"You know that feeling. It's the one that makes us hear about Trayvon, and now about Jordan Davis, and reach back across decades into our history, for the name of another boy named Emmett Till. Then, it was a whistle at a White woman. Now, it's a hooded sweatshirt, or music being played loudly from a car. But always, this one thing has been the same--no presumption of innocence for young Black men. No benefit of the doubt. Guilt--not determined by what they did or said--but presumed to be inherent in their very being. They need not wield a weapon to pose a threat. Because, if you are a young, Black man, who you are is threat enough. And in yet another case, it seems, that perceived threat is justification enough for someone who would play judge, jury, and executioner."

--Melissa Harris-Perry

(via Sister Outsider)

This makes me want to watch LA Complex

 Reblogged from come correct

Because seriously when do you see this in pop culture? Uhhhh I think this brings us to a grand total of once. 

Questions Raised at the Black Solidarity Conference

(by myself and others)

1. What does it mean to be a Black sexual being? 
2. How are people given the opportunity to be engaged in their sexuality?
3. Do people engage in sexuality differently according to access to various resources?
4. Why are today's young people, especially young women, being so miseducated about their own bodies?
5. Why is abortion what we leap to when talking about sexuality? Why single-motherhood? Why monogamy and marriage? What narratives are being ignored when our conversation centers itself around these topics? How can we refrain from institutionalizing sexuality?  
6. What is the difference between talking about sexual practices and talking about sexuality?
7. What are the everyday ethics of Blackness that determine who can or can not be in the community?
8. What is the impact of geographic region on gender presentation?
9. How do we work against the sociohistorical pathologization of Black bodies?
10. If Black women have never really fit into the definition of womanhood presented by dominant (White) society, what are our goals in the redefining of gender roles? What does that redefinition mean for us?
11. Why can't Brothers see themselves in women the way Sisters can see themselves in men?
12. How do we disaggregate criticism from "haterism"?
13. Why is the "walk of shame" a female-specific term?
14. Why are Black communities so obsessed with "presentability"? Why is who we are not enough? What are we overcompensating for?
15. How much experimentation with gender presentation is internal, having fun, and expressing ourselves, and how much is in response to our expectations of others' reactions to our presented selves?
16. How do we get rid of the idea that to participate in Blackness, we have to debase ourselves?
17. How do we reconcile promoting cultural criticism with promoting solidarity and/or the presentation of a unified front?
18. How does harkening back to our African past influence, isolate, and/or negate the experiences of people living in Africa today or who came to America from Africa recently? 
19. What does the phrase "I see you" signify in Black communities?
20. When can we, as Black peoples, OWN our sexuality?

 Despite all the "rachetness" and the existence of Travis Porter in my personal space and the heteronormativity I had to deal with and the freshwomen crashing in my room and not letting an old person like me sleep and all the other minor annoyances, this is why I go to the Black Solidarity Conference every year. Questions like this. The conference makes me think. The things I don't like about the conference make me think even harder. 

...New Haven also has some great places to shop. I'm not gonna lie. 

I-can't-believe-someone-thought-this-was-okay advertising strikes again! (NSFW)

Why yes, in case you were confused, this is a White woman lying on a bed of naked, contorted Black men, in an advertisement for luxurious handmade bedding. 

"Merge into the colours of the south. Feel the beating heart of the city of light at night. Breathe the scent of the forest. Feel the briny of the breakers on your skin." Funny, I don't associate any of those things with the naked, contorted bodies of Black men. Do you?

My first question is whether these men are intended to be interpreted as being alive or dead. I'm not sure which is more problematic: If they're alive, every single stereotype about the hypersexualized savage Black man out to rape and ravage the pure White woman comes into play here. I realize this is 2011 where interracial relationships are no longer condemned and denigrated to the degree they once were, and could perhaps be less of a big deal in France than they are here (this is a French ad), but...anyone who knows anything about the history of race relations should recognize this damaging trope and not try to replicate/propagate it. Or if I'm supposed to view this from the liberated empowered woman standpoint, are they her playthings? I can't get behind that either. If they're alive, are they/their work supposed to represent the labor that went into creating this luxurious bedding? Dozens of Black men working to make something for one White woman...do I have to say the s-word? (Their contortion does make me think of the arrangement of certain ships...) At the very least this smacks of all sorts of oppression.

If they're corpses, which I hadn't considered until someone pointed it out in the comments on the Sociological Images post that alerted me to this ad, then we're dealing with the Black-body-as-disposable notion that society has never really seemed to shake. They almost look as if they were tossed into some kind of mass grave. Were they worked to death to create the luxury this White woman desires so? Were they sexed to death in some crazy orgy that created the "heavenly" aura the woman finds herself in?

I suppose the best possible way to interpret this is that Black men's bodies are supposed to be a luxury, which is at the very least a kind of rare positive association. But even that has objectification written all over it. PEOPLE cannot be luxuries. THINGS are luxuries. Black man = person. Sheets = thing. Let's not equate the two, okay?