For February 2016 I will stick to a Black media diet: Black books, Black blogs, Black magazines, Black music, Black films, Black television, Black news outlets, Black Twitter, etc. So, for example, I will not be watching the Oscars. Or reading The Economist. And so on.
My media diet for January 2016 (based on sources listed for posts):
- 60% White
- 23% Black
- 13% Native
- 3% Asian
- 0% Other
I will count as Black anything that seems to be by or for people from Africa and the Diaspora. So, for example, Melissa Harris-Perry will count, even though she is on White-owned MSNBC. The Root counts even though, for all I know, the editor-in-chief is White. Ancient Egyptians count. So does Nollywood and Augustine. So does any Twitter or Tumblr account with a Black avatar or Black-oriented content. I will not unfollow anyone who seems to be non-Black, just skip over their posts and tweets for now.
Links: I can follow links that go to or from Black content, but not any between non-Black content. I can use Google, but only to find Black content. I can use the Wikipedia, but only those parts written in a language native to Africa, like Swahili or Wolof.
Research for posts: I will be limited to some 20% of my books and an even smaller share of the Internet. For Black Women’s History Month, though, that should not be a big deal since most of my sources would have been Black anyway.
Will this narrow my range of media? Blacks, after all, are only 13% of the US. But even to think of it that way buys into the very White gaze I want to avoid. Over half of my current media diet comes from Whites in the US and Britain – from less than 4% of the world! Africa and the Diaspora are nearly five times that – and its media is way less likely to under-represent and mis-represent Black people.
The top ten languages of Africa and the Diaspora, in rough numbers:
- English: 240 million speakers as a first or second language
- Arabic: 170m
- Portuguese: 150m
- French: 120m
- Swahili: 100m
- Hausa: 50m
- Spanish: 30m
- Yoruba: 28m
- Oromo: 34m
- Amharic: 32m
Only the last two I cannot read or get a quick, rough translation of.
Just on the strength of English alone, though, it is almost the size of White America and White Britain put together (250m).
Exceptions: All that said, I will allow the following exceptions to my Black media diet:
- The Bible,
- The Oxford dictionary,
- “The X-Files” (2016),
- anything required for work (computer stuff), and
- anything directly having to do with this blog (comments, links people give me, guest posts, fact checking, etc).
In March I will write about my experiences. Sooner, if I do not last that long. I will then consider what changes I should make to my media diet going forward.
If you have any Black or African media you want to recommend, especially news outlets and YouTube channels, please let me know in the comments below.
Thanks!
– Abagond, 2016.
See also:
- The Vast Talking Machine
- media diet
- media guides
- medium and media
- I put up my books – geographically
- demographically weighted world history
- Books I would take to a desert island
- The Economist
569
I am going to recommend Muftah, as I just started to read their articles and I like it a lot.
http://muftah.org/about/
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The focus of Muftah seems more about the Middle East and some writers are white so I don’t know if this fits,.
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The whole thing sounds kind of silly. Clarence Thomas, Cornel West and Adolph Reed Jr. are black but their worldviews have little in common, so which one should be considered “authentically black”?
Having spoken my piece, here’s are a few websites you might find of interest:
( http://nilevalleypeoples.blogspot.ca/search?updated-min=2015-01-01T00:00:00-05:00&updated-max=2016-01-01T00:00:00-05:00&max-results=13
http://afkinsider.com/
http://timbuktuchronicles.blogspot.com/#!
http://www.howwemadeitinafrica.com/agriculture-doesnt-have-to-be-a-poor-peoples-game-says-successful-farmer/53223/
http://www.herald.co.zw/category/s7-blogs/c59-nathaniel-manheru/
http://www.herald.co.zw/category/s7-blogs/c70-reason-wafawarova/
http://www.blackagendareport.com/)
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I like Trojan Pam’s blog: http://www.racismws.com
I strongly urge you, Abagond, to feature it in your blog. It’s an enlightening blog.
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NileValleyPeople is an excellent blog! Thanks for posting the other links!
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It should be interesting. I once went a year without money to better understand the hardships of my renters. By the end of that year I better understood the shortcomings of myself and them.
In your case, some of your sources (blogs) may still rely upon non-Black sources.
I wonder if your experiment will change you or your readers…?
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Brown Girl Collective is a Facebook page dedicated to the education and uplifting of black women. Created, maintained and owned by a black female.
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@Uglyblackjohn
What an excellent undertaking. I’d love to read about your experiences one day.
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@Abagond
I will send you some interesting links in the weekend.
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Lots on Idris Elba please.
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Black And Sexy Tv. One of my favorite black owned media outlets. They have a youtube channel and a website where you can check out all of their webisodes.
http://www.blackandsexy.tv
(https://m.youtube.com/user/blackandsexytv)
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Enjoying my YouTube channel Watching The Number and Punnannie Diaries and Unwritten Rules and The Couple and Black & Sexy TV and Smoke and Mirrors. And on Aspire cable channel featuring aspiring black filmmakers and their short films. I enjoy listening to audiobooks that’s an amazing art form being able to tell a good story. Just finished Isabell Wilkerson’s The Warmth of Other Suns about The Great Migration read by this wonderful audio artist Robin Miles. And listened to Ta- Nehisi Coates Between The World and Me. Narrated by Ta-Nehesi Coates. Also listened to Robin Miles narrate Bernice Mcfadden’s Nowhere Is A Place. Now I am listening to Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man. Reading Abagond’s blog. And articles from Clutch Magazine. And listening to my favorite podcasts About Race and Intersection with Jamil Smith. And Buzzfeeds Another Round which I strongly suggest to white people who want to be *Cough* “Allies ” Because white folks got a lot they need to learn. I see you Mirkwood and Uriel. But these are the things that are making my melanin radiant and glistening. Loving my blackness all day everyday.
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And Reelback on YouTube also. Everyone should check that out. Especially Dr.Charles Woods aka The Professor. Love Reelback,
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And my weekend ritual Melissa Harris-Perry On Saturday and Sunday with my breakfast to get my morning started.
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Very Smart Brothas blog and Awesomely Luvvie make howl with laughter.😉
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Black Twitter is “Fire” Love Black Twitter hope social media does another Black Out to annoy the yipipol.
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@ gro jo
I knew you would think it was silly, but much thanks for the links.
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@ villagewriter
Thank you! I look forward to it.
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@vanishingpoint @Mr Mitchell @Herneith @Yaquina @Danny @Mary
Thank you for your recommendations!
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Abagond, you’re welcome. It’s still silly to me.
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Here are some links:
http://africanpeople.info
(https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC12lU5ymIvSpgl8KntDQUQA)
http://africasacountry.com/
Hope they help. Will send more.
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Abagond,
if you should ever feel inspired to write about modern day black/brown people
who are Not American or live in the USA:
http://calvertjournal.com/features/show/5388/red-africa-afrorussians-black-ussr-portraits-generation-identity
Black in the USSR
The children of Soviet Africa search for their own identity
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Abagond,
I think this is such a wonderful idea!
I have somewhat embarked on this in my own life. Let me explain (please excuse my ramble).
I am not sure when it came about, but possibly when I was listing some books that I had read on the’ stories through the centuries’ thread, reading comments on the history of Black music and cultural appropriation, the eclipse and dominance of white media drowning out authentic Black voices , historians and scholars, the distortion wrought by centuries of ’emptying the native’s mind of all content’ and the ceaseless propaganda working 24/7 to exonerate white culpability and all of that , I had an epiphany. Why am I reading dead white mens’ books? And why am I paying attention to white musicians who don’t give two hoots about the people whom they have appropriated music from? And not enough African and Africans in Diaspora poetry, literature, history , biography and philosophy? I stupidly used to pride myself having catholic tastes.
So out with George Bernard Shaw (eugenist), Bertrand Russell (thought that Blacks were savages), Oscar Wilde, Samuel Beckett, etc. (I have not gone so far as giving away James Joyce and Shakespeare, though). In with Credo Mutwa, Sol Plaatjie, Ben Okri, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie,
George G. M . James, John Hendik Clarke,Dr Amos Wilson, Kwesi Wiredu, Dr Walter Rodney, Dr Cheik Anta Diop, etc.
Of course James Baldwin, Toni Morrison and Alice Walker are always in.
As an English speaker, my collection of dictionaries and Roget’s Thesauri stay on my bookshelf.
For myself, I have simply stopped listening to most white music for a variety of reasons. I really used to like U2’s music, (even having met Bono in person) but have been turned off by the scrotum-tight pantsted white saviour indulging in African poverty pornography.
The classical piece that really still haunts is Gorecki’s Song of Sorrowful Songs.
I do not watch Hollywood nonsense anymore (even if it includes Samuel L. Jackson) and used to like wildlife documentaries and could not bear it any longer how the white man is the centre of ‘saving wildlife’ when they are the primary cause of habitat loss and species endangerment.
I sometimes catch Democracy Now and Al Jazeera.
So yesterday , on the beach , was a few lines of The Isis Papers , I Write what I Like and Alice Walker’ s discovery of Zora Neale Hurston in In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens and listening to Whitney Houston on the train – (I love the Greatest Love of All).
Written on a small phone. Sorry for the ramble and typos.
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Off the top of head , here are some blogs and websites I read. Apology, not on my computer, so it is difficult to send links from this phone.
1) http://www.assatashakur.org
2) http://www.sbf.org.za
3) http://www.assante.net
4) http://www.africanholocaust.net
5) http://www.oopau.org
6) http://www.msafropolitan.com
I really like Trojanpam’s blog.
And Brothawolf and Diaryofanegress.
Used to watch Trevor Noah comedy clips on YouTube- African American, That’s Racist, etc.
I also like listening to Dr Cress Welsing and Dr Marimba Ani amongs others, on YouTube
(If you are curious about South African hip hop , check out an artist, iFani, who raps in Xhosa- Chocolate and Vanilla, Ewe, pronounced airwhere)
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@ villagewriter @ taosetan
Thank you for your recommendations. (I thought I already had, but see that I haven’t.)
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@Abagond
You are welcome.
And thanks for fixing the links.
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https://africanbloodsiblings.wordpress.com/
A site written from an extraordinary African mindset perspective about community and organization.
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@ Mary
Do you know what is going on with her show? From watching her show, is there any reason you can see why MSNBC would want to cancel it or take over editorial control from her? Like, was she being too pro-Sanders or something?
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Melissa Harris Perry walked off. She’s done. Her show was pre-empted for weeks and she wasn’t part of their election coverage. She complained about it to the higher ups but they didn’t pay her any mind. She thought she was one of the boys. Nope. Despite her light complexion, she’s still black. She was their token negro and when they needed someone to exclusively shame black men, she was their go to person.
She got her wake up call. Sharpton’s show is on life support. Joy Ried is one borrowed time.
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It is a bit late, but if you want to see some news channels from Africa, or with an African perspective:
ANN7 (South Africa): http://www.ann7.com/livetv
Channels TV (Nigeria): http://www.channelstv.com/home/live/
CNBC Africa (Africa): http://www.cnbcafrica.com/tv/cnbc-africa-live/
eNCA (Africa): http://www.enca.com/live24
TVC News (Nigeria): http://www.tvcnews.tv/?q=live-tv
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