BLACKEST MOMENTS OF 2017: KANDY FREEMAN AT A BLACK LIVES MATTER PROTEST IN FRONT OF TRUMP TOWER

Breathtaking

ACTIVIST ERICA GARNER DIES OF A HEART ATTACK AT 27

Feeling Rebloggy

Erica Garner -- an activist for social justice and the eldest daughter of the man who died from a police choke hold in New York in 2014 -- died on Saturday morning days after suffering a heart attack, her mother Esaw Snipes said."She was a fighter, she was a warrior and she lost the battle," Snipes said of her daughter. "She never recovered from when her father died. She is in a better place." 

[Suffering from an enlarged heart after the birth of her son, Erica's mother warned,] "You have to slow down, you have to relax and slow down."

...Some activists suggested the NYPD and its systems of power bore some responsibility for her death. 

"The police killed her unarmed, nonviolent father with an illegal chokehold and got off with nary a word," Brittany Packnett, a leader in the Black Lives Matter movement and co-founder of Campaign Zero, said on Twitter. "Erica had to fight for justice. Then for her own life. She didn't deserve this. Her father didn't deserve this. Her family doesn't deserve this. All this for being Black in America. I can't."

Read More:http://www.cnn.com/2017/12/30/us/erica-garner-eric-death/index.html 

BLACKCHICKROCKED.BLOGSPOT.COM

Blackest Moments of 2017: BEST OMAROSA MEME & ROBIN ROBERTS SAYS "BYE FELICIA"

A repost

Tanya Fields said,
 Harriet Tubman would have put a bullet in her and [stepped] over her (Don't believe me just read up on Harriet). I suggest we do the same...figuratively. 

I don't have a thing for her. 

Not one iota. 

I understand that we have to navigate capitalism and racism best we can and that's even trickier for Black women at certain intersections but she wasn't tying to make hard decisions to survive. She took glee in being apart of the destruction that is white supremacy and she thought her participation would exempt her but she's a bed wench (I said what I said and I almost never use that term). 

She thought she had a seat at the table but failed to realize they only needed her to fetch water, wine and place settings, like a good house negress. They wanted her to keep the other negroes in check and it filled them with such excitement when she projected her self loathing and she used a little subjugation, abuse and tyranny to do it.

 And they threw her out kicking and screaming like she was trash. 

It was the literal visual of what this country thinks of Black women collectively. They let her do the dirty work and then discarded her. 

I guess she forgot that this country was built on the (stolen and exploited) labor of Black women. They reminded her pretty Black ass. 

The ancestors want us to have compassion but they also don't want us to be fools. She could go off into obscurity and I wouldn't bat an eye. She is no friend to Black people, she isn't even a friend to herself. I don't wish ill on her but if ill is all she reaps it is just because that is what she sowed. 

I am tired of Black folks especially women welcoming back those who would cut us and our families down without thought for a mere SNIFF of what greedy white folks got in their table. She BEEN left us out there so as far as I'm concerned she's on her own. In short, f*ck her.

Robin Roberts, of all people, said it all on Good Morning America

BLACKCHICKROCKED.BLOGSPOT.COM

Blackest Moments of 2017: Angela Rye's says "GIRL BYE" to Omarosa

The moment is near the 2:00 minute mark and it's hilarious

And Angela Rye posted this on her OWN youtube channel too

BWAAAAA HA HA HA

BLACKCHICKROCKED.BLOGSPOT.COM

Blackest Moments of 2017: ISSA RAE BETTING ON BLACK

RED CARPET INTERVIEW

AT THE EMMYS

"I'm rooting for everybody black. 

I'm betting on black tonight"

Not only did she come right on out with it, after saying how much black people miss seeing accurate depictions of themselves She also talked about saying "no" to what sounds like a major network to be true to her vision in creation of black female imagery.

This video is only three minutes. Don't miss it 

BLACKCHICKROCKED.BLOGSPOT.COM

Blackest Moments of 2017: JESSMYN WARD WINS NATIONAL BOOK AWARD

Feeling Rebloggy

The novel, which critics compared to works by William Faulkner and Toni Morrison, features a 13-year-old boy named Jojo, whose drug-addicted mother takes him and his toddler sister on a road trip to pick up their white father when he is released from prison. The judges called the book “a narrative so beautifully taut and heartbreakingly eloquent that it stops the breath.”

~NY TIMES 

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/15/books/review/national-book-award-jesmyn-ward.html

This is her second time winning.  She also won for

National Book Foundation: Why did you write this book? 

Jesmyn Ward: As a lifelong reader, I fell in love with classic “odyssey” novels early on—especially As I Lay Dying, The Grapes of Wrath, and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Yet I always felt somehow outside these books. This novel responds to that tradition, reflecting the realities of being black and poor in the South, the realities of my people and my community. While the novel explores darker aspects of Mississippi’s past and present, through Parchman Farm, the Mississippi State Prison, and the complicated legacy of slavery and mass incarceration, it’s also a celebration of the black family and familial love. My characters face the terrible consequences of racism and poverty wherever they go, but they also have an incredible, tender, transformative love for each other. I wanted to acknowledge all of the forces that work against us and our ability to survive despite all.

http://www.nationalbook.org/nba2017-finalist-fic-ward-sing-unburied-sing.html#.WklF0N-nFPY

ON MY LIST TO READ NEXT YEAR


BLACKCHICKROCKED.BLOGSPOT.COM

Black Moments Of 2107: GIRLS TRIP Stomps The Competition

From August 2017
ROUGH NIGHT is the white version of GIRL'S TRIP and it came out approximately one month before GIRL'S TRIP.

ROUGH NIGHT appears to have opened in 1000 more theaters, though 500 more theaters now have GIRLS TRIP than did opening weekend

At 65 million dollars GIRL'S TRIP HAS MADE 3x the money just outside a week. And I don't see that ROUGH NIGHT is still in theaters anymore --because it wasn't good enough. In fact, ROUGH NIGHT has barely made it's production budget back.

BWAAAAAAAA HA HA HA

You know what else? 

When you break down how much folks were spending per theater, GIRLS TRIP was little more than 10% behind Christopher Nolan's DUNKIRK-- who is the golden white boy of Hollywood right now.

http://norfolkdailynews.com/entertainment/box-office-top-dunkirk-girls-trip-score/article_1f7d2112-7211-11e7-b435-a737d6cefb04.html

DUNKIRK will outstrip GIRLS TRIP because foreign markets are used to loving anything white Hollywood produces about white people. But GIRL'S TRIP should have made the producers of DUNKIRK nervous because it nearly embarrassed them on opening weekend. 

* * * * *
Be scared. Be very scared of the BLACK GIRL MAGIC because sometimes it goes BOOM!

BLACKCHICKROCKED.BLOGSPOT.COM

Blackest Moments Of 2017 -Claudia Rankin's CITIZEN: AN AMERICAN LYRIC

A repost on THE PLAY 
based on the 2014 award winning book

I so seldom get to see the work of black women on stage that I rushed to buy a ticket to the play CITIZEN AN AMERICAN LYRIC based on a book by the same name by Claudia Rankine without really knowing what it was. 

Though curious, I resisted the urge to buy the book before going to see it because I didn't want to ruin it like I'd ruined movies for myself. Reading only a few of the books that GAME OF THRONES is based on (my ultra-problematic addiction) ruined an entire season of the television series for myself -- and there are only 10 episodes a year.  

I explain all this in order to say that the movie, the television series, the play is never as good as the book because a well written book allows you to feel every nuance of what the main characters feel because you get to know their thoughts. 

But if this turns out to be true for CITIZEN: AN AMERICAN LYRIC, I'm not sure if I'll be able to read it in public because the play left me feeling wounded and validated at the same time.

If I read it in public I wonder if I might not cry in public.  

And this homie don't play that. 

* * * * *

From: 

Reconsidering Claudia Rankine’s Citizen: An American Lyric. A Symposium, Part I

 "It’s not like poetry, said the students in my Black Poetry course last semester. It’s not (just) poetry, asserted the judges of the National Book Critics Circle Awards’s “Criticism” category, in which Citizen was a finalist in 2014. Reviews of Citizentend to call its components “essays,” “lyric essays,” “prose narratives,” “stories,” and “prose representations” significantly more often than “poems” — even “prose poems” — even when the volume as a whole is referred to as “poetry.” "

https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/reconsidering-claudia-rankines-citizen-an-american-lyric-a-symposium-part-i/

Instead of reading this prose-poetry book before I saw the play, I listened to a Claudia Rankine interview while I was cooking. The time stamp at the bottom of the video said it was an hour or so. Too long. But it was about the race and language and how she creates. Since I create, I needed it. 

So I let it drone on in the background. Interesting. But I didn't turn my full attention to it until she started talking about how she rushes to fill that ever-empty seat next to a black man on a bus or subway.  

This doesn't just happen to black men. It happens to me too in very nearly full movie theaters. 

White person after white person looks at the seats next to me, then looks elsewhere to sit...no matter how full the theater is. But this doesn't happen as consistently to me as it does to black men, I suppose.

In my old home of New York, there's more public transportation riding than driving of cars. In Los Angeles, I am protected mostly protected from having to ignore this behavior because we drive everywhere.  

During the play when I saw the actor slouch down and lean to one side in his make-believe bus seat, I realized that I'd seen that exact pose on many a bus --that tough, defensive I-don't-care slouch.  And I recently saw the same thing in a black man in a quasi-fast food place, a casual restaurant where the seating is cramped. I've seen this dead-pan-face-with-slouch so many times I can't even count

I recognized that I-don't-care slouch that means

-I don't care if you think I'm not quite human, so sure of my lack of humanity that you'll leave that space empty even if you have to stand.
-I don't care that you're too afraid to sit next to me
-And I'll even spread out a little, curl around the space a little so everyone will think it's me that has a choice about leaving that space empty instead of you.

During her interview, Rankine spoke about rushing to fill the space as if it feels necessary to validate or confirm humanity. At least one black woman in the audience or on the panel said she does the same thing.

I'd seen the space and knew what it meant before the play...but I didn't.

Before I went to see this mystery play based on poetry that I knew nothing about, I thought it might be extraordinary one woman show or an "ordinary poetry reading" in some way.  

I was wrong on both counts. 

And then I thought I might get lost in flowery language for long periods of time. 

I was wrong about that too. 

This was "prose poetry," you see? Story type poetry in bits and little bites.  I needn't have worried about falling asleep or  fidgeting so much I annoyed my neighbors. I didn't need that giant cup of coffee at 7:30 in the evening at a Paris imitating bistro that was virtually inches from the theater. 

This play seemed to be over almost as soon as it began. 

There were so many scenes that seemed pulled straight out of my life. Little off-hand race based comments that come at you from white people at school, in the workplace, in a suddenly-white friend's home.

During the interview I heard online I heard that she interviewed friends and neighbors endlessly about race before she wrote her poetry book.

While I was watching her work being performed on-stage, once again it occurred to me that the "micro" in term "micro-aggression" offends me. 

Seeing so many of the things I've experienced from white people without ever commenting on it -- not even to other blacks it's so common, it made me realize how mentally and emotionally under assault I am on a daily basis, how much I keep hidden inside. 

So many experiences came back to me. 

I wonder if I'd have been so sensitive if I hadn't seen this play on the very same weekend as the 25th anniversary of the Rodney King Shooting, less than 24 hours after I watched John Ridley's LET IT FALL....on the white run, white gate-kept ABC....at 9PM....on a Friday Night.   

Same as a character in the play, I'd experienced that last minute white folks seating shuffle on a plane, and sometimes buses and trains. But mostly on planes...

You know the shuffle I'm talking about right? 

You're already sitting down by the window. You smile and try to look friendly, just to be polite, not to encourage conversation. The white child or white woman starts to sit in the middle seat and white man says, "No. Come out. I'll sit there."  There's a look exchanged, very brief. Then the white man puts his body between himself and his woman or child.  

I don't think I've ever commented on this out loud though it's happened several times in my life.  Part of what this play did was reveal some of what is hiding in my body.  

Black men probably experience this more often too. 

 In a patriarchal society, men feel like men by dominating / winning-over other men. So it makes sense to me that the dominated man's resentment would automatically be feared; the dominated man may seek to win at his very next opportunity. So that white unconscious fear of resentment is relabeled "potential black violence" and that winds up layered on top of the straight racism that is made up of fear of difference and fear of stored histories inside each black body.

There was a screen with imagery behind the actors, but other than that the stage was bare except for 6 or 7 folding chairs. Four black actors and two white actors that didn't always stand in for white people in every single moment conveyed my personal racial history in a little less than an hour and a half.

CITIZEN: AN AMERICAN LYRIC wasn't about anger so much as it was about being wounded and 

• having to overcome in order to just do things like go to work; 
• having to ignore the questions that pop up in your head about white people on the street, white acquaintances, white co-workers
• having white friends that go from feeling close to feeling 1000 miles away in an alternate dimension just two or three sentences later in a conversation. 

There was an entire section of the play about Serena Williams that floored me.

I'd heard the racist and white supremacist commentary about her, especially at the beginning of her career. But I don't watch sports, so I didn't see the details of what happened to her. When she wins I jump up and down, fist in the air like I'm the one doing battle and winning on the court. Her wins feel personal to me. But I feel like a bad non-friend now.  I had no idea just how aggressively white tennis tried to eject her black body from the sport...

 


To be continued here: http://blackchickrocked.blogspot.com/2017/05/feeling-my-way-through-claudia-rankines.html

In the meantime, this video on Serena Williams is from a liberal white youtube channel

Black Community Victory: WHITE FAMOUS Flames Out

Before we talk about WHITE FAMOUS, a definition.

Self-hating Black Person

Any black person who supports, endorses, or cosigns the destruction or denigration or erasure of all black people --or even just half of black people at a time, be that half female or male.

FIRST EPISODE:

Seconds in and there's a black woman that's undeniably black who is depicted as nothing but an exposed ass that his friend walks in and drools over.

Six minutes in Don Qui Hotep defends Cosby. (I wonder if this had been filmed a few months later if they'd have defended Harvey Weinstein too.)

Ten minutes in the dark-skinned male star ONCE AGAIN has a racially ambiguous, light-skinned woman as a girlfriend or baby-mama. (like movies DOPE, SLEIGHT etc. etc. etc. etc.....) I'm not even going to get into the black man in a dress thing...as if THAT is the most humiliating thing, AS IF what's coming out of the main actor Jay Pharoah's mouth is NOT stupid enough to be humiliating.

* * * * *

This show seemed exclusively designed for the black hoteppery and their pick-me hoteptresses. I never thought there was enough of them to carry an entire show for multiple seasons and I was right. The Jamie Foxx produced WHITE FAMOUS has been canceled after a single season.

Hallelujah!

This ain't Omarosa-kicked-to-the-curb level good news, but this definitely qualifies as good black news.

May the black female refusal to watch the work created self-hating* black folk continue to destroy shows, movies, and/or careers of those that don't serve the black community. Black Women Rock

Black Feminist Rock With Focus

Black Women and Black Feminists Can Giveth And Taketh Away

BLACKCHICKROCKED.BLOGSPOT.COM

Blackest Moments Of 2017: ALABAMA BLACK WOMEN WALK INTO WORK AFTER TAKING ROY MOORE'S HEAD

A repost

POLITICAL UPSET IN ALABAMA

ROY MOORE LOOSES SENATE RACE

THANKS TO BLACK WOMEN 

Black voter turn out in Alabama was off the hook. Upwards of 70 percent of black voters turned out to stomp Roy Moore to dust and hand Doug Jones the win in Alabama. 

And out of all black voters that showed up to vote, near 94% of black men went for Jones while black women went all out -- same as during the presidential election-- with 97 to 98% of black women voting for Jones.

Early polls, numbers will change...

In other words, black women showed up and showed out...AGAIN. But this time we won. Alabama black women kicked Moore's white supremacist child molesting @$$ to the curb.

And black folks won that race for Alabama despite Roy Moore and his wife dropping two fairly major white supremacy shells trying to rally his white supremacist based in the last two days. 

Somebody pulled out a 2011 video where Moore said all the constitutional amendments after the 10th should be scrapped --- which would include the 13th Amendment that freed slaves and the 19th Amendment which gave women the right to vote. 

Then, yesterday, that jackal showed up at the polling station, on his horse Sassy, to vote for himself. 

And he still lost

headline from the zero chill New York Daily News

My stomach hurts. I've been laughing so hard. So hard. The memes I've seen have been so funny.

Most important though? Trump's endorsement lost. Not only did Roy Moore loose, Trump endorsed Luther Strange to run for the Senate seat over Moore in the first place -- and Strange lost.

It has now been established that Trump is not all powerful with white people. 

Then again, it has been established he is still very powerful with the majority of white people. More than 2/3rds of white people voted for Moore, a man who preyed on young girls in school when he was in his thirties.

I'm reading only 55% of the white electorate showed up to vote - but I think that's in the normal zone of 55 to 65 percent turn out.  Black voter turn out at 72 percent, if that's the right number is correct, is simply high.

Black people in the U.S. have just proven that we only need one-third of white voters to overcome white supremacist voter. We just did it in a very, very conservative, ex-confederate state.     

I've been preaching this all year --starting a third party led by black and brown people, only needing one-third of white voters--and EVEN I DIDN'T THINK this voting block could win in a deep like Alabama 

This vote should also have proved to us, to us as black people and especially black women, that WE ARE a voting block to be contended with. 

It's going to be interesting to see if the white democrats finally start to understand that we do not need win over the white Trumpthuglicans. We need to out vote them. And for that we need high black and brown voter turn out. 

And in order to have high black and brown voter turn out, we need to "keep hope alive" in our breasts. LOL

It is important to note that Doug Jones got high black and brown voter turn out because, as a prosecutor, he put some KKK demons in jail for crimes during Civil Rights movement. 

Going for the block of someone like Moore is motivation enough for me a lot of days. But it is good and satisfying to reward a candidate, that happens to be white, for demonstrating that he can actually produce results that directly benefit black and brown people, produce results that take aim at reducing white supremacy. 

It will be a good thing for blacks to be DEMANDING of white candidates in the future. As Janet Jackson would sing, "What have you done for me lately?" is the right question for all white candidates...until we can create a black and brown led third party

You know what else left me breathless with laughter and schadenfreude joy last night? 

Jeff Sessions, who Trump pulled from his Alabama senate seat to be Attorney General, was replaced by a democrat --IN ALABAMA-- where that wasn't supposed to be possible. And now Trump can't stand Jeff Sessions because Sessions recused himself from the Russia investigation.|

HA!!!

And that alt-Right loser Bannon was behind Moore, got him on the republican ticket instead of Trump's first choice, Luther Strange. And Moore LOST!!! HAAA!

So now Bannon's getting trounced by members of his own party --who knew Bannon went too damn far a long time ago. The status-quo republicans know perfectly doggone well they have to keep their white supremacy at dog whistle level.  But now Bannon has trapped them with the alt-Right overt racism....and a voting base that CRAVES MORE overt white supremacy.

But the most important thing that happened is this: 

The Senate is now split 51 to 49. This means Obamacare is a little safer than it was. This means the runaway train that was the republicans has been slowed down a little. The republicans can only lose one republican on any given vote.

The republicans have to worried about what's going to happen to them in the 2018 midterm elections. But that'll wait.

For now, I'm just waiting for McTwitterwits next few tweets. 

Maybe the U.S. isn't going to crash and burn after all. 

BLACKCHICKROCKED.BLOGSPOT.COM


BLACKCHICKROCKED.BLOGSPOT.COM

Blackest Moments of 2017: ISSA RAE BEING UNAPOLOGETICALLY BLACK AND FEMALE

Feeling Rebloggy

“In creating and writing the show, this is not for dudes,” Rae told The RollingStone in a recent interview. “It’s not for white people. It’s the show that I imagined for my family and friends.”

What’s amazing is that a Black woman’s imagination still holds so much space that non-Black, non-women can resonate deeply with the characters and stories despite. “The fact that dudes have latched onto this character is such a compliment, because we’re mostly women writing these male characters,” Rae continued.

BOOM!!!!

Yes, Issa Rae is responsible for two of my blackest moments of the year.

Read More:

http://afropunk.com/2017/09/issa-rae-insecure-not-made-dudes-white-people/

BLACKEST MOMENTS OF 2017: RECLAIMING MY TIME BY MAXINE WATERS

If you follow U.S. politics at all, Maxine Waters was undoubtedly responsible for the funniest, blackest moment in Washington D.C. this year.

The original story in case you missed it this summer

From VOX

Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA) wasn’t messing around during a House Financial Services Committee hearing Thursday when she confronted Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin with a procedural interruption that has now gone viral.

When Waters asked Mnuchin why his office had not responded to a letter from her office regarding President Trump’s financial ties to Russian banks, Mnuchin prefaced his direct response to the question with a series of formalities — mostly compliments to Waters.

Waters, however [knew] Mnuchin might be stalling in order to avoid answering the question....

https://www.vox.com/culture/2017/7/31/16070822/reclaiming-my-time-maxine-waters-mnuchin-meme 

THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES INTERVIEW

THAT WENT VIRAL 

(watch the first 3 or 4 minutes)

I fell out when I saw this on the news. People were laughing over this for days. The memes and jokes were non-stop. The very, very black celebratory video below, made most of us laugh even harder.

Maxine Waters is no joke on an ordinary day.  Get her back up at your own risk.  

Whenever I see her, I'm like "GO MAXINE GO!" 

VEENA SUD

VEENA SUD SAID

Most white feminists look at me disdainfully when I recount some of my choice violent moments. They are appalled, morally repelled by this unbecoming behavior. 

One even giggled, holding her breastbone ever so lightly and saying she’s not the violent type, blah blah blah.

The messages are,

1) I’m educated and you’re not,

2) I’m upper class and you’re not,

3) I’m a feminist and you’re not (since her brand of feminism is equated with nonviolent moon-to-uterus symbiosis).

My “men” can do the fighting, but I, gentle maiden, shan’t; the new feminism remaking a generation in the image of the suburban, wealthy, sophisticated, genetically genteel. 

No one protected me when a loved one cracked my head on a public street one might, not even the college educated Upper West Side white women strolling by pretending not to notice. I don’t like getting hit either, but what are you gonna do when someone grabs your tits? Meekly whisper you won’t stoop to your attackers level? and what level is that exactly?

if that’s the way “women” react, how do we classify the elderly Filipinas on a subway train who, when Joe Dickwad grabbed my ass, congratulated me for whacking him as hard as I could, screaming obscenities, and chasing him – to his utter shock and dismay – through the station? They were the few who seemed to acknowledge, respect, and allow for “aggressive” forms of resistance instead of strapping on moral straightjackets for the nineties which we “women” must squeeze into.

If that’s a woman, I’m not one. I am an animal who eats, sleeps, fucks, and fights voraciously – I assume a “good” woman does it gently and in the missionary position only.

* * * * *
Yeah! 

 After reading this quote and seeing Veena Suds'
THE KILLING on Netflix-- which some are calling
"Feminist Noir." I have high hopes
 for her black female led next project SEVEN SECONDS coming to Netflix in February 2017

BLACKCHICKROCKED.BLOGSPOT.COM