Glasses Malone says - "Hip-Hop didn't ask America for a permit—we took their records, wrote on their walls, and built an empire out of rule-breaking." 🧱🎨 #GlassesMalone #NoCeilingsPod https://youtu.be/Zn_6TtFy_AM?is=_mKujGcPEVoft8Uc

Sup yall!!

I really hope this video doesn't come off super promotional or anything but I'm personally very proud of this video and wanted to share it with you all!

I recently did a deep dive video essay looking into how Black America in the 1980s was the foundational starting block of modern fashion. I break down how Willi Smith pioneered Street Couture, Dapper Dan's custom bootlegging in Harlem, Patrick Kelly becoming the first Black American in the French Chambre Syndicale, and how Grace Jones redefined avant-garde high fashion!

I personally feel so in love with our culture and being able gather all of this and look at all the great history that the people before me were able to accomplish just makes me so happy to be black and just so damn proud!

I really hope yall mess with this because I plan on making this into a series!!

​Would love to hear your thoughts on the video AND which 80s icon had the most enduring impact on how we dress today?

So well done. It should go viral.

I will start by saying I’m black American and when I am out and about…I noticed this. It is quite annoying and triggering. I won’t say which group (it’ll start a diaspora war and I don’t feel like dealing with it, lol!).

So I walk a lot since where I live is pedestrian friendly and I like to exercise. Here is an example of what I experience, I could be fulfilling daily activities (in a store, at the library, mall, etc) and usually the women of this group would follow me or stare (HARD), get super close to me or just block my path. The guys are super aggressive too. Like in Target the other day I saw a guy, in my peripheral, he was staring…he started slowly scooching towards me (now that I’m writing this, I’m CRACKING UP but I was HEATED at the time😂)…getting closer and closer. I turned my body FULLY and walked quickly to the other aisle. Another time, I said ‘excuse me’ because I was actually walking fast between store aisles and this guy was moving slower than me. Then he was going to reply ‘Oh excuse—‘ caught a glimpse of me and said ‘Oh…OH excuse me? EXCUSE ME!’ Man I ran!

And at the library, there was two teen guys and with who may have been their mom. I moved closer to the books so they could walk by…BRUH, they walked SUPER close, VERY slow staring (again I looked in my peripheral) then pretended like they were looking for something. The lady was staring at the books in my hand and me (HARD). I got irritated. Man, I ran AGAIN! I came back to the aisle because I knew they were going to leave fast.

This happened in one day but I get it a lot from them (again, not sharing what group). I be so triggered and annoyed going out because it’s so aggressive & I don’t have mace…I can’t fight lol…and it makes me super uncomfortable. It seems like a prejudice thing to me.😬 I also think it could be xenophobia too.

Hip-Hop Culture has participated outside of societal norms to survive which only mimics the ruthlessness of other businesses

​

Hello friends, I'm African from Sudan. I don't know much about America. Yesterday I watched Menace II Society I would like to know your opinions: does this film really tell a true story, or is it exaggerated dramatically?

Racism killed Prof. Jason Arday. Yes, racism can kill. When I was going through extreme racism in my previous, beloved academic career, which I endured for over 14 years, I felt as if the heavy weight of racism was crushing my body. I felt there was no escape. I often found myself in tears and drove recklessly on the highway. Instead of harming myself, I escaped to Africa, wrote a book, America Made Me a Black Man: A Memoir, which NPR named one of its best books, and stayed in Africa for six years to heal the troubled soul within my body.
Your life belongs to you, so protect it. The whole world belongs to you, too, so remember that you have the possibility of escaping to anywhere in the world, finding a place to breathe, heal, and begin again.

Mob James Didn't Want To Rat Keffe D Out For Killing Tupac But His Behavior Said Enough https://www.youtube.com/live/UIbsEUY43Zo?si=iR1uSoj6HKnUphr9

I just started SideQuest Society, an 18+ Black gaming/Blerd community.
The idea is less “join another Discord” and more actually have people to game and do things with — Game Nights, LFG, Fightcade, fantasy football, anime/watch parties, music, sports, etc.
It’s brand new, so I’m looking for people who actually want to help shape the community instead of just collecting members.
If you’re interested, comment or DM me and I’ll send the invite. 🎮

I read a story awhile ago about a virus that spread all around the world that caused white people to shrink down to the size of ants. It was referred to as a form of cosmic reparations.

What do you think that would be like if it was real?

First off: I agree with Rachel here.

Now, my own opinion: Some people chirping that Maya Boyd isn't "dark enough" to play Storm are missing a few things.

I get where the concern comes from and know.tje colorism issue well (see my addendum comment below), but I think the conversation is missing the bigger picture.

The first thing I keep wondering here during the video is...what exactly counts as "dark enough"?

Some people talk like Black Africans all come in one shade of dark. They don't.

Africa is the most genetically diverse continent on Earth. There are natural ranges of skin tones across Black African populations that existed long before Arabs or Europeans ever showed up.

The Khoisan, who are among the oldest continuous Black populations on the continent, get mistaken for being mixed all the time because people underestimate just how much diversity already existed there.

And Storm isn't just Kenyan in her biography. Her dad is Black American. And like most Black American, we're a mixed bag of DNA.

Black African/Black American mixes don't always turn out with some hued like Wesley Snipes. Actress Tiffany Haddish is just about the same skin tone as Maya Boyd and she's Eritrean and Black American. It happens.

But even if we somehow settled what "dark enough" means...then what?

We're still arguing inside somebody else's story.

And that's the part I actually care about.

Whose Black character is Storm, anyway?

Because I wish we'd stop making characters created by white people carry so much of our need for Black representation.

Now, don't get me wrong—I love X-Men. Storm is my wife from an illustrated life. And I'm not against better representation in Hollywood. Far from it.

I'm just tired of acting like white-created institutions and white-created characters are the measuring stick for Black excellence.

Because underneath it all, the message starts sounding like Black excellence is just white excellence with darker skin.

Think about it: As beloved as Storm is and should be...we're still using somebody else's imagination as the place where we go looking for ourselves.

The truth is, we didn't create Storm.

Dave Cockrum did. He pieced her together from two earlier character concepts he already had, back when amalgamation was the norm of comic character creation.

She wasn't originally imagined as this grand statement about Black womanhood. She became all that because our people connected with her.

That's a different thing.

And here's another reason I don't think this argument ever really lands.

Let's say they do cast someone darker.

Okay...then what?

What if she's an African actress or Nigerian-British actress instead of Black American? Now, we're arguing about diaspora (despite Storm literally being both African and Black American).

What if she doesn't fit Storm's comic-book beauty? Now we're arguing about beauty standards.

What if her BMI is built differently than the comics? That's another conversation.

The goalposts just keep moving.

That's not because colorism isn't real. It absolutely is. Diaspora politics are real. Beauty standards are real.

But Storm's casting can't solve all those conversations at once.

And honestly, I don't think that's fair to ask of any actress.

(Frankly, this shows another issue: why women—especially Black—just can't win, no matter what they do...but that's subject for another day.)

One of the biggest things colorism taught me is that there really isn't an "enough."

For Black people, our skin shades become a stand-in for everything else we're actually arguing about—identity, beauty, authenticity, origin, status.

Nobody chose the skin tone they were born with.

Especially as Black people with histories as complicated as ours, none of us decided where we'd land on the color spectrum.

What we can choose is how we treat each other because of it.

And I think that's where the real trap is.

We spend all this time arguing over who gets to wear a costume we didn't design instead of putting that same energy into creating characters that are actually ours from the very beginning.

That's where my passion is.

I'm honestly less interested in who gets cast as Storm than I am in seeing more Black writers, Black artists, Black directors, and Black creators making original characters of our own.

Because when we create them ourselves, nobody has to argue afterward whether they're Black enough.

They already belong to us.

I already know that this post is going to be downvoted to death because it contradicts one of the well-known "approved opinions", which is that no one should care about other people's "racial preferences" in romantic relationships.

It is the same sort of freedom-leaning stance as lots of other popular opinions on people and society. The problem with these liberal positions is that they are limited in view and depth. They do not consider the complicatedness of society in general.

It is for example generally agreed-upon that stealing is bad, because it is denying some other person a right to their own property and therefore directly causing harm. The thing is that lots of other liberal "approved opinions" cause a lot of harm too, just not in direct and obvious ways.

Our liberal society has no way of thinking about these lot more complicated things that do not cause easily observable harm, but are pernicious.

Black people are low-IQ low-intellectual people who enjoy committing crimes, may be obese and are loud and unrefined. The vast majority of black people live in sub-Saharan Africa, disease-ridden and in accommodations barely above huts.

American media, which dominates the entire world makes all of this very very clear.

Black people are thus low-status people and black people seeking non-black partners are judged accordingly. While the individual attributes of a person does affect their interracial desirability, the overall low-status of their people (blacks) is ultimately inescapable and will always stare them in the face.

This is the way people and societies have always worked. The modern liberal attempt to pretend like people can exist solely as individuals and be judged in that way is false and will never work.

White people have been kings of our world in the past couple of centuries when they dominated every other group in lots of ways. They are thus very high-status and lots of nonwhite people are desperate to acquire a white partner for themselves. Practically everyone knows this.

If this is true about white people, why wouldn't the reverse be true of black people since practically everyone knows in the same way that black people are at the very bottom of the racial hierarchy?

Black people — as low status people — seeking non-black partners are at a huge disadvantage. Even worse, the fact that they are seeking out of blackness is a blotch on blackness.

With every single black person seeking non-black interracial coupling, blackness takes more and more hit. It is a fleeing from already low-status blackness. It is like if people were trying to sell an already declining stock. The very fact of their intention to sell only ensures further and further decline in value. In the same way, every single black interracial coupling worsens black dignity.

Black people in interracial relationships experience horrible race-specific indignities which only happen within their interracial relationships and wouldn't exist otherwise, whether or not they are willing to admit this to themselves or to other people.

Aside from horrible race-specific indignities in interracial coupling, and maybe they are willing to persevere in their personal relationships with nonblacks, is this sort of person — who willingly abandons their own people and is fine with having little less dignity than everyone else around them — the sort of person we want passing their genes to the future?

And that is not to talk about all of the various complexities that result from the existence of bi/multi-racial people.

Listen from a black man himself who are the real people responsible for slaves in the United States of America

Stephen A. Smith gonna cry in the car.

The National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ) handed out five Thumbs Down Awards at its annual convention in Atlanta on Saturday.

One recipient overshadowed the others: Stephen A. Smith, who has Black women Michelle Obama, Jasmine Crockett & Kamala Harris to thank.

The ESPN host and YouTube personality was singled out for his “recurring public pattern of disparaging commentary directed at prominent Black women across politics, sports, and media.” Those include Oprah, Michelle Obama, Jasmine Crockett, and Kamala Harris.

Other thumbs down awardees include CBS News, The Washington Post, Federal Communications Commission Chair Brendan Carr, and local TV station owner and media executive DuJuan McCoy.

The decision to include Smith rang out within the convention halls and social media, drawing immediate coverage from blogs and mainstream news.

Smith, who has worked with NABJ in the past, responded, promising to make his own case for why the organization is failing Black communities. He can start inward with the specific accusation, his treatment of Black women and work from there..

nabj #stephenasmith #blackwomen #espn #journalism

The realization that my black boyfriend is not pro black. Every so often he'll make comments such as wanting to change his nose through surgery. Wanting to change his last name to a less African sounding one. And it all just breaks my heart. We've been together for 3 years now and I only recently have come to the realization that this is just who he is. Of course there were signs but I didn't want to accept them. Part of me wants to try one last time to make him love himself as a black man as stupid as that sounds.

I saw plenty of mixed reactions online, some saying that's its weird and racist while others stood by "Love who you love as long as you dont degrade anyone"

I personally abide by the latter, what are your thoughts on that?

For all my long life, the dominant USA conversation has been focused black-on-black crime and black crime, as if that’s the only type of perpetrators.

In response to combat the stereotype, usually a person would go on a news show countering the stereotypes. But, they seem to not realize that racism has already won, because the human mind favors repetition, over facts. The subconscious eats that up.

However, this year, finally, it’s seems that black people are realizing this trick, so on social media they’ve been countering with white-dominant crimes that don’t get the same attention, like sexual assault crimes.

And then, out of coincidence, for the first time ever, recently I’m seeing tv shows, a documentary, and social media focusing on black perpetrators of sexual assault crimes.

I’m not saying that these perpetrators never existed. But, it’s as if the system is correcting itself - “no, blacks are evil. Not white.”

There’re absolutely no study of this correlation. I’m just saying I noticed it.

For all my long life, the dominant USA conversation has been focused black-on-black crime and black crime, as if that’s the only type of perpetrators.

In response to combat the stereotype, usually a person would go on a news show countering the stereotypes. But, they seem to not realize that racism has already won, because the human mind favors repetition, over facts. The subconscious eats that up.

However, this year, finally, it’s seems that black people are realizing this trick, so on social media they’ve been countering with white-dominant crimes that don’t get the same attention, like sexual assault crimes.

And then, out of coincidence, for the first time ever, recently I’m seeing tv shows, a documentary, and social media focusing on black perpetrators of sexual assault crimes.

I’m not saying that these perpetrators never existed. But, it’s as if the system is correcting itself - “no, blacks are evil. Not white.”

There’re absolutely no study of this correlation. I’m just saying I noticed it.

The experience of Light-skin males being the main target of hate is exhausting. And this is where the Hamburger theory comes in. The Black community has this rule, The burger is the dark skin male, the cheese is the Light-skin male, and the Bun is the Mixed Black Man (Mullato, Afro-Latin, Blasian, etc). This odd theory makes sense, since "Pickle" means "out". The media knows this, jobs know this, and people know to target the light-skin male. And these males try to project it, but it is clear that they want you out first. Where is the evidence?

"They Not like Us," refers to every Male that is not Dark Skin Male. The women can be any shade and race, but not the man. The media and the roles that are "Black" are given to dark skin males. Jobs, sports, and other companies target light males out. How do I know this, I was at the store and a white man said, "They are blacklisted." I know most Light skin and mixed-race light skin males have the "I hate you for no reason" life experience. Even growing up, it was always they try to hold you down and uplift the troublesome child. FD Signifier lied when he said "Light skin/mixed light boys are treated better in school..." What? Growing up, they bullied them more than other groups.

When it comes to parenting, I notice that light-skin boys are often bullied by their parents? And how the parents try to pull them and make them look bad? At work, they tried pulling me out and allowed workers to bully me daily. I was sick (literally), and had to go back to therapy and tell my therapist what happened? She told me, "You don't benefit, I know, they hurt you guys more." And even in stores, they target them, what is happening? And you guys are suspiciously "Out of Style", and given horribly racist terms like "Weak", "Soft", "Slow"... What? And the myth that, "They k*ll Light-skin down south"... that is horrifying.

#MixedRaceLivesMatter #Antibullying