Thursday, August 31, 2017

TALES OF THE GRIM SLEEPER PART 2: ACCESSORIES BEFORE THE FACT

A repost

Many different things contributed to Lonnie Franklin’s ability to get away with murdering dozens or hundreds of women over 25 years.  Even the fact that he appears to have begun killing in the 1980s explains his ability to avoid detection.

He started killing during the crack epidemic. Plenty of dead bodies among which to hide his dead bodies His being a loader at the dump, working for with the sanitation department, was also a contributing factor. Being a significant player in the underground economy of the hood, he had help --that supposedly didn’t know they were helping-- getting rid of evidence.  And because he was “the rich one” in the neighborhood, the one handing out little jobs here and there, it’s likely nobody wanted Lonnie Franklin to be “The Grim Sleeper” even though so many signs were there. 


REVIEW OF THE GRIM SLEEPER Part 1 http://blackchickrocked.blogspot.com/2017/08/review-tales-of-grim-sleeper.html






In addition to his legit jobs, Franklin fenced stolen goods, his specialty being cars and car parts. This made him the go-to-guy for whatever you might need -- so long as you asked no questions. Again, Franklin’s "business connections" made him the go-to-guy for a job. 

One man admitted that he was hired to burn a blood soaked car for Franklin, thinking that he was being paid to burn the car as a part of Lonnie’s insurance scam business. Franklin paid a friend that had a (likely off the books) carpet cleaning business who clean the murder sites (van and mobile home) getting rid of one stain that was an oil like substance. But the friend knew it wasn’t oil. 


The alternate economy of the inner city, mostly involving not so serious crime, enabled Franklin to get rid of bodies and blood. But it was the sexism and misogyny that enabled Franklin to lure his victims and kill them without anybody bothering to notice.




Lonnie Franklin was just one of a group of men that went out weekly (at least) to pick up hookers, and/or drug addicts to pose for pornographic pictures. The filmmaker that produced this documentary covered for these “men,” calling them a sort of amateur photography club.

To many people’s ears this photographing of naked women “just” sounds harmless “boys will be boys” stuff.  But these men weren’t perusing nude women paid to pose in magazines. These men were going out with Franklin to find desperate, drug addicted women to have sex with and take pictures of. Franklin was sticking thing in these women and actually torturing them. The pictures were a way of reliving the debasement of these women.

One of Lonnie’s “friends” said that they paid as little as $2 to get these desperate, drug addicted women to go with them. A “friend” said he routinely witnessed Franklin torturing these women—and talks about the women screaming as X, Y and Z was done to

them.


Remember Delashaun,  the son’s girlfriend?
She said that Franklin’s third phone was "for his hoes, his crackheads."  This indicates that Lonnie Franklin and his pornography “friends” were hunting women barely able to give consent to "sex " and pose for sexual photos - weekly or daily.

Round mounds of flesh at chest level with a nipple, round mounds of flesh above each thigh, and a wet hole. That's all these women were to these men. Franklin was just the one with that certain something where obsessive objectification leads to murder.


There’s a lot of video of these “men” saying Lonnie couldn’t have been involved because they don’t want to believe that one of their pack was capable of this.

One of these friends/photographers talk about how Franklin showed one of them the gun, the .25 used to kill some of the women. The same “friend” tells of how handcuffs fell out of Franklin’s car one day.  Another of Franklin’s friends was actually in the car when Franklin stopped, cut a woman off who was walking, got out of the car, grabbed her by the hair and started dragging her to the car with a glazed look in his eyes, before he sort of woke up and let her go. This "friend" only thought this was “weird.”

As the documentary goes on, it becomes clear that these same friends knew that Franklin hated the women he was picking up. They said Franklin learned to hate black, female drug abusers after his wife became hooked on crack. He really loved her until he hated her, they said. There’s actually video of two men giggling, one of them laughing about female drug users, ‘You get in his car you won’t get out.’


There were so many signs that this man was a deviant and a predator. But how do you recognize this if:


Wednesday, August 30, 2017

REVIEW: TALES OF THE GRIM SLEEPER

A REPOST


Do you remember “The Grim Sleeper.”

Have you even heard of the “The Grim Sleeper” before?


Do you instantly recognize the name “Lonnie Franklin?"

I whizzed past “Tales Of The Grim Sleeper” in the TV schedule then came back to it because I'd seen a black woman’s face near the title.


When I saw the name of the documentary and the black woman's face together, it came back to me. “The Grim Sleeper” was the name given to a serial killer that murdered dozens if not 100s of black women over 25 years beginning in the 1980s. 

Watching “The Grim Sleeper” documentary on HBO made me a little sick. I didn't want to watch it in the first place. I thought it would make my ears bleed to hear even one excuse for dozens of black women being murdered by a serial killer for 25 years without too many people noticing.

This is especially galling to me since the police knew a serial killer was hunting black women in South Los Angeles by 1987 but didn't let the public know, didn't let black women in the South Los Angeles area know they were prey until 2008. 




In 1985, Margaret Prescod started a black women’s group called “Black Coalition Fighting Back Serial Murders.” She was handing out leaflets on the victims of an unknown serial killer in 1985. But leaflets were not enough. People virtually around the corner from where a body was found didn't know there was a serial killer in their midst. The police needed to make an announcement to the news outlets and they didn't let black women know they were being stalked for 22 years

It's possible that Lonnie Franklin killed hundreds of black women. The number being thrown around as the possible number of victims stands at 180.


Cops not moving due to racism is old news. Cops not moving due to the sexism and misogyny involved in not caring about sex workers, prostitutes, or “ho-s” is not new either. Yet I have to admit I was shocked when I found out that The Grim Sleeper’s sole survivor, “Anitra” Wilson, went to the police in 1988 and not 2010 when Lonnie Franklin was finally arrested like I'd assumed.

Police ignored Wilson as "unreliable" for years because they assumed that she was a hooker. And they assumed she was a hooker because she's black. (I've experienced this personally from white men at malls and art galleries) And hookers are some of those whom police "used to" mark as NHI (No Humans Involved) on police reports, when they are hurt or murdered as a way of prioritizing their caseload, obviously.

My mouth fell open again when I found out that that Wilson also had a police sketch done of the killer and took police directly to Lonnie Franklin’s street, only to misidentify a house only two doors down from Franklin’s as the one belonging to the man that offered her a ride, shot, and raped her. Again, all of this happened in 1988 not 2010 when this killer was caught.


Prescod and her Black Coalition Fighting Back Serial Murders and victim's parents had been pressing police to catch this serial killer for years. Yet they didn’t get to see the Wilson sketch of the killer for a decade.


How many dozens of black women died between 1988 when Wilson took police to Franklin's street and 2010? We'll probably never know. For a while police thought this serial killer had stopped killing for 14 years then resumed, hence the nickname "The Grim Sleeper." But now it looks like he just got better at disposing of the bodies. (Franklin worked as a sanitation worker, a loader at the dump for a while.) 

Still, there was so much more than racism and the usual lack of white police interest behind the Grim Sleeper’s ability to kill so many black women.

Lonnie Franklin was able use South Los Angeles like his own personal game reserve because the murderers of sex-workers, prostitutes, hookers, or hoes, whatever they’re being called at the moment, are rarely hunted down with any vigor, regardless of color.  Women that fall off the virtuous woman pedestal into the pit of "hoes" are treated like so much garbage by police, rappers, and communities, including black communities. 

Somebody other than Prescod and her group should have noticed so many black women were showing up dead, shot by the same caliber weapon or strangled - in a "tight knit community" where people have lived for multiple generations according friends of Franklin's.

Arthur Shawcross, for example, killed 12 white women, mostly prostitutes, in upstate New York and was hunted down within 3 years. The Grim Sleeper, by comparison, killed dozens if not hundreds of black women over 25 years and was never actually hunted down so much as stumbled upon.


Franklin’s son was arrested. The son’s DNA led to the father, whose DNA was on the breast of at least one murder victim. At Lonnie Franklin’s home, police found 180 photos of black women, many of them missing, some of them the faces of murder victims whose bodies have been found over the years. At Franklin’s home, police also found the gun that was used to kill a number of women 


In addition to Franklin’s sanitation job, the crack epidemic in South L.A. appears to have made it easy to hide a few bodies among so many bodies dropping dead anyway in the 80s and 90s

The underground economy in the hood (due to legitimate industry and jobs having moved to the suburbs) also enabled him to dispose of bodies with relative ease. Franklin himself fenced stolen goods, mostly stolen cars and stolen car parts in addition to his straight, legit jobs. This made him the “rich one” in the neighborhood, the go-to guy for whatever you need, and more importantly the go-to guy to get a job. 

One man admitted that he was paid to burn a blood soaked car for Franklin, thinking that he burning another car as part of Lonnie’s insurance scam business. Franklin also paid a friend that had a (likely off the books) carpet cleaning business. This man likely cleaned the murder sites (van and mobile home) He said he got rid of a hard to get rid stain, like oil but he knew wasn’t oil. 

Crime, some serious and some not so serious -all the usual parts of the alternate economy that comes to exist in destitute neighborhoods, enabled Franklin to get rid of bodies and blood. But it was the sexism and misogynoir in this same neighborhood that enabled Franklin to lure his victims and kill them without anybody noticing.




Photo #147 “Delashaun” (not shown) of Lonnie Franklin's photo collection is one of those women that is still alive. She turned out to be Christopher Franklin's, his son's, high school girlfriend. Her photo was mixed in with what appears to be his father's “sexual conquests,” and murder victims 


“Delashaun” said she spent a lot of time at the Franklin house when she was in 11th grade. A decade or so later(?), she described the Franklin's at home:

“They seemed normal typical family. If you ever needed anything, he’d get for you. Don’t ask questions. He would go and beyond to help you…

He would have a conversation with you. During that conversation, something perverted would come out. That’s just who he was. He was just a horny old man. That’s exactly how everybody would look at him. A horny old man. 


When she was alone with the son, Chris Franklin, in his bedroom. She said, "You could tell he was listening at the door. Sometimes it seemed like he was a pervert."


When she asked Lonnie Franklin why he had three cell phone, she he told her that his third phone was for his hoes, his crackheads.


TALES OF THE GRIM SLEEPER, PART 2
http://blackchickrocked.blogspot.com/2017/08/tales-of-grim-sleeper-part-2.html

"Amateur Photography Club" 
Franklin's First Wife
Franklin's Current Wife (at time of the arrest)
 Witnesses to torture who reported nothing
 Other survivors


THE 1999 PHONY ASSASSINATION ATTEMPT ON SHERIFF JOE ARPAIO

In case you've been living under a rock or just can't stand to see Trump or hear his voice. Trump pardon famous racial profiling white racist Joe Arpaio on Friday as Hurricane Harvey was approaching Texas. And TrumpleRacistSkin said he did it at that time because he knew television ratings would be high then....because of the storm.

Yes, he's that much of a lowlife.  And lowlife's love company. As bad as I thought "Sheriff Joe" was before, I had no idea just how disgusting an individual Joe Arpaio was until yesterday. 

* * * * * 
feeling rebloggy
* * * * *

"In one infamous case, people working under Arpaio
staged an assassination attempt against him in order to boost his popularity — framing an innocent man in the process.


[James Saville] spent four years in jail waiting to clear his name and eventually received a $1.1 million settlement."

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2017/08/28/trump-defends-pardon-of-former-arizona-sheriff-joe-arpaio/

In 2004, victim James Saville’s family sued Arpaio for $10 million, after Saville was found not guilty of attempting to kill the sheriff. The county recently settled with Saville for an undisclosed amount. It only had to pay the above amount out of public coffers; its insurance policy covered the rest.
Before you wish that you could collect $1 million by getting framed for Arpaio's murder, consider that Saville spent four years in county jail, awaiting trial as a result of the made-up crime.
In 1999, Arpaio's staff rigged the entire fake assassination plot – just so he could get his mug on TV.

http://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/news/a-phony-murder-plot-against-joe-arpaio-winds-up-costing-taxpayers-11-million-6629798




Tuesday, August 29, 2017

SEXISM IN THE CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT

feeling rebloggy

Point #1: Sexism in the Civil Rights Movement did not exist in a vacuum.
"The sexism that was present in the Civil Rights Movement was a continuation of oppressive mentality that existed in the larger U.S. culture, which was and is a white, male-dominated culture." --> Correction: While the preceding statement is true enough, it is also true that sexism in Africa predates white people. And sexism survives, to this day, in African cultures that barely experienced any white colonialism. 

Black women do travel here from Africa. And they have mouths to tell the real story. Let's keep it real folks. 

Point #2: The leaders of the Civil Rights Movement never intended to end all forms of oppression in the U.S

Point #3: The Civil Rights Movement has served as a model for other social justice movements.

Point #4: Women contributed significantly to the Civil Rights Movement. 

If the Montgomery Bus Boycott began what's known as "The Civil Rights Movement" and Martin Luther King became famous as a result of that boycott, then you should know that Black Women of the Women's Political Council of Montgomery, led by Jo Ann Gibson Robinson, conceived of, planned and executed that boycott.  Black men came along later and extended it after it was successful the first day.
Black women didn't just "help" They led

Point #5: Martin Luther King Jr. and other male Movement leaders remain heroes.


Point #6: By acknowledging the imperfections of the Civil Rights Movement's male leaders, we recognize not just their humanity, but [our own] as well.
"In his impressive volume, Soul of a Citizen, Living with Conviction in a Cynical Time, author and scholar Paul Loeb explores the ways in which everyday citizens excuse themselves from activist efforts.
He writes:  Chief among the obstacles … is a mistaken belief that anyone who takes a committed public stand, or at least an effective one, has to be a larger-than-life figure, someone with more time, energy, courage, vision or knowledge than a normal person could ever possess. This belief pervades our society, in part because the media tends not to represent heroism as the work of ordinary human beings, which it almost always ..."
NOT TRUE. 

SEXISM IN THE CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT: A TEACHING GUIDE FROM TOLERANCE.ORG

read more:
http://www.tolerance.org/article/sexism-civil-rights-movement-discussion-guide 


* * * * *

Everybody, but especially black women need to read black history written by black women.
SUGGESTION 1 When and Where I Enter: The Impact of Black Women on Race and Sex in America
SUGGESTION  2 Montgomery Bus Boycott and the Women Who Started It: The Memoir of Jo Ann Gibson Robinson


FROM CHARLOTTESVILLE TO WASHINGTON TO DEMAND THE WHITE SUPREMACIST PRESIDENT RESIGN

Feeling Rebloggy
* * * * *

"Singing spirituals and protest songs from the civil rights era, a group of clergy and activists from across the country began a 118-mile march to Washington on Monday to protest white supremacy and demand that President Trump be removed from office..."
Headline


Read More:http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-charlottesville-march-20170828-story.html





Monday, August 28, 2017

ERASING MARIA W STEWART

Maria Stewart is forgotten as a part of black history more often than not. 

And when black historians do remember her, most leave out her feminism because they are likely just as unaware of how affected they are by male supremacy as white people are unaware of how affected they are by white supremacy.

But male supremacy (patriarchy) is as important a limitation to achieving equality for black people as white supremacy is.

As Stewart suggested nearly 200 years ago, black women's contributions were being held back. Holding back half the race's contributions means progress toward freeing ourselves from slavery was held back.
The sad thing is that Maria Stewart receded back into the background of battling for equality when she was hammered again and again for...

not knowing her place as a woman.




That's kinda funny if you think about it.  Women were held back for not acting like traditional women but only Sojourner Truth, Harriet Tubman and other black women like Stewart who ignored the limitations of traditional womanhood (such as wringing hands, weeping, and praying that the men do something...as they did in Nate Parker's BIRTH OF A NATION) are women who are remembered now.


More than fifty years later, not so long after slavery, during her anti-lynching campaign Ida B Wells would face fierce opposition from white men and black men for not knowing her place too. When she was supported by black men that support was often lackluster. Frederick Douglass failed to completely have her back more than once if you read between the lines of history books that give black women's contributions equal time. Yet she pushed men and white women out of her way and continued the her fight against lynching 

...a campaign that focused on that which mostly affected black men.

And lynching mostly affected black men the way police shootings mostly affect men because part of white supremacy is a toxic masculinity contest.

The outer symbols of being a successful male in America involve competition. And it starts in childhood with sports. In other to be a successful boy or man, a man has to do the following:

1) Win at sports, beat other boys 
2) Win at fights, beat other boys 
3) Win at holding out against emotional pain, cry last or cry never. 
( The movie MANCHESTER BY THE SEA can be viewed as being entirely about a man unable to cry and therefore recover his life after an accident.)
4) Win at any competition having to do with beating girls 
5) Win at getting more girls and sex than other men 
6) Win at getting more money than other men 
7) Win at getting more power than other men 
8) Win at getting more income than your wife (a.k.a Be the provider)
And in this world making the most money in the house mean you are the boss in the house even if you're not necessarily the brains of the house.
I just saw a depressed looking Mexican woman on the television news, sitting silently in a house in the path of Hurricane Harvey. Her husband, his son moving to board up windows in the background, is telling the interviewer how everybody else in the neighborhood evacuated when told. But he decided his family would stay, despite his wife's objections. 
The entire time I was watching his interview, I was wondering if she would blame her husband if she wound up watching her son die in the flood waters.    
* * * * * 
And that story made me remember that Syrian man who took off from Turkey in a tiny boat and headed out to sea with a wife and child, both of which wound up drowning. He was the only one to survive. 
It's possible his wife had 50% buy-in as far as the idea of going to sea in a tiny, barely lake-worthy boat when they had food and shelter enough to survive in a refugee camp. It's possible she'd have done the same thing without a husband at all. But it seems much more likely in my mind that she was just like the Mexican woman, being obedient* and hoping for the best 
....when her husband's main motivation was "a better life" and getting that better life right now as "the provider".  
Men are too emotional and more than a little too short-sited when they feel like they are failing at being "a real man."  


*= if you aren't earning any wages in a non-equal relationship/partnership then "obedience" is the only choice. In an equal relationship everybody's contribution to the household counts, wage-earning or not. 

That society-planted provider "instinct" in men can be deadly all by itself, much less when its combined with "I'm the boss because I'm the man."    
A woman who cannot stand up for herself and be counted as an adult can wind up dead more easily than one who can decide, with or without  a partner, where she will plant her flag and stand her ground. In my opinion a girls should be taught that when they are in a relationship with a man, she should always seek the checks and balances required between adult members of a household. Checks and balances are not just needed between Congress, the Supreme Court, and the White House or any corporation that plans on being successful long term. It's needed in the home too.
* * * * * 
Since men have 80% of the power in society (measures used being: who's in control of government, businesses, churches, military, healthcare, and even provider status in the home) they are the ones able to dominate the conversation. And men have used domination of the conversation to say items 1 - 8 are logic based instead of emotion based. 

And supremacy is always emotion-based, white supremacy, male supremacy, class supremacy, all or them. People love to feel superior and they feel hate when that supremacy is challenged.  One way men have try to prevent challenge is by deeming themselves more logical.  Assuming that they are less emotional because it is not socially acceptable for them to express emotions outwardly (or even admit they have them inwardly) they claim to have "good reason" for keeping themselves in charge most of the time.

These attitudes aren't good for anybody, least of all men. But that's not the focus here. 

The point here is that all men, including black men, expend a lot of their energy trying to compete their way into feeling masculine, feeling like men. And when they are "successful" they hold women back.

And I'm certain that black men cannot afford this kind of success. Black people need everybody, not half of everybody, performing at their very best, bringing all they have to the table.

So my questions are these: 
A) How many black women, unlike Maria Stewart (temporarily), Sojourner Truth, Ida Wells, Diane Nash, Daisy Bates, did obey the hard gender role rules as set out by male supremacy (patriarchy) and did not give their intellectual and emotional best to  

-- Abolition (Anti-Slavery)?  
--The Civil Rights Movement? 
-- Black Lives Matter?
B) How much further along would the leading edge (black people) of our anti-ethnoracist movement be if we'd dropped the dead weight of toxic masculinity like Barack and Michelle Obama did in their household?  

To be continued














Sunday, August 27, 2017

THE ARPAIO MESSAGE TO WHITE RACISTS

feeling rebloggy

...Although the final choice is of course the president’s, usually the Justice Department’s special pardons division prepares an advisory review of the merits of each case. This time Trump apparently just blasted ahead. Usually the recipient of a pardon has either begun serving time or has exhausted his or her appeals. (Not always—.....) In this case, Joe Arpaio had been convicted, but appeals had not even begun.

But the main difference was the nature of Arpaio’s crime. While he is not the first official whose offense involved abuse of public powers—from Nixon on down, others fit that category—his is the first case I’m aware of where someone is pardoned for using state power toward racist ends.

That description of Arpaio’s crime may sound tendentious, but it’s what his conviction amounts to.
For details, I very highly recommend a Twitter chronicle put out last night by Phoenix New Times, which has been covering Arpaio for two decades.
Over at least the past decade, state and federal judges—most of the latter appointed by George W. Bush—have been criticizing Arpaio and his practices, and warning that they violate a range of anti-discrimination laws.
In 2008, one Bush-appointed federal judge, Neil Wake, ruled in favor of the ACLU, which had claimed that Arpaio’s jailing practices were unconstitutional and abusive.
Another Bush appointee, federal judge G. Murray Snow, ordered Arpaio to cease-and-desist racial profiling practices, and referred him for criminal prosecution when he refused to obey. In the Phoenix New Times account you’ll see links to a lot more....
~THE ATLANTIC 


Read More: 
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/08/why-the-arpaio-pardon-matters/538131/



Why hearing "the alt-Right-ers are coming to town" should make you react just like " the KKK is coming to town" ...or the neo-Nazi's, or the the Aryan Brotherhood, or...or....or...



Read More:
https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2017/8/15/16144070/psychology-alt-right

MARIA STEWART IS AMERICA'S FIRST FEMINIST

"O ye daughters of Africa, awake! awake! arise! no longer sleep nor slumber but distinguish yourselves. Show forth to the world that ye are endowed with noble and exalted faculties...How long shall the fair daughters of Africa be compelled to bury their minds and talents beneath a load of iron pots and kettles?...How long shall a mean set of men flatter us with their smiles, and enrich themselves with our hard earnings: their wives' fingers sparkling with rings and they themselves laughing at our folly?"
Source: https://www.marxists.org/archive/dunayevskaya/works/1971/womens-liberation.htm

Maria Stewart became part of Boston's small free black middle class upon marrying James W Stewart in 1826, a shipping agent " [She] became involved in some of the institutions founded by that black community, including the Massachusetts General Colored Association, which worked for immediate abolition of slavery."


Her husband died some 3 years after they married. As she was both female and black, white executors were able to take the property her husband left her. 

A famous abolitionist she admired, David Walker, died six months later, and Stewart had a religious conversion. She felt that she was called by God to be a warrior for freedom. Shortly after that Stewart responded to a white abolitionist's advertisement for black women writers. 

Stewart wrote articles for William Lloyd Garrison's abolitionist newspaper, the Liberator. By 1831, Garrison published Stewart's first essay, "Religion and the Pure Principles of Morality" as a pamphlet --though he misspelled her last name as "Steward."

Feeling called by God, Maria Stewart spoke first to an audience black women then an audience of men and women together. And she did so even t
hough it was still scandalous for women to speak in public at the time, 

Her speeches and writings came to be about the intersectional forces of racism, classism, and sexism as they bore down on women. In the early 1830s, this makes Maria W Stewart the first woman, of any color, to speak publicly on women's rights

The white feminist movement would not begin until 1848 in Seneca Falls but Stewart was already advocating that women get an education and be able to provide for themselves more than a decade earlier. She thought it was critical that black women bring their share of brains and ingenuity to the movement to end slavery.

In 1833, Stewart was bowed by the pressure to stop speaking publicly.  But Sojourner Truth, Harriet Tubman, and Ida B Wells would come after her and carry on the tradition of speaking truth to power  - be they white male, white woman, or black male.





next: the erasure of Stewart's feminism




Saturday, August 26, 2017

CHANGING HOLLYWOOD ONE BLACK IMAGE AT A TIME


Caring about what is on our American Television, our American Movies, and our American Books matter because America is ours too.



HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO AVA DuVERNAY
CHANGING BLACK IMAGES IN HOLLYWOOD
ONE MOVIE, ONE TELEVISION SHOW AT A TIME


These media forms are teaching, reteaching, and regurgitating anti-black stereotypes for white people and black people alike. And when the movies, television, and books erase us all together (Oscars So White) it tells white people that they are in the world by themselves and better off that way. And some white people react badly and violently when a brown handed reality slaps them in the face,

http://newsone.com/1058015/anthony-mackie-blacks-hollywood-lazy/

Black people are being influenced by all white dominated movies, television and books too. Where do you think respectability politicians are getting their information on how 'white people would like us and stop killing us if we would only stop doing X and start doing Y if not from what they soak up from mass media (at least partially.  Black children were given the doll test, hating themselves, and failing it long before mass media was very massive.)

At the end of June 2016, Hollywood started taking steps in order to prevent Oscars So White III from occurring.

[Last year] the Board Of Governors of the Academy Of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences approved a record-shattering 683 new members, more that double last year’s 322, which had been the most given keys to Oscar’s kingdom previously. Beyond that though there was tremendous pressure to come up with a list that goes a long way in diversifying the membership, especially to meet the Academy’s goal stated on January 22 to “double the number of diverse members” in the organization by 2020 — meaning women and people of color.

http://deadline.com/2016/06/academy-president-diversity-oscar-voters-change-industry-wants-1201781460/
That was certainly a step in the right direction. But I'm trying to figure out how the Board Of Governors really affects movies get made.

As far as I can tell, this board affects what movies get nominated for Best Picture etc. Of course, if a movie with a predominantly black and brown cast wins then the next black or brown project has better chance of getting funding if there are black and brown people on the board. However, the Sundance Film Festival seems to be one of the only places where new black directors, like Ava DuVernay was a short time ago, can get a serious toe hold in the industry.

For a lot of actors and directors, especially those not-white, getting an Oscar is nearer the middle or the end of the Hollywood career than the beginning.  This means black and brown people need more points of entry.


Already on an inside track, Ava DuVernay has created a few points of entry. She's made a television series for Oprah's OWN called "Queen Sugar" which has generated work for black actors who will later become black directors and black producers. And "Queen Sugar" has some of the most three-dimensional characters on television today


Thanks to Shonda Rhimes, Viola Davis' production company JuVee had enough visibility to get a movie like Lila and Eve on video. I was disappointed "Lila and Eve" didn't really get to theaters but it was decently reviewed. That success plus her visibility raise due to Rhimes' How To Get Away With Murder has enabled her to get a deal with ABC. 

Kerry Washington, who just recently produced the Anita Hill story,  "Confirmation," has also become a high profile figure in Hollywood thanks to Shonda Rhimes. And she too has entered a deal with ABC


The reason we know Jesse Williams  at all  --problematic as he seems right now due to messy divorce -- is because of Shonda Rhimes as well. Rhimes is the reason Williams has had the option to fire agents that were getting him roles such as gangster, janitors, and magical negros. In fact, Shonda Rhimes is one of the reasons that actors do not have to do The Hollywood Shuffle"  and take the stereotypical roles that Denzel and Queen had to take to get a foot in Hollywood's door. And she has allowed numerous black women a chance at directing on her televisions shows...and that includes Ava DuVernay.

Now DuVernay, Davis, and Washington are the reasons a bunch of future black actresses and black actors will have meaningful, race supportive, acting work.

Due to Ava DuVernway, Shonda Rhimes, Mara Brock Akil (Girlfriends, Being Mary Jane) and now Viola and Kerry that I am less and less satisfied with all white casts. I mean, I wasn't satisfied before. But over the past couple of years,  I've started counting the dark skinned folks almost the instant a television show or movie comes on.  In fact, I'm counting the dark-skinned women too. If I don't see SOMEBODY that looks like me and mine in the first fifteen to thirty minutes, my mood gets funky.

This is kind of a weird place to be in, entertainment wise, because I'd almost pay white people to never, ever create a black or brown character without a black or brown writer or producer of equal stature to avoid the creation of deadly stereotypes. 

And when I say equal stature, I do not mean you produce something like CONFEDERATE with two white men that just made GAME OF THRONES and add a couple of black writers who's last project was a video game or something.  Black folks know tokens and shield when we see them.   
White America always manages to take two steps forward, one step back on matters of race. And White Hollywood is no exception
Overall I'd say we're making progress again in Hollywood. And we need to keep up the momentum because we don't need white cops (and black and brown) growing up with white supremacy being taught in their homes and schools being further reinforced by television and movies. We don't need immigrants coming to America predisposed to be violent toward black people because of what they've seen on predominantly white generated television and movies either.

White Hollywood has influence on how much black lives matter to non-black people and it always has. And for so long as Hollywood is too white that influence will be bad. 


Friday, August 25, 2017

GORKA GONE


Is Alt-Right Leader Richard Spencer's friend / mentee Steve Miller, next?

I hope so because an isolated white supremacist is a weak white supremacist.


Read More:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/with-one-white-nationalist-gone-will-the-rest-get_us_599e08b5e4b0a62d0987aca5


THE HYPER-REALISTIC PAINTINGS OF NIGERIAN ARTIST ORESEGUN OLUMIDE




Feeling Rebloggy 
From CNN
"Water is a recurring theme in his art because according to a popular adage in his native Yoruba language, "water has no enemy," Olumide told CNN.

The use of water gives a translucent effect and, he says, is "why it's difficult for many people to do."
Olumide pushes himself to create art that his community hasn't seen before and that is challenging for him.
He became interested in art at the age of four and started professionally creating art in 2005, Olumide said.
The 35-year-old majored in Fine Art at the Yaba College of Technology , Lagos, graduating with a distinction. "

Read More:

BATTLE HYMN OF A NATURALISTA

NICOLE ALLEN'S STORY

A [white] coworker walks into my office and says "wow, your hair is getting bigger. Is there something you can put on it to make it lay down or straight; it's sticking straight up!" 



So, I take a calming breath and reply "I'm not a fan of flat lifeless hair. My hair reaches for the sun because it's just that glorious." Then I just look at her and don't say a word until she starts backing out and apologizing. 

* * * * * 
BWAAA- HA HA HA HAAA!


DEBLYNN'S PETTY SCOREBOARD: 
 NATURALISTA NICOLE: 1 
WHITE MICRO-AGGRESSOR: 0


Thursday, August 24, 2017

HOW HOLLYWOOD MATTERS INFLUENCE BLACK LIVES MATTERS

What is made in Hollywood may seem like a trivial thing. But what comes at us in the form of movies, television, and books is us-telling-us (all Americans) who we are and what we're like and how we like to see ourselves. 

When only white people are in control of making the movies, then the view of us is distorted into stereotypes

And stereotypes made more real, more lifelike by Hollywood can kill.




Rodney King was probably stomped by straight hate. But the police officers that attempted to murder him were likely set free by white people who do not consider themselves card carrying racists, but hold many anti-black stereotypes that they see as 'the truth.'

The man who killed Philando Castile was scared out of his mind. You can hear it on Castile's death video. And that officer was likely scared out of his mind by images he already had in his head. It doesn't sound like anything happened that should have scared this cop into shooting Philando.

The officer that murdered Philando, reportedly Asian, may have family that's been here since the railroad tracks were laid by the Chinese. But a few Asians, who have come to America more recently, told me that they were frightened of black people when they first arrived because they had seen on American television, while still in their home countries, that all blacks are violent and criminals. Some new immigrants are actually surprised to meet black people that have families, go to college, and have jobs.

I've also heard stories that White Americans processing immigrants into the country will make racist statements like "stay away from black people because they are..."

Therefore, it should have been expected that blacks and Asians (Koreans to be specific) would have problems getting along long before the Rodney King verdict came out. And they were having problems before the verdict and the uprising -- and that was before Asian shop owner shot Latasha Harlins  over a bottle of orange juice.

I can't remember what wars were going on, but the Asian population in the U.S. doubled between 1980 to 2000 (2% to 4%) That might mean that a lot of  poor Asians refugees with a lot of anti-black stereotypes in their pre-filled heads were still moving into the Los Angeles area during the Rodney King debacle -- all thanks to White American Television and White American Movies.

Our black and brown images being made negative matter yesterday, today, and tomorrow. The whitening of all good American Images matters yesterday, today, and tomorrow as well.


to be continued...