Center for Culture Sexuality and Spirituality

Mission: To liberate the ways people love, experience the Erotic, and connect to the Sacred. We provide a space for the exhibition and exploration of sensual awareness, sexual consciousness, erotic power, and pleasure; to provide a gathering place for...

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CALL FOR PROPOSALS: Making Revolution Irresistible in Socially Engaged Art (New Book)

CALL FOR PROPOSALS: Making Revolution Irresistible in Socially Engaged Art (New Book) Editors: Drs. H. “Herukhuti” Sharif Williams and Otto Muller, Goddard College (Vermont, USA) Publisher: Routledge Anticipated publication year: 2025 The world is ablaze with the rise of white supremacist fascism, genocide, and wealth extraction. Communities are working to resist and disrupt the mechanisms of…

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WORLD PREMIER of In the Valley of Coming Forth - One Night ONLY

By Dr. Herukhuti It’s here. We’re just days away from the realization of a new contribution to funk theatre. For two years, I’ve been working with the Caribbean Cultural Center African Diaspora Institute (CCCADI) to bring to life the Afrofuturist, funk ritual performance piece, In the Valley of Coming Forth (IVCF). On November 24, 7pmET, we will present a one night only world premier of IVCF at…

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Afrofuturism and The Birth of Funk Theatre

Afrofuturism and The Birth of Funk Theatre #Afrofuturism #Afropessimism #Funk #Afrocentricity

“While there has been quite a bit of work to define the roots and elements of Afrofuturism, from my observation Afrofuturists come to the framework in different ways and associate with different elements.” by Dr. Herukhuti The creative and philosophical discourse known as Afrofuturism has been growing in reach since the early 90s. Simply put, Afrofuturism centers Blackness and Black people in…

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I Missed You. I Figure You've Missed Me Too.

I Missed You. I Figure You’ve Missed Me Too.

by Dr. Herukhuti Hey there. I know it’s been a long time since you’ve heard from me here. Too long. My last post was in the summer of 2020. While COVID affected my life as it did many of you, there have been a number of important experiences that contributed to the absence of my voice on this platform. I’d like to share them with you. Behind the Veil of Organized Labor I was elected to a two-year…

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Reparations or Revolution, There Are Decisions to Make on All Sides

Reparations or Revolution, There Are Decisions to Make on All Sides

by Dr. Herukhuti

As the surge in protests, looting, and uprising occurred several months ago, close friends and colleagues, unbeknownst to each other, asked me the same question, “do you think this is it?” By it, they were referring to a change that would fundamentally transform the society. Being known as a revolutionary scholar, I am not surprised by the question but I tend to surprise people…

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The Problem Isn't Merely Policing - Dismantling the Matrix of Domination

The Problem Isn’t Merely Policing – Dismantling the Matrix of Domination

by Dr. Herukhuti

In the wake of the most recent murders of and attacks against Black people, people around the world have taken to the streets to demand justice for Black victims of police and vigilante violence and defunding the police. But anti-Blackness, white supremacy, and racial terrorism didn’t begin and won’t end with policing. Patricia Hill Collins, sociologist and Black feminist…

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Habari Gani? Kwanzaa and Umoja Can Be Complicated

Habari Gani? Kwanzaa and Umoja Can Be Complicated

By Iyatunde Oshunade Folayan

In 2009, I received my name at the long running Kwanzaa celebration within Detroit’s historic Black queer community. It was done in the beauty salon basement of SASHA (Sexual Assault Services for Holistic Healing) center founder Kalimah LocMama Johnson. As a part of that annual Kwanzaa ritual, Detroit performs name-giving ceremonies performed by Kofi Adoma, founder of…

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That Ain't Forgiveness: On the Political Economy of Hugging

That Ain’t Forgiveness: On the Political Economy of Hugging

By Dr. Herukhuti

Stop it.

Stop showing the images, playing the video. Stop talking about how amazing or incredible or moving or heartwarming it was. To anyone who is using the scene of the sentencing phase of Amber Guyger’s trial in Dallas, TX, USA to pimp a narrative about forgiveness and Black people or Blackness in general. Stop it.

Stop labeling these kinds of performances as acts of…

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The Loss of Empathy: When We Can No Longer Mourn Our Dead, We Become Dust

by Dr. Herukhuti

We don’t love each other, not because we don’t have the capacity. But because our trauma has so disrupted our natural instinct to do so.

The intergenerational trauma of experiencing settler-colonialism, imperialism, white supremacy, capitalism, and cisheteropatriarchy has wrought havoc on our collective empathy. It is easiest for us to mourn the loss of those closest to us–or at…

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Reppin' Ain't Easy and Some of Us Are Brave

Reppin’ Ain’t Easy and Some of Us Are Brave

By Dr. Herukhuti

Before keeping it real was a thing, we represented. Back in the 90s and early 00s, people repped the street on which they lived, the school they attended, the neighborhood, city, or state in which they resided. Showing love for your community and your origins was a sign of self-love and we represented accordingly.

It feels so good to love what you represent and represent what you…

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White Gay Men Using Crystal Meth to Enslave and Sexually Exploit Black Men

White Gay Men Using Crystal Meth to Enslave and Sexually Exploit Black Men

by Dr. Herukhuti

I don’t do trigger warnings in my writing but I’m letting you know now that I might have written something here that pisses you or someone you know off. And yes, some people who are living with an addiction might be triggered.

This is the story of how an aphrodisiac got its afro and became an epidemic in the Black community like crack but one that few people want to openly…

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Manchild in the Compromised Land: What We Might Learn from Surviving R Kelly

Manchild in the Compromised Land: What We Might Learn from Surviving R Kelly

 By Dr. Herukhuti

I watched it. Not the tape of him having sex with a 14, 15, or 16 year old child. At the time that tape came out, I considered it child pornography and did not want to watch or even have it in my possession.

I watched the enormously painful documentary mini-series, Surviving R Kelly, “executive produced by cultural critic, filmmaker and passionate activist dream hampton, Tamara…

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What BlacKkKlansman Poses Is a Problem

What BlacKkKlansman Poses Is a Problem

by Steven G. Fullwood

BlacKkKlansmanwants you and me to wake up. No, seriously. Brown-skinned people who have been terrorized by the murder of dozens of unarmed Black people including children, women and men by the police or any random white men. You, me, us Black folk, individually and collectively have had to suffer and mourn the loss of Eric Garner, Trayvon Martin, Sandra Bland, Donte…

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Is Paulo Freire's Pedagogy of the Oppressed Possible with the White, Middle Class?

Is Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed Possible with the White, Middle Class?

by Dr. Herukhuti

I first read Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed when I was in high school. I found an old copy of it somewhere and waded with relative ease through the translation that made his words feel more abstract and opaque than were probably the case in the original Portuguese. It would be years later in grad school when I returned to the text as assigned reading.

Educators from the…

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Sustainability for Creatives: The Importance of Self-Care for Artists

Sustainability for Creatives: The Importance of Self-Care for Artists

By Dr. Herukhuti

I’ve been reading Reiland Baraka’s introduction to Resistance and Decolonizationby Amilcar Cabral. The text has been providing me with an opportunity to think about the role of culture, cultural production, and art in the work of revolutionary decolonization. Simultaneous to the reading, other events in my life have been an occasion to think about the role of self-care in the…

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Dr. Herukhuti's 2018 New York City Pride Rally Speech (Full Text)

Dr. Herukhuti’s 2018 New York City Pride Rally Speech (Full Text)

On Friday, June 22, 2018, Dr. H. “Herukhuti” Sharif Williams, founder and chief erotics officer of the Center for Culture, Sexuality, and Spirituality, delivered the following speech at the 2018 New York City Pride Rally at the Stonewall National Park and Monument:

I recognize the Lenape and Wappino people as the rightful protectors of this land and ask for their mercy when an accounting for my…

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7 Reasons Not to Call Someone A Hotep

7 Reasons Not to Call Someone A Hotep

By Dr. Herukhuti Recently, I’ve noticed an uptick in progressive Black folks and others using the Kemetic word “hotep” to label and critique other Black folks who promote a brand of Black nationalism or cultural nationalism that is frequently rooted in the cisheteropatriarchy of white supremacy and Western thought while purporting to be antagonistic to them. Seems as if the Black Panther…

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