POCTALK Kingston

POCTALK aims to create space by and for people who self identify as of Colour, and/or Mixed Race, and/or Indigenous to share our poetry, stories, jokes, songs, histories, resistance, and lives.

[poctalk-kingston]

Why I don't Celebrate Canada Day and Never Will

"July 1 was the day that Canada was formed. In essence it was based on a deal between Upper and Lower Canada, the British colony and the French one.  It was an unequal deal  that we have been paying for ever since but more importantly both were based on the annihilation of most and marginalization of the rest of First Nations."  -excerpt from "Why I don't Celebrate Canada Day and Never Will" by Judy Rebick

[poctalk-kingston]

You are recreating the very racism this art is supposed to critique,” I yelled. The visitors lowered their cameras. Just seconds ago, they had been aiming their lenses at the sculpture of a 40-foot tall, nude black female sphinx. Many posed under its ass; some laughed and pointed at its vulva. As I watched their joking, my thoughts spun and I walked into the crowd, turned to face them and began yelling. [...] Black Pain, White Laughter Anger shot up my body like a hot thermometer. Face flushed, I walked to the Mammy sphinx. Couples posed in front of it, smiling as others took their photos. So here it was, an artwork about how Black people’s pain was transformed into money was a tourist attraction for them. A few weeks ago, I had gone to the 9/11 museum and no one, absolutely no one, posed for smiling pictures in front of the wreckage.

excerpt from "Why I Yelled at the Kara Walker Exhibit", by Nicholas Powers

[poctalk-kingston]

A photo of Richard Aoki: "Yellow Peril Supports Black Power" For resources on his involvement with Black Power movements as a high ranking member of the Black Panethers, and arms supplier to the Black Panthers, as well as allegations in 2009 highlighting his history as an FBI informant, as well as activist communities responding to these allegations, please visit:

Richard Aoki: Informant Turned Radical? 

Who Was Richard Aoki?

Was Bay Area Radical, Black Panther Arms Supplier Richard Aoki an Informant for the FBI? 

Why Couldn't Richard Aoki Have Been an Informant?

http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2012/09/richard-aoki-fbi-black-panthers

http://www.racialicious.com/2012/08/21/on-richard-aoki/ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Aoki http://www.sfgate.com/crime/article/Activist-Richard-Aoki-named-as-informant-3800133.php

[poctalk-kingston]

That's Alright by Laura Mvula - you must watch the music video while listening to these amazing lyrics. 

[poctalk-kingston]

Whatever lacks love will wither into impotence. Ultimately, this is mercy.

Brandon Wint, poet and author

[medievalpoc]

buttonmeupbuttons submitted to medievalpoc:

I don’t usually like historical fiction, but I love this book:

The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation

by M.T. Anderson

The novel takes place in Boston around the time of the revolutionary war and is...

[frankoceanvevo]

[onlyblackgirl]

The history of film in one scene

[poctalk-kingston]

The Artistic Showcase ft. Rita Carter, Brandon Wint, Catriona Sturton, Adam Saik photo: Rita Carter, by Dizz Photography Date: July 16th, 2014 Time: 7pm Location: Pressed, 750 Gladstone, Ottawa, ON: K1R 6X5 In July, The Artistic Showcase welcomes yet another group of diverse, devoted and well-loved featured performers and special guests. This show will also mark the first time Brandon Wint will be reading from his new chapbook, Love, Our Master, in the city where it was written and published: Ottawa, Ontario. :)

[poctalk-kingston]

"Since the 1980s, Iran has experienced the largest and fastest drop in fertility ever recorded — from about seven births per woman to fewer than two today.

[...]

It happened largely because of the Islamic government.

In the late 1980s, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, Iran's supreme leader, issuedfatwas making birth control widely available and acceptable to conservative Muslims." - Iran's Birth Control Policy Sent Birthrate Tumbling, by Kenneth R. Weiss and Ramin Mostaghim

[fuckyeahpocstandupcomedy-blog]

Aamer Rahman talks about ‘random’ security tests at the airport. 

[poctalk-kingston]

an excellent take on so called "random" security checks. Obviously if it keeps happening to the same person, it's not that "random" after all! POC could totally get together and keep a tally of how often this kind of stuff happens

[poctalk-kingston]

Paper Girl Ink Page

Warn her about you. Hold her like a regular old colonial building, swept away (in) yesterday’s newspaper clippings down the Kaveri.   We can boil a little book, sitting on top of Montréal, and...

[ratchetmelancholy]

White privilege is your history being taught as a core class and mine being taught as an elective. 

[queengreendown]

please let them know.

[brehaaorgana]

white privilege is your history being taught as a core class, and mine being banned because it would promote "the overthrow of the U.S. government, foster racial resentment, and advocate ethnic solidarity."

[poctalk-kingston]

Janelle Monae: Q.U.E.E.N.

[poctalk-kingston]

Native studies is often articulated as concerned being primarily with colonization (and, subsequently, decolonization) while Black studies is articulated as concerned primarily with race (and, subsequently, anti-racism). However, this distinction is itself a product of anti-Blacknesss. The colonization of Africa must disappear so that Africa can appear as ontologically colonized.

from "The Colonialism That is Settled and the Colonialism that Never Happened" by Andrea Smith

[poctalk-kingston]

The History Of Afro Futurism and Black Science Fiction automatically begs the question: ‘Well, what isn’t futuristic about being Black in America?’ The entire history of Black America can be seen as a fundamentally futurological and science fictional enterprise, a perpetual biding on hope and struggling for change endeavor that frequently employs far flung visions of tomorrow and other more oblique speculative stratagems in pursuit of outcomes barely foreseeable in the near-present

Greg Tate’s course description for “The History of Afro Futurism and Black Science Fiction” at Brown University

[poctalk-kingston]

[poctalk-kingston]

"When I looked to the media for representation of brown sexual boys all I got were spelling bee champions, gas station owners, and that one guy from Mean Girls—that archetype of the brown boy being forced to overcompensate to compete for the attention of white people. Indeed, the brown body was usually depicted as engaging in emotional, physical, or mental labor for white interests. And as I got older and the other male assigned people around me had voices that got deeper I witnessed the many ways in which they felt compelled to overcompensate—by either adopting the aesthetics of white patriarchy in all of its J Crew JP Morgan finesse or by adopting and exploiting blackness to seem more ‘cool’ and ‘masculine.’ The plight of the South Asian American male lied in his effort to grapple with a culture that did not, and continues to not, recognize his body as beautiful and worthy of receiving and transmitting desire. Which goes to say that it has always been difficult to fantasize with sexual scenarios that involve my own body because I have never had a reference point for my own pleasure."

excerpt from "What's r(ace) got to do with it?: White privilege and (a)sexuality" by Alok-Vaid Menon