Together We're Strong

In the movie "School Daze,"  the Jigaboos sang


"Don’t you know my hair is so strong 
It can break the teeth out of a comb"

And that's true.

Most afro strands are a lot more fragile than most when taken individually. But taken together? Those strands, weak or strong, together they will indeed break the teeth out of a comb.

Black folks, as a people, are the same way.

Don't you ever forget it.

BLACKCHICKROCKED.BLOGSPOT.COM

ON EBONICS AND AAVE

Linguists estimate that AAVE is spoken by 80-90% of African Americans, at least in some settings. Those who speak AAVE are described as “bidialectal”, meaning they slip easily in and out of AAVE and Standard American English (SAE) dialect, and the extent of its use is regulated by circumstances such as communication partner, environment, or topic. In addition, researchers at the University of Michigan found that most AAVE speakers use it in less than one third of their speech events.

Furthermore, AAVE is occasionally spoken by members of other racial and ethnic groups; these people are considered to be part of the AAVE “speech community”.

LEARN MORE:  

https://www.pdx.edu/multicultural-topics-communication-sciences-disorders/african-american-vernacular-english-aave

BLACKCHICKROCKED.BLOGSPOT.COM

SO HOW MUCH AFRICAN IS IN THE AVERAGE AFRICAN AMERICAN?

a repost

Exactly How "Black" Are Black Americans?

* According to Ancestry.com, the average African American is 65 percent sub-Saharan African, 29 percent European and 2 percent Native American.

* According to 23andme.com, the average African American is 75 percent sub-Saharan African, 22 percent European and only 0.6 percent Native American. 

* According to Family Tree DNA.com, the average African American is 72.95 percent sub-Saharan African, 22.83 percent European and 1.7 percent Native American.

* According to National Geographic's Genographic Project, the average African American is 80 percent sub-Saharan African, 19 percent European and 1 percent Native American.

* According to AfricanDNA, in which I am a partner with Family Tree DNA, the average African American is 79 percent sub-Saharan African, 19 percent European and 2 percent Native American.

 [The numbers above describe "admixture" And] what exactly is admixture?

I asked a few prominent geneticists to define it for this article. Dr. George Church, a professor at the Harvard Medical School and a pioneer in the mapping of the human genome, defines it this way: 

"Genetic admixture is the breeding between two or more previously isolated populations." 

[The second  thing] these findings show that the common claim that many African Americans make about their high percentage of Native American ancestry is a myth. Joanna Mountain broke down to me our low amounts of Native American ancestry in this way: "Eighty percent of African Americans have  less than 1 percent Native American ancestry. 

* * * * *

You can't throw a stick in a room full of black people hit somebody that does NOT claim to have a Cherokee or two in their blood line. So that last quote is surprising.

But I have a theory.

I think it was easier for black slave women to say to their light-skinned children, "Your Daddy was an Native American that was killed" than it was to say "Your Daddy is a white rapist that lives in the big house and will kill you or sell you if you say it out loud to anybody, ever." How is small child supposed to remember not to say anything. And "Who is my Daddy" is not a question that goes away.  I think a bunch of us were lied to about Great Great Aunt Sophie that was a full Cherokee with hair length down to the back of her knees. 

Read More http://www.theroot.com/articles/history/2013/02/how_mixed_are_african_americans.html?wpisrc=root_lightbox 

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WIFE RELAXES HAIR AND HUSBAND CRIES

Well...He didn't cry. 

But he wanted to. 

LOL

More importantly, Shay and Travis are way-cute together. 

He disagreed, strongly with her relaxing her hair. But he was respectful. And I was even more amazed toward the end of the video when he said he grew his hair out in support of her going natural when she was having her last problem with relaxer.

Travis gets the feminist husband of the year award. I wonder if he even knows what the word "feminist" means as opposed to the stereotype?

PATTI LaBELLE'S SWEET POTATO PIE RECIPE

This Recipe has gone viral according to main stream news papers

8-10 servings; makes one 9-inch pie

INGREDIENTS

• FOR THE CRUST
• 1 1/2 cups flour, plus more for the work surface
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 cup butter-flavored vegetable shortening, chilled and cut into 1/2-inch pieces
• 1/3 cup ice water
• 1 tablespoon melted unsalted butter
• 1/4 cup packed light brown sugar

• FOR THE FILLING
• Salt
• 3 large orange-fleshed sweet potatoes, scrubbed
• 7 tablespoons (most of 1 stick) unsalted butter, melted
• 1/2 cup packed light brown sugar
• 1/2 cup granulated sugar
• 2 large eggs, beaten
• 1/4 cup half-and-half
• 3/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg

---

DIRECTIONS

For the crust: Sift the flour and salt into a mixing bowl. Add the shortening. Use a fork or a pastry blender to cut the shortening into the flour until the mixture resembles coarse crumbs with a few pea-size bits.

Stirring with the fork, gradually add enough of the water until the mixture clumps together (you might need more or less water). Gather up the dough and press it into a thick disk. If desired, wrap the dough in wax paper or plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least 1 hour, and as long as 3 days.

Lightly flour a work surface. Place the chilled dough on it; roll out to a round that's 13 inches across. Fold the dough in half.

Transfer to the pie plate; gently unfold the dough to fit into it. Trim the dough as needed to leave a 1-inch overhang. (Bake or reserve the scraps for another use.)

Fold the dough under itself so the edge of the fold is flush with the edge of the pan. Flute the dough around the edge of the pan. Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate while you start the filling (and up to 1 hour).

For the filling: Bring a large pot of water to a boil over high heat. Add a generous pinch of salt, then the sweet potatoes. Reduce the heat to medium; cook until the sweet potatoes are tender when pierced with a knife, about 30 to 45 minutes.

Drain the sweet potatoes, letting them fall into a colander. Run under cold water until cool enough to handle. Discard the skins; transfer the cooked sweet potatoes to a mixing bowl. Use a hand-held electric mixer to blend until creamy and smooth. You'll need 3 cups for the filling; scoop out the remainder and reserve for another use.

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.

Uncover the pie shell; brush the interior with the 1 tablespoon of melted butter. Sprinkle the 1/4 cup of brown sugar over the bottom of the pie shell. Par-bake until the crust is set and just beginning to brown, about 15 minutes. (If the pie shell puffs, do not prick it.) Let it cool.

Meanwhile, add the 7 tablespoons of melted butter, brown sugar, the granulated sugar, eggs, half-and-half, cinnamon and nutmeg to the pureed sweet potatoes. Beat on medium speed until well incorporated.

Pour into the par-baked pie shell, smoothing the surface. Reduce the oven temperature to 350 degrees. Bake (middle rack) until a knife inserted in the center of the filling comes out clean yet the filling still jiggles a bit, 1 to 1 1/2 hours.

Transfer to a wire rack to cool completely, then cover loosely with plastic wrap and refrigerate until ready to serve.

BLACKCHICKROCKED.BLOGSPOT.COM

AND UMMM....You can buy these pies too. Here's a video review
 (Warning: Colorful language....and funny)

SWEET POTATO PIE NOT PUMPKIN FOR BLACK AMERICANS ON THANKSGIVING

Bernard Jones said

“For millions of African Americans like me, Thanksgiving Day means sweet potatoes, not pumpkins, and we love sweet potatoes so much that we won’t settle for having a sole side dish of candied sweet potatoes (we call them “yams,” but that’s another story) or sweet potato casserole. No, we have to double down on this tasty tuber and serve up sweet potato pie for dessert, too.

Sure, we eat this soul food classic year-round, but this is the week that the sweet potato pie really shines.

It doesn’t have to be the only dessert option on the holiday table, but it has to at least be part of the lineup.

As much as sweet potato pie is beloved within the black community and in the South, it doesn’t seem to get much love elsewhere. Our national pie divide is deepest when people choose between pumpkin pie and sweet potato pie on Thanksgiving Day. And that got me wondering: How did sweet potato pie become a soul-food favorite over its chief Thanksgiving rival? It started happening centuries ago, and it didn’t follow the path that you might expect...”

* * * * *

FROM WAPO

When tracing the history of African American cuisine, it’s best to take stock of what was inherited from West Africa, our ancestral homeland. I’d thought and hoped that sweet potato pie had West African roots, but the trail begins in Peru, where sweet potatoes originated. 

As early as the 16th century, Spanish traders shipped sweet potatoes from the Americas across the Atlantic Ocean on two different routes, one headed to West Africa and the other to Western Europe.

West African cooks [in the Americas] first experimented with sweet potatoes as a possible substitute for the other root crops (cassava, plantain and yams) that they used to make a typical meal of some sort of starch served with a savory sauce, soup or stew typically made with fish and vegetables. One particular specialty was fufu, in which a root is boiled, mashed or pounded and shaped into balls. For those who have made sweet potato pie, it doesn’t seem to be much of a leap to add eggs, milk, sugar and spices to make a dessert out of a savory mash.

Read More:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/food/how-sweet-potato-pie-became-african-americans-favorite-dessert/2015/11/23/11da4216-9201-11e5-b5e4-279b4501e8a6_story.html?utm_term=.bd79d903dc8b

NEXT UP:'
 PATTI LA BELLE'S SWEET POTATO PIE RECIPE

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DICK GREGORY DIES AT 84

HE WAS AN AFRICAN AMERICAN ICON. 

Though I hope he missed Charlottesville altogether. If he did see Charlottesville I hope he watched a lot more white folks show up for the fight. More importantly,  I hope he watched Trump set his own butt on fire this week. I've been laughing at Trump for days.

I hope Mr. Gregory got a chance to do that too if he had to know about Charlottesville at all.

My grandmothers died a couple of years ago. I was glad they got to see Barack Obama become president. But I'm so fearful the old folks in my family will die with Orange Twitterb*tch in office. I don't want them to die thinking we're going to lose ground all the way back to the 1950s.

I know they won't hang onto it when they pass. But I don't want them to be troubled by the news or the troubles of younger relatives who are worried now.

Mostly, I hope Dick Gregory's last days were peaceful and he didn't see Charlottesville at all. I hope he went peacefully. It seems like he deserved that. He lived a brave life.

From MSN

Mr. Gregory was a breakthrough performer in his appeal to whites — a crossover star, in contrast to veteran black comedians like Redd Foxx, Moms Mabley and Slappy White, whose earthy, pungent humor was mainly confined to black clubs on the so-called chitlin circuit.

Though he clearly seethed over the repression of blacks, he resorted to neither scoldings nor lectures when playing big-time rooms like the Hungry I in San Francisco or the Village Gate in New York. Rather, he won audiences over with wry observations about the country’s racial chasm.

He would plant himself on a stool, the picture of insouciance in a three-button suit and dark tie, dragging slowly on a cigarette, which he used as a punctuation mark. From that perch he would bid America to look in the mirror, and to laugh at itself.

“Segregation is not all bad,” he would say. “Have you ever heard of a collision where the people in the back of the bus got hurt?” Or: “You know the definition of a Southern moderate? That’s a cat that’ll lynch you from a low tree.” Or: “I heard we’ve got lots of black astronauts. Saving them for the first spaceflight to the sun.”

Read More: http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/dick-gregory-84-dies-found-humor-in-the-civil-rights-struggle/ar-AAqnhgc?li=BBnbcA1 

As he got older, he spoke, did interviews. He was an awesome speaker

KENDRICK LAMAR'S GRAMMY PERFORMANCE

A LITTLE SNIPPET
FULL VIDEO HERE

SO HOW MUCH AFRICAN IS IN THE AVERAGE AFRICAN AMERICAN?

Exactly How "Black" Are Black Americans?

* According to Ancestry.com, the average African American is 65 percent sub-Saharan African, 29 percent European and 2 percent Native American.

* According to 23andme.com, the average African American is 75 percent sub-Saharan African, 22 percent European and only 0.6 percent Native American. 

* According to Family Tree DNA.com, the average African American is 72.95 percent sub-Saharan African, 22.83 percent European and 1.7 percent Native American.

* According to National Geographic's Genographic Project, the average African American is 80 percent sub-Saharan African, 19 percent European and 1 percent Native American.

* According to AfricanDNA, in which I am a partner with Family Tree DNA, the average African American is 79 percent sub-Saharan African, 19 percent European and 2 percent Native American.

 [The numbers above describe "admixture" And] what exactly is admixture?

I asked a few prominent geneticists to define it for this article. Dr. George Church, a professor at the Harvard Medical School and a pioneer in the mapping of the human genome, defines it this way: 

"Genetic admixture is the breeding between two or more previously isolated populations." 

[The second  thing] these findings show that the common claim that many African Americans make about their high percentage of Native American ancestry is a myth. Joanna Mountain broke down to me our low amounts of Native American ancestry in this way: "Eighty percent of African Americans have  less than 1 percent Native American ancestry. 

* * * * *

You can't throw a stick in a room full of black people hit somebody that does NOT claim to have a Cherokee or two in their blood line. So that last quote is surprising.

But I have a theory.

I think it was easier for black slave women to say to their light-skinned children, "Your Daddy was an Native American that was killed" than it was to say "Your Daddy is a white rapist that lives in the big house and will kill you or sell you if you say it out loud to anybody, ever." How is small child supposed to remember not to say anything. And "Who is my Daddy" is not a question that goes away.  I think a bunch of us were lied to about Great Great Aunt Sophie that was a full Cherokee with hair length down to the back of her knees.

Read More http://www.theroot.com/articles/history/2013/02/how_mixed_are_african_americans.html?wpisrc=root_lightbox

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