Young Female Black

My Femininity: It's only viewed as a tool or a weapon.

[pocmemes]

[ruinedchildhood]

Met Gala 2018

[odinsblog]

Kanye West: a useful mouthpiece—a tool—for white supremacy.

In this 2009 Reuters interview, Kanye stated he was a proud non-reader of books and said he wasn’t a fan of books. Never has this been more apparent than right now. Kanye West is making ignorant, uninformed, counter factual statements, and he needs to educate himself before trying to educate others.

Kanye, with his “free thinking” coonery, is one of the most cancelled celebs of 2018. So far, anyway.

[jessehimself]

say it with your whole black mouth: i am innocent           & if you are not innocent, say this: i am worthy of forgiveness, of breath after breath i tell you this: i let blue eyes dress me in guilt walked around stores convinced the very skin of my palm was stolen & what good has that brought me? days filled flinching thinking the sirens were reaching for me & when the sirens were for me did i not make peace with god? so many white people are alive because we know how to control ourselves. how many times have we died on a whim wielded like gallows in their sun-shy hands? here, standing in my own body, i say: the next time they murder us for the crime of their imaginations i don’t know what i’ll do. i did not come to preach of peace for that is not the hunted’s duty. i came here to say what i can’t say without my name being added to a list what my mother fears i will say                       what she wishes to say herself i came here to say i can’t bring myself to write it down sometimes i dream of pulling a red apology from a pig’s collared neck & wake up crackin up           if i dream of setting fire to cul-de-sacs           i wake chained to the bed i don’t like thinking about doing to white folks what white folks done to us when i do                      can’t say           i don’t dance o my people          how long will we reach for god          instead of something sharper?          my lovely doe with a taste for meat          take the hunter          by his hand

Danez Smith (via jessehimself)

[gohoneycocolove-deactivated2015]

What Really Happened in the Congo: Belgium’s ‘Heart of Darkness’

Leopold famously said when he was forced to hand over the Congo Free State to the Belgian nation: “I will give them my Congo but they have no right to know what I have done there,” and proceeded to burn archives.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/belgium-confronts-its-heart-of-darkness-6151923.html

Did y’all know about this?

[jessehimself]

Religious terrorism of the highest order

[alwaysbewoke]

Always reblog. We never talk about the African Holocaust do we?

[boulevard-of-june-30th-deactiva]

The way this has been erased from the surface of the planet, my country still suffers today.

[sweetestbatch]

[365daysoflesbians]

NOVEMBER 30: I Can’t Think Straight premieres (2008)

On this day in 2008, the lesbian film I Can’t Think Straight finally received a wide release in the United States after initially hitting select theater on November 21, 2008.

The British drama is based on the book of the same name and was directed by Shamim Sarif, a notable writer and director of South Asian and South African descent who is openly lesbian and has extensively explored gender and sexuality in her work. I Can’t Think Straight follows the story of a Palestinian woman named Tala who is living in London and engaged to a man named Hani. While Tala’s wealthy family eagerly make arrangements for her wedding to take place in their home country of Jordan, Tala is slowly coming to the realization that she likes women. The object of her affection is the girlfriend of her best friend, a British Indian Muslim woman named Leyla. As Tala’s wedding day approached, both women struggle with their family’s cultural expectations and their secret relationship.

Upon its release in 2008, I Can’t Think Straight was awarded by many LGBT film festivals from around the world such as the Miami Gay & Lesbian Film Festival, the Melbourne Queer Film Festival, and the Vancouver Queer Film Festival. Lesbian publication sites such as AfterEllen and Autostraddle delivered lackluster but ultimately endearing reviews of the film. Autostraddle dubs it “another film that lesbians either love or hate, but this is the film that opened our hearts forever to…Tala and Leyla, two women from very different backgrounds that fall in love on accident.”

-LC

[thechanelmuse]

Black Migrants Sold into Slavery in Libya for as Little as $400

“Eight hundred,” says the auctioneer. “900 … 1,000 … 1,100 …” Sold. For 1,200 Libyan dinars — the equivalent of $800.

Not a used car, a piece of land, or an item of furniture. Not “merchandise” at all, but two human beings.One of the unidentified men being sold in the grainy cell phone video obtained by CNN is Nigerian. He appears to be in his twenties and is wearing a pale shirt and sweatpants. He has been offered up for sale as one of a group of “big strong boys for farm work,” according to the auctioneer, who remains off camera. Only his hand — resting proprietorially on the man’s shoulder — is visible in the brief clip.

After seeing footage of this slave auction, CNN worked to verify its authenticity and traveled to Libya to investigate further.

Carrying concealed cameras into a property outside the capital of Tripoli last month, we witness a dozen people go “under the hammer” in the space of six or seven minutes.“Does anybody need a digger? This is a digger, a big strong man, he’ll dig,” the salesman, dressed in camouflage gear, says. “What am I bid, what am I bid?” Buyers raise their hands as the price rises, “500, 550, 600, 650 …” Within minutes it is all over and the men, utterly resigned to their fate, are being handed over to their new “masters.”

After the auction, we met two of the men who had been sold. They were so traumatized by what they’d been through that they could not speak, and so scared that they were suspicious of everyone they met.

Crackdown on smugglers

Each year, tens of thousands of people pour across Libya’s borders. They’re refugees fleeing conflict or economic migrants in search of better opportunities in Europe. Most have sold everything they own to finance the journey through Libya to the coast and the gateway to the Mediterranean. But a recent clampdown by the Libyan coastguard means fewer boats are making it out to sea, leaving the smugglers with a backlog of would-be passengers on their hands. So the smugglers become masters, the migrants and refugees become slaves.

The evidence filmed by CNN has now been handed over to the Libyan authorities, who have promised to launch an investigation. First Lieutenant Naser Hazam of the government’s Anti-Illegal Immigration Agency in Tripoli told CNN that although he had not witnessed a slave auction, he acknowledged that organized gangs are operating smuggling rings in the country.“ They fill a boat with 100 people, those people may or may not make it,” Hazam says. “(The smuggler) does not care as long as he gets the money, and the migrant may get to Europe or die at sea.”

“The situation is dire,” Mohammed Abdiker, the director of operation and emergencies for the International Organization for Migration, said in a statementafter returning from Tripoli in April. “Some reports are truly horrifying and the latest reports of ‘slave markets’ for migrants can be added to a long list of outrages.“The auctions take place in a seemingly normal town in Libya filled with people leading regular lives. Children play in the street; people go to work, talk to friends and cook dinners for their families.But inside the slave auctions it’s like we’ve stepped back in time. The only thing missing is the shackles around the migrants’ wrists and ankles.

Deportation ‘back to square one’

One of the detained migrants, a young man named Victory, says he was sold at a slave auction. Tired of the rampant corruption in Nigeria’s Edo state, the 21-year-old fled home and spent a year and four months — and his life savings — trying to reach Europe.

He made it as far as Libya, where he says he and other would-be migrants were held in grim living conditions, deprived of food, abused and mistreated by their captors.” If you look at most of the people here, if you check your bodies, you see the marks. They are beaten, mutilated.“ When his funds ran out, Victory was sold as a day laborer by his smugglers, who told him that the profit made from the transactions would serve to reduce his debt. But after weeks of being forced to work, Victory was told the money he’d been bought for wasn’t enough. He was returned to his smugglers, only to be re-sold several more times.

The smugglers also demanded ransom payments from Victory’s family before eventually releasing him.

“I spent a million-plus [Nigerian naira, or $2,780],” he tells CNN from the detention center, where he is waiting to be sent back to Nigeria. “My mother even went to a couple villages, borrowing money from different couriers to save my life.”

Read more

[thechanelmuse]

An article from The Telegraph posted months ago (May 9, 2017):

Migrants in Libya forced by smugglers to kill sick or injured friends - by burying them alive

Migrants in Libya have been forced by smugglers to bury alive fellow migrants who are too sick or injured to board boats setting off across the Mediterranean towards Italy, it was revealed on Tuesday.

Migrants often spend months in Libya, held captive in squalid compounds or trying to earn enough money for their passage, and suffer knife and gunshot wounds at the hands of Libyan militia or ruthless gangs of traffickers.

They are even sold as cheap labour in modern-day slave markets, humanitarian organisations say. If they are too badly injured to walk to the beaches from where the rubber dinghies set out or if they are perceived as being too much trouble because of illness, then they are killed, said Flavio Di Giacomo, spokesman for the International Organisation for Migration.

“We have recently heard of cases where migrants who are wounded or sick have been buried alive by other migrants, on the orders of the traffickers,” Mr Di Giacomo told The Telegraph. 

“It’s horrific to think that traffickers can be so cruel. But they don’t care about the lives of migrants. If a migrant is a problem, they will kill them. A lot of migrants are shot dead on the beaches if they refuse to board the boats. It might be that they see the boats are overcrowded or the weather conditions are very bad.  They are scared of the sea. A lot of these people come from small African villages and it’s the first time they have seen the sea.”

A young Gambian migrant named Ousmane told IoM: “My friend got very sick in Libya. He was sick, but not dead. They buried him alive. They said he couldn’t have survived anyway. I heard him shout my name from the ground. I ran to him and saw them throwing dirt on top of him. I tried to save him, but they cut me with a knife.”

Before they even reach the coast, some migrants are sold in slave markets held in town squares or car parks for the equivalent of £170 each, after which an even worse fate awaits them.

Their new “owners” torture them in a bid to extract money out of their traumatized families back home, the IOM says. “Sometimes they are tortured while they are on the phone to their families, so that their relatives know they are suffering,” said Mr Di Giacomo.

[…]

So far this year more than 43,000 migrants have been rescued at sea and brought to Italy, an increase of 38 per cent compared with the same period last year.

The dramatic increase could be a result of smugglers’ fears that the Libyan Coast Guard is about to become more effective, having undergone months of intensive training by the EU. Traffickers are trying to put to sea as many migrants as they can because they fear a looming crackdown on their business, humanitarian groups say.

The photo above is of migrants on a rubber dinghy awaiting to be rescued in the Mediterranean off the coast of Zawiya in Libya, in April 2017.

Read more

[goawfma]

no lie detected

[bob-belcher]

[mancandykings]

The question people ask me all the time is, “How was it playing a gay character? How was it pretending to love a man?” And I don’t mean to be abrasive, but that’s just the stupidest question in the world to me. To assume there is a difference is ignorance. You’re born a certain way. I was born loving women. I could have been born loving men. It’s the same fucking thing, man. Strip away race, strip away gender, strip away sexual orientation, we’re all these little blobs seeking out love. We’re all connected; we’re all the fucking same. I get heated when people ask that.

[valkoyes-deactivated20190101]

Meghan Markle speaking to Nick News in 1993 after writing a letter to civil rights lawyer Gloria Allred, then-first lady Hillary Clinton, and Nick News anchor Linda Ellerbee in response to a sexist commercial she had seen on television. Meghan’s commitment to speaking out had a lasting impact and the commercial was changed in response to her letter.

[officialromaniantranslatiuni]

Is this what real beauty looks like?

By Steven McIntosh (Entertainment reporter)

“Go to Google Images right now,” says photographer Mihaela Noroc, “and search ‘beautiful women’.”

I do as she tells me. Millions of results come back.

“What do you see?” she asks. “Very sexualised images, right?”

Yes. Many of the women in the top pictures are wearing high heels and revealing clothes, and most fit into the same physical mould - young, slim, blonde, perfect skin.

“So beauty all the time is like that,” Mihaela says. “Objectifying women, treating them in a very sexualised way, which is unfortunate.

"Women are not like that. We have our stories, our struggles, our power, but we just need to be represented, because young women, they see only images like this every day, so they need to have more confidence that they can look the way they look and be considered beautiful.

"But,” she adds, “Google is us, because we are all influencing these images.”

Mihaela has just released her first photography book, Atlas of Beauty, which features 500 of her own portraits of women.

The Romanian photographer’s definition of beauty, however, appears to be that there is no definition. The women are a variety of ages, professions and backgrounds.

“People are interested in my pictures because they portray people around us, everyday people around the street,” Mihaela explains.

“Usually when we talk about beauty and women, we have this very high, unachievable way of portraying them.

"So my pictures are very natural and simple. And this is, weirdly, a surprise. Because usually we are not seen like that.”

Each of the book’s 500 portraits has a caption with information about where it was taken, and, in many cases, the subject.

The locations are varied, to put it mildly. They include Nepal, Tibet, Ethiopia, Italy, North Korea, Germany, Mexico, India, Afghanistan, the UK, the US, and the Amazon rainforest.

Some locations, however, proved more problematic than others.

“I approach women I want to photograph on the street. I explain what my project is about. Sometimes I get yes as an answer, sometimes I get no, that really depends on the country I’m in,” she explains.

“When you go to a more conservative society, a woman is going to have a lot of pressure from society to be a certain way, and her day-to-day life is carefully watched by somebody else.

"So she’s not going to accept being photographed very easily, maybe she’s going to need permission from the male part of her family.

"In other parts of the world they are extremely careful because there might be issues concerning their safety, like in Colombia. Because they had Pablo Escobar and the mafia for so many years.

"So they say 'OK, so you’re going to take my picture but I’m probably going to be kidnapped after that because you’re part of the mafia and you’re not who you’re saying you are’.”

She adds: “If somebody were to start this project just with men, it would be much easier, because they don’t have to ask permission from their wives, sisters or mothers.”

Mihaela says she occasionally puts pictures through Photoshop, but not for the reasons you might think.

“When you take a picture, it’s usually raw, and that means it’s very blank, like a painting, you don’t have the colours you had in the reality.

"So I try to make it as vibrant and colourful as it was in the original place. But I’m not making anyone skinnier or anything like that, never, because that’s very painful.

"Because I also suffered as a woman growing up from all kinds of difficulties, I wanted to be skinnier, look a certain way, and that was also related to the fake images I saw in day-to-day life.”

It’s safe to say Mihaela’s photography book is quite different tonally to, say, Kim Kardashian’s 2015 book of selfies.

“These days, the bloggers, the famous people of our planet have set this unachievable and fake beauty standard, and it’s very difficult for us as women to relate to that,” she says.

“Kim Kardashian has 100 million followers on her Instagram page and I have 200,000, so imagine the difference - it’s astonishing. But slowly, slowly, I think the message of natural and simple beauty will be spread around the world.”

So what’s the best piece of advice Mihaela could give to anyone keen to get into photography? Buy a good quality camera? Learn about lenses and angles?

Not exactly.

“Buy good shoes,” she laughs, “because you’re going to walk and explore a lot.”

Link here for the original article

[jessehimself]

[amelsewhere]

Richard Spencer: The United States is not your real home, your ancestors didn’t build it. 

Gary Younge: My ancestors built it tenfold and weren’t payed for it. 

Richard Spencer: Its like saying African Americans built the United States- 

Gary Younge: They did! They literally built the white house 

Richard Spencer: Because we made them do it! 

(source)

[amelsewhere]

In case anyone thinks I’m taking this out of context, this comes from an interview in which Richard Spencer tries to explain he thinks African people benefited from slavery. And also concludes saying he is proud of his ancestors who he openly acknowledges enslaved people. The context is Richard Spencer literally sees slavery as a positive part of human history. 

[sauvamente]

This is why you gotta eradicate Nazis and white supremacists.

[ruinedchildhood]

#same

[brownnesscrew]

I’m obsessed. Play it here: http://hairnah.com/