My Osama bin Laden-free life appears no different than before. Except today I was a little more worried about coming into work. I live in NYC, my office is two blocks below Times Square, and I have to take the subway. The only bright side is that the city is on high alert today for exactly this reason. Safe / Unsafe balance remains wobbly.

It’s not lost on me that this announcement came exactly a year after the attempted Times Square bombing. I was in the area that day, too. I sometimes think about what could have happened to me. But you know what I think about more? How lucky I am not to live in places where the danger of being killed randomly is not just an intermittent fear, but a constant one. Living in this city has always been a risk, even if you put aside terrorism. It’s a choice I and millions of others made. You can’t say the same about many citizens in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Ivory Coast, Palestine, or the hundreds of other locations on this planet where it’s not safe to… exist.

I did not join in the celebrations last night even though I am here. I don’t think celebrating someone’s death is useful. I’m glad he’s dead. He reaped what he sowed. But I will not stand in the street chanting USA!USA!USA! because of it.

Then again, I completely understand the need to be in front of the White House, or at Ground Zero, or in Times Square to mark that moment. It was an important one.

Honestly? I fell asleep waiting for the president to come on TV and tell me what Twitter had already told me an hour before. (It didn’t help that every channel waiting for him to appear had the most boring people marking time in the most boring way imaginable.) I woke up in the middle of it, and found myself impressed by the way Obama carried himself. He’s good at hitting the right notes in speeches. And I’m really glad that he was able to be a part of bringing this about.

I was also glad that he pointed out that bin Laden not only killed white westerners, but many, many Muslims as well. We in America often try to do a little shuck and jive to bring the conversation back to our own pain, but we’re not the only ones who’ve suffered because of this man. It brings to mind the whole Ground Zero Non-Mosque issue, where protesters steadfastly ignored that Muslim men and women died in the Twin Towers as well. Nothing mattered to those assholes except their own pain and suffering, their own fake pain and suffering, or the political points they could score. Last night our president made it clear that bin Laden is a criminal responsible for a lot of death, not just the death people like that want to talk about. I’m proud of him for that.

The day after Osama is not a momentous day, though. Because his death isn’t going to magically restore our civil liberties, end our wars, end people dying because of his actions, or make terrorism go away. When all of that happens, then I will stand in the street and chant. I feel like I may never get that chance in my lifetime.

The Day After Osama -- Originally posted at The Angry Black Woman

Put Them Back! Or, Some Thoughts On The Tension Between Science and Culture

jhameia:

moniquill:

sandyfrink:

Llullaillaco Maiden — A 15 year old girl sacrificed during the Inca Empire for both purposes of religious rite and social control. She was chosen a year prior to her death, fed a ritualistic diet for an approximate twelve months to make her gain weight, then was drugged and left on the shrine at Volcano Llullaillaco, where she was left to die of exposure. For five hundred years, her body had been preserved at 82 ft. She is considered to be the best preserved Andean mummy ever uncovered. 

First thing that came into my mind upon seeing this image:

Where was this picture taken? Who are these people?

Did they put her back?

DID THEY PUT HER BACK?!

ETA:

 Answer, upon looking at google? No. No they didn’t. She and several others are currently in a museum.

But hey, at least they’re in the right country.

::bitterly drinks coffee::

“The research, by a British-led team” This is my suprised face. See how suprised I am?

agutie.homestead.com/files/world_news_map/mummy_inca_girl.html

I mean, I understand the intrinsic value of exploring really ancient gravesites and researching them and photographing them, even in taking minute samples for carbon dating and stuff. But PUT THEM BACK. In the event that you have to move them at all, which YOU PROBLY DON’T (situations in which bringing corpses to large imaging devices is relevant aside). But once that’s done, PUT THEM BACK.

Because, yanno, they were people. Because they ARE people.

These children DIED to be in the place that you found them, jackasses.

People visiting the museum would get just as much in terms of educational experience from a well-made replica and a bunch of detailed photos. You do not need the actual human corpse there. If you truly and deeply need to see human corpses for the sake of anatomical detail, go to Bodyworlds or its like. The people there volunteered to be there.

Stop robbing graves in the name of science.

We should know better by now.

Very very important commentary.

My agree face is so fierce right now. Also, that thing about British scientists pinged me the same way, too.

As some may know, I’ve been studying ancient Egypt off and on for several years as research for a book. And while I deeply appreciate the work of Egyptologists to uncover the past, I often find myself staring at books or standing incredulous in museums thinking: WTF why are there corpses here? Who gave these people the right to desecrate these graves, take the stuff and people out of them, and not even have the common courtesy to return them once they’re done examining them? 

I enjoy looking at artifacts in museums very much. But I try to never lose sight of the fact that, with Egyptian stuff, the majority of them are items meant to stay with the deceased according to their beliefs. And just because we do not have these beliefs, we do not get to just dig shit up and cart it around.

Visiting the British Museum and seeing an actual dead body on display made me want to cut someone. How is that even okay? That person was laid to rest. Even if I concede that it’s all right to study him for the furtherance of knowledge, I so, so agree with the poster above: PUT HIM BACK.

Zahi Hawass, the Minister of Antiquities in Egypt, annoys the living daylights out of me with his fame seeking and crazypants. But I will forever give him credit for taking a hard line on ancient Egyptian artifacts, noting that those belong to his country and his people, not to the British or French or Portuguese or any other European or American entities that stole them int he past when they had the political and military power to do so. 

Hawass does not let people cart the body of King Tut around, but instead sends a full-size replica out for exhibitions. This will probably preserve the body for further scientific study for longer than King Ramses (who I remember seeing on display when I was wee), and also preserves his damn dignity. 

Yes, these are people. No matter how long they’ve been dead and no matter what your beliefs about what happens when people die and whatnot, these were real people and should be given more respect. UGH.

(Also, I am severely uncomfortable with the scene depicted in the picture. It’s a visual for exploitation and appropriation that doesn’t sit right, even though I know it’s just dispassionate science… right.)

From The Angry Black Tumblr | Comment below or Reblog @ Tumblr

Sister Song website

Reproductive Justice: 101

Loretta Ross of SisterSong on “Reproductive Justice 101″ Part 1

Loretta Ross of SisterSong: Women of Color Reproductive Health Collective, gives a lecture on “Reproductive Justice 101″ in Miami during June of 2008, sponsored by Women’s Fund of Miami and Mi Lola. Check out their website at http://sistersong.net/

Loretta Ross of SisterSong on “Reproductive Justice 101″ Part 2

Loretta Ross of SisterSong: Women of Color Reproductive Health Collective, gives a lecture on “Reproductive Justice 101″ in Miami during June of 2008, sponsored by Women’s Fund of Miami and Mi Lola. Check out their website at http://sistersong.net/

Reproductive Justice: Abortion

Loretta Ross: The Economic and Racial Dynamics of Abortion

Loretta Ross, reproductive justice and human rights activist, talks about the racial and economic dynamics of abortion, STDs, teen pregnancy and health care.

The 2010 Documentary “The Abortion Conspiracy

Abortion Conspiracy Part 1: The Billboard Campaign

Part 2

Episode Two of a five part series looking at a right wing conspiracy theory that abortion in communities of color is genocide. This video covers Pro Life Freedom Rides staged by Priests for Life in the summer of 2010.

Part 3

Abortion Conspiracy Episode 3: This video examines a right wing documentary which alleges that abortion in the African American community is genocide. Through fear mongoring and guilt by association, it tires to make the case that this is a conspiracy led by Margaret Sanger, founder of Planned Parenthood.

Abortion Conspiracy Part 4: Racial Uplift

Part 4 of a five part series on the right wing effort to portray abortion as genocide in communities of color. This episode profiles several African Americans who work in the field of reproductive health: an abortion provider, a volunteer at a hotline which offers counseling and two escorts at an abortion clinic in the south.

Abortion Conspiracy Part 5 The Mid Term Elections

One of the strategies of the right wing conspiracy theory that abortion amounts to genocide in the African American community is to try to fragment the Democratic base in the 2010 mid term elections. This episode asks if this strategy will have any effect.

2010: Are Black Children an ‘Endangered Species’? (The shorter version)

Reproductive Rights: Birth

Atlanta: The Doula Story

This video profiles Perez Ridley, a Doula in Atlanta, GA, who counsels pregnant teens on behalf of the Georgia Campaign for Adolescent Pregnancy Prevention.

Northwest Doula Conference 2010

Shafia M. Monroe – Certified Midwife, founder and president of International Center for Traditional Childbearing – presenter on Full Circle Birth Traditions

The Legacy of the Black Midwife Part 1/6

The Legacy of the Black Midwife Part 2/6

The Legacy of the Black Midwife Part 3/6

The Legacy of the Black Midwife Part 4/6

The Legacy of the Black Midwife Part 5/6

The Legacy of the Black Midwife Part 6/6(end)

Reproductive Justice part 2: Reproductive 101, Deconstructing the current anti-abortion efforts targeting Black women; also, doulas and midwives. -- Originally posted at The Angry Black Woman

“I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to “order” than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: “I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action”; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a “more convenient season.” Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.”

–Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Letter from a Birmingham Jail

Is it a More Convenient Season yet? -- Originally posted at The Angry Black Woman

So this whole thing with Chris Matthews “forgetting that Obama is black” falls into that same range of racism as “Pretty for a black girl” and the “You’re not like those other black people” claptrap often espoused by the “I’m not racist, but…” crowd. They’re coded as compliments, but the subtext is still an ugly one that frames racism as being the fault of the oppressed. After all, if we’d all just be a credit to our race then our problems would go away right? Right. Oh wait, no that’s completely wrong.

Let me give you a quick history lesson on American race relations and what can happen when black people in this country are just going about their business. We can start with Rosewood, Florida. Now let’s move on to Tulsa, Oklahoma, and of course the riots that broke out right here in Chicago. What’s that? Oh, you think the early 20th century is ancient history? Okay. Let’s talk about a Baptist church in Selma, Alabama. Still too far in the past? Okay. Let’s come forward to cases like Lenard Clark’s or Abner Louima’s. Or this one on New Year’s Day 2010.

This incidents are as much a part of America’s racial history as the “I have a Dream” speech, traffic lights (invented by Garret A. Morgan, peanut butter, open heart surgery (successfully pioneered by Dr. Daniel Hale Williams), and all the other positive moments like the election of President Obama. I’ve heard people that claim to be colorblind (or post-racial) insist that the future hinges on seeing people without including race. Of course their future seems very…pale with some of the same people complaining about the continuing existence of institutions like the NAACP, HBCU’s, and other organizations that predate the Civil Right’s Movement.

I’ll buy that part of the problem is the failure of our educational system to teach history comprehensively, but that’s not the only reason for these attitudes. America’s efforts to “transcend” race are still about America’s efforts to forget the past entirely and of course to ignore anything happening right now that might require confronting reality. Racism isn’t going to go away as long as we try to pretend that ignoring race is a solution. The idea that race is something for POC to overcome is the equivalent of buying racism a new costume to replace the old hood.

Transcending Race…A History Lesson -- Originally posted at The Angry Black Woman

So there’s this letter in today’s Dear Abby about the way President Obama is referred to by black Americans/self-identifies as a black man. And it contains an argument I’ve heard before about the white “half” and so I feel compelled to point out a few bits of historical and social context in the interests of not listening to people make this argument any more. First up, we live in a society that coined the One Drop rule to ensure that racism had a solid generational footing. The impact of that rule, Jim Crow etiquette and laws, and a host of other bits of institutional racism are still being felt today. Terms like mulatto and colored carry a whole lot of cultural baggage in America that most (if not all) people with good sense want to avoid heaping on anyone else. So, that brings us to words like biracial or multiracial. And yes, President Obama (much like my eldest son) is technically biracial. However, he is not light enough to pass and so he has spent his life (regardless of the color of his mother and grandmother) being treated as a black man in his everyday interactions.

My son isn’t light enough to pass (not that I’d want him too) either and he sees himself as a black man. Some of that is definitely influenced by upbringing (after I divorced his father, I eventually remarried and his stepfather is black), but it is also a product of what he sees in the mirror everyday. This idea that a society that engineered distinctions like the One Drop Rule, mulatto, colored, quadroon, octoroon, and quintroon is going to be filled with people that look at someone with a skin tone that reflects black ancestry and see the white/Asian/Latino/Indian/NDN ancestry as paramount is frankly ludicrous. I’ll let you in on a secret, your average black American with a family line present in America for longer than 2 or 3 generation is part something else. Maybe white, maybe NDN, whatever the racial background, when they go outside and walk down the street unless they are light enough to pass for white (and have the requisite features of thinner lips and a nose that is high and narrow enough) someone is questioning their background. More importantly they are encountering racism (subtle and overt) that constantly informs their experience.

And yes, there is some backlash (from all sides) attached to the notion of self-identification for multiracial people especially if someone feels that the racial identity established is too narrow/disrespectful of the other ancestry/too general. We’re a country that likes boxes and labels (see every single discussion of Tiger Woods) because we’re a country that has built an entire caste system on racial classifications. My son’s biological father is white, but his experience in society? It’s not that of a white man. It will never be that of a white man. When President Obama refers to himself as a black man it’s not a denial of his mother, it’s an acknowledgment of his experience. Is that a good statement about the state of American race relations? Probably not. But this the reality of living in a country that periodically trots out the idea that being tolerant or color blind is the only way not to be racist.

Race, Terminology, and Self-Identification -- Originally posted at The Angry Black Woman

Found these via my Flist on LiveJournal last week and thought to share them with you. First up is an awesome short film (I guess that’s what it would be called) of Djimon Hounsou reading Binyavanga Wainaina excellent essay “How Not to Write About Africa“.

via Delux

And now for something completely different. I am aware that Glen Beck is unbalanced and unhinged, but as I don’t watch live TV that much, I only get glimpses and often forget just how insane he seems. Then people put up videos like this and I watch in amazement all over again. At least this one is of Keith Olberman making fun of him:

Glen seems to be painfully unaware of Greek sculpture and art. Also, he seems to think that someone can be a communist and a facist without having a split personality. I mean, seriously, people like this just sort of lump in all groups of people they consider “evil” and then accuse you of being all of them at once. Like, “OMG you are in the Nation of Islam AND the KKK!!!” The ignorance, it is staggering.

via rozk

It’s Sunday, Have Some Videos -- Originally posted at The Angry Black Woman

Michael Jackson died yesterday. I wish I could say this came as a shock. Though I didn’t know anything about his health or recent condition, somehow I just found myself unsurprised. And profoundly sad.

In deciding to write this, I went through many thoughts on why I feel able to be sad about Michael’s death and to even say positive things about him when I would not extend the same charity to other flawed artists. For example, when Ike Turner died I was unwilling to allow his talent to overshadow my feelings about his history as an abuser. And if R. Kelly were to die today I would think it was a shame, but I would not mourn. In the former case I don’t have much opinion on the talent of the individual; in the latter, I do feel that the man has a lot of talent, but I can’t separate that from the disgust I feel at his sexual adventures with underage girls.

So why don’t I feel the same about Michael?

I can’t give you a good answer. Perhaps because I feel like, whatever Michael is alleged to have done, I can see how the damage done to him in life could have led to it. Doesn’t excuse it, certainly. But it allows me to personally look past it to the good things about him: his music.

The first music video I ever saw was Thriller and I was around 3 years old. My aunt was excited to have me watch it, my mother thought it was too scary for me. But in the end my aunt won and I tried to match those dance moves all night. Michael’s music has been in my ear since before I was born. And before I was five I could sing all the lyrics from every song on Thriller and a bunch from his Jackson 5 days, too.

I was too young at the time to understand the implications behind Michael being the first black artist on MTV. As an adult I still feel a sense of incredulity when I think about that. In the 80s there was still a need for someone’s talent to transcend their race. But Michael did and music (and television) is all the better for it.

The first record I bought with my own money was Bad. Dangerous and HIStory were the first CDs I ripped to MP3. I know that in my music-listening life there has rarely been a month that’s gone by without my listening to some of his music. It seemed like everything he set himself to do he did really well. The singing, the dancing, even the acting.

The videos! Oh goddess, the man pioneered music videos as cinema. Thriller did us all in, but as I sit here searching YouTube I’m reminded of so many more. Remember the Time, Black or White, Smooth Criminal (the long cut), Bad, Jam…

I saw him in concert once when he was touring after Bad came out. It was… amazing. He was a machine. Dancing, singing, never stopping for hours. He gave the crowd everything and then he went on to do it every night for everyone else. It increased my love for him ten-fold.

I think I mourned the MJ I adored many years ago. I had no expectation that he’d make a satisfactory comeback, though I would have been happy to be surprised. It all ended sometime after HIStory for me. Invincible didn’t impress, Blood on the Dance Floor didn’t even register. I felt bad for that. But Michael changed, and not in the way he was able to change before to keep up and transcend.

Still, today I am sad. Because the image of him I have in my head is that amazing entrance to the stage for the Dangerous tour. He exploded out of the stage in a spray of fireworks and then just stood there, silent and still, for a full five minutes, with the bearing of a god. He knew he was good. He knew that, in those moments, he was a rock god. And then the music would start, and he would move, and the concert began, and everything else melted away.

Rest in Peace, Michael Jackson. You and James Brown can spend eternity trading moves. Maybe you’ll teach him to moonwalk.

Michael Jackson: Speak A Good Word -- Originally posted at The Angry Black Woman

Today is Octavia E. Butler’s birthday.  If she were still alive, she’d be 62 and awesome.  She wrote science fiction and fantasy, and one of her aims was to change the world with it.  I think she did.  I think she still does.

I was privileged to be Octavia’s friend, to know her and hang with her during the last years of her life.  I went shopping with her, ate at (vegetarian) restaurants with her, attended stage performances with her, sat on author panels with her.  I got me a lot of Octavia E., though of course not enough to make up for her being gone now.

Octavia was pure-D gorgeous, beautiful in every way, inside and out.  “No, I wasn’t,” I can hear her saying in my head.  “You didn’t know!”  But I did know, and so did so many other people.   At the memorial service held for her in 2006, another science fiction author who had met her and been in her presence for only one short hour was in tears as he spoke about how deeply she had affected him.  Another man who knew her in connection with her video interviews there at the Science Fiction Museum walked up to the podium, looked out at the people gathered together, said “Thank you” in a trembling voice, and walked unsteadily back to his seat.

People often ask me how Octavia influenced me as a writer.  I tell them that aesthetically I’m much closer to Samuel R. Delany when it comes to what I try to do.  But Octavia did affect me in two ways.  First, she emphasized how important it is for writers to tell the truth.  To find it, figure it out, dig for it if you have to, climb for it, fly for it.  Go where it is and get it and bring it back whole for your readers.  Second, she gave me money.  Over $1000.  And if you don’t think that has something to do with what I write and what I’ve been able to get written, you are not an author or any kind of artist yourself.  And if you are an artist or author of  some kind, you understand the connection intimately.

At Octavia’s memorial service in Seattle in 2006, I lit a candle in her name and poured a libation for her spirit, as is traditional in my spiritual practice.  I brought out the Christmas cards she’d sent me: a mother tiger and two cubs in the snow; Mount Rainier towering above the clouds, just the way she did.  I spoke about her early membership in the Carl Brandon Society, a nonprofit organization that supports increased representation of people of color in the fantastic genres.  And I repeated her directive, what she’d told me about her membership: “Use me,” Octavia had said.  “Use my name.”

Soon after the memorial service,  some of the many people who she had affected put together a scholarship fund in her name and gave the fund’s administration to the Carl Brandon Society.  The Octavia E. Butler Memorial Scholarship Fund has just sent off its fifth full payment for a student of color to attend a Clarion or Clarion West Writers Workshop.  Five writers of color have been able to attend Clarion or Clarion West, the workshops where Octavia got her start as a professional science fiction author and where she taught several times.  She’s having an influence.  She’s changing the world, and I’m using her name, exactly the way she wanted me to.

If you loved Octavia, if you still love her, no matter how brief or distant your encounters with her, no matter if you knew her, rode the bus with her once, or only (“only!”) read her work, celebrate the passing of her birthday today with a smile of thanks.  And if you’re able to donate to her scholarship fund, either by sponsoring Tempest in the Clarion West Write-a-thon so that part of your contribution goes to Clarion West and part to the fund, or by donating directly via the Carl Brandon Society’s website at www.carlbrandon.org, well, so much the better.

If you haven’t read any Octavia E. Butler yet, now’s a good time to start.  Though she’s best remembered for her novels, I adore her short story collection, Bloodchild.  If you’d really prefer a novel, I recommend you start with the last one she finished.  That’s Fledgling.

Let me know what you think.

OEB Day! -- Originally posted at The Angry Black Woman

I practice a West African religious tradition known as Ifa or Orisha.  It’s very closely related to Vodun, Santeria, Lucumi, and similar traditions in the Western Hemisphere.

Among the Ifa pantheon are many goddesses.  One could say they are black, as they originate in black Africa.  And at times one could say that they are angry.

Oya is the owner of the whirlwind.  A rushing river.  A copper current.  She is electricity in the air, the crackle of tension as it builds, the sizzle as it releases.  Her name means ”she tore.”  Oya cleans away dirt and decay with her powerful broom.  To quote my godmother, Luisah Teish, she is “a warrior against stagnation.”

Yemaya is the mother of fishes.  She dances on the surface of the ocean, silver and blue and pearly white in the sun and moon.  But in a storm–watch out! And like any mother she is ready to defend her children to the death, stashing a kitchen knife in the pocket of that June Cleaver (!) apron.  Don’t make her pull it out.

Oshun is sweetness personified.  She owns erotic love, money, culture, and the finer things in life.  Oshun is honey and oranges, cool spring water and trilling birdsong.  She is also the vulture soaring high, casting her shadow over what is spoiled and needs work, over all that must be changed.  From her I learned that engaging others with my anger is a blessing, a precious gift I give them.

Some divinities in the Ifa pantheon are asexual, and appear not to have sexual characteristics.  Others seem to embody both sexes, either simultaneously or via different “faces” or “roads.”  I’ve written here about three of the Orisha who are primarily seen as female, but there are others.

Even the briefest discussion of Angry Black Goddesses would be incomplete without mention of the Iyami.  This is a word in the West African Yoruba language meaning “our mothers.”  The Iyami of any community are that community’s witches.  They act in secret to further women’s interests.  They are able to disguise themselves as birds when going about their business.  They are very dangerous to oppose.

Those who follow my tradition believe that each of us is closest to one Orisha in particular, and that Orisha is said to rule one’s head.  Men may be ruled by female Orisha, and women by male Orisha.  In fact, each of us has a father and a mother; the Orisha who rules our head and another of the complementary gender.

This is true of all people, no matter one’s race, origin, or religion.

Do you know who your Angry Black Goddess is?  If you want to find out, you can ask a diviner.

Angry Black Goddesses -- Originally posted at The Angry Black Woman