complexitii: “This racialization of what is represented as terrorism is an attempt to bring the old style racism into conversation…” - Angela Davis #HandsOffAssata View high resolution

complexitii:

“This racialization of what is represented as terrorism is an attempt to bring the old style racism into conversation…”

- Angela Davis

#HandsOffAssata

(Reblogged from yearningforunity)
legallyunderage: brofiling: white privilege radically changes the appearance of Tsarnaev bros This is how brofiling actually works in real life. The Week Magazine ran with this image as their cover sketch. Just so it is said, clearly and unambiguously: the Tsarnaev brothers are white guys. They are white. The FBI’s own wanted poster for Dzhokhar Tsarnaev lists his race as “white”, but you would never know it from the cover image on The Week. Hold up the cover to someone else, and ask them how many white people they can see on the cover. Chances are they will identify Gabby Giffords on the top left and the image of the Boston policemen (all white men) on the top right, but how about those two guys in the center? Nope, not a chance that anyone would say these caricatures look white. Why? Because in addition to being white they are also “Muslim”, which is the current dehumanizing “Other” that whiteness has constructed as a sanctioned target for violence in US popular culture. This is how white privilege works in media representations and everyday life: when the criminal suspects are demonstrably white men, seize upon any aspect of difference and magnify it such that they become Othered, non-white, and menacing. If it is too hard to do so, simply dismiss them as aberrations and isolated cases of insanity. This is also how white culture, specifically the process of whiteness in conjunction with white privilege, portrays several non-white identities, including those that are now considered white but at one time were decidedly not so. For example, see here for how the Irish were depicted as violent apes or lazy drunks in the late 1800s to early 1900s. U guys WOW View high resolution

legallyunderage:

brofiling:

white privilege radically changes the appearance of Tsarnaev bros

This is how brofiling actually works in real life. The Week Magazine ran with this image as their cover sketch.

Just so it is said, clearly and unambiguously: the Tsarnaev brothers are white guys. They are white. The FBI’s own wanted poster for Dzhokhar Tsarnaev lists his race as “white”, but you would never know it from the cover image on The Week.

Hold up the cover to someone else, and ask them how many white people they can see on the cover. Chances are they will identify Gabby Giffords on the top left and the image of the Boston policemen (all white men) on the top right, but how about those two guys in the center? Nope, not a chance that anyone would say these caricatures look white.

Why? Because in addition to being white they are also “Muslim”, which is the current dehumanizing “Other” that whiteness has constructed as a sanctioned target for violence in US popular culture.

This is how white privilege works in media representations and everyday life: when the criminal suspects are demonstrably white men, seize upon any aspect of difference and magnify it such that they become Othered, non-white, and menacing. If it is too hard to do so, simply dismiss them as aberrations and isolated cases of insanity. This is also how white culture, specifically the process of whiteness in conjunction with white privilege, portrays several non-white identities, including those that are now considered white but at one time were decidedly not so. For example, see here for how the Irish were depicted as violent apes or lazy drunks in the late 1800s to early 1900s.

U guys WOW

(Reblogged from black-culture)

lezbuild-s:

socialismartnature:

Demonstrators face-off against police during a protest against the shooting of Kimani Gray, March 13, 2013 in the East Flatbush neighborhood of the Brooklyn borough of New York City. Numerous arrests were made during the police crackdown on this protest.

16-year-old Kimani Gray was shot and killed by police on March 9, provoking unrest in the neighborhood.

AIN’T NO POWER LIKE THE POWER OF THE PEOPLE, COS THE POWER OF THE PEOPLE DON’T STOP!!!!!

(Reblogged from black-culture)
hiphopeducation: BRONX HIP-HOP COLLECTIVE TO LAUNCH A ‘RADICAL’ LIBRARY FOR YOUTH MOTT HAVEN — Rappers feed off great beats, but they’re nourished by great books. That’s one message the hip-hop-centric Rebel Diaz Arts Collective hopes to convey to local youth with a community library they will soon run out of their headquarters in a former candy factory by the Bruckner Expressway.   “I tell them, ‘The more you read, the iller you’ll be as an emcee,’” said Rodrigo Venegas, aka Rodstarz, one-third of the rap crew, Rebel Diaz, and a founding member of the cultural collective with an activist bent.   The roughly 20-member collective has partnered with Bluestockings, the independent Lower East Side bookstore, to amass about 300 mostly donated books on radical politics, Hispanic and black history and hip hop.   By erecting the small library in the same space where it hosts monthly hip-hop open mic nights that draw rising rappers and their fans from across the city, the collective is trying to convince these young people that the slickest rhymers are often also the sharpest readers.   “If we make it cool to read books in the South Bronx,” Venegas said, “then it’s a victory.”   The Richie Perez Radical Library, named for a South Bronx educator and activist who died in 2004, combines works by influential thinker-agitators, such as Angela Davis and Malcolm X, with writings by hip-hop luminaries including KRS-One, the RZA and Jay-Z. Read more: http://www.dnainfo.com/new-york/20130205/mott-haven/bronx-hip-hop-collective-launch-radical-library-for-youth#ixzz2KG03anOL View high resolution

hiphopeducation:

BRONX HIP-HOP COLLECTIVE TO LAUNCH A ‘RADICAL’ LIBRARY FOR YOUTH

MOTT HAVEN — Rappers feed off great beats, but they’re nourished by great books.

That’s one message the hip-hop-centric Rebel Diaz Arts Collective hopes to convey to local youth with a community library they will soon run out of their headquarters in a former candy factory by the Bruckner Expressway.

 

“I tell them, ‘The more you read, the iller you’ll be as an emcee,’” said Rodrigo Venegas, aka Rodstarz, one-third of the rap crew, Rebel Diaz, and a founding member of the cultural collective with an activist bent.

 

The roughly 20-member collective has partnered with Bluestockings, the independent Lower East Side bookstore, to amass about 300 mostly donated books on radical politics, Hispanic and black history and hip hop.

 

By erecting the small library in the same space where it hosts monthly hip-hop open mic nights that draw rising rappers and their fans from across the city, the collective is trying to convince these young people that the slickest rhymers are often also the sharpest readers.

 

“If we make it cool to read books in the South Bronx,” Venegas said, “then it’s a victory.”

 

The Richie Perez Radical Library, named for a South Bronx educator and activist who died in 2004, combines works by influential thinker-agitators, such as Angela Davis and Malcolm X, with writings by hip-hop luminaries including KRS-One, the RZA and Jay-Z.


Read more: http://www.dnainfo.com/new-york/20130205/mott-haven/bronx-hip-hop-collective-launch-radical-library-for-youth#ixzz2KG03anOL

(Reblogged from hiphopeducation)

An Indiscriminate Collection: solidified-soul: Black Audacity: 7 Young Black Writers You Should...

solidified-soul:

Black Audacity: 7 Young Black Writers You Should Know

blackaudacity:

image

Jenna Wortham

As a technology reporter for The New York Times, Jenna Wortham writes about mobile apps, Web start-ups, and everything in between. Prior to theTimes, Wortham…

(Reblogged from anindiscriminatecollection)

Prompted: For my daughter, on this, her 14th birthday.

thacatalyst:

Written at a writing workshop Summer 2012.

The prompt: Think of a proverb, quote, or cliche…10 minutes…go:

Love never goes far from home…at least that’s what I hope she takes away from it all. Once she is grown. Too grown for me to hug or play with. I can just hear her now commenting that I am…

(Reblogged from thacatalyst)
Repost! View high resolution

Repost!

(Source: superviolence)

(Reblogged from superheru7-deactivated20130328)

Pambazuka - Africa’s wealth and Western poverty of thought

This…

The Richest Man in Babylon

If you know like I know - you will devour this wisdom and knowledge. Thank me later just as I thanked the brother who passed it on to me.

Raw, random and needed (for me) Whitney Houston - my thoughts

As I try to shake the death of Whitney Houston off of my brain I can’t help but evaluate and outwardly express why her death has affected me in the first place. Since the news was released to the public I have thought about it more than I care to even admit. As a man in my mid 30s, I wonder why this has struck a particular chord with me.

Yes, I am one of the many who shook their head seeing the pictures of her downward spiral in pictures or upon watching a YouTube video with her voice a frightening shadow of what made her such a formidable star in the first place. And no, I haven’t purchased a Whitney album since Heartbreak Hotel. I was a distant fan, always willing and ready to hear a Whitney song from the 80s and 90s but unwilling to bear witness to anything less than who she once was.

Yet, I’m sad. Sad, for a woman I’ve never met, never seen live in concert and haven’t listened to in more years that I can even remember.

I had to ask myself why, and what I discovered within was far more personal than just losing Whitney Houston. It stems from the loss of loved ones in general. As I think about my own daughter and what my loss would mean to her – it brings tears to my eyes. When I think of her mother who loved her like any mother would - unconditionally and without fail it breaks my heart. Those are obvious feelings however, what is more sobering for me is how we as a people take life for granted. How Whitney, Michael, our own friends and family become the butt of jokes at their lowest times, forgotten until the next opportunity to gossip or untimely death.

We take for granted that people, all people have an expiration date. We take for granted that they will be here, surviving our neglect, fodder and short memories of their humanness despite their shortcomings. Whitney dead at 48. Only when they are gone do we began to reflect and that feeling is often - wait we weren’t finished with them yet. We never got the chance to say sorry, never got the chance to take it all back because what made her great once made her great always even at her lowest. Never got the chance to celebrate the talent she gifted to the world until it was too late. We took her for granted; only remembering that she was a loving mother and daughter, legendary vocalist, fun loving artist, and beautiful personality on February 11th.

If Whitney Houston’s death has done nothing else but finally shut mouths and end judgment let it also be the day that we stop taking life for granted. Whitney was a daughter and a mother. Whitney was an incomparable vocal artist, brilliant and beautiful.

Let me be one of those people who speak to the spirit world to which you now reside that I am sorry for forgetting you. Sorry, that I ever judged you as if you should have been exempt from the trials this world can often bring and I’m so sorry Whitney that I assumed you would remain here on earth beyond your 48th year of life for me to once again celebrate you in life instead of now in death.

No one will ever mourn you like your mother and daughter but I thank you for being you and sharing your talent with the world. You are a legend – a superstar beyond measure and now that we have been reminded in such a tragic way I hope that your true family and friends can take solace that you will not and cannot ever be forgotten again. R.I.P. Whitney Houston.