WHAT HISTORY HAS SHOWN ME

What history has shown me is that people rarely embrace someone else’s god(s) without being forced to. People usually stick to their own. If enslaved Africans hadn’t been threatened with violence, rape, and death they likely wouldn’t have embraced White Jesus. Just doesn’t happen.

I NOTICE

I keep noticing this tendency whereby patriarchal men imply that men who advocate for feminism wanna be women. Which they see as insulting. Conversely, they think that women who advocate for feminism want to be men. Which they also see as insulting. Which boils down to feminism being an insulting movement, because how dare we challenge patriarchy.

I USED TO

I used to hate myself for liking boys. I cried and cried. Prayed. And cried some more. Feelings wouldn’t budge though. Long story short. I made it. Homophobia couldn’t hold me down. I rather be a real gay man than a fake straight one. Can I get an amen?

 

MARGARET GARNER

When my Toni isn’t writing novels, she lends her considerable talents to writing librettos for operas. This opera is titled “Margaret Garner” based on the real-life slave woman who killed her daughter rather than allowing her to be taken back into slavery. Toni Morrison based her fictional novel, Beloved, on the life of Margaret Garner. Denyce Graves, a mezzo-soprano, sings lead. Enjoy. ♥

SINGLE MOMS

What single moms really represent is a threat to the patriarchal order. The idea of women free from male control, shaping the way that children view the world (potentially raising them out of patriarchal mentalities). It is usually for this reason that single mothers are so virulently attacked.

ARROGANCE

The universe has been around for billions of years. Humans have been around for a couple hundred thousand, at most. Yet we are so arrogant as to think that our stories about this vast system are greater than the actual system. The myths we create, the gods we imagine, the fables we tell; these things are not greater than the natural world. Why do we insist on privileging our supernatural claims over the natural world? People running around claiming the world is going to end? Are you serious? Our pathetic religious and theistic concepts are going to end a world that we’ve only spent a blip of time in? Our imagined god created a universe that was doing just fine for billions of years before we came around boasting about our prayers and chants and meditations? The arrogance of theism and the supernatural disgusts me.

LOVE BEYOND STEREOTYPES

Michelle took a chance on a man who worked under her, and Barack took a chance on a woman who was his senior. Let this be a lesson to those of you who subscribe to gender stereotypes. There’s nothing wrong with a woman earning more, being more educated, or being in a senior position over her boyfriend or husband. There’s nothing wrong with a man earning less, being less educated, or being in a lower position than than his girlfriend or wife. Don’t let gender stereotypes keep you away from a good person.

GUEST POST: “YOU BLACK AS SHIT!”

By: TheBlackGuyX

I was not always the conscious, freethinking Black man that I am today. For a long time, I was the exact opposite. I was ashamed of my dark skin and my facial features. My shame stemmed from being constantly teased in school. Classmates would tease me about my dark skin and facial features, saying, “Yooo, you Black as shit!”, “Ya ugly Black ass never gone get no girls!” and “Ill! You look like a monkey!” While in school, I sat and listened as the whole class laughed. I either laughed with them or cried. These experiences led to me being ashamed of the way that I looked. Along with other worries and thoughts I thought, “If everyone is laughing at my dark skin and facial features then there I must be ugly and my skin isn’t beautiful.” Ultimately, I went through life looking down on dark skin people. I loved light skin women (it was more like lust). I would look past dark skin girls/women, and stare at light skin girls/women. It even went as far as me thinking that dark skin girls were dirty and light skin girls were clean. When it came to sex, I would tell people that eating light skin pussy is heaven, that it tastes like peaches, strawberries and that the shit is good! I would say not to go near dark skin pussy, don’t even put your face near it. My disgust with dark sin girls stemmed from my being mocked about my dark skin, and I felt justified in having negative thoughts about dark skin women. I thought that no one could tell me differently.

I was never encouraged to think differently about my dark skin. My parents even subconsciously encouraged my negative thoughts about dark skin. My father jokingly–though I never took it as a joke– called me ugly from time-to-time, and my mother, because I had an under-bite, took me to a dental surgeon. I was afraid of getting the surgery, and I often expressed this to my mother, but she constantly tried to make me feel better by telling me, “It may hurt and your mouth will swell for around a month, but you’ll look a lot more handsome.” In the home I was raised in, saying no or having options was not a possibility, so at the end of my senior year of high school I had the surgery. Upon healing from the surgery, I was more confident. I liked looking in the mirror a lot more, and I smiled more. I began to look people in the eyes, more often, when they spoke to me. I was less ashamed, but I still didn’t like my dark skin.

I went through undergrad and half of grad school continuing to look down on dark skin until I had a long, heated debate with a loved one. This loved one taught me that my views on dark skin was hatred, self-hatred. After our conversations, I gradually became more conscious, and started to love myself as a dark skin Black man. I also began to appreciate other dark skin people.

Regardless of how I was influenced when I was younger, I am now ashamed of the person I used to be. It was disgusting. I will admit that I HATED dark-skinned people. Now I know that black beautiful and I am beautiful. My natural, nappy hair is beautiful, my dark skin is beautiful, and my Afrocentric facial features are beautiful.

Read more from TheBlackGuyX on his blog’s Facebook fan page.

 

NO FEMALE EQUIVALENT

In the Black community, there can be no female equivalent of the often heard expression “Light skin men gone out of style.” White supremacist notions of beauty and femininity have seeped too far into the Black community for us to ever be comfortable with saying that “Light skin women have gone out of style.” In the minds of many Blacks who have embraced white supremacist thinking, light skinned Black women represent both idealized beauty and femininity, and therefore are always “in style”. We may laugh and chuckle about light skinned men going out of style, but the true would never be allowed with women. We are much more comfortable with dark skinned men than we are with dark skinned women. A dark skinned man can be seen as macho, rugged, rough; all things affirming to his masculinity, and therefore appealing in the eyes of Black men and women. The dark skinned Black woman, however, is in a much more precarious position. How could the dark skinned Black woman ever be in style in a Black community that has internalized white supremacist notions of beauty? In the minds of white supremacist Blacks, her dark skin marks her as rough, rugged, unfeminine, and ugly. The intersection of white supremacy and patriarchy. Light skinned men may go out of style in the Black community, but the light skinned woman will always hold her position in a community that views her lighter skin as a marker of feminine beauty.

STEREOTYPES

It baffles me when people who challenge gender stereotypes complain about other people who challenge gender stereotypes. Example, men attracted to other men (defying gender stereotypes) get mad when some men arch their eyebrows (defying gender stereotypes). I don’t get it. It’s like people who take showers thinking they are better than people who take baths. You’re both in water!