Posts tagged: blackness
- Oppression renames its victims
- Oppression renames its victims, brands them as a farmer brands his cattle with a common signature. It always aims to subvert the individual spirit and the humanity of the victim; and the victim will more or less struggle to remove oppression and be free. Nigerian author Chinua Achebe in his essay “Spelling Our Proper Name,” in [...] [23 Feb 2010]
- On black folks and the movie “Precious”
- From the Los Angeles Times piece Black viewers are divided on film’s ‘Precious’-ness by Erin Aubry Kaplan. Verdicts about high-pitched movies from black viewers and public figures are usually swift and decisive — “Do the Right Thing,” “The Color Purple,” and the recent Robert Downey Jr. performance in “Tropic Thunder” come to mind. But that’s not [...] [30 Nov 2009]
- Thoughts on Barack Obama and Choosing Blackness
- I use “black” and refer to blackness and black culture in a variety of ways in this post. In some contexts, I mean “descended from Africans and living in the United States.” In others I mean “descended from Africans enslaved in the United States.” I tried to be clear, but sometimes that just isn’t enough. [...] [8 Jan 2009]