34 EXCUSES

34 EXCUSES...

“1. I’m lonely so I do lonely things
2. Loving you was like going to war; I never came back the same.
3. You hate women, just like your father and his father, so it runs in your blood.
4. I was wandering the derelict car park of your heart looking for a ride home.
5. You’re a ghost town I’m too patriotic to leave.
6. I stay because you’re the beginning of the dream I want to remember.
7. I didn’t call him back because he likes his girls voiceless.
8. It’s not that he wants to be a liar; it’s just that he doesn’t know the truth.
9. I couldn’t love you, you were a small war.
10. We covered the smell of loss with jokes.
11. I didn’t want to fail at love like our parents.
12. You made the nomad in me build a house and stay.
13. I’m not a dog.
14. We were trying to prove our blood wrong.
15. I was still lonely so I did even lonelier things.
16. Yes, I’m insecure, but so was my mother and her mother.
17. No, he loves me he just makes me cry a lot.
18. He knows all of my secrets and still wants to kiss me.
19. You were too cruel to love for a long time.
20. It just didn’t work out.
21. My dad walked out one afternoon and never came back.
22. I can’t sleep because I can still taste him in my mouth.
23. I cut him out at the root, he was my favorite tree, rotting, threatening the foundations of my home.
24. The women in my family die waiting.
25. Because I didn’t want to die waiting for you.
26. I had to leave, I felt lonely when he held me.
27. You’re the song I rewind until I know all the words and I feel sick.
28. He sent me a text that said “I love you so bad.”
29. His heart wasn’t as beautiful as his smile
30. We emotionally manipulated one another until we thought it was love.
31. Forgive me, I was lonely so I chose you.
32. I’m a lover without a lover.
33. I’m lovely and lonely.
34. I belong deeply to myself .”

― Warsan Shire

34 excuses for why we failed at love

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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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PAUL MANAFORT'S FOURTH CHOICE

from 
THE DAILY BEAST

"Paul Manafort, the former campaign chairman for President Donald Trump, was convicted of eight counts of tax fraud and bank fraud by a federal jury in Virginia earlier Tuesday. 

But it’s far from over for Manafort.

Manafort’s Choices: Work With Mueller, [HOPE LIKE HELL] for Trump Pardon, or Die in Prison

Unlike a typical defendant, Manafort still has several options available to him. His next move, and Trump’s response to it, could have explosive impact on the larger special counsel investigation and on the future of Trump’s presidency. 

Next up for Manafort is sentencing. While all eight counts of conviction combined carry a maximum of 80 years in prison, he isn’t going to be locked up until 2098. Federal sentences are determined in part through a calculation based on the defendant’s prior criminal history (for Manafort, none) and the seriousness of the offense (for Manafort, very). 

... All things considered, Manafort likely faces a sentence of around eight to twelve years in prison. For a 69-year-old man, that could mean life behind bars...

Read More: https://www.thedailybeast.com/manaforts-choices-work-with-mueller-wish-for-trump-pardon-or-die-in-prison

I've been dancing in the streets the last couple of days, especially after former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen said he's going to cooperate with Mueller.

But these rich white boys are not fools. We all know they mostly stick together.  And I'll bet you a million doughnuts Manafort's  financial behavior is standard in the circles he runs in.

...which might include some of judge's running buddies depending on how much money he earns per year.

Reading between the lines of news stories here, there, and everywhere over the last couple of weeks, the judge in Manafort's case was either trying extra hard to make sure the prosecution's case was solid OR he was trying to trip the prosecution up; he made that many calls against the prosecution during the trial.  

So, I say the forth choice Manafort has is a hail mary from the judge himself because, in my opinion, Paul Manafort should be visualized as a white cop on this occassion.

That is, the judge could very well say, "Yeah, the jury found you guilty. But... well.... everybody does what you do. And this was a political witch hunt aimed at Orange Voldemort anyway. You just got caught up in it.  So I'm going to give you 8 months in Club Fed " 

...a prison which may have cells fancier than half of all eighteen year olds' apartments.

However, I'm still dancing in the streets. And I'll stay until the party is over. But I'll be kinda surprised if Manafort goes to jail for a whole 3 years, much less the rest of his entitled life.  

By the way, a pardon from Trump is not out of the question. 

Trump has proven beyond a doubt that all but 10 out of the 532 congress people in Washington to represent us are toothless cowards. He can do whatever the hell he wants until the Senate and House Of Representatives is dominated by the democrats. 

And if Pelosi-The-Spineless-Whisperer and Whiny Grandpa Schumer are still running thangs --if by some miracle the House AND THE SENATE do change hands in November--  Apricot @$$wipe might STILL be able to do whatever the hell he wants.

I'm still dancing though. 

Manafort and Dayglo Orange Dumb@$$ are going to be sweating and hyperventilating until after sentencing is done.   And Cohen, Omarosa, and Mueller could wind up carpet bombing Chump and Manafort with new and ugly revelations for days, maybe even weeks. 

SOOO...

Here's to hoping Manafort panics and runs into Mueller's arms, starts whispering everything Mueller wants to hear, and gets that impeachment rolling for real.
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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 

OCTAVIA SPENCER & LeBRON JAMES LAND CJ WALKER MINI-SERIES AT NETFLIX

feeling rebloggy

It’s official: Octavia Spencer and LeBron James’ limited series about entrepreneur Madam C.J. Walkerhas landed at Netflix...

The project is executive produced by Spencer and James. Spencer will star in the eight-episode series, which is based on the book “On Our Own Ground” by A’Lelia Bundles, Walker’s great-great-granddaughter, who will also serve as a consultant.

http://jacksonvillefreepress.com/madame-cj-walker-series-headed-to-netflix-courtesy-of-olivia-and-lebron/ 

SHE WAS MORE THAN JUST A BUSINESS WOMAN.  MUCH MORE! CHECK OUT THE MINI-BIO ON MADAM CJ WALKER HERE:

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MADAM C J WALKER AS FEMINIST, A BIOGRAPHY

Life was hard on Sarah Breedlove from an early age. Her parents died when she was a child. She wound up marrying when she was still young. That husband wound up dying by the time she was 20.

When Sarah Breedlove took her children and moved to St. Louis Missouri, the middle class women in the church she attended helped her to see herself as more than a washer woman. She learned philanthropy and entrepreneurship, both, from these church women. And she started her first charity drive at this black church

When a scalp condition caused her to lose her hair she became ashamed of her appearance.

She started her hair company by finding a solution for her own scalp condition. Later, when asked how she started her hair care business she would say that she prayed for a solution and a big African man appeared to her in a dream. She wound up ordering ingredients from Africa and used them to create a a shampoo and an ointment. With her own scalp healed and her hair began growing as it never had before she became a walking advertisement for product she was making in her own home.

Eventually she was selling her product door to door.

In 1906 she married Charles Joseph Walker and Ms. C J Walker was born. Mr. Walker would help her with advertising the business. They would travel door to door together, selling her products and demonstrating the products. They would eventually divorce when Madam Walker wanted to expand the business and Mr. Walker did not.

Madam Walker would eventually open a beauty school and then a factory. She hired black women to be "Walker Agents." Forty to fifty years after slavery, there were few job opportunities for black women other than that of domestic, with a few lucky women able to become teachers and nurses. But thousands of black women gained economic independence working for Madam C J Walker.

As her company grew, she encouraged the black women that worked for her to stand for racial equality and the equality of women.  She wanted her Walker Agents to show themselves not just as professionals but as people who give back to the community. During her 1917 Convention for Walker Agents, Madam Walker gave prizes to women that sold the most product and got the most clients but also to women who gave the most to charity.

At their Beauty Salons the walker agents would talk to clients about what black women could do to help their churches, their schools in their communities. (I'm reading a book right now that talks black women like these making the black church strong enough, connected to one another enough to make it good base for The Modern Civil Rights Movement a few decades later)

By 1910 The Walker Company had employed some 5000 black female agents around the world, and averaged revenues of about $1000 dollars a day, seven days a week...Upon her death in 1919, her will stipulated that two-thirds of her fortune go to various charities and that her company always be controlled by a woman

~When and Where I Enter: The Impact of Black Women on Race and Sex in America

Activist within The Black Women's Club Movement, Madam Walker was also a part of black suffrage and also anti-lynching movements. She was a signer on the letter to President Woodrow Wilson, demanding that he make lynching a federal crime. She seems to have counted Ida B Wells, the original anti-lynching activist, as a friend and also contributed money to the one of the organization's Wells helped found, the NAACP anti-lynching campaign.

She became famous nationwide when she contributed $1000 to the building fund of a YMCA for young black boys.  And it sounds like she may have built something in Indianapolis that sounds like one of the first malls, the Madam Walker Theater Center....

Madam C. J. Walker

Naturalista

Employer Of Black Women

Philanthropist

Political Activist

First Woman in the United States, of any color, to become a self-made millionaire  

Sources: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H4pawZJg7oA

http://www.biography.com/people/madam-cj-walker-9522174

Walker told her friend Ida B. Wells, the journalist and anti-lynching activist,
 that after working so hard all her life
— first as a farm laborer, then as a maid and a cook,
and finally as the founder of an international hair care enterprise
— she wanted a place to relax and garden and entertain her friends.

She also wanted to make a statement,
so it was no accident that she purchased four and a half acres in Irvington-on-Hudson, New York,
not far from Jay Gould’s Lyndhurst and John D. Rockefeller’s Kykuit
amidst America’s wealthiest families.
.
She directed....the architect
— to position the 34-room mansion close to the village’s main thoroughfare
so it was easily visible by travelers en route from Manhattan to Albany...
.
[H]er new [white] neighbors were “puzzled” and “gasped in astonishment”
when they learned that a black woman was the owner.
“Impossible!” they exclaimed. “No woman of her race could afford such a place.”

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/national-trust-for-historic-preservation/do-big-things-madam-cj-wa_b_6029236.html

a

ANNIE TURNBO MALONE

MALONE STARTED BY FOCUSING ON HEALTHY HAIR


BUT WITH THE HELP OF AN AUNT SHE WOULD  CREATE CHEMICAL STRAIGHTENERS FOR BLACK HAIR

While experimenting with hair and different hair care products, she developed and manufactured her own line of non-damaging hair straighteners, special oils, and hair-stimulant products for African-American women.[4] She named her new product “Wonderful Hair Grower”[5] To promote her new product, Turnbo sold the Wonderful Hair Grower in bottles from door-to-door.[5] She began to revolutionize hair care methods for all African Americans....

One of her selling agents, Sarah Breedlove (who became known as Madam C. J. Walker when she set up her own business), encouraged Turnbo to copyright her products under the name "Poro" because of what she called fraudulent imitations and to discourage counterfeit versions.

 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annie_Malone

http://thevillagecelebration.com/survivors-and-innovators-the-shared-legacy-of-annie-malone-and-madam-c-j-walker-2/

Malone's business thrived until she wound up in a battle for control of her business with her second husband, Aaron Eugene Malone. She'd left some of the day to day affairs in his hands as manager. And he eventually claimed he was responsible for 1/2 of the success of the business.  She suffered another blow when a former employee also sued her, claiming credit for Annie Malone's success. This lawsuit forced her to sell property in order to pay the settlement. Eventually, the government would come after for back taxes.

http://www.encyclopedia.com/topic/Annie_Turnbo_Malone.aspx

* * * * * 

Like "Thomas Edison's" light bulb, the relaxer probably had multiple simultaneous inventors in multiple places around the world that didn't know about each other. So we may never be absolutely sure who invented it first. But it wasn't Madam C J Walker.

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IF YOU'RE FEELING CONFLICTED ABOUT OMAROSA, IT'S OKAY

Feeling Rebloggy

J BERNARD JONES SAID...
It's entirely fine if you have conflicted feelings about Omarosa.

No, she doesn't deserve a single shred of sympathy. She not only deserves all the scorn heaped on her, but her cookout invite should be thrown in the fire and not held in reserve.

However, it is possible to admire Omarosa in an At-Least-Moussolini-Ran-The-Trains-On-Time way.

Omarosa has a ruthless Machiavellian skill in handling every situation: extraordinary poise, directness, the eerie controlling calm that so many passive aggressive white people use against people of color ("calm down," "you're getting emotional," "this is how this is going to go", etc.).

As a person of color, she's playing the game every white shift manager, mid-level manager, VP of human resources and CEO uses to run a conversation, to control a topic, to set their own agenda. She's a black woman who can out-white white women, too: she's no stranger to deploying "white tears" when the situation calls for it.

You can admire all of that, you can even cheer her on for turning the tables on Herr Führer Trump and you can do that without having a single shred of sympathy for Omarose Onee Manigault Newman.
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ARETHA FRANKLIN SINGS FOR THE OBAMAS AT THE KENNEDY CENTER HONORS

ARETHA FRANKLIN
 SINGS

NATURAL WOMAN

2015 KENNEDY CENTER HONORS

The Obamas’ Aretha Franklin tribute is an elegant reminder of how she united us

https://www.vox.com/2018/8/16/17698898/the-obamas-remember-aretha-franklin

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REST IN POWER ARETHA FRANKLIN, QUEEN OF SOCIAL JUSTICE

Feeling Rebloggy

Aretha Franklin, who died Thursday at the age of 76 in her home in Detroit, was known for her unbelievable musical talent and majestic career, but the Queen of Soul was also a longtime warrior in the fight for social justice.

A close friend of the Rev. Jesse Jackson, who visited her in her final days, Franklin was a vocal supporter of civil rights movements, often performing at benefits and encouraging voter registration. But her private and church-based work—including stepping in to financially support Martin Luther King Jr.’s movement, the families of incarcerated people, and black activist ministers—was largely under the radar, Jackson told the Detroit Free Press recently. That’s part of why she was a fitting choice to sing at the inauguration of America’s first black president, Barack Obama, where she regaled the crowd with an emotion-filled rendition of “My Country Tis of Thee”....

~QUARTZ

Read More/ Hear More: https://qz.com/quartzy/1356841/when-aretha-franklin-offered-to-post-bail-for-angela-davis/

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REST IN POWER QUEEN OF SOUL ARETHA FRANKLIN

Feeling Rebloggy
From February 14, 2017

On this day 50 years ago, a little-known gospel singer from Detroit went into a New York City recording studio to try to jump-start her career. No one saw it coming, but the song Aretha Franklin laid down on Valentine's Day 1967 would go on to become one of the greatest recordings of all time.

"Respect" hit the top of the charts four months later and turned Aretha Franklin into a feminist champion. The track was actually a clever gender-bending of a song by Otis Redding, whose original reinforced the traditional family structure of the time: Man works all day, brings money home to wife and demands her respect in return.

Franklin's version blew that structure to bits.

For one, Redding's song doesn't spell out "R-E-S-P-E-C-T" like Franklin's does. It also doesn't have the backup singers and their clever interplay. So much of what made "Respect" a hit — and an anthem — came from Franklin's rearrangement. She remembered how it all came together when she spoke with WHYY's Fresh Air in 1999...

https://www.npr.org/2017/02/14/515183747/respect-wasnt-a-feminist-anthem-until-aretha-franklin-made-it-one