Happy International Women’s Day! Or, not!

Today, March 8, is International Women’s Day. The day was first professed by the Socialist Party of America in 1909, the idea arising from women’s rights movements in industrializing nations around the turn of the last century. Its purpose is to celebrate the achievements of women throughout history, as well as engage in the ongoing struggle for gender equality.

March is also Women’s History Month. <-That is a website curated by the U.S. Library of Congress that showcases women’s battles and triumphs with interesting and informative stories, audio, video and still images.

If you are a dude and still reading this post: here, have a cookie. (I baked them myself.) That’s for seeing the word “women’s” and not immediately deciding to GTFO.

However, if you are a dude blogger, social media influencer, or a Big Willie with a platform of any kind? [Read more…]

It’s Day 24 of Black History Month and We Whites Are All Going to STFU and Listen.

URGENT REMINDER: The fundraiser for reopening the National Black Doll Museum ends February 28. If you are able to donate a few dollars please do, and please share the fundraiser link as widely as you can. Many thanks! ☮️ -Iris.

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Every once in a while, mainstream media gets something (sort of) right. For instance, at Today.com I found the inaccurately titled Nine inspiring Black American heroes you might not know about, but should. The phenomenon of erasure is a subject near and dear to my heart, and I’ve given my take on erasure in at least one post in this Black History Month series. Here is another, from the Today article:

Black history lessons in the month of February likely include the teachings of famous Black Americans like Martin Luther King Jr., Rosa Park [sic], and Jesse Owens. These pioneers have earned their pages in history textbooks, but why is so much Black history missing?

“The reason is simple,” Gerald Horne, Moores Professor of History and African American Studies at University of Houston told TODAY Parents. “Just look at the legislative backlash to Critical Race Theory or the Virginia gubernatorial race. Black history well taught leaves discomfort, which many would prefer to avoid.”

Personally, I prefer uncomfortable truths to comfortable fictions. Embracing the latter is not only foolish, but demonstrably dangerous.

But this post falls in neither camp; it celebrates historic accomplishments by Black people that we whites really should know about. (And if you’re into historic photos, its a little treasure trove.) As the good people at Color of Change helped to remind us yesterday, Black history IS American history.

Below are photos of Black historical figures I had never heard of until now, and short quotes from the Today article where you can go to learn more about them.

1. Harlem Hellfighters

Black & white photograph of over a dozen black men wearing double-breasted coats on a sailing ship, many of whom are smiling, upon the arrival of the famed 369th Black infantry regiment in New York after World War I.

The arrival of the famed 369th Black infantry regiment in New York after World War I. Celebrated in Europe, they faced discrimination at home.
(image: Bettmann Arc via Today)

[Read more…]

It’s Day 22 of Black History Month and We Whites Are All Going to STFU and Listen.

Today I turn this space over to my esteemed Freethought Blogs comrade Abe Drayton, who writes at Oceanoxia. Abe posted today about a Black history issue that is both important and urgent, and deserves the widest possible audience. It is posted here in its entirety, with Abe’s kind permission.

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Color photo of Black Barbie doll in embellished red dress.(image: National Black Doll Museum of History & Culture)

Tegan Tuesday: The National Black Doll Museum needs your help!

“The National Black Doll Museum has a three-fold mission: to nurture self-esteem, to promote cultural diversity, and to preserve the history of black dolls by educating the public on their significance.” – Mission statement of The National Black Doll Museum of History and Culture

 

I only recently learned about this interesting museum, The National Black Doll Museum, that used to be housed in Mansfield, MA. For all I lived in Massachusetts for 12 years, I rarely explored the many small and unusual museums in the area. The NBDMHC has a collection of over 7000 Black dolls, and the oldest dolls are from the late 18th century. This isn’t just about the past, however, as these dolls are equally loved and displayed with Black Panther action figures. Although many doll museums include Black dolls in their collections, prior to 2020, this museum was the only physical museum in the US dedicated to Black dolls specifically.

The museum got its start from the personal collection of the founder, Debra Britt, who used to take her private doll collection on tours to women’s shelters or community centers to share the history and communal heritage as the Doll E Daze Project. The museum, which is a 501(c) 3 non-profit, still supports this community outreach as well as a number of workshops and educational resources. The workshop on the Power of Play looks at the impact of Black dolls on the self-pride and explores the stories of Black activists post-Reconstruction through today; The workshop on African wrap dolls works to preserve this important cultural handcraft; and the museum offers support and assistance for geneology research as well. For a project focused around children’s toys, the staff involved have found ways to connect with many aspects of the Black community at all stages of life.

But, unfortunately for the project, 2020 was a difficult year for them, like so many others. With the lack of school engagements, workshops, or in-person celebrations, the museum lost their space in Mansfield due to lack of funding. However, all is not lost! Attleboro, MA has set aside land for cultural development and is interested in working with the National Black Doll Museum to relocate to the new area. But they need funding to do so. The current phase of fundraising has a goal of $100,000 and a deadline at the end of the month — February is Black History Month after all! So I hope that you, much like myself, find the concept exciting and the project worthwhile, and will help to make the new location a reality. Let’s let this understudied aspect of history have a chance to shine again!

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[Read more…]

It’s Day 21 of Black History Month and We Whites Are All Going to STFU and Listen.

Today we all get to STFU and maybe look a little more than listen. This post is about a piece of Black history being reclaimed and revived, and it is also about that revival being beautifully documented by photographer Justin Hardiman.

Okay, quick: what’s the first image that comes to your mind in response to the word cowboy?

For me, it’s some hybrid of Clint Eastwood in one of his Western films, sitting high on a horse with a squint and a snarl, and some white dudes with unkempt facial hair, iconic cowboy hats, and conspicuous holstered guns doing “cowboy things” (I guess?) like sitting around a campfire passing whiskey, riding horses to round up cattle, or small groups of these men on horseback traversing the mountains and deserts of the Western U.S.

For Black photographer Justin Hardiman, a “cowboy” looks a lot more like him.

Photo of Justin Hardiman, wearing white dress shirt, jeans, and tan leather lace-up shoes, seated, against a dark backdrop with large red lettering: "TEDx"Justin Hardiman
Photographer & Cowboy
(image via justinhardimanvisuals.com)

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It’s Day 17 of Black History Month and We Whites Are All Going to STFU and Listen.

At the intersection of patriarchy and anti-Black racism stands the Black woman. There’s even a word for it: misogynoir. And it’s a necessary word, too, because multiple axes of oppression (like misogyny and anti-Black racism) do not compound each other by simple addition. Instead, they contort and magnify each other in a way that is distinct, and it works a lot more like multiplication.

Can Black women experience anti-Black racism in the same way Black men do? YES.

Can Black women experience misogyny in the same way white women do? OF COURSE.

Can Black women experience bigotry and oppression that is unique to the wholeness of their identities as “Black women”? YESSSSS.

And add LGBTQ+, disabled, or any other axes of privilege/oppression and the harm and marginalization multiply. Again.

There are white feminist women being racists toward Black women in the feminist movement (a well-documented phenomenon since the earliest feminist organizing that unfortunately continues to this very day). And Black men being misogynistic and patriarchal toward Black women (also a well-documented phenomenon).

Misogynoir manifests in too many ways to enumerate here, but one example that comes readily to mind is when police assume a Black woman who is dressed appropriately for warm weather is a sex worker, and they then proceed to degrade, harass, arrest or assault her. (Not that mistreating sex workers is EVER okay, in any context.) The misogynoir lies in the initial assumption: the stereotyping and overt sexualizing of Black women, because they are Black women. The consequence of that assumption is harm to Black women.

I have been privileged and honored to know and to work with Black women over the course of my time living in New York, and even more fortunate to count some Black women as my friends.* While they face not only sexism and anti-Black racism but their twisted cousin, misogynoir, in everyday life, my respect, empathy and anger on their behalf only continues to grow, as I do.

WAIT. Now I owe you all an apology! All of that^ was a way-too-wordy prelude (from the white woman who is supposed to be S-ing TFU and listening!) to introducing perhaps my favorite historical figure ever, a Black woman. It just felt necessary to emphasize this context in which she lived her life, because it makes her all the more extraordinary for being who she was, and doing what she did.

Her name is Florynce Rae Kennedy. A.k.a. Flo.

Photo of Black woman Florynce "Flo") Rae Kennedy, wearing a cowboy hat, brown leather vest over a black long-sleeved shirt, pointing upward with one finger, and smiling.
Florynce Rae (“Flo”) Kennedy
1916-2000

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It’s Day 9 of Black History Month and We Whites Are All Going to STFU and Listen.

Today we are going to STFU and listen to black voices speaking to us from 1969. Not just any black voices, either: these are some of the most groundbreaking, hit-making, genre-breaking, unfathomably influential musical artists of the time – and for some, perhaps, of all time

Last evening, a film popped up in our streaming suggestions: Summer of Soul (…Or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised). The blurb said the documentary was about the 1969 Harlem Cultural Festival, a multi-weekend concert series that took place in the summer of ’69 in what is now Marcus Garvey Park in Harlem. Directed by Ahmir Khalib (“Questlove/?uestlove”) Thompson, perhaps best known as the drummer and co-frontman for the band The Roots, his debut film was put together from reels of raw footage that sat in a basement, virtually untouched, for fifty years.

Summer of Soul premiered at the 2021 Sundance Film Festival, where it took both the Grand Jury Prize and the Audience Award for a documentary.

Playing the trailer (which you can view below), I first heard then saw Nina Simone (*squeee4EVAH*) sing-saying to an enormous sea of black bodies and faces,

“Are you ready, black people? Are you really ready? Are you ready to listen to all the beautiful black voices, the beautiful black feelings, the beautiful black waves, moving in beautiful air? Are you ready black people? Are you ready?”

The Harlem crowd erupts in response to her callouts with spine-tingling, goose-bumping enthusiasm. Meanwhile, written words are interspersed, appearing in bright, colorful lettering against a black background:

In 1969
the same summer as Woodstock

Another festival took place

It was filmed but never seen

Until now

And with that, we were only 21 seconds into a 2-minute trailer.

The concert lineup promised nothing less than a pantheon of Black musical gods: Nina Simone, 19-year old Stevie Wonder, Sly & the Family Stone, Gladys Knight & the Pips, Mahalia Jackson, B.B. King, The Fifth Dimension and more.

Ms. Simone had me at “Are you ready?” We paid $5.99 for the rental.*

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It’s Day 6 of Black History Month and We Whites Are All Going to STFU and Listen. UPDATED.

Today we’re going to listen to Franchesca Ramsey ‘splain to a white dudebro why Black history is so important and deserves our attention and respect. This vid (for MTV) is short (3:21), and targeted perfectly for that a$$hole on your social media who whines about why there’s no white history month. Perhaps you can post it to their timeline before you block them?

via MTV Impact (youtube channel):

If you believe that @$$hole in your timeline is serious about learning and becoming a more-informed person, there are obviously much more in-depth resources that they should be seeking out themselves. And not, under any circumstances, asking a random Black person they do not know to do that work for them. You as a white person, however, can and should direct them to Black voices and Black media content to answer their (genuine?) questions and broaden their understanding of structural racism, white privilege and white supremacy.

IT IS THE LEAST WE CAN DO TO LESSEN THE BURDEN ON BLACK PEOPLE BY DOING MORE OF THIS WORK FOR OTHER WHITES.

This is a big part of why I am posting this series.

Here’s one good resource: the host of this very video, Franchesca Ramsey, has an excellent Twitter feed to follow for those who want to STFU and listen: @chescaleigh. And almost any online resource will direct you or link you to many, many more.

UPDATE:

Franchesca Ramsey’s Decoded series for MTV seems intentionally produced as 101-level, “non-threatening” infotainment targeted to MTV’s audience. Not that she doesn’t tackle very serious subjects in it: I’m speaking in terms of tone rather than content. Naturally, she received death threats and had to ratchet up her personal security at live events for engaging in anti-Black racist discourse even in the context of this light-handed and light-hearted approach. And she also received angry pushback from other activists whose criticism was that Decoded was too light-handed and light-hearted, as if there were no point in engaging MTV’s young audience with this work at a basic level.

Well, Franchesca is no basic bitch, people. She has social media platforms through which she discusses and engages with anti-Black racism at other levels that are anything but basic. That is why I recommended following her on Twitter @chescaleigh.

I have since stumbled across one such video post on Facebook she made in 2020. I urge those looking to take a deeper dive into their own anti-Black racism work to watch it. I apologize: I’m having trouble embedding the video here, so the best I can do is link to her FB post so you can view it there. Please do! Even if you find the information and concepts she discusses familiar to you already, think of it as a booster shot.

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Day 1 of Black History Month 2022 (Lori Teresa Yearwood) is here.
Day 2 of Black History Month 2022 (Mallence Bart-Williams) is here.
Day 3 of Black History Month 2022 (Emmett Till) is here.
Day 4 of Black History Month 2022 (A Tale of Two Citizens) is here.
Day 5 of Black History Month 2022 (Trayvon Martin) is here.

Indigenous Peoples Day 2020.

On Friday, the preferred president of assholes everywhere issued a shitty proclamation declaring that today’s federal holiday is exclusively a celebration of Italian-American contributions to our nation and the exploits of a particular 15th century Italian explorer, said exploits necessarily encompassing the ensuing brutal colonization and genocide of Indigenous people in the Americas. This proclamation is much, much worse than I even imagined. (And I write this as a person with significant Italian-American heritage.) If you choose to read on, you will first want to ensure that your irony meter is in excellent working order and – this is the important part – still under warranty.

For one thing, consider what Pres. Alpha Asshole and his Merry Minions of Masklessness would be saying and doing about Italian immigration a hundred years ago. You know: before Italians suddenly and miraculously became white. I’m pretty sure my grandmother, who happened to be exceptionally dark-skinned even for southern Italy, would have been locked up in a cage along with her sister and all the other Italian immigrant children.

Of course those among us who think we should instead recognize and reckon with the truth of our nation’s history are deemed “radical activists” and “extremists” who “seek to squash any dissent from their orthodoxy” and instead promote a “radical ideology” and “revisionist history” just to “spread hate and division.”

Let us pause for a moment here so that you can recalibrate your irony meter and/or attempt to extinguish the flames emanating therefrom.

Okay now? Good. The preceding was merely setting the stage for what I really want to talk about on this Indigenous Peoples Day. If you guessed that is “Indigenous people,” you win all the internetz! 🏆⭐️🏅

[Read more…]

Erasure: Women in STEM and Your Liberal Media.

One of these things is not like the other:

Two news feed headlines. 1- New York Times: "Nobel Prize in Chemistry Awarded to 2 Scientists for Work on Genome Editing" and 2- Washington Post: "Nobel Prize in chemistry awarded to two women who developed CRISPR, the revolutionary gene-editing tool"The difference is equally apparent in the summary blurbs from NYT and WaPo:

From this morning’s New York Times email briefing:

Two scientists, one from France and one from the U.S., were awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. They discovered a tool that allows researchers to change the DNA of animals, plants and microorganisms with high precision.

From The Washington Post breaking news alert:

University of California at Berkeley biochemist Jennifer A. Doudna and Emmanuelle Charpentier, a French scientist, were awarded the 2020 Nobel Prize in chemistry on Wednesday for their work developing CRISPR, which is contributing to new cancer therapies and helping to cure inherited diseases.

Listen up, motherfucking New York Times. Feminism does not mean erasing gender. Just like equality in the broader sense does not mean erasing human diversity. Erasure is not a neutral act in a world where women are systematically denied opportunities to advance their careers, particularly in STEM, and face institutional bias (and worse) as they try.

It would be different if people of all genders enjoyed full equality across the board. But until that happy day comes when women (and minorities!) in roles and professions historically and visibly dominated by (white! cis! able-bodied! het!) men are equally commonplace and visible, their representation in these contexts is vitally important for everyone to see.

And yes, for those keeping score at home, this is reason number 6,858,945 I hate The New York Times. But not to worry! I ain’t goin’ soft on ya! I still hate The Washington Post, too! Both of them get it right a lot of the time, which only makes this all the more infuriating because it proves they are perfectly capable of doing so. And getting it right sometimes hardly exonerates them for all the times they get it very, very wrong.