“For peoples of African descent living in majority-white nations in the West, the harmful and the healing potential of Black self-consciousness, or subjectivity, are quite clear and quite real. Seeking to determine Black subjectivity in the African diaspora means constantly negotiating between two extremes. On one end stands the “blackness that swallows” (to adapt Kincaid), the hypercollective, essentialist identity, which provides the comfort of absolutist assertions in exchange for the total annihilation of the self. On the other end stands the hyperindividual identity, most commonly found in poststructuralist critiques of racism and colonialism, which grants a wholly individualized (and somewhat fragmented) self in exchange for the annihilation of “Blackness” as a collective term. Any truly accurate definition of an African diasporic identity then, must somehow simultaneously incorporate the diversity of Black identities to show that they indeed constitute a diaspora rather than an unconnected aggregate of different peoples linked only in name.”
—Michelle M. Wright in Becoming Black: Creating Identity in the African Diaspora (via daniellemertina)
June 2013
49 posts
“Certain forms of black cultural expression have become commercially valuable, and black cultural entrepreneurs fear that these forms will be exploited by white performers who will adopt them and, tapping white-skin privilege, obtain compensation far outstripping that paid to black performers.”
—Randall Kennedy in Nigger (via quierosonreir)
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Mr. Anderson and Mr. Brady were also in stark contrast to my father and many of the working-class black men I knew in my neighborhood or saw on TV, characters like Redd Foxx’s Fred Sanford and John Amos’s James Evans Sr., who was much closer in spirit to my own dad.
That all changed in the fall of 1984, when America was introduced to Bill Cosby’s Dr. Heathcliff Huxtable, who quickly took on the unprecedented role for a black man as America’s “favorite dad.”
There was a need to celebrate a character who challenged historic stereotypes of black men as fathers — often portrayed as absent, shiftless, unemployed and overly chauvinistic. But was an upper middle-class professional not dramatically different than his white male peers really what black audiences were looking for? Where were the black male characters who represented the complexities of what it means to be a black in contemporary America? Would we even know them if we saw them?
In my recent work researching the intersection of African-American and pop cultures, I have been examining the ways that black men are legible to us in the popular imagination. In the ways that seeing a black man on television with a basketball or on a newscast about crime is terribly familiar to us, more complex images of black men as fathers seem few and far between. Indeed, the recent Samsung Galaxy II commercial — featuring basketball star LeBron James engaging with his sons over breakfast — seems almost revolutionary.
” —Mark Anthony Neal, “On Occasion, TV Captures The Complexities Of Black Men As Fathers,” The Herald-Sun 6/12/13 (via racialicious)
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We do a much greater disservice to girls, because we raise them to cater to the fragile egos of men. We teach girls to shrink themselves, to make themselves smaller. We say to girls: ‘You can have ambition, but not too much. You should aim to be successful, but not too successful, otherwise you will threaten the man. If you are the breadwinner in your relationship with a man, you have to pretend that you’re not, especially in public otherwise you will ‘emasculate’ him.’
But what if we questioned the premise itself— why should a woman’s success be a threat to a man? What if we decide to simply dispose of that word? And I don’t think there’s an English word I despise more than ‘emasculation.’
” —Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, TedxEuston (x)
“Don’t let anyone call you a minority if you’re black or Hispanic or belong to some other ethnic group. You’re not less than anybody else.”
—Gwendolyn Brooks (via unapproachableblackchicks)
