(via bad-dominicana)
(Source: w-atercolors, via frontiercity)
The Black Woman is another badass anthology (written similarly as This Bridge Called My Back) that explores what it means to be a black woman in Amerika by analyzing sexism and racism outside and within our radical communities of color.This anthology features contributions from Alice Walker,Nikki Giovanni,Audre Lorde,Abbey Lincoln,Paule Marshall and others who, through poems and stories, offer a remedy towards healing and self preservation for black women who have had enuf of the rainbow.
“When a white man “likes colored girls,” his woman (the white woman) is the last one he wants to know about it. Yet,seemingly,when a Negro “likes white girls,” his woman (the Black woman) is the first he wants to know about it. White female rejects and social misfits are fragrantly flaunted in our faces as the ultimate in feminine pulchritude. Our women are encouraged by our own men to strive to look and act as much like the white female image of beauty as possible, and only those who approach that “goal” in physical appearance and social behavior are acceptable. At best,we are made to feel we are poor imitations and excuses for white women.
Evil? Evil,you say? The Black woman is hurt,confused,frustrated,angry,resentful,frightened and evil! Who in this hell dares suggest that she should be otherwise? These attitudes only point up her perception of the situation and her health rejection of shame.
Maybe if our women get evil enough and angry enough, they’ll be moved to some action that will bring our men to their senses. There is one unalterable fact that too many of our men cannot seem to face.And that is, we “black,evil,ugly” women are perfect and accurate reflection of you “black,evil,ugly” men. Play hide and seek as long as you can and will,but your every rejection and abandonment of us is only a sorry testament of how thoroughly and carefully you have been blinded and brainwashed. And let it further be understood that when we refer to you we mean,ultimately,us. For you are us,and vice versa.
We are the women who were kidnapped and brought to this continent as slaves. We are the women who were raped,are still being raped, and our bastard children snatched from our breasts to be scattered to the winds to be lynched,castrated,de-egoed,robber,burned,and deceived.
We are the women whose strong and beautiful Black bodies were-and still are- being used as cheap labor force for Miss Anne’s kitchen and Mr.Charlie’s bed, whose rich,black,and warm milk nurtured-and still nurtures-the heir to the racist and evil slavemaster.
We are the women who dwell in the hell-hole ghettos are over the land.We are the women whose bodies are scarified,as living cadavers,to experimental surgery in the white man’s hospitals for the sake of white medicine.
We are the women who are invisible on the television and movies screens, on the Broadway stage. We are the women who are lusted after,sneered at,leered at,hissed at,yelled at,grabbed at,tracked down by white degenerates in our own pitiable,poverty-stricken,and pride-less neighborhoods.
We are the women whose hair is compulsively fried,whose skin is bleached,whose nose is “too big”,whose mouth is “too big and loud,” whose face is “too black and shiny,” and whose suffering and patience is too long and enduring to be believed.
Who’re just too damned much for everybody.
We are the women whose bars and recreation halls are invaded and flagrantly disrespectful,bigoted,simpering,amoral,emotionally unstable,outcast,maladjusted,nymphomaniacal,condescending white women…in desperate and untiring search of the “frothing-at-the-mouth-for-a-white-woman,strong-backed,sixty minute hot black.” Our men.
We are the women who,upon protesting this invasion of our privacy and sanctity and sanity, are called “jealous,” and “evil,” and “small-minded,” and “prejudiced.”
We are the women whose husbands and fathers and brothers and sons have been plagiarized,imitated,denied,and robbed of the fruits of their genius,and who consequently we see emasculated,jailed,lynched,driven mad, deprived,enraged,and made suicidal.
We are the women whom nobody,seemingly,cares about,who are made to feel inadequate,stupid and backward, and who inevitably have the most colossal inferiority complexes to be found.
And who is spreading this propaganda that “The only free people in this country are the white man and the Black woman?” If this be freedom,then Heaven is Hell.
Who will revere the Black Woman? Who will keep our neighborhoods safe for black innocent womanhood? Black womanhood is outraged and humiliated. Black womanhood cries for dignity ans restitution and salvation. Black womanhood wants and needs protection,and keeping,and holding.
Who will assuage her indignation? Who will keep her precious and pure? Who will glorify and proclaim her beautiful image?
To whom will she cry rape?”
(Source: blck-grrl, via obsidianelohim)
"Fat people in America are reduced to nothing but fatness. A fat person has a health problem of any kind? It’s because they’re fat. A fat person is single? Well, duh. Fat. They deserve it. A fat person is poor? That’s not surprising-obviously they have bad judgment and no impulse control! Because why would a smart person choose to be fat? If a fat person goes to a restaurant and sits on a broken chair and the chair collapses under them, it’s because they’re fat. But if a thin person sits on the same broken chair and the chair collapses under them, it’s because they sat on a broken chair."
— Lindy West, Being Mean To Fat People is Pointless: A Good Old Fashioned Plea for Civility (via broadist)
(via dark-backroads)
In this photo, President Barack Obama chats with Presidential Medal of Freedom recipient Toni Morrison in the Blue Room of the White House. Thirteen Americans received the prestigious award, which is the highest honor awarded to civilians in the United States. President John F. Kennedy established the honor in 1963. It is presented to those who have made “an especially meritorious contribution to the security or national interests of the United States, world peace, cultural or other significant public or private endeavors.”
The White House described Morrison’s contributions:
One of our nation’s most celebrated novelists, Morrison is renowned for works such as Song of Solomon, Jazz, and Beloved, for which she won a Pulitzer Prize in 1988. When she became the first African American woman to win a Nobel Prize in 1993, Morrison’s citation captured her as an author “who in novels characterized by visionary force and poetic import, gives life to an essential aspect of American reality.” She created the Princeton Atelier at Princeton University to convene artists and students. Morrison continues to write today.
(Source: dopereads, via dark-backroads)
![A Muslim migrant from Africa prayed Friday morning [May 25] as his comrades slept at a playground in Tel Aviv’s Levinsky Park. Race riots shook the city Wednesday night [May 23], prompting calls Thursday [May 24] for the removal of tens of thousands of African migrants.](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m4u9o7xy2n1qa0wj4o1_1280.jpg)
I will not act in another Hollywood picture until the prejudice is removed against colored actors in dramatic roles. Personally, I will not accept any maid parts. I am not a maid and will not [act] like one. - Nina Mae McKinney
(via bad-dominicana)
My ex used to call me Kid. I liked it. I felt very romantic about the whole thing. Casablanca. Like our romance was a grand sort, defying all sorts of things like distance. But no matter how you romanticize, sometimes you just know when things are right or when they are wrong. Don’t waste your time or anyone else’s because being alone is a frightening thought.
(Source: narcotic, via largerloves)
HAPPY BIRTHDAY DORTHEA LANGE (117)
Florence Owens Thompson (September 1, 1903 – September 16, 1983), born Florence Leona Christie, was the subject of Dorothea Lange’s photo Migrant Mother (1936), an iconic image of the Great Depression. The Library of Congress entitled the Migrant Mother image, “Destitute pea pickers in California. Mother of seven children. Age thirty-two. Nipomo, California.”
In March 1936, after picking beets in the Imperial Valley, Thompson and her family were traveling on US Highway 101 towards Watsonville in hopes of finding more work. On the road, the car timing chain snapped and they coasted to a stop just inside a pea-picker’s camp on Nipomo Mesa. While Jim Hill, her husband, and two of Thompson’s sons took the radiator, which had also been damaged, to town for repair, Thompson and some of the children set up a temporary camp. As Thompson waited, Dorothea Lange, working for the Resettlement Administration, drove up and started taking photos of Florence and her family. Over 10 minutes she took 6 images.
(via largerloves)
(via caityleann)
(Source: leahhkaye, via chanelmercedes)
