“Let everything we say be real. Let everything we do be funky.” — Sekou Sundiata
June 7, 2016
December 30, 2015
December 4, 2015
From”The Book of Night Women”
“…In this place two thing matter more than most, how dark a nigger you be and where the white man choose to put you. One have all to do with the other. From highest to lowest, this be how things go. The number one prime nigger who would never get sell is the head of the house slaves. That position so hoity-toity that in some house is a white woman who be that nigger…After that be the house slaves who work the rooms and the grounds and the gardens. Sometimes is the pretty niggers or the mulatto, quadroon or mustee that work there. Then you have the cooks who the backra trust the most, because the cook know that if the mistress get sick after a meal there goin’ be a whipping or a hanging before the cock even crow. Other house slaves be cleaning and dusting and shining and manservanting and womanservanting and taking care of backra pickneys.
“After the house slaves come the artisan niggermens, like the black smith, the bricklayers, the tanner, the silversmith, niggers who skilled with they hands, followed by the stable boys, coachmen and carters. Next is the field niggers, headed by the Johnny-jumpers who be the right hand and left hand of the slave-drivers. They do most of the whipping and kicking but when the estate running right they have nothing to do, so they whip and kick harder. After Johnny-jumper come the Great Slave Gang, the most expensive slaves, the one who they buy for the long years of hard work. The mens and the womens strapping and handsome like a prime horse…After that is the Petit Gang, the makeup of plain common nigger…Other nigger look down upon them mens as worthless and them womens as good for rutting, not breeding. On some estate even the pickneys work, mostly in the trash gang to pick up rubbish on the estate or to carry water for the field slaves to drink, or to get firewood. That be the negroes.”
-Marlon James, The Book of Night Women
July 17, 2015
from the African Origins of the “Major Western Religions” by Dr. Josef ben-Jochannan
The whole concept of a “God” or “Gods” came out of the Nile valley African civilizations thousands upon thousands of years before Sumner (The Kingdom of Hamurabi) was established along the banks of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. That was more than thousands of years before Abraham – the first Hebrew (Jew) – was born in the city of Ur, Chaldea. This concept, which had gone through very extensive changes and revisions for thousands of years before the arrival of the Asian Jews, all seventy-seven (77) of them, in Africa, was in its zenith when Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Joseph entered the land at the end of the Nile River – Sais, which they later called “Egypt.”
The indigenous Africans of Egypt had already become proficient in the sciences that allowed them to: (a) embalm their dead; (b) name the bodies in the celestial universe; (c) name their God and minor Gods; (d) develop agriculture; (e) establish a Solar Calendar in 4,100 B.C.E.; (f) develop a fertility control tampon recipe; (g) build temples to the Gods – including the world wonder, the Sphinx of Gezeh (Giza); (h) develop engineering; (i) develop medicine – including internal surgery; (j) develop pharmacology and many other disciplines too numerous to try and outline or define at this time. They even wrote poetry and short stories during said period along with their historical achievements in the sciences. All of this the small group of half-starving Asian Jews met, and were exposed to, from the very first day they entered Africa out of the Asian desert, where they were nomads. At no time in their history is there any record of them being exposed to such knowledge before their encounter with the indigenous Africans of the Nile Valley, who had settled Sais, Egypt, for thousands of years before the Jews came. This, then appears to be the beginning of what is today called “Judaism, Judaeo-Christianity, Christianity,” and “Islam.” It is also the juncture that all of the concepts, be they material or spiritual, which are in any manner connected to either of these generally labelled “WESTERN RELIGIONS” originated.
September 14, 2014
Colored Frames: A film about black visual art
A rich and varied look at what we call black art and the people who make it.
August 31, 2014
May 22, 2014
Amina Claudine Myers, “African Blues”
Black genius is prolific, nuanced and so prevalent that we sometimes take it for granted. Sometimes, however, somebody does something that captures our negritude so succinctly, all you can do is revel in it and thank the gods you are able to dig it. Here is one such thing, Amina Claudine Myers’ sublime “African Blues”. Words are superfluous…
betterblackness
Better Blackness 