A 208 YEAR OLD EXAMPLE OF WHAT A KILLMONGER ATTITUDE GETS YOU

The Youtube description of video below, on Henri Christophe, is very different from mine:

YOU TUBE's:

"The story of a black man's rise from soldier to king."

DEBLYNN's:

The story of a black man who didn't know the difference between wanting equality and wanting to replace the oppressor as the top dog. Only this man pays for his betrayal in the end.

Top dogs always want slaves and sycophants and is usually willing to fight a civil war to get them. This was true in real life between 1811 and 1820. And it was true in a fictional movie called BLACK PANTHER.

Video: 3 minutes

Read More Here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henri_Christophe

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HOW TO SPEND A DAY IN BLACK-OWNED AMSTERDAM

Feeling Rebloggy

     History and modernity collide in Amsterdam, a city that boldly embraces its past while it builds an even more progressive future. Known for the red-light district, 165 gorgeous canals within the city, parks, and landmarks like the Anne Frank House and the Van Gogh Museum, the capital of the Netherlands offers a unique experience that can’t fully (by law) be captured in pictures and videos.      

Visitors travel to Amsterdam from around the world to have a good time, but the city also has a rich black heritage that often gets overlooked. The Dutch Kingdom was prominent in the transatlantic slave trade, and as a result, the Netherlands has a vast black history that can be unearthed if you know where to look...

Stay at a black-owned, women-only hostel  

https://www.hostelle.com/ 

Step back in time during a black history tour of Amsterdam 

Let Surinamese-American Jennifer Tosch be your guide...with Black Heritage Tours. 

Get “coffee” at African Blackstar Coffeeshop 

Have breakfast at Water & Brood 

Visit the National Slavery Monument 

Late Surinamese artist Erwin de Vries created the Slavery Monument located in Oosterpark, which was unveiled in 2002 commemorating the July 1863 abolishment of slavery in Holland, Suriname, and the Dutch Antilles... 

Go to an event at the Black Archives  

The Black Archives is home to more than 3,000 books which all focus on race, colonization, feminism, and the legacy of Black Dutch writers and scientists. The venue hosts several exhibitions, film screenings, conversations, and community events every month, so if you want to learn about the Black Dutch experience of the past and present in great detail, a trip to the Black Archives is a must.

~TRAVEL NOIRE 

READ MORE: https://travelnoire.com/black-owned-amsterdam-netherlands/

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JNANE TAMSNA: A Black Owned Hotel Still Going Strong In Morocco 18 Years Later

And it's boutique hotel at that.

feeling rebloggy

     Meryanne Loum-Martin, a Black woman, has proven that she doesn't need to be in her territory to excel. She owns Jnane Tamsna, a boutique hotel in Marrakech, Morocco, that is hailed as one of the most fabulous and elegant luxury hotels in the area. Since its birth in 2000, those who visited the hotel has been raving with 5-star reviews for the hotel's design, exclusivity, and service.

     Getting started     "At that time, I was a black woman in a country with a low percentage of black people," Loum-Martin, who is half West Indian and half Senegalese, told Black Enterprise. She and her husband was then building the establishment from scratch at the property they just bought in a foreign land.
     "I didn't speak the language and the field of construction was very much a world of men who are known to ignore women. And you know what? We designed everything ourselves. My husband was responsible for the gardens and I was responsible for the architecture, interiors, and floor plans," Loum-Martin shared...

BlackBusiness.Org

Read More: https://www.blackbusiness.org/2018/05/black-owned-luxury-boutique-hotel-jnane-tamsna-18-years.html? 

For reservations, try booking.com or go directly to the website: http://www.jnanetamsna.com/

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A QUIET REVOLUTION: WOMEN IN WEST AFRICA INCREASINGLY SEEK DIVORCE

"For centuries, women have been expected to endure bad marriages in many conservative pockets of West Africa. Divorce happened, but most often the husbands were the ones casting off their partners. Tradition has bound women so tightly that spouses are sometimes chosen for babies in the womb."

     Joy and sadness rose up in me at the same time when I first read a headline about women seeking more divorces West Africa. But I was mostly happy.

     I so wish I didn't understand that locations where there are no divorces are locations where women don't have any choices. And a location where a woman doesn't have any choices is a location where men can make zero effort to be a friend, confidant, and supporter. 

     Bottom Line: More often than not, a place where a woman has no choice is a place where the husbands are doing a poor job at being husbands. 

     "He didn’t hit her. He didn’t yell. He didn’t cheat, as far as she knows. It was just that, less than two years into their marriage, Zalika Amadou’s husband had changed. He’d become far too neglectful and indifferent for a young woman who expected, well, more.
     Her mother, who had gotten married at 14 to a stranger twice her age, couldn’t understand the fuss. She’d stuck with her husband for five decades until he died, and was appalled that young women these days didn’t do the same.
     But for Ms. Amadou, who married at 16, simply having a husband was not enough. She never wanted to depend on a man in the first place. So, on a busy morning in Maradi, Niger, she sat in front of a judge at a crowded Islamic court on the sidewalk and asked for what young women across the region are seeking like never before: a divorce."

Read More: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/06/world/africa/niger-divorce-women.html?

     I was really happy to read, despite the conservatism of these Islamic West African Nations, that wife beating and murder were not at the root of divorces. By comparison, in India, the men appear to be having a hard time letting go of conservative, traditional roles where the men are supposed to be the only ones in charge in the household. 
     Years ago, I set a google search engine for wife beating and neglected to limit the search to the United States. I couldn't believe how many women were being murdered by husbands in India. I couldn't believe it. 
     Never forget that women's freedom is not only a quality of life issue, but a life and death issue.  And one as is important as the other. 

BLACKCHICKROCKED.BLOGSPOT.COM

absolute power corrupts absolutely

Senegal Opens Museum of Black Civilizations—One of the Largest of Its Kind In the World

feeling rebloggy

     What began as an idea proposed by Senegal's first president Léopold Sédar Senghor over 50 years ago, has now become a reality as Senegal has officially opened the Museum of Black Civilizations, one of the largest of its kind in the world.     Senegal's current president Macky Sall inaugurated the museum earlier today in Dakar. The design of the building, which contains 14,000 square meters of floor space and a capacity for 18,000 exhibits, was inspired by circular traditional homes native to Southern Senegal, BBC Africa reports. Its size is comparable to the National Museum of African American History in Washington, according to Al Jazeera...

~OkayAfrica.Com

Read More: 
https://www.okayafrica.com/senegal-opens-museum-of-black-civilizations-dakar-largest-in-africa/

REACT OR DIE: IT IS DANGEROUS TO BE BLACK IN BRAZIL

Repost 

2016

THIS SEEMS TRUE 

DESPITE BRAZIL HAVING 

THE HIGHEST NUMBER OF AFRICA-DESCENDED FOLK 

OUTSIDE OF AFRICA ITSELF. 

THE BRAZILIAN GOVERNMENT'S DECISION TO "INVISIBLIZE" RACE, 

NOMINALLY ERASE RACE, 

AT LEAST ONE HUNDRED YEARS

BEFORE THE U.S.

TRIED TO DO THE SAME 

HAS HAD IT'S EFFECT IN BRAZIL

 * * * * *

"As Salvador kicked off Carnival, residents of Cabula...gathered to commemorate the murder of twelve black people on Feb. 6, 2015

Brazilian newspapers called "The Cabula 12" would be bank robbers and glorified the police officers as heroes. Yet, once more the victims of these police shootings were mostly black and poor black as Amnesty International says they are at least 80% of the time.

Autopsy reports showed, according to one article, that these "bank robbers" died on their knees with their hands on their heads. A secret video tape of what looks like a hospital corridor shows that three of the "robbers" have bullet holes in their backs.

Brazil's population is 50% of that of the United States. "Yet Brazil's police have managed to kill "more people in a five year span than U.S. police have killed in the last 30 years."

“The numbers are equivalent to a country at war,” said Hamilton Borges, a black liberation leader and founder of the anti-police violence movement Reaja ou Sera Morta, meaning “React or Die.” 

...Days after the massacre, protests erupted in slums throughout Salvador. Family members broke their silence and spoke to the media. During the carnival, a popular Afro-bloco group staged a die-in honoring Cabula and the Black Lives Matter movement in the United States. Countless murals dot the city with the words: “We will never forget those killed in Cabula.”

America.Aljazeera.com 

http://america.aljazeera.com/watch/shows/america-tonight/articles/2016/2/25/the-cabula-12-brazil-police-war-blacks.html

 * * * * *

Cops in Brazil
Image Source: Twitter

The protests make it sound like a new day is dawning in the black areas of Brazil. 

And black people in this country need to take notice of the fact that maybe we are a part of that new dawn.  Black people in other countries are looking at us and they have been since long before Black Lives Matter.

We, as Black Americans, have power that those in Brazil don't, power that those in France don't.

We, with our whole 13% and American ideals,  have the ability to make ourselves heard in this country and also on the world stage. And we've probably had this power, without most of us being very aware of it, since Civil Rights Leaders used television so effectively to show how the United States was beating and lynching black people in the 1950s and 1960s for doing things as simple as trying to live free and vote.

 

I consider the willingness of the protests in Brazil to stand up another victory for Aliza Garza, Opal Tometi, Patrisse Cullors and their entire Black Lives Matter movement. And if the Black Lives Matter first function is to act like a spotlight, then let us all turn our eyes to the south, toward Brazil, and lift up their struggle.

If the U.S. can be embarrassed into treating us better than the did prior to the 1960s, Brazil can be embarrassed into stopping it's police force from murdering black people at will.

We, as black people, should always see ourselves as being part of a world struggle.
    

Read More On the deaths of The Cabula 12 

http://www.theroot.com/articles/culture/2016/02/fighting_a_black_genocide_in_brazil.html


Read More On How Very Differently Race Is Constructed In BrazilBLACKCHICKROCKED.BLOGSPOT.COM

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HOW THE WHITES ARRANGED THE CONSTRUCTION OF RACE IN BRAZIL

Repost 

2016

Thinking about race identity in the Brazil has always been hard for me to wrap my head around because the white folks here in the United States constructed race in very different way.

In the U.S. it's normal for us to observe (even if we don't agree with it) hypodescent, commonly called "the one drop rule"

That is, in the United States, the mostly unwritten rule is if you have one drop of black blood you are considered "black." 

This is based on centuries old biological racism which is based on a erroneous belief in the biology of race. The belief in the white-constructed biology of race has been so strong that there was even a court case where a woman went to court to have herself declared white. I believe it was a state court(?) that once ruled that a person that had even 1/32 of  black ancestry meant she could not identify herself as white. 

(That probably means if one great, great or one great, great, great grandparent is black, you're black. I'll let you do the counting of "greats" But, understand this: Brittney Spears could find out she was  "black" using this method of racial identification)

Slavery, the obscure court case that I can't half remember, and everything in between (except maybe Le Dolezal) indicates that the dominant and excluding racial identity in the United States is "white."  

It is the dominant culture in the United States that demands this "purity."  And that kind of discrimination is normal to my brain. 
Even though some of us have given up forcing people to identify via the one drop rule,  people who have the slightest tinge of color in their skin mostly know that they are allowed to identify themselves as mixed, bi-racial, and even cablinasian.  But these slightly tanned folk without the narrowest of noses and lips, whobinsist on identifying as "white" despite white supremacy are given major side-eye by dark-skinned folk and greeted with outright shock by white people should they ever say words that mean, "I am white." 

In Brazil, though? They don't do hypodescent.

Whiteness does not nominally exclude in Brazil.

You can be as dark as Tiger Woods and Lupita Nyongo's lovechild and try to identify yourself as "white" so long as you can trace you biology to somebody white and you are pale enough in shade (I think? Colorism is a factor too. But I can't always figure out the racial math white Brazilians are doing.  It feels so twisted in my head)

You can try to identify as white no matter what shade you are. But I think there's a skin shade box you have to check off in order to identify as "white" too.  So if you're like Tiger Woods where being identified as "black" bothers you in Brazil, you have options that seem to mean (in U.S. terms) "brown-skinned," "mixed race", and/or "bi-racial"

As I understand it, many darkish-skinned people fear/hate being identified as black will identify as "white" if there is any way possible in Brazil.

Those that are too dark to claim "white" will claim to be in a group called "brown" And if you start earning a lot of money you can try to change your racial category into a paler one (That is, if you're light brown and poor you're in the group called  "brown"  (in English) But the same person might be able to claim to be "white" if that person is rich)

This goes a long way in showing just how deep the racism problem is in Brazil, though racism's pattern seems very different from that of the United States.

For a long time, pale folk of Brazil would claim that all this racial ambiguity they've built into their categories means there's no racism or less racism in Brazil.

But you know what?

Most of the CEOs in Brazil are pale, regardless of what words they use for the ethnic/racial identity.

When the models go from there (Brazil) to here (U.S.) in order to compete in the Miss Universe contest etc, the models have been historically been very pale to white. (I hope things changed in the age of Obama but the story below indicates, things don't change very fast.)

And according to what I'm reading, the government of Brazil deliberately made racial identity complicated, deliberately set out to make race and therefore racism harder to track by making the racial categories difficult to define.

    On Invisibilization

"When as the former slave owners set about diluting the country’s blackness, they also went to work on their cover story.

In the Brazilian creation myth – the country’s version of Canada’s “cultural mosaic” or the U.S. “melting pot” – the country is a democracia racial, a racial democracy. This official story was built on the idea that from the day slavery ended, Brazilians of all colours were equal.  After all, there was no segregation, no apartheid, no Jim Crow. Glossing over the massive disparities between the former owners and the newly freed slaves – who had no education, land or assets – the Brazilian elite, almost entirely white, declared the country uniquely equal and, in effect, postracial.

“It was ‘invisibilization,’” says Marcelo Paixão, who is black and a professor of economics at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro. “The discourse was that we don’t have race in Brazil, so you don’t have race problems in Brazil, and you don’t need to discuss the inequality.” "

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/brazils-colour-bind/article25779474/

White sociologists in the U.S. actually had debates and became "confused" in the 1980 and 1990s claiming Brazil had a lot less racism than the U.S. 

But anybody with eyes --people who are not bent on to e-racing racism from view every single place they are able-- can see the racism every time they look at photos and images of the money-ed and powerful of Brazil.

Some will point to Brazil's habitual bragging about carnival and the variety of shades of people singing and dancing on the streets.

My answer? Yeah, well black people in the United States were oppressed as h*ll in this country during the 1960s and 1970s, Yet you would see black folk on television, in commercials, singing and dancing while they were ordering a burger, under the golden arches hourly.

The happy darkies pushed out front don't fool anybody here or there.  The affluent and powerful are paler here in the U.S. and in Brazil too, and in a lot of places around the world.

But for all Brazil's attempts at "invisiblization" racism, the overt kind, and the attending poverty seem much worse for Blacks in Brazil. 

Street actors recreating "Aladdin"

This photo may seem like a petty example of racism in Brazil to some. But the racism is so very overt here. 

These actors look like they are walking around out on the street or in a Brazilian Disneyland equivalent or a place very much like Hollywood boulevard. To me the racism displayed here (replacing the cartoon monkey with a dark-skinned black child)  is the tip of an iceberg. 

That is, you can only see a small part of the Brazil's Racism Iceberg on top of the water, but you know the rest of it is there and big enough to destroy the ship you're on.

Brazil, while having the largest black population outside Africa, was the last country to officially outlaw slavery in 1888. That's a little more than 20 years than after slavery was outlawed in the U.S.

However, Brazil didn't go through the same Slavery Part 2, Jim Crow, like we did here in the U.S.  Furthermore, this claiming to be post-racial immediately after slavery, some 100 years before the U.S. even thought about claiming such a thing, was much more effective in maintaining white supremacy.

How police treat black people in Brazil make the police in the United States look like saints. 

And cops, same as in the United States, come from the general population. Thy are not imported from Mars. Cops reflect the attitudes of the nation they are raised in.

In 2013, due to an overtly racist response from a sizable portion of the population, the reigning Queen of Carnival dethroned, so to speak, and changed from dark-skinned to light-skinned.

DARK QUEEN REPLACED

BACKGROUND:
Apparently there is a Queen of Carnival in Brazil voted in every year. And Nayara Justino was elected to be that Queen in 2013.

Justino was called everything from a monkey to a darkie, and told she didn’t deserve to be the Globeleza because she was “too Black.” What hurt most, though, were that many Black Brazilians also thought she was unfit for the title because of her dark skin.

“Black people in Brazil are ashamed of being Black,”  Neusa Borges, a Black actress explains in the video. “There are very few who will stand up and say, ‘I am Black.'”

As a result of the backlash, Justino was stripped of her title without...notice.  “They called me and said, ‘You’re not going to be Globeleza anymore. Thanks for your participation, 

Read More

http://www.clutchmagonline.com/2016/02/heres-how-brazilians-treated-its-first-black-globeleza-carnival-queen/

After doing some reading on Brazil, you know what I think? 

I think it's one thing to be black in this country and have a smallish portion of black and brown folks that internalize racism and despise themselves. 

It would be quite another thing 

to live in Brazil 

where many or most of the people 

that WE, in the U.S. WOULD identify as black 

and being among 

light, medium and dark-skinned people 

who want to identify as anything but black. 

Clearly, the white racists there are a lot smarter than the ones here, and they have been from the very beginning. 

The white people in power there have the middle class white people hating the light people, and the next shade of light people down hating the brown people, and the brown people hating the black people.

I wonder if this has created a gap between the haves and have-nots is astronomically huge a<----because a="" and="" assign="" at="" bottom="" br="" categories="" create="" difference="" even="" everyone="" exploit="" function.="" inbetween="" inferiority="" is="" look="" main="" make="" money.="" money="" more="" on="" people="" physical="" precedes="" race="" racial="" racism="" s="" superiority="" that="" the="" then="" to="" top="" with="">s a result of this higher level of hidden(?) racism and colorism combined with an more overt classism. Again, the Brazilian police that kill black people at will make the white racist cops here look like amateur hour. 

<----because a="" and="" assign="" at="" bottom="" br="" categories="" create="" difference="" even="" everyone="" exploit="" function.="" inbetween="" inferiority="" is="" look="" main="" make="" money.="" money="" more="" on="" people="" physical="" precedes="" race="" racial="" racism="" s="" superiority="" that="" the="" then="" to="" top="" with="">

<----because a="" and="" assign="" at="" bottom="" br="" categories="" create="" difference="" even="" everyone="" exploit="" function.="" inbetween="" inferiority="" is="" look="" main="" make="" money.="" money="" more="" on="" people="" physical="" precedes="" race="" racial="" racism="" s="" superiority="" that="" the="" then="" to="" top="" with="">Brazilian police have out-killed the cops here by 100s of folk, despite being 50% smaller. 

<----because a="" and="" assign="" at="" bottom="" br="" categories="" create="" difference="" even="" everyone="" exploit="" function.="" inbetween="" inferiority="" is="" look="" main="" make="" money.="" money="" more="" on="" people="" physical="" precedes="" race="" racial="" racism="" s="" superiority="" that="" the="" then="" to="" top="" with="">

<----because a="" and="" assign="" at="" bottom="" br="" categories="" create="" difference="" even="" everyone="" exploit="" function.="" inbetween="" inferiority="" is="" look="" main="" make="" money.="" money="" more="" on="" people="" physical="" precedes="" race="" racial="" racism="" s="" superiority="" that="" the="" then="" to="" top="" with="">I know I don't want to live in Brazil. But after reading some of this, I don't even know if I want to visit. I don't want anybody who runs this country or profits from it to have my money. 

<----because a="" and="" assign="" at="" bottom="" br="" categories="" create="" difference="" even="" everyone="" exploit="" function.="" inbetween="" inferiority="" is="" look="" main="" make="" money.="" money="" more="" on="" people="" physical="" precedes="" race="" racial="" racism="" s="" superiority="" that="" the="" then="" to="" top="" with="">

<----because a="" and="" assign="" at="" bottom="" br="" categories="" create="" difference="" even="" everyone="" exploit="" function.="" inbetween="" inferiority="" is="" look="" main="" make="" money.="" money="" more="" on="" people="" physical="" precedes="" race="" racial="" racism="" s="" superiority="" that="" the="" then="" to="" top="" with="">I wish more people felt that way about visiting the United States, truth be told.

<----because a="" and="" assign="" at="" bottom="" br="" categories="" create="" difference="" even="" everyone="" exploit="" function.="" inbetween="" inferiority="" is="" look="" main="" make="" money.="" money="" more="" on="" people="" physical="" precedes="" race="" racial="" racism="" s="" superiority="" that="" the="" then="" to="" top="" with="">

<----because a="" and="" assign="" at="" bottom="" br="" categories="" create="" difference="" even="" everyone="" exploit="" function.="" inbetween="" inferiority="" is="" look="" main="" make="" money.="" money="" more="" on="" people="" physical="" precedes="" race="" racial="" racism="" s="" superiority="" that="" the="" then="" to="" top="" with="">The thing I know for sure is this: The black folks there have a hell of a battle ahead of them. The classism combined with the colorism and racism seems like a hardier structure to tear down as compared to what we have here. 

<----because a="" and="" assign="" at="" bottom="" br="" categories="" create="" difference="" even="" everyone="" exploit="" function.="" inbetween="" inferiority="" is="" look="" main="" make="" money.="" money="" more="" on="" people="" physical="" precedes="" race="" racial="" racism="" s="" superiority="" that="" the="" then="" to="" top="" with="">

<----because a="" and="" assign="" at="" bottom="" br="" categories="" create="" difference="" even="" everyone="" exploit="" function.="" inbetween="" inferiority="" is="" look="" main="" make="" money.="" money="" more="" on="" people="" physical="" precedes="" race="" racial="" racism="" s="" superiority="" that="" the="" then="" to="" top="" with="">BLACKCHICKROCKED.BLOGSPOT.COM 

NELSON MANDELA AT 100

Feeling Rebloggy

     Rolihlahla Mandela was born into the Madiba clan in the village of Mvezo, in the Eastern Cape, on 18 July 1918. His mother was Nonqaphi Nosekeni and his father was Nkosi Mphakanyiswa Gadla Mandela, principal counsellor to the Acting King of the Thembu people, Jongintaba Dalindyebo. In 1930, when he was 12 years old, his father died and the young Rolihlahla became a ward of Jongintaba at the Great Place in Mqhekezweni1.

     Hearing the elders’ stories of his ancestors’ valour during the wars of resistance, he dreamed also of making his own contribution to the freedom struggle of his people

     https://www.nelsonmandela.org/content/page/biography

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RUNAWAY SLAVES IN BRITAIN

Academics at the University of Glasgow today (1 June 2018) launched a new digital database of fugitive slave adverts from 18th century UK newspapers. 

The database is a result of the Runaway Slaves in Britain project and reveals hundreds of stories of enslaved and bound people who had escaped their captivity. 

More than 800 advertisements from 18th century newspapers were placed by masters and owners offering rewards to anyone who captured and returned the runaways. 

They represent a far larger number of enslaved and bound people, as many masters did not place newspaper advertisements, and a great many slaves and bound servants do not appear to have tried to escape. 

Most runaways were of African descent, though a small number were from the Indian sub-continent and a very few were Indigenous Americans....

https://www.gla.ac.uk/news/headline_587451_en.html

BLACKCHICKROCKED.BLOGSPOT.COM 

BOERING WHITES TO SEEK TRUMPS HELP EMIGRATING TO THE U.S.

Cackling And Feeling Rebloggy
From Early March 2017

More than 12,000 people have signed a petition asking President Donald Trump to let white people in South Africa emigrate to the U.S. amid a vote by the country's parliament favoring a motion that could see South Africa's constitution amended to allow for land to be stripped from owners without any compensation. 

The motion.... has once again stoked fears among the country's white farmers of a violent and disastrous land redistribution akin to that which crippled Zimbabwe in the 2000s

~NEWSWEEK 

http://www.newsweek.com/thousands-sign-petition-asking-trump-allow-white-people-south-africa-migrate-826126

WAIT!!!

ZIMBABWE'S LAND REDISTRIBUTION WAS DISASTROUS FOR WHO, NOW?  🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣 

headline

Land reform is a Zimbabwe success story – it will be the basis for economic recovery under Mnangagwa

https://theconversation.com/land-reform-is-a-zimbabwe-success-story-it-will-be-the-basis-for-economic-recovery-under-mnangagwa-88205


In other words, Black South Africans are mimicking your local bartender saying, You do not have to go home but you do have to GTFOH 😂😂😂





A

And Black Americans are like, Oh hell naaaw. We do not need anymore coloniza's up in here. Thank you for offering. You do have to go home after all.

BWAAAAA HA HA HA 

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EPSY CAMPBELL BARR IS COSTA RICA'S FIRST BLACK VICE PRESIDENT

Feeling Rebloggy

Born in San Jose, Campbell Barr is a third generation Costa Rican of Jamaican descent, she is named in honor of her paternal grandmother who emigrated to Costa Rica from Jamaica. 

Campbell Barr follows in the footsteps of Costa Rica's former high-standing political officials including Thelma Curling, the first Afro-Costa Rican legislator, Victoria Garron the first vice-president and Laura Chinchilla the country's first female president. 

The vice president-elect has made it a point to highlight the role of women in fostering growth Costa Rica. Ahead of her win, Campbell Barr gave an address, urging her fellow citizens to support equality and inclusion. "I want to invite you to vote on April 1 to build an inclusive, transparent Costa Rica, a Costa Rica for all people, it is for us, it is for Costa Rica."

~OKAY AFRICA

http://www.okayafrica.com/costa-rica-just-elected-its-first-black-female-vice-president/ 

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IS MEGHAN MARKLE ANYTHING TO WRITE BLACK HOME ABOUT?

Meghan Markle, an actress on the television show SUITS, got engaged to Prince Harry of England this week. There's been a lot of discussion of whether or not Black Americans have anything to celebrate. 

The black discussions being had about Markle seem remarkably like the discussions had about Tiger Woods at the beginning of his career. 

It went like this:

• He's a golf success story
• Blacks don't have a superstar golfer
• We want him
• Therefore, he's black

Unfortunately, it doesn't work that way. 

Tiger Woods was crystal clear when he spoke to Oprah on national television and said it makes him uncomfortable when people call him "African American" 

And he did not mean he preferred "Black American," "Black" or...or...or... He was saying he prefers -- in so many words-- to be identified with the group called "mixed race" or "bi-racial."    

And it was not surprising when he found ways to say he is racially "colorblind" which made him a hero to white folks everywhere...who were still on the "I don't see race" crap as a way of declaring racism would just go away if you just stop talking about it.  

Yet, it was downright predictable that he'd marry a blond white woman (despite his being able to see skin color) 

I would have laughed my butt clean off when Tiger was caught cheating on his white wife with nearly two dozen cheesy-looking white women -- while being unable to see color-- but I was pretty sure every-white-body who loved him said to themselves, "Damn, I guess he's black after all."

 Woods' calling himself cablinasian was a joke. But the message connected to the joke was: I am mixed race.

And I was fine with that --eventually. (I'd already been cheering for him as  black golfer when I found out he wasn't black) 

So here we are again. 

• Markle is a successful actress 
• She's marrying a prince
• We want her
• Therefore she's black

Markle has very clearly identified herself as "mixed race" and her mother as different/"black" when giving interviews. 

Furthermore those who are confused because they either believe in the one-drop rule or think it's possible to NOT respect somebody else's choices in the name of defending their blackness should read what Barack Obama and Halle Berry have said about being black and their decision to "identify" as "black" because this ain't that.

My teacher told me to check the box for Caucasian. 'Because that's how you look, Meghan,' she said. I put down my pen. Not as an act of defiance, but rather a symptom of my confusion. I couldn't bring myself to do that, to picture the pit-in-her-belly sadness my mother would feel if she were to find out. So, I didn't tick a box. I left my identity blank – a question mark, an absolute incomplete – much like how I felt.

When I went home that night, I told my dad what had happened. He said the words that have always stayed with me: 'If that happens again, you draw your own box.' 

This ain't that.

LET US REVIEW

• President Obama is black because he said he is 
• Halle is black because she said she is.
• Meghan Markle and Tiger Woods are not black because they said they aren't OR they said they are all things mixed together -- as in "I am mixed-race"
• I got 20 mulattos in my family tree and I AM BLACK

Markle is a mixed raced or bi-racial woman. That's fine. 

She's not black. That's fine.  

Race is a social construct and Markle knows how she has been socially constructed. And she has not been socially constructed as "black" but "mixed race." That's fine.  

I don't question any of her choices.

And after reading the article below, I once again feel truly sorry for light-skinned little girls who have had to try so hard to figure out where they fit in.

But making an end around to deny her light privilege is NOT fine.

"This is precisely why Suits stole my heart. It's the Goldilocks of my acting career – where finally I was just right. The series was initially conceived as a dramedy about a NY law firm flanked by two partners, one of whom navigates this glitzy world with his fraudulent degree.  

Enter Rachel Zane, one of the female leads and the dream girl – beautiful and confident with an encyclopedic knowledge of the law. 'Dream girl' in Hollywood terms had always been that quintessential blonde-haired, blue-eyed beauty – that was the face that launched a thousand ships, not the mixed one. But the show's producers weren't looking for someone mixed, nor someone white or black for that matter. They were simply looking for Rachel. In making a choice like that, the Suits producers helped shift the way pop culture defines beauty.

http://www.elleuk.com/life-and-culture/news/a26855/more-than-an-other/ 

The shift she's talking about did not take place when she was hired on SUITS or a few years before SUITS. The shift she's talking about where Hollywood hires almost-white looking actresses instead of the usual blond, blue-eyed white girl took place decades ago. 

She's pretending her getting that role was more than just her personal gain, that her getting that role on SUITS broke a glass ceiling for women of color when...

Halle Berry, 
Vanessa Williams 
Rosario Dawson 
Thandie Newton
Gina Torres 
Zoe Saldana 
Gugu Mbatha Raw
Paula Patton 

....and dozens of other light-skinned actress have ALL already been there and done that. 
Literally dozens of light-skinned and/or mixed race actresses --some of whom DO identify as "black" -- have gotten roles that didn't necessarily specifically call for woman of color.

Her ignoring of all the light skinned women that came before her winds up being a  method of firmly denying her light privilege.

This pretense that other light-skinned, mixed race actresses weren't cast in exactly the same way she was cast in SUITS allows her to deny that she is number 30 or 40, at the end of a list of light-skinned, mixed-looking female actress that got roles because they were pale.

That is, she may have had a hard time getting roles compared to Becky, exactly as she's stated. But her paleness made her 1000 times more likely to get the role of RACHAL ZANE in SUITS over darker-skinned women. 

I'm not going to celebrate anyone who refuses to discuss -- at length-- their light privilege.

And when I say "at length" I mean there needs to be the same number of paragraphs per article to discuss her privilege as there were to discuss the pain of not fitting in.

Furthermore, there needs to be follow up that discusses how a light-skinned person is going to use her light privilege to benefit those who are darker, those who's social construct is "Black" or "Black American" or darker mixed-race people.

But I don't see that happening. I've read one statement attributed to her that seems to be a Tiger-Woodsy "I'm colorblind" statement, which most sociologists have identified as a form of [white] racism.

Besides, the pain of not fitting in should NOT be on the forefront of a grown ass woman's mind, not even as a mixed-race, half-black woman in a white supremacy rife world. 

I hope I'm wrong about what I see so far. But I don't think I am. 

Public persons who identify as black or mixed race who want to make sure other people of color feel represented have a way of communicating that. President Obama has done it. Halle Berry has done it. A number of mixed race actresses have done it.  Not only has Markle failed to communicate anything of the sort, she is marrying somebody who had to be told his wearing a Hitler costume for Halloween is an ethnoracist maneuver. 

I'd like to hope anybody could learn and become better over 12 years (when that Nazi costume incident took place) But his ability to do this at all after the age of 5 speaks to how he was or wasn't raised. I see this Nazi costume as socially constructed white supremacy at it's whitest. 

...which can't be a surprise to anyone. Britain has made a career of trampling anybody not-white for centuries.

Apology or no apology for the Nazi costume, no matter how long ago this happened, this makes him a frightening prospect as a husband for a "woke" woman of color, which she probably isn't.

In fact, I'm just hoping she's not a white supremacy enabler at this point.

I hope the both of them turn out to be more racially conscious than they appear so far because the content of the tweet actually worries me.

I actually worry about light privileged joining the white privileged to become a new oppressor group. The level of denial is the same. And white racists are going to give  up trying to go it alone eventually as they become outnumbered.

Large numbers of light-privilege deny-ers will be seen as natural allies to white supremacists...eventually. (It's already begun).  

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