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"Your African characters may include naked warriors, loyal servants, diviners and seers, ancient wise men living in hermitic splendour. Or corrupt politicians, inept polygamous travel-guides, and prostitutes you have slept with. The Loyal Servant always behaves like a seven-year-old and needs a firm hand; he is scared of snakes, good with children, and always involving you in his complex domestic dramas. The Ancient Wise Man always comes from a noble tribe (not the money-grubbing tribes like the Gikuyu, the Igbo or the Shona). He has rheumy eyes and is close to the Earth. The Modern African is a fat man who steals and works in the visa office, refusing to give work permits to qualified Westerners who really care about Africa. He is an enemy of development, always using his government job to make it difficult for pragmatic and good-hearted expats to set up NGOs or Legal Conservation Areas. Or he is an Oxford-educated intellectual turned serial-killing politician in a Savile Row suit. He is a cannibal who likes Cristal champagne, and his mother is a rich witch-doctor who really runs the country."

From the brilliant, satirical essay "How to Write About Africa." Read it! http://www.granta.com/Archive/92/How-to-Write-about-Africa/Page-1

theGrio: "Detroit immigrant fights to be classified as black"

Hefny was born in Egypt and immigrated to the U.S. in 1978. When he entered the country, he says that he was classified on government papers as a white person – “The government (interviewer) said, ‘You are now white,’” he said.

...According to Directive 15 for the Federal Office of Management and Budget Standards for the Classification of Federal Data on Race and Ethnicity, a “white” person is defined as “a person having origins in any of the original peoples of Europe, North Africa or the Middle East.”

I discussed this case in the conclusion of my lecture on racial formation, critical race theory, and whiteness and the law. It definitely got the students' attention!

Read the full article here: http://thegrio.com/2012/09/04/detroit-immigrant-wants-to-be-classified-as-black/

Preview 'Negrita' (Documentary on Afro Latina Identity in the U.S.) and support the campaign!

13 days left to raise the funds to complete the film! Support the indiegogo campaign here: http://www.indiegogo.com/NEGRITA

#AfroLatin@s documentaries

nbclatino

Don't label us as "Latinos," says new poll

Latinos don’t necessarily see themselves as “one big family,” but cherish their diversity, according to a new survey. (Photo/Getty Images)

“Don’t label us,” seems to be the takeaway from a new survey on U.S. Latinos. Most of us would rather be known as “Mexican” or “Dominican” rather than “Latino” or “Hispanic,” and what is more, a majority of us - almost seven-in-ten- think U.S. Latino groups are made up of different cultures rather than a shared common culture.

notesondiaspora

We will end #AfroLatinAmerica with a discussion of the racial and cultural politics of Latino and "Hispanic" identity in the U.S. What questions would you add to the survey? Read the rest of the study here: http://www.pewhispanic.org/

[I]n contrast to scholarship that focuses on the formal aspects of political citizenship in Brazil, this book examines how the informal and everyday aspects of Brazilian citizenship serve to disenfranchise and marginalize Afro-Brazilian women. I pay particular attention to the ways in which the Brazilian ideology of 'racial democracy' has influenced the social construction of black women's identities and has been used to create differential citizenship categories based on prevailing gender and racial hierarchies. Through an ethnographic analysis of Afro-Brazilian women's life stories and practices of social activism, this study examines how Afro-Brazilian women come to terms with race, gender, and class domination and develop active and resistant subjectivities, thereby expanding the boundaries of citizenship and national belonging in contemporary Brazil.

revolutionary-afrolatino-deacti

In light of the Too $hort video, it's important that we listen to the testimonies of the girls and teenagers coerced into a life of rape and commercial sexual exploitation.

Read more about the Very Young Girls documentary and the work of the organization GEMS here: http://www.gems-girls.org/get-involved/very-young-girls

Too $hort: "This is a Wake-Up Call for Me"

Following the massive outcry that resulted after he participated in an XXL.com video blog that offered young boys disturbing "advice" on touching young girls (which he followed up with a less-than-satisfactory apology), rapper Too $hort asked to speak with writer dream hampton because she'd publicly joined a group of women, We are the 44%. Here they talk feminism, accountability, rape culture and traumatizing playground "games."

Read the full Ebony.com interview here: http://www.ebony.com/entertainment-culture/too-short-interview/

[F]ormal participation in government is only one part of a more encompassing effort to be recognized within the nation. The struggle for recognition is the nexus of human identity and national identity, where much of the most important work of politics occurs. African American women fully embody this struggle. By studying the lives of black women, we gain important insight into how citizens yearn for and work toward recognition.

...This book is not a work of history, but it relies on black women's history as a frame for understanding contemporary politics. It is not a work of literary criticism, but it relies on literature written by and about black women. It is not a biography, but it gives some black women an opportunity to tell parts of their personal stories. It is not a traditional social science text, but it makes use of empirical data. This book is concerned with understanding the emotional realities of black women's lives in order to answer a political, not a personal, question: What does it mean to be a black woman and an American citizen?

Melissa Harris-Perry: 'The Help' doesn't help domestic workers

A roundtable with an historian, a domestic worker/activist, and a comedian on the real life struggles of domestic workers in historical and contemporary context.

Boston University study Hair Relaxer Use and Risk of Uterine Leiomyomata in African-American Women (January 2012)

These findings raise the hypothesis that hair relaxer use increases uterine leiomyomata risk.

aka uterine fibroids.

link to abstract and full article pdf: http://aje.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2012/01/10/aje.kwr351.short

for more on the Black Women’s Health Study at Boston University: http://www.bu.edu/bwhs/

Popeyes commercial from 2010/2011. The craziest thing is that I just saw this actress in the play A Raisin in the Sun this weekend. She played Ruth Younger! (It dawned on me only at the end of the play: "Hey, is that the Popeyes lady?") This ties nicely into our discussions about the limited roles available for black actresses.

In my opinion the Popeyes commercials are a contemporary example of the persistent marketability of the Mammy figure. What do you think?

Sent in by Alexcia. Watch the first 30 seconds to see the Gladys Knight Aunt Jemima commercial from the 90s that Wallace-Sanders mentions in Mammy: A Century of Race, Gender, and Southern Memory.

"...both the historic and the contemporary interpretations of the mammy too often isolate the image within narrow categories: as a literary stereotype, or as a historic reality, or as an advertising trademark, or as a visual subject. These approaches reduce the complexity of mammy's powerful presence in American consciousness. This book examines the mammy figure as a signpost pointing to concepts and ideals extending far beyond the stereotype; the wide-ranging representations of the mammy figure reflect the various ways in which this image has shaped and continues to influence American concepts of race and gender."

Amber and Michael in #afam241 sent in this video. The debate reminds me of Harold Cruse's analysis in The Crisis of the Negro Intellectual (1967), where he argues that black artists and thinkers lack creativity and independence of thought, which undermines black self-determination. For Cruse, "it is not the race politicians or the ‘rights’ leader who create the new ideas and the new images of life and man. That role belongs to the artists and intellectuals." It's interesting to consider this dialogue/debate between Tavis Smiley, who calls himself a 'thinker' and is considered a public intellectual, and Viola Davis and Octavia Spencer, who speak on behalf of black actors and other artists, in light of Cruse. What does the debate about 'black movies' reveal to us about the role of black artists and intellectuals today and the public's expectations of them?

ferrarisheppard

In her article "Researching Sex Work in the Caribbean" (Feminist Review, No. 67, Spring 2001, pp. 39-62), Kempadoo writes the following about European and North American women who engage in sex and romance tourism in the Caribbean:

Among women tourists, an experimentation with being able to control men, while retaining a sexualized femininity, appears to have taken place. Caribbean masculinity and femininity, I concluded from this, could be viewed as the stage upon which a reshaping and retooling of western identity occurs, securing the reproduction of First World labor and the (re)contruction of First World/white/western masculinity and femininity.

It seems as if Kempadoo figures the tourist as necessarily white. What about when the tourist is a black woman?

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