, for example. I know thousands within my lineage from names, birth dates, death dates, autopsy reports, photos, occupations, locations, their towns within the upper South; deep South; and South Central (Oklahoma), those who were already on this land, who were chattel enslaved on this land, who and where one was purchased then shipped to this land as human cargo to be chattel enslaved, life beyond and before the system of chattel enslavement and the nation they built, the reservations my people were already on/returned to, the colonizing crackas that invaded the land to them distant pre-colonial Europeans who were obsessed with documenting 🫠:
We can go ancestor for ancestor.
Anybody running on that spineless narrative that Black Americans are “root-less” or “culture-less” people, resorting to a goofy, unprovoked “shaming” tactic because their ancestors were not shipped as human cargo and enslaved needs to reevaluate their life and focus. We’re in your view. There’s no shame due to slavery, beloved. Like others, Black Americans descend from survivors.
Every ethnic group has and knows their homeland. Everyone needs to be in the know about their home and the happenings on their land. Burna Boy can start with them japa waves.
as a Black American, the idea of what happens after Palestine is free, after the genocide has stopped, is freaky because the trauma is going to be rooted in these people for generations to come, just like how the trauma of the slave trade and shit is just engrained in Black Americans. Generational trauma is no joke, and it will impact Palestinians more than it already has all because a group of colonizers couldn’t resist colonizing more than they already have.
The Legacy of Knocking and Kicking: The Little-known Traditional African-American Martial Art
Kicking and Knocking, a little-known traditional African-American martial art, has a rich history deeply rooted in both physical combat and cultural expression. Practiced clandestinely in parts of the Southern US and on the Sea Islands, this unique martial art integrates acrobatic movements and musical accompaniment, making it inseparable from dance. Its origins can be traced back to Central…
in honor of juneteenth, i've been researching my genealogy starting with my mom's side since I know a bit more about them and so far have learned:
my 5th great grandmother was mulatto and born in 1800 [<- i'm imagining the clothes she wore during the georgian and victorian era! i assume it's similar to the bayasoube video i posted earlier of the southern belle fashion 🥰]
most of my family on my mom's side is from southern and central alabama and have been for 6-7 generations (i.e around 170 years) (before that they seem to be from georgia and virginia)
my family is possibly alabama creole? they were in the right area at the right time and mixed so hm.... and maybe mississippi creole on my dad's side idk.
based on what i saw, the seven ancestors who lived before 1865 were all born free (besides maybe two or three)
my 4th great grandfather fought in the civil war as a member of the union side's colored troops in either alabama or georgia
my 4th great grandmother was a cook
i haven't found the indigenous ancestry that i was told about but i won't rule it out yet since it was supposed to be fairly recent and some laws makes it harder to be counted as part of a tribe especially if you're black during those time periods
etc etc.
it's really cool to learn and i wish i could learn more, unfortunately ancestry.com is mostly behind a paywall and dna tests are even more expensive and a girl gotta eat (and would like to help her parents do so as well) so.... since others have been asking today...
if anyone wants to send some money to help me out with either learning my heritage or buying groceries and gas that'd be great! my cashapp: $softestruler
“American Fiction” was one of the last few movies from 2023 that I wanted to see before I make my annual list of favorite movies. I’m glad I did, because it shot to the top of my favorites.
In “American Fiction” Jeffrey Wright plays Thelonious "Monk" Ellison, a professor and author whose books get good reviews but don’t sell well. He focuses on literary novels influenced by mythology. But his White publishers complain the books aren’t “Black” enough. They want gritty stories about life in “the hood”.
Two things inspire Monk to give his publishers exactly what they want. First his mother is suffering from dementia and he needs to pay for her care facility. And he comes across another Black author whose book “We's Lives In Da Ghetto” is a best seller. Monk thinks the book pander to White readers using the worst stereotypes of modern African Americans. So he decides to write one of his own as a joke.
The problem is that the publishers don’t get the joke. They love the book and offer him $700k to buy it. That’s quickly followed by a $4million dollar offer to adapt it into a movie.
The story then crosses between Monk’s personal life (ailing mother, gay brother, and budding romance) and the book which becomes an out of control freight train he can’t stop.
I love the dialogue’s wry sense of humor, and the cast is terrific. It includes Leslie Uggams as the mother, Tracee Ellis Ross as the sister (who sadly isn’t in the movie long enough), Sterling K Brown as the Brother, and Erika Alexander as the love interest.
“American Fiction” is written and directed by Cord Jefferson. His resume includes writing for my favorite TV series of 2019 - “Watchmen” for which he won an Emmy.
As I praise the movie, I do hesitate a bit. Am I part of the joke? Is this the movie about African Americans that I want to watch? No, matter. It’s well written and directed and made me laugh out loud.