Love

This woman’s style and hair,

Beautiful as is.

Noticed

On the way back from class :

Platoon

This weekend I  watched Platoon, a movie first released in 1986 by Oliver Stone. The cast includes actors such as Forest Whitaker, Johnny Depp and William Defoe, check it out.

Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington D.C.

African Americans and US Popular Culture

Yesterday I found this passage from Assata Shakur’s autobiography :

Small children, mirroring the attitudes they were taught at home or in school, taunted one another with the rhyme “If you’re White, you’re all right, if you’re Black, get back, if you’re brown, stick around. (Byrd and Tharps, 52)

It gave me a better understanding of the Inaugural blessing given by Dr. Lowery, whose humour shocked some by saying:

When brown can stick around, when yellow will be mellow, when the red man can get ahead man and when white would embrace what is right.

Obama’s inauguration was a reaffirmation that we can move forward. I was discouraged by the NY Post yesterday and it is a reminder that racism is a reality, even in the media which is supposed to be objective. According to the book, African Americans and US Popular Culture by Kevern Verney :

Modern representations of African Americans in US popular culture begin with the emergence of blackface minstrelsy in 1830-2.(Verney, 1)

The lack of diversity in print media and broadcasting is a major problem today. Minstrelsy persists, such as in Tropic Thunder where Robert Downey Jr. put a modern spin on blackface.

Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885), a work sometimes seen as the quintissential American novel, was also set in the antebellum South. A central element of the narrative was the friendship between the young Huck and an escaped slave…The Jim character had a number of positive qualities, including his love for his family and a longing for freedom. At the same time the repeated use of the epithet ‘nigger’ in the novel revealed obvious limitations in the author’s thinking on race…and echoed the minstrel show dialogues of the day that Twain admired. (Verney,8-9)

How many mainstream print magazines are there for women of color in the United States? As I watch A Girl Like Me, by Kiri Davis I wonder whether it is any surprise that black kids are overwhelmingly affected by racial bias. Daisy Bates, one the organizers for the integration of Little Rock in 1957, who helped choose the first nine students said :

If you hate, make it count for something. Hate the humiliation we are living under in the South. Hate the discrimination that eats away at the soul of every black man and woman. Hate the insults hurled at us by white scum-and then try to do something about it, or your hate won’t mean a thing.(Bates, 1962, 29)

The Kids Are Alright

This photo from The Sartorialist is adorable!

Continue the cuteness campaign at “Little Black Girls Are Everywhere, You Idiots” …

Heart it.

Fun image bookmarking network.

Photo by Anthony Asael, via We Heart It

Simple

“To scatter flowers- to miss no single opportunity of making some small sacrifice, here by a smiling look, there by a kindly word, always doing the tiniest things right, and doing it for love.” _Thérèse de Lisieux

New Look : Pop

The new layout for Pop’Africana’s blog is great!

Atong X for Pop'Africana

a bi-annual fashion.art.style magazine.

Ghubar – Magazine

Translated from FadsOf.Mode :

Ghubar, means Drive

It is 140 Pages dedicated to Fashion, Beauty, Culture and Current Affairs…

Through it’s themes “Ghubar reflects the era of multiculturalism to a worldwide scale.”

It is not a Web.Magazine but beyond that it offers us a new approach to Fashion. At the source of this project, is a team which has everything of a small Artistic Army : Editors, Designer, Webmaster, Photographers, Stylists…the Young and Talented.

***

Ghubar, qui signifie Poussière

C’est 140 Pages dédiées à la Mode, la Beauté, La Culture et l’Actualité…

A travers ses sujets”Ghubar reflète l’ère du multuculturalisme à l’échelle mondiale”.

Ce n’est pas un Web.Magazine de plus mais une nouvelle approche de la Mode qui nous est proposée. A la source d’un tel projet, une équipe qui a tout d’une petite Armée Artistique: Rédacteurs, Concepteur,Webmaster, Photographes, Stylistes… Jeunes et Talentueux. (FadsOf.Mode)

The First Issue came out January 2009. I dig the concept. What do you think?

Photograms / M’Bengue

Recently I thought it would be cool to put a few images from various magazines I like on photo sensitive paper in the darkroom to make these photograms :

The movement in the photograms remind me of these rad photos of the Model Jessi M’Bengue :