Black Phoenix

Life's a continuous melody; we need to find our song. A musician, writer and poet singing life.

[disciplesofmalcolm]

“You will love the things that destroy you, and you will hate the things that advance your growth. Look at your behavior. Look at the behavior of your compatriots and watch if what I’m saying is not true.

‘I hate to read. I hate to study. I hate to learn. Oh, but I love to party. I love to smoke. I like to drink. I love to screw.’ And all the loves you will find will be loves that what? That don’t advance you one bit, and yet you can’t get over them. You’re addicted to them.

But things that lead to growth, to growth and wisdom, knowledge, you see, self-understanding and self-discovery, healthy relations, self-control; all those things are hateful.

But this is the only way a minority can rule over a majority of people, is by turning their minds backwards. So that they love the things that destroy them and hate the things that move them forward. In order for these people to rule over us, we must hate learning. This has to be built into us.

If we were into learning, if we were into research, and into thinking, and into real philosophical ideas and abstraction, we would defeat those people. They know it. So consequently, what they must do is rob you of all of these things so that they may stay in their place.”

-Dr. Amos N. Wilson

[heartcountry]

“To say: I forgive my mistakes. To say: They helped me love you better. In another world, New York’s underwater already. All those hearts: stones sinking to the bottom. The sun betrayed its own sky, at least that’s what they say. In this world right here, Syria is an almost graveyard. Syria is a mother asking for her children back. Syria is smoke gone loud. Smoke gone bloody. In this world, Palestine is an all night sadness. Palestine is a poem that breaks your heart. Every part of me is a voice that’s disappearing. Nothing to name the homesickness after. This good fight. These brave hands that never stop reaching. May our ghosts come back to haunt the ones who tried to ruin us. May the ones we leave behind have a place they can finally return to.”

— Y.Z, all the things we lost (via rustyvoices)

[specialnights]

In tomorrow’s world, men will not need artificial instruments such as jets and space ships. In the world of tomorrow, the new man will ‘think’ the place he wants to go, then his mind will take him there.

Sun Ra (via specialnights)

[theclassicsreader]

I discovered me in the library.

Ray Bradbury, interviewed in The Art of Fiction No. 203 (via theclassicsreader)

[charmainsonguniverse]

Rape Culture: A forced heritage for Black Women

Rape culture is fuelled by the patriarchal habits that society is quick to dismiss as the norm such as the sordid habit of catcalling.

A terrifying heritage followed me to the streets of Bloemfontein. It’s just before 8pm on a Tuesday evening. The air was impregnated with a haste caution; the black rush of commuting from school or work back to the townships- home. I had just finished with my classes for the day on campus. I get into a taxi and I religiously put on my earphones and let the sounds of Makeba usher my trip from campus to downtown Bloemfontein.

When the taxi reaches downtown I cautiously put away my phone and earphones as I hurry through the streets to the next taxi to Rocklands Township. As soon as I walk the city streets in the dark- I am confronted with perverted stares from men who are old enough to be my father’s age. I cringe as I am being undressed by their stare. “Hello baby, o batla ke ho felletse ke tla ho tshwara hantle”, one of the men says, and another passes a foul cat-calling comment. My heart throbs and anxious paranoia kicks in accompanied by fearful thoughts about rape as I see one of the men begin to follow me through the corner of my eye.

The rape culture that follows the Black female body seems to synonymous with Black Female heritage in South Africa. I am constantly forced to be in a state of paranoia as my safety is constantly endangered as a Black female body. It has become the norm for a township girl to stomach catcalls and sexualisation on a daily; this has become part and parcel of the spaces women find themselves in. The spaces which we find ourselves in as Black female bodies are prowled by rapists and men who seek to objectify and sexualize women. I find myself being forced to always solicit male company so as to feel protected from objectification and most pertinently protected from rape.

As an African girl I have endured spaces that allowed for men to feel dominant over the female bodies more so the spaces men and women occupy. I grew up with my grandmother constantly singing: “ if you do not learn how to cook, clean, and do the laundry you won’t find a man to marry you” and I grew up hearing songs and warnings that restricted my freedoms as a little girl such as: “a girl does not sit like that, sit like a lady. Your undergarments are showing do not sit like that.” These are the restrictions and mental cautions that I was indoctrinated with from an early age that can falsely lure me into accepting that treating or presenting my body in a certain way will make me victim to rape and sexual harassment. It is such misconceptions that do not allow for the honest conversations about the facts that rape is caused by rapists. Rape is not caused by slutty clothes, alcohol, or reckless women. Rape is caused by rapists; men who feel they have the right to violate and objectify women.

What is then my culture that I am suffocated by as a Black woman?

I have inherited a culture that is dense with patriarchy. In my culture patriarchy is not termed as such but the elderly call it culture. According to Gerda Lerner patriarchy is “the manifestation and institutionalisation of male dominance over women and children and the extension of male dominance over women in the society in general.” This is the culture I am born into as a woman. I have inherited a culture that exists with the ideology that influences behaviour and this behaviour shouts rape culture. Rape culture: permits habits from men that make rape inviting such as catcalling and sexualisation of women.  I have inherited a culture that does not address the how the socialisation of men has led to the way in which women are victimised, abused, and thought to be inferior to men. I have inherited a nervous state of existence that leads me to always being guarded because we have not confronted patriarchy which leads to the sexual violation of women.

Rape culture a forced heritage.

[fyblackwomenart]

By Sreal

: : submission : :

[shatteringtheillusion]

[melaninmercy-blog]

[cultureartsociety]

Kinshasa, Congo 1983 | © of Alex Webb

[charmainsonguniverse]

Our own improvised take of Mama Miriam Makeba's Thula. Somewhere in the townships of Johannesburg- Vosloorus Groove Corner Jam Sessions. She breathes song. A Black Phoenix: Black fiery bird.

[afriblaq]

NeverForget

#afriblaq

[ancient-serpent]

[visualjunkee]

[mydaisysoul]

[dynamicafrica]

[dynamicafrica]

Meet Eric Edwards, A Brooklyn-based African Art Collector Seeking to Launch A Black-Owned African Art Museum in New York.

The art world and the that of art collecting specifically, is no stranger to racism. Walk through the insides of museums like the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Royal Museum for Central Africa in Belgium, Sainsbury African Galleries in the British Museum in London, and Paris’ Musée d'Ethnographie du Trocadéro, amongst many others, and you‘ll be greeted with countless African artworks often numbering in the 100s, on display in these locations.

Then, of course, there are the stories about how these works of art found their way there in the first place. Though some were bought, under what circumstances that remain questionable, many were looted and stolen throughout European colonialism in Africa. One of the most infamous examples of this was during the Benin Expedition of 1897 where British troops destroyed and looted Benin Bronzes belonging to the Benin Empire in modern-day Nigeria.

In this new short documentary from New York City-based filmmaker Mark Zemel, we meet and enter the Clinton Hill apartment of former AT&T executive Eric Edwards, a man whose home is host to an estimated $10 million 1,600-piece collection of African art, that encompasses 54 African countries and goes back as far as the Nubian empire, amongst many other things.

Collecting African art for over 40 years, Edwards has always been a collector of sorts but was particularly drawn to works from Africa through his father’s deep sense of Pan-African and Black Consciousness, “My father knew that we [his kids] would experience racism, and he wanted to basically inoculate us from feeling less important or inferior than anyone else. So his way of doing that was to teach us African history, which later in life led me to collecting African art.”

Motivated and inspired by his father, Edwards seeks to open up his collection to the world beyond this 4-minute documentary. In a bid to secure his collection once beyond his own lifetime, Edwards is currently looking for funders and backers to assist in his launching ofThe Cultural Museum of African Art, an African art museum in Brooklyn. Architect Rodney Léon, who designed the African Burial Ground National Monument in Manhattan, is one of them, so far.

The Collector is the start to an incredibly important meeting of worlds in both art and history.  

H/T: Gothamist.

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[n-ij]

© Nadine Ijewere

Kojey radical

[n-ij]

© Nadine Ijewere

Kojey radical