@davidhmccoy@TheConversationUS@blackmastodon The implication being that you can't find out the black experience by, say, talking to black people and then believing what they say.
My dad had Black Like Me on his bookshelf, as a psychologist. It wasn't merely professional, either. Our Irish ancestry has a darker skin tone than normal, but still 'white', and afro-textured black hair. In the service at the end of WWII he was denied restrooms in Georgia.
I find the inference that posing as black for discovery is just another form of blackface to be very interesting, and a tell of racism, realized or not, within the speaker themself. It's also interesting see how people want to form the line of color on a spectrum that is largely seamless.
In honor of Juneteenth, the team at @EatingWell has curated this @Flipboard Storyboard of recipes, all of which have special significance for the holiday. The collection contains dishes created by South Carolina cook and activist Mabel Owens Clark and Jessica B. Harris, the culinary historian and living legend, and includes recipes made with traditional prosperity ingredients such as collards, rice, beans and corn.
Romance Writers of America (RWA) is filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, in part because of years of controversy surrounding race and inclusion. The trade association was founded by a Black woman in 1980 but became progressively whiter and less supportive of Black writers, awarded controversial books and in 2005, polled members on if romance should be defined as between one man and one woman. Despite all this, romance itself is thriving — it's the highest-earning fiction genre and sales are climbing. NBC took a look at what went wrong at the RWA. We want to know: What genres of book do you read (choose as many options as you like)? And if you're a writer, tell us about your work in the comments!
@CultureDesk@bookstodon@blackmastodon
The poll results are a bit surprising to me. I always knew sci-fi was popular, but I wouldn't have predicted it to be first. My debut novel was #sci_fi (or, more specifically, #PoliSciFi) but I mostly read non-fiction.
@EllenInEdmonton@blackvoices@blackmastodon Even to this day, while maybe no longer using relaxer, she uses expensive hair extensions and other types of hair pieces that give her the appearance of a “natural” look that’s financially out of reach for most Black women. Still, I do appreciate her frankly decrying her nightmarish experiences using relaxers. I remember back before she was “Oprah”, she wore a short Afro on local Baltimore TV news where I used to see her in the early 1980’s.
@Weirding_Is_Real@blackvoices@blackmastodon You’re welcome! NYT does a pretty good job with its audio versions of its longer articles— a godsend for my elderly mother, whose eyesight makes it harder to read the tiny print of longer pieces.
You may not know this, but back in day, yours truly was a “close friend” of Donald Duck for a number of years. And I hated the job for the longest time.
Today the billed one turns 90. Here’s a little ditty from a while back that changed my outlook on the world, the people in it, Disney, and me.
“I believe that Trump can be placed among a long line of demagogues who possess the skills needed to tap into the fears and anxieties of a group of people that perceives itself as marginalized, at risk and not in control.”
💛 “The Jim Crow Era Was Never ‘Happy Times’ for Black People”
By @clayrivers
Despite what you may have heard in the news lately, the period of Jim Crow was never nor can it ever be viewed as a period of benefit for Black families.
We want you to know the name Alice Ball. She was the first woman and first African American to earn a master’s degree in science from the College of Hawaii.
Ball remarkably developed a treatment for leprosy, but she passed away shortly after.
Arthur Dean, chair of the College of Hawaii’s chemistry department, took over the project, and renamed Ball’s method to the “Dean Method,” never crediting Ball for her work.
Beethoven is A great composer, but not THE great composer, according to a music professor who believes it’s time to reframe Beethoven’s greatness “within the context of historic ideals of whiteness and patriarchy.”
“If Americans could acknowledge that our music and music education are deeply rooted in these two ideologies, then we could realize that Beethoven, surely a good composer, was simply one of many.”
@TheConversationUS@blackmastodon The conversation on this subject with regard to Shakespeare has been robust. The outgoing director of the Folger Shakespeare Library really thought it was an important conversation, and the incoming director (a woman of color) is even more devoted to it. It’s a valuable conversation, once you get past the screamers.
> “Walking while Black” laws, first created in California in 1925 as a safety measure and lobbied by the automobile industry, are controversial due to racist enforcement and because they shame pedestrians while giving more protections to cars on the road
@BigAngBlack@blackmastodon@BlackMastodon I live in a cluster of predominantly white towns (the Monterey Peninsula) and believe you me, most of the people jaywalking in this tourist-heavy microcosm are NOT people of color.