From One Survivor to Another

Fucking Black History Month.

wretchedoftheearth:

siddharthasmama:

sapphrikah:

I hate that shit. Hate it.

First of all, I don’t want any boobie consolation facts about who invented listerine strips, the stoplight, air conditioning, or ice cream.

TELL ME ABOUT THE AMOUNT OF COWRIE SHELLS MY BODY WAS WORTH IN THE TRADE.

Tell me about how I very well may have literally be BRANDED into Christianity the moment they would’ve started to wash my African history from my mind and called me a slave.

Tell me about how and why minstrel shows came about.

Tell me that Catch a Tiger by the Toe used to be about a Nigger.

Tell me how many of us were taken from west Africa.

Tell me about Jim Crow (in depth) and Black Codes, income inequality that still exists today that keeps just just as Jim Crow-ed now as we were then.

Tell me even about how our music was stolen, how were started Rock music, how we gets no credit for that.

Stop glossing over our history with these tired as 1-fact-a-day ass school announcements.

And THEN tell my ass why we don’t just teach our actual history in the public school curriculum EVERY DAMN DAY like we’re not sitting next you your white asses learning about you in ever medium possible EVERY DAMN DAY.

YESSSSSSS.

I’m always surprised at what a good job my school district did at teaching at least some of this (and outside of black history month). We learned about racist undertones and history of literature in English classes, the history and origin of music genres in music class, Jim Crow and post-reconstruction codes. My school district was predominantly white and Asian too, so I don’t see why there can’t be a more streamlined way to get this to happen. It infuriates me when I meet people at school (and even my own boyfriend) who know nothing about black history. And the fact that most people had to go out of their fucking way to learn basic history. It’s also not hard to integrate black history into history as a whole. It’s a pretty big part of history that should pop up a lot in a normal history class if the curriculum wasn’t designed by or taught by racists.

Tell me about how Black women dealt with systematic rape and cocercion. I did not learn that until COLLEGE. Like in public school we’d talk about how the children were sold and families were split up…but we never once looked at the racial dynamics of rape and mixing. We never talked about how Black women would often abort or kill their own children to save them. Things like that.

Little Known Black History Fact (No. 72)

torayot:

talldarkbishoujo:

smallrevolutionary:

thisisblackwomen:

afro-art-chick:

Queen Sophia Charlotte was queen consort of the United Kingdom and wife to King George III of Britain. She is a direct descendant of the Sousa family, a black branch of the Portuguese Royal House. Her appearance was black, with full lips and distinct facial features. Artists of the 18th century were asked to tone down “extreme” features of their subjects, but Sir Allan Ramsay, an anti-slavery artist, always painted Queen Charlotte in her actual appearance.

white washing…. it aint nothin new.

not new at all.

More here: Was This Britain’s First Black Queen? and Blurred Racial Lines of Famous Families (ick for use of word ‘Negroid’ - like…really? Even though the article is generally positive about the whole idea? er…)

I should note that I am not black and I would never presume to speak for black people’s experiences and their history. I hope to only open conversations in a positive way.

You can really see white feathers being ruffled, like, ‘how DARE you say that a member of a predominantly white western European family might have been black! I AM CLUTCHING MY CRAVAT, SIR.’ Like, a flat-out refusal to even engage with the question in any positive way. Their genteel, avoidant squeamishness around admitting that there might be biases in place makes me want to spit in their eye.

Maybe it’s because I hold the illusion that I am a bit of a historian, but my particular approach is to be open minded and curious about these things. What harm does it do to seriously consider the idea that prominent people in society might have been a person of colour? Let’s look at the history. Let’s look at all the sources. Let’s be historians.

Let’s consider contemporary attitudes towards race. In the C18th, ideas of race aren’t quite as we know them now. To lift a passage from one of my postcoloniality essays:

…. the ways in which we have thought of the human body and subsequently racially mark and differentiate these bodies have changed over time. It is thusly important to situate the skin in the appropriate context: in the eighteenth century, skin colour was not always the primary marker of difference.  How the body was thought to be affected by climate, commerce and how it was clothed (or, indeed, lacked clothing) were also ways of distinguishing different groups of people.

A definite sense of what was ideal was, therefore, established in eighteenth-century Europe. It was not quite yet the science of eugenics – Europeans still lacked the knowledge and vocabulary of genetics  but they were, as discussed, very concerned with character and country. According to the art historian and archaeologist Johann Winckelmann, clement weather was more likely to produce beautiful and civilised people.  An avid Hellenist, it is unsurprising that Winckelmann was particularly delighted by the harmonious features and behaviour of Greek people.  This was unfavourably contrasted by the characteristics of people from hotter climes: people from Africa were, in Winckelmann’s opinion, comparable to monkeys.  Their hot continent and apparently resultant combination of human and animal characteristics disqualified African (and many other) people from the Greek ideal of beauty and, by conflation, an European ideal of beauty.  Their status as slaves would also permanently exclude them from being included in the ideals even if they attempted to change their complexions by remaining in more temperate environments.

…

These conditions of beauty, Kay Dian Kriz notes, formed the basis of an exclusive and Eurocentric history of art which leaves the excluded with a negatively-charged, bestial aesthetic standard. This did not mean that white European people found black people to be entirely unattractive, per se, but their status apparently cancelled out the reverence and respect afforded by conforming to normative, Eurocentric ideals. Within the parameters of the brutal standard handed to them, the desire for the bodies of black people – of both women and men – were portrayed in a highly dehumanising manner that robs the subject of agency and is purely for the delectation of the white European spectator.

So… what do you do if you have a black branch of a European royal family? What do you do with people of mixed Black heritage? [for interest—see: mulâtresse represented by Agostino Bunias + ‘Sugar, Slavery, Refinement’ by Kay Dian Kriz]? What if these categories overlap? How do you react do them, how do you represent them? It’s complicated. Obviously. So far, the general approach seems to be some form of aggression towards black people’s backgrounds, from whitewashing to straight-up excoriation.

I think it is important to consider why there is a lack of racialised caricatures of Charlotte Mecklenberg-Strelitz—and also why we expect that there should be caricatures of her in that way. I mean, just because they are not extant doesn’t mean they were never made in any form - a contemporary account of her appearance unfavourably said she had a ‘true mulatto face’. It’s important to consider C18th categorisations of race, compare contemporary visual/textual accounts of her appearance and heritage, think about racialised physiognomy, and think carefully about what it means today. I think that is more productive than just outright dismissing the idea as “offensive” and defending precious whiteness.

(Source: blackamericaweb.com)

baddominicana:

“To My Old Master”

liquornspice:

sourcedumal:

This letter is one of THE BEST THINGS I HAVE EVER READ!

This is the response letter to a white man asking his former slave to return and work for him….

Dayton, Ohio,

August 7, 1865

To My Old Master, Colonel P.H. Anderson, Big Spring, Tennessee

Sir: I got your letter, and was glad to find that you had not forgotten Jourdon, and that you wanted me to come back and live with you again, promising to do better for me than anybody else can. I have often felt uneasy about you. I thought the Yankees would have hung you long before this, for harboring Rebs they found at your house. I suppose they never heard about your going to Colonel Martin’s to kill the Union soldier that was left by his company in their stable. Although you shot at me twice before I left you, I did not want to hear of your being hurt, and am glad you are still living. It would do me good to go back to the dear old home again, and see Miss Mary and Miss Martha and Allen, Esther, Green, and Lee. Give my love to them all, and tell them I hope we will meet in the better world, if not in this. I would have gone back to see you all when I was working in the Nashville Hospital, but one of the neighbors told me that Henry intended to shoot me if he ever got a chance.

I want to know particularly what the good chance is you propose to give me. I am doing tolerably well here. I get twenty-five dollars a month, with victuals and clothing; have a comfortable home for Mandy,—the folks call her Mrs. Anderson,—and the children—Milly, Jane, and Grundy—go to school and are learning well. The teacher says Grundy has a head for a preacher. They go to Sunday school, and Mandy and me attend church regularly. We are kindly treated. Sometimes we overhear others saying, “Them colored people were slaves” down in Tennessee. The children feel hurt when they hear such remarks; but I tell them it was no disgrace in Tennessee to belong to Colonel Anderson. Many darkeys would have been proud, as I used to be, to call you master. Now if you will write and say what wages you will give me, I will be better able to decide whether it would be to my advantage to move back again.

As to my freedom, which you say I can have, there is nothing to be gained on that score, as I got my free papers in 1864 from the Provost-Marshal-General of the Department of Nashville. Mandy says she would be afraid to go back without some proof that you were disposed to treat us justly and kindly; and we have concluded to test your sincerity by asking you to send us our wages for the time we served you. This will make us forget and forgive old scores, and rely on your justice and friendship in the future. I served you faithfully for thirty-two years, and Mandy twenty years. At twenty-five dollars a month for me, and two dollars a week for Mandy, our earnings would amount to eleven thousand six hundred and eighty dollars. Add to this the interest for the time our wages have been kept back, and deduct what you paid for our clothing, and three doctor’s visits to me, and pulling a tooth for Mandy, and the balance will show what we are in justice entitled to. Please send the money by Adams’s Express, in care of V. Winters, Esq., Dayton, Ohio. If you fail to pay us for faithful labors in the past, we can have little faith in your promises in the future. We trust the good Maker has opened your eyes to the wrongs which you and your fathers have done to me and my fathers, in making us toil for you for generations without recompense. Here I draw my wages every Saturday night; but in Tennessee there was never any pay-day for the negroes any more than for the horses and cows. Surely there will be a day of reckoning for those who defraud the laborer of his hire.

In answering this letter, please state if there would be any safety for my Milly and Jane, who are now grown up, and both good-looking girls. You know how it was with poor Matilda and Catherine. I would rather stay here and starve—and die, if it come to that—than have my girls brought to shame by the violence and wickedness of their young masters. You will also please state if there has been any schools opened for the colored children in your neighborhood. The great desire of my life now is to give my children an education, and have them form virtuous habits.

Say howdy to George Carter, and thank him for taking the pistol from you when you were shooting at me.

From your old servant,

Jourdon Anderson.

CLOWNIN YO ASS IS PART OF MY HERITAGE! I WILL SNARK TIL I DIE!