Black Looks

• Resident Evil 5

  Posted: July 31, 2007, 12:40 am by Kym Platt

  The new Resident Evil video game depicts a white man in what appears to be Africa killing Black people. The Black people are supposed to be zombies and the white man’s job is to destroy them and save humanity. “I have a job to do and I’m gonna see it through.” This is problematic [...]

• 15th Erase Racism Carnival

  Posted: July 30, 2007, 4:27 pm by Kameelah

  via RaceWire 15th Erase Racism Carnival! Read all about it! Welcome to the July Erase Racism Blog Carnival! Every month, a different blog gathers posts from throughout cyberspace that explore issues of racial justice. The goal is to enhance the discussion of race online and connect bloggers working hard to make that happen. We thank everyone who submitted [...]

• Freire: Necrophilia, Schooling and Resistance

  Posted: July 30, 2007, 4:18 pm by Kameelah

  After reading Freire’s “The Banking System of Education,” all I have wanted to do is further connect the issues of violence, and the ritualistic killing through pedagogical approaches that seek to own, collect and render students as embalmed fixtures on the stage of oppressive classroom monologues. Freire writes: Because banking education begins with the false understanding [...]

• Michael Vick

  Posted: July 29, 2007, 6:19 pm by Kym Platt

  There’s been much controversy surrounding the case of Atlanta Falcons football player, Michael Vick and the allegations of animal cruelty that lead to his arrest. Police found all the makings of an illegal dogfighting setup on his rural Virginia estate. –”The case began April 25 when investigators conducting a drug search at a [...]

• More Joburg Rising & Nice Music for Week Ending

  Posted: July 28, 2007, 3:13 pm by Sokari

  Maveric ——– [listen to very cool musik for slow dancin on MP3] and Aura Msimang ——-[more musik here] provided the sound track to Joburg Rising Tags: Maveric Aura Msimang Joburg Rising South Africa Share This:

• ‘I think it’s an obligation for us to reinterpret history’

  Posted: July 28, 2007, 2:32 am by Sokari

  Another film-maker, another documentary from South Africa - Thanks to Vincent Moloi and “A Pair of Boots and a Bicycle” another part of our hidden history is revealed and with it more stories of heroism and betrayal. From what I have heard this is a brilliant and absolutely riveting film that [...]

• A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini

  Posted: July 27, 2007, 6:16 am by Annie

  A lot of excellent writers lose steam after their first novel. Tsitsi Dangarembga came out with the excellent Nervous Conditions, and then very recently published The Book of Not, which in my opinion— and opinions are personal and subjective— was not so excellent. Khaled Hosseini began with The Kite Runner, an expertly woven tale about family [...]

• myspace gems

  Posted: July 26, 2007, 6:40 am by Sokari

  This is probably old hat but I am just discovering gems on MySpace after my son sent me some music - now I fear another obsession in the making. Some of the gems I found are the None on Record project - an audio documentary work in progress that collects [...]

• Joburg Rising

  Posted: July 25, 2007, 9:28 pm by Sokari

  Joburg Rising has been sitting in my head for the past two weeks since the film’s opening on 13th July. The film is special because it was made by my dear sister friend Lindiwe Nkutha (writer, poet, photograher and film maker) The film is a 48 minute documentary called Jo’burg Rising, and [...]

• via Kameelahwrites: Kliptown Folks are Asking: Where is my house?

  Posted: July 25, 2007, 4:31 pm by Kameelah

  visit me at: kameelahwrites If you had to guess the year of this South Africa photo, what would you guess? Any ideas? It is not 1980s Apartheid South Africa. It is 2007. Hat-tip to Jacque in Jozi for the recent happenings in Gauteng. Residents from several informal settlements in Kliptown took to the streets on Monday morning, barricading [...]

• Blind rage hits you in the face

  Posted: July 25, 2007, 8:57 am by Sokari

  Facebook brings out the the gremlins This damn Facebook! The reason I don’t want to know about it is so many arbs get hold of you!! I mean look at your list of disturbed people! I don’t want to hear from people from the past or I would phone them and say hoozit my braatjie! And we [...]

• Archbishop Pius Ncube: A message of solidarity

  Posted: July 24, 2007, 7:14 pm by Sokari

  Via Sokwanele - This is Zimbabwe. A message from the people of Zimbabwe, standing in solidarity with Archbishop Ncube. _________________________ We as citizens of Zimbabwe are appalled at the recent attempt of the State to undermine the standing of Archbishop Ncube. We demand answers to the following questions: * Why was the Deputy Sheriff accompanied by ten state journalists [...]

• An unbroken punishment

  Posted: July 23, 2007, 10:48 pm by Sokari

  While President Jean-Bertrand Aristide remains in forced exile in South Africa, his Lavalas supporters continue the campaign to bring him back to Haiti. Amy Goodman of Democracy Now interviews Randall Robinson (founder of Trans Africa Forum) whose book “An Unbroken Agony: Haiti, From Revolution to the Kidnapping of a President” was published [...]

• UNICEF ends campaign

  Posted: July 22, 2007, 6:21 am by Sokari

  African American Opinion Pundit decided to write to UNICEF about their “black face” campaign I am concerned about the “racial overtones” of the recent campaign of placing white children in black face. As a long time UNICEF supporter, I’m concerned that UNICEF and it’s German National Committee for UNICEF are involved in racial hatred with this [...]

• Plastic bags and other addictions

  Posted: July 22, 2007, 2:56 am by Sokari

  For Koranteng’s collection - “I AMMM A PLASTIC BAG” ADDICTIONS Someone I know (I have to say it like that so he won’t get identified even while remaining nameless) has confessed to being obsessed and addicted to Face Book. He has now taken to blaming me for introducing him to this addiction. It’s OK, [...]

• Some Things…

  Posted: July 19, 2007, 1:49 am by Annie

  I’ve just given a very successful presentation to faculty and students on Negritude, and now I must make myself look “presentable” and head off to a celebratory “banquet.” Academia can be very performative at times. But before I dash off, here is an article that caught my eye. Congolese President Joseph Kabila says he is disappointed Switzerland [...]

• Hangers and haters

  Posted: July 19, 2007, 6:27 pm by Sokari

  South Africa has just released it’s latest crime statistics. Tim Trengove Jones writes that many “anti-constitutionalists” are calling for the return of hanging as the number of violent crimes are on the increase. But for this group of people, violent crime does not include hate speech - verbal abuse [...]

• Human rights defender at risk

  Posted: July 19, 2007, 3:19 am by Sokari

  Nigerian, Human Rights Defender and founder of The International Centre for reproductive health and Sexual rights (INCRESE) in Niger State, Dorothy Aken’Ova has been ostracised and intimidated by family and community because of the work she does. Social activists and Frontline HRD like Dorothy are a special group of people who put [...]

• Reparations

  Posted: July 19, 2007, 2:52 am by Kym Platt

  An article in the Mail & Guardian has triggered some thoughts about reparations. Thousands of Jews are seeking reparations from the German government not because they are holocaust survivors, but because their parents were. –”The lawsuit was seen as the first ever filed by representatives of the so-called “second generation” or those descended from the [...]

• “muddy uneducated uncivilized people who need to be educated (probably by any random westerner)”

  Posted: July 18, 2007, 10:27 am by Sokari

  Via Women of Color and Black Women in Europe This is an actual ad-campaign by UNICEF Germany! This campaign is „blackfacing“ white children with mud to pose as “uneducated africans“. The headline translates “This Ad-campaign developped pro bono by the agency Jung von Matt/Alster shows four german kids who appeal for solidarity with their contemporaries in Afrika” The first [...]

• Happy birthday, Nelson Mandela

  Posted: July 18, 2007, 5:50 am by Rethabile

  AND I WATCH IT IN MANDELA (by John Matshikiza) It is not for the safety of silence That this man has opened his arms to lead. The strength of his words hangs in the air As the strength in his eyes remains on the sky; And the years of impatient waiting draw on While this man burns to clear the smoke [...]

• More Name-calling

  Posted: July 17, 2007, 7:03 pm by Kym Platt

  The public use of derogatory slurs is a hot topic these days, with famous utterances from Mel Gibson, Michael Richards, Paris Hilton, and Isaiah Washington. Remember “macaca”? Last week the NAACP buried the word “nigger”. Today in the news a prominent member of the board and benefactor to Roger Williams University admitted to calling [...]

• Sajida Khan: 1952-2007 - Death of an Eco-Feminist

  Posted: July 17, 2007, 6:04 pm by Sokari

  A tribute to Sajida Khan, who fought against global capitalism at the continent’s largest rubbish dump - a fight that cost her life. Sajida was a key activist against carbon trading and died as a direct result of the toxins emitted from illegal medical waste in an incinerator [...]

• Africa’s Liberation: Against the Four Headed Beast!

  Posted: July 17, 2007, 1:15 pm by Andile Mngxitama

  You cannot carry out fundamental change without a certain amount of madness. In this case, it comes from nonconformity, the courage to turn your back on the old formulas, the courage to invent the future. It took the madmen of yesterday for us to be able to act with extreme clarity today. I want to [...]

• Hot Ghetto Mess

  Posted: July 16, 2007, 11:43 pm by Kym Platt

  I’ve been mulling this one over. The new show on BET (Black Entertainment Television) called Hot Ghetto Mess has been in the news lately with its debut of July 25, 2007 quickly approaching. I’ve been sent links about the show and implored by AskThisBlackWoman readers to write something about it… but I had [...]

• Ravaging Africa

  Posted: July 16, 2007, 7:26 pm by Sokari

  “Ravaging Africa” is a truly exceptional 4 part radio documentary series on Africa. The series interviewed 26 activists from 16 countries during the WSF in Nairobi in January. The ravaging of Africa has been enriching Europe and North America for more than 500 years. First, European empires imposed slavery and colonialism on the [...]

• THE CHILDREN OF THE REAL LESOTHO (by Pavo Real)

  Posted: July 16, 2007, 2:01 pm by Rethabile

  The children far from urban Maseru, the children of the real Lesotho, (A country of mountains, anchored in the sky with the stones of Africa, a land of beauty, death and love, Of corn and useless flowers, cattle and Aloe, Of wild skies and serene earth, And women stooped to sweep the dirt and weep, Without tears or fear that will [...]

• Complications

  Posted: July 15, 2007, 7:39 pm by Sokari

  Complication City by Ibou Ndoye - Art Works Share This:

• 40 years and still

  Posted: July 15, 2007, 6:52 pm by Sokari

  40 years on from the decriminalisation of gay sex in the UK, protected against discrimination and equal under the law. Social acceptance has moved on to the point where 75% of parents wouldn’t mind if their child’s teacher was gay and 95% would be happy if a member of our football team was gay. [...]

• thoughts that stop you from sleeping

  Posted: July 15, 2007, 11:00 am by Sokari

  Tags:   
  I have been thinking about the rapes and murders. Wondering about the safety of my friends. I do want to know the why and the who of rapes of women. I am sure much has been written on why men rape and who these men are. But I [...]

• A Time of Hurt: lesbians raped, tortured and murdered

  Posted: July 12, 2007, 10:12 pm by Sokari

  Last Sunday two more South African lesbians were brutally raped and murdered in Medowlands, Soweto. Sizakele Sigasa, lesbian activist and outreach worker with the Positive Women’s Network (PWN), and her friend, Salome Masooa, were first tortured and then murdered. Sizakele was found with her hands tied together by her underpants [...]

• Landless fighting back

  Posted: July 11, 2007, 9:04 pm by Sokari

  The landless people’s movement in KwaZula Natal is gathering momentum as people from the urban shack dwellers movement fight back from the commons, to prevent the implementation of the “Elimination and Prevention of the Re-emergence of Slums Bill”. The Bill makes it mandatory for landowners and local municipalities to evict people [...]

• Sunrise

  Posted: July 11, 2007, 3:01 pm by Rethabile

  I saw in the distance a god sucking life through a straw, sucking the silence; then she darted in a blur to where, behind a bush, pygmies pumped air into a beach-ball, chuckling and slapping smeared hands on it, till it took the redness of Basotho dye used by graduates at mountain schools; they released it, watched it go up, up, giggling in fields [...]

• Pink Pistol-Packing Lesbian Gangs are Terrorizing the Nation

  Posted: July 11, 2007, 6:52 am by Kameelah

  Also, visit me at: kameelahwrites ____ I came home from class and did my usual blog checking and I came across to an interesting post entitled “Beware: Lesbian Gangs Terrorize Men with Pink Pistols” over at Grits & Eggs. Grits & Eggs is described as A forum for five exceptionally ordinary people: a Black woman who loves [...]

• Old and new states of women’s rights in Africa

  Posted: July 11, 2007, 6:38 am by Sokari

  A number of African governments have finally chosen to implement women’s rights legislation including laws against gender based violence such as domestic violence, FGM and child marriages as well as make abortions more accessible to women. Sierra Leone has outlawed domestic violence and guaranteed women the right to inheritance and customary marriage [...]

• Time Limit campaign

  Posted: July 11, 2007, 6:20 am by Sokari

  In Britain there is a law which places a time limit on disclosure by abuse survivors. The law at present is 3 years for negligence and 6 years for assault. For children time runs out at age 18 which gives them until 21 and 24 to disclose. [...]

• Serial Link Dispatch: Translating Blackness, Ventriloquizing the Dead, Blindspots, and Racism in Surround Sound

  Posted: July 11, 2007, 6:15 am by Kameelah

  Also, find me at kameelahwrites ____ via RaceWire: “Culture of Disrespect,” Ebony Magazine takes on bad words RaceWire asks: “So 32 pages on the n-word and its cousins, ho and bitch. Is it time to move on?” Maybe so…I wonder if Ebony would ever spend 32 pages on the Prison-Industrial-Complex or Hurricane Katrina. And, why is Ebony taking [...]

• Quick Links

  Posted: July 10, 2007, 12:26 am by Sokari

  It seems like weeks since I have journeyed through the blogosphere and visited old friends and spaces - here are a few posts I thought of mentioning. I read this post on No Longer At Ease which provides a reality check into what ordinary people want and what they think of democracy. But what [...]

• Meen Erhabe? Who’s the Terrorist?

  Posted: July 10, 2007, 7:15 am by Kameelah

  via malangbaba speaks for itself. Palestine Israel Violence Media Resistance Share This:

• People with darker skin

  Posted: July 10, 2007, 7:13 am by Sokari

  Just as the NAACP buries the word “Nigger”, further down south in Peru, a restaurant is fined for refusing entry to “people with darker skin” For many human rights campaigners the closure is an important step in combating Peru’s racial and economic discrimination….. Wilfredo Ardito is one of them: “This is a symbolic [...]

• R.I.P. “Nigger”

  Posted: July 10, 2007, 6:28 am by Kym Platt

  “Nigger” has reached the inevitable hour. Hundreds of people affiliated with the NAACP convened a mock funeral for the word “nigger”. “Nigger” was buried in a wooden coffin decorated with fake black roses. –The group has been campaigning against the casual use of the “N-word”, especially in rap and hip-hop music, and also comedy. What other words [...]

• Live death, hypocrisy and progressive mobiles

  Posted: July 9, 2007, 9:31 am by Sokari

  Student to professor Did you hear about the pollution caused by the recent live earth concerts? Apparently it will take something like 100,000 trees to undo the emissions produced. The irony would be hilarious if it weren’t killing us. Professor to anyone on blog ………………………….obserdrival culminating in And so, those struggling against pollution and exploitation and so on [...]

• Off the top of my head

  Posted: July 9, 2007, 6:14 am by Annie

  Where does one find the time to Blog Take pictures Write words Pick up phone calls Not lose friends Find the answers Ask the questions Love Breathe Make some money take some courses fight a war remember God Jump a fence believehopepray Cry! Where do I find the time to Find time to Find time Find Myself Don’t tell me to make the time to Keep time Allocate time Sleep in death Do life simultaneously Take a firm [...]

• Busboys, books and slavery

  Posted: July 9, 2007, 3:53 am by Sokari

  I discovered a treasure of a bookshop yesterday in NW DC called Busboys and Poets - probably the best collection of progressive books I have come across in one single place. With the added bonus of coffee, couch, apple macs, poetry nights and trendy food, Busboys looked like one of the “hottest” places [...]

• Reflections on the Nigerian strike

  Posted: July 9, 2007, 2:14 am by Sokari

  For a brief 4 days between, 20th and 23rd June, Nigerians from across the country joined in a nationwide strike which brought the country to a standstill. However, the opportunity to achieve the beginnings of fundamental change in the problems facing the country was once again abandoned by the labour unions capitulating [...]

• Beauty is Wild

  Posted: July 6, 2007, 12:00 am by Sokari

  From “Wild Things” by Femi Osofisan Oh all the beautiful things are wild The lions as well as the unending plains The water that will not be damned But must return to Mombassa The woman that will defy her womanhood To pursue her husband into the very face of war (& bring death back with her, in her vagina) who would raise coffee [...]

• Yesterday in Gaza

  Posted: July 6, 2007, 5:50 pm by Sokari

  Israeli army shooting Palestinian journalists in Gaza caught on camera. The soldiers continue shooting even though the journalists are down. One of the journalists lost both his legs and is in a critical state. Via No Longer At Ease Tags: GAZA; Palestine; Israel; Share This:

• I Have No Name

  Posted: July 6, 2007, 5:10 pm by Annie

  I have no name Because God gave me none And in the space that contained my pain, in all of that space I thought perhaps you could touch me Then I found that the hurt blocked all of that- I heard hurt does that sometimes And the space had become a wall And the wall had become my home. Just outside [...]

• Babies are people too!

  Posted: July 6, 2007, 8:55 am by Sokari

  One last comment on the USSF - Fabulosa Mujer, who I had the pleasure of meeting and spending some little time with watching musical fountains in Atlanta and just hanging out, posts her thoughts on the forum. One particular unpleasant experience she had with some “another world is possible, another America [...]

• African Writing

  Posted: July 6, 2007, 3:23 am by Sokari

  A new online quarterly journal on African Writing with interviews, news, reviews, poetry, fiction, art and culture. Just what we have been waiting for! Tags: Africa; Literature; Share This:

• Mobile activism

  Posted: July 6, 2007, 2:50 am by Sokari

  Following on from the Pan African Mobile Phone Activists workshop in Nairobi last month - Ken Banks who developed Frontline SMS - has started a SOCIAL MOBILE GROUP on Facebook Mobile phones are revolutionising communications across the globe, more so in developing countries where landline infrastructure is lacking in many rural (and some [...]

• The Fourth of July

  Posted: July 4, 2007, 7:03 pm by Kym Platt

  Happy Fourth of July! Below is the speech given by Frederick Douglass on July 5th, 1852. No truer words were ever spoken about the United States’ Independence. Even today, his words, his accusations, his veracity are just as appropriate. Fellow citizens, pardon me, allow me to ask, why am I called upon to speak here today? [...]

• I just worked out I have been ...

  Posted: July 3, 2007, 10:08 pm by Sokari

  I just worked out I have been on 9 planes since April 26th that’s almost one a week - up and down all over the place. Night flights, jet lag, a two hour flight takes 7 hours, queues for security - at DC I had to take my jeans off cause I was beeping all [...]

• Kimpa Vita - a profile of courage

  Posted: July 3, 2007, 2:50 am by Sokari

  Today is the anniversary of the death of Kimpa Vita who together with her baby (Kembo Dianzenza va Kintete) and her boyfriend, were burned to death on July 2nd 1706 by the Catholic church. I only just found out about Kimpa Vita - there is so much of our African and [...]

• We must kill the bandits

  Posted: July 1, 2007, 7:48 pm by Sokari

  We Must Kill the Bandits Watching this film I began to see some similarities between Haiti and Palestine. The fact that a democratically elected government has been subverted by the US and it’s allies because the winners were not acceptable as leaders. In Palestine it was Hamas and in Haiti it was Aristide [...]

Blah blah blah

Fish cakes

Alas a fish cake.

Yet more fish cakes

Guess what ... yeah ... fish cakes.

The end of the fish cakes