“Nina” (2016), a film about singer Nina Simone, is set to come out on April 22nd. See the trailer above. Nina Simone is played by Zoe Saldana, a light-skinned Latina who looks so unlike Simone that she plays her in what is arguably blackface.
Simone’s daughter, who controls her estate (but not enough of her songs to stop the film) says the film is “unauthorized”. She preferred Viola Davis or Kimberly Elise. On Twitter she told Saldana to “please take Nina’s name out your mouth. For the rest of your life.”
Because the film has a (made-up) love story and is by and for White people, it falls under the “But Not Too Black” trope, a sort of Hollywood whitewashing. The idea is that most White men could see themselves in love with Zoe Saldana but not, say, Viola Davis or any other woman who is actually dark-skinned. Even Nina Simone would be too dark to play Nina Simone!
You see the same sort of thing in “Kung Fu” (1972-1975), where a Chinese American is played by David Carradine, an Irish American made to look Asian (yellowface). That was because White Americans (or at least Hollywood producers) have a hard time seeing Asian American men as fully human (partly because of the many wars the US fought in Asia).
– Abagond, 2016.
See also:
- Zoe Saldana to play Nina Simone – the post I wrote in 2012 when Saldana was cast for the film.
- Ta-Nehisi Coates: Nina Simone’s Face
- Zoe Saldana
- Hollywood whitewashing
- blackface
- Nina Simone
- Nina Simone: My Baby Just Cares for Me – this post has a 1930 video showing Eddie Cantor in blackface.
- Nina Simone: Little Girl Blue
- Nina Simone: To Be Young, Gifted and Black
- Nina Simone: Mississippi Goddam
- Nina Simone: Feeling Good
- David Carradine
- Real People
This should be an interesting film. What’s next? The Malcolm X story played by Tom Cruise. Hollyweird continues to insult the intelligence of black people.smh
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me and the wife were talking about this she was looking at the other recent song that had blackface in it you posted, what is it with that? idk
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it looks like a cute story but
because I know it’s Zoe Saldana underneath there, I can’t get past the shoe polish, the afro wigs and fake nose
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What is the “made up” love story?
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The current political and social climate around race in America, now in 2016 are more pitched than back in 2012. This could be embarrassing for Saldana and the producers. I wonder how the U.S. release/reception will fare.
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She’s an actor who has been blue in ‘Avatar’, green in ‘Guardians of the Galaxy’ and ambiguous colors/races in other movies. Why shouldn’t she be able to be black in ‘Nina’?
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The trailer doesn’t look bad. As for Saldana being too light to play Nina, that sounds like nonsense and hypocrisy, because Sidney Poitier played Thurgood Marshall without a word from anybody claiming he was too dark. How is the love story made up?
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Terrible just terrible I would rather watch the documentary on Netflix What Happened Miss Simone.
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There was an argument about this a while back online that was teetering on non-constructive. There was a whole bunch of name calling toward Zoe in the form of almost calling her non-black. It was surreal. While certainly I have issues in most movies that cast Ms. Zaldana in it (it seems every movie she’s in promotes “get a white man”), I don’t think SHE personally means any harm in shooting this film. There may be issue here, but it certainly isn’t Zaldana’s fault. Gotta talk to the white people in Hollywood about that. While I agree there could have been a better casting choice, none of us got all up in arms when Denzel Washington played Malcolm X. I think if we’re going to complain about this, we should at least show some consistency.
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Any controversy about Saldana being too light to play Nina is based on hypocrisy. If Sidney Poitier could play Thurgood Marshall, why can’t Saldana play Nina?
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This movie is going to end up like Stonewall. A big FLOP.
Zoe Soldana had to put on black face to play Nina Simone goes to show you how little Hollywood has changed. The more they say they are willing to change, the more things stay the same. And speaking of Zoe Soldana, she comes from a part of the world were actors and actresses have NO qualms using black face so for her to do this speaks volumes. Viola Davis would have been perfect for this role. She’s a great actress and I’m sure she would do exceptionally well.
Everyone was so bothered by the awards instead of the systemic Jim Crow like practices that Hollywood engages in. We all know Hollywood has an affinity for light skin blacks due to their fairer skin and, hair and those features are the closest proximity to whiteness.
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@Linda: That makeup looks like poo slathered on her face and the wig and the prosthetic nose is horrible to me as well, that’s what is insulting.
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Mary,
it does look un-natural.. I watched the trailer twice. I closed my eyes the second time to see if I could “feel” the character
but when I opened them and all I saw was Zoe in a costume.
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@Linda I can see this going straight to the $2.00 DVDs bin at Walmart.
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That makeup looks like poo slathered on her face and the wig and the prosthetic nose is horrible to me as well, that’s what is insulting.
@Mary & Linda
Interestingly, I couldn’t help but notice just how slick the movie poster is. A sharp contrast to the actual appearance of Saldana in the film, using the trailer as my guide, anyway.
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Zoe Saldana is a gotdamn idiot.
http://www.clutchmagonline.com/2013/05/girl-bye-zoe-saldana-claims-people-of-color-dont-exist/
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People – its not like there is a shortage of dark-skinned actresses getting good roles in Hollywood.Most of the young actresses who are coming up in Hollywood are very dark skinned. Just check out movies like Dope, Creed, Dear White People, Furious 7.. oh wait. Well, at least there’s porn. Well, maybe not.
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It will reach a point where the DVD/streaming/rental market will be the best option for… niche moviemakers. You have that RED Handheld camera, bunch of other technologies. May need to have something like equipment rental for us, film school seminars, infrastructure. We’ll need something like that Chinatown Yellow Pages.
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I don’t see Zoe as light or dark, but I guess all those trends are relative. Idk… im not all that offended by this casting decision
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“@ bro Jo,
Because a) dark skinned black men are allowed in Hollywood
B) light skinned Bp have privileges so in my opinion it’s like comparing apples to oranges and sounds a lot like an argument a wp would make
Sidney Poitier playing one light skinned black man doesn’t mean colorism isn’t an issue nor does it make it hypocritical to want fair representation for dark skinned bw”
Sis Pumpkin,
Coming from you, the above is ludicrous, aren’t you the one pining for the companionship of white men? Since when was competition outlawed? Why should she have stepped aside for a darker skinned woman? Should blacks make way for white actors when Shakespeare’s or any other white writer’s work is to be performed? This post is full of nonsense and reeks of hypocrisy. A case of political correctness run amok. Only people who think they are “superior” to dark skinned blacks would take this stuff seriously.
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I liked the Netflix film “What Happened, Miss Simone?”. That was enough to get me to realize that even though I had grown up with her music, I didn’t know her name or biography. Props, Nina..!!
As a teenager, I was a BIG Jimi Hendrix fan. I had a lot of angst about the casting of both of his big budget bio films. Although Andre 2000 nailed both the role and made it his, it was the screenplay that sucked.
The real problem with both films was not the casting. The problem was that the Hendrix estate didn’t release the music rights to the producers. That meant that the producers and screenwriters had to actually dig deeper to write about an African-American MAN who was also a musical genius that defined a musical genre in the 1960’s, without using the very music he created.
Tough sledding. IMHO, the best bio-film of Jimi Hendrix was based on a series of interviews with his brother. After I saw that film, I knew Hendrix, the man.
The controversy surrounding the casting of the Nina Simone bio-pic, with all due respect to all parties concerned, should be focused on the quality of the “story”, not the casting. I will readily concede that her “story” was about her overcoming, unlike Zoe Spock, the label of not being a “traditional beauty” as define by European standards. The question that remains about this film is whether those obstacles and her response to it, through her music and her life of civil rights advocacy, is depicted in-depth.
I hope that the depth of her commitment to civil rights and black liberation, through her musical genius is the focus of this dramatization of her life
I would also hope that if this movie falls short, enough interest in the subject will motivate any future production to aim higher.
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I have wrestled with the rhubarb surrounding this film for all of the reasons stated. Certainly there have been successful biopics where the actor was not anywhere close to a doppelganger of the subject. Joaquin Phoenix playing Johnny Cash, for example. And I feel like the criticism directed toward Zoe Saldana personally is accusing her of the crime of accepting a job and working at that job. It’s hard enough for actors of color, especially female actors of color, without telling them that they must among other things reject lucrative gigs if they are potentially not PC in the eyes of some viewers.
At the same time, in the case of Nina Simone, her skin tone and physiognomy were an immutable part of her public persona, moreso perhaps than with other musicians. For this reason it was incumbent on the film makers to cast this film with a bit more verisimilitude. It brings to mind Mira Nair (an Indian-American director) casting Marisa Tomei as a Latina (“Perez Family”) instead of somebody like Rosie Perez or Jennifer Lopez, or Sarita Choudhury (half Bengali and half English) in “Mississippi Masala” as the daughter of Indian immigrants. As often discussed, Hollywood is chockablock with examples of using blackface or yellowface or brownface to portray various ethnicities other than white American, and it’s a disgusting practice that ought to be a piece of history, not a current ongoing accepted practice. Yet somehow the blogosphere seems to be harsher, in a more directed and personal manner, when this is perpetrated by somebody who is herself a black person.
Just a couple of years ago Beyoncé was cast as Etta James in “Cadillac Records”. Etta was herself a light skinned person, so there was no blackface involved, but Etta was a powerhouse vocalist with a huge emotive range to her voice. Further, Etta was a large gal who was not considered sexy in a traditional way. Beyoncé is purely a sex symbol and her singing voice is way too weak and thin to credibly render covers of Etta’s songs. Her rendition of “At Last” was almost as bad as that awful nadir of music where Kenny G noodled over Louis Armstrong. There was some level of criticism about this at the time, but nowhere near the vitriol that we see being directed at Zoe Saldana here, I think because of the high level of sensitivity about the colorism issue that infuses the Zoe/Nina question.
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Sis Pumpkin, We are both entitled to our points of view. Let’s leave it at that.
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@Pumpkin
You’re not too far off with that. Do you remember this? They’ve done this nonsense before.
http://kulturekritic.com/2012/07/news/should-biracial-actress-have-portrayed-harriet-tubman-abraham-lincoln-vampire-hunter/
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Stop the darkening of our image.
We know that Thurgood Marshall Looked like this:(http://www.americaslibrary.gov/aa/marshallthrgd/aa_marshallthrgd_subj.html)
But Hollywood wants us to think he looked like this:(http://ecowallpapers.net/sidney-poitier/)
Your silence equates to complicity. Tell Hollywood no more! Do not support entities who want to darken us.
To the unwary, the above is parody of the idiocy of certain super black fanatics hellbent on making a mountain out of a molehill.
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I do remember sitting in the theater laughing my butt of watching Abraham Lincoln Vampire Slayer and the light skinned actress as Harriett Tubman. That was some manure right there.
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@Danny: That link you is posted is one of the many things that irk me about her. When she knows damn good and well colorism plays a huge role in Hollywood for dark skinned black women. Her career is up and running and she could have let another black actress have a shot at that role. Nina Simone’s daughter didn’t even want her playing her mother. Saldana is only black when it’s convenient for her.
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Joseph Fiennes playing Michael Jackson is just as ludicrous. I can’t believe they are going to do this and I hope it’s a joke.
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@Kushite Prince
Yeah!
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Beyonce was terrible as Etta James and Angela Bassett slayed as Tina Turner. And the best portrayals of Michael Jackson from young Michael to teenage Michael to Michael in his Billy Jean phase was the young actors in my favorite film The Jackson’s an American an American Dream. Then Flex Alexander did that horrific portrayal of MJ Man In The Mirror. He should take the walk of shame for that one.
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If Miss Simone were alive today she would probably be outraged.
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The blog, Black Women of Brazil posted an article that dealt with similar themes of “whitening” (embranquecimento)Black historical figures.
https://blackwomenofbrazil.co/2015/06/20/whitewashing-history-play-in-rio-de-janeiro-inspired-by-afro-brazilian-historical-figures-but-portrayed-by-white-actors/
Of course the Brazilians were more brazen in their erasure efforts. They substituted Europeans for famous Afro-Brazilians:
We think Hollywood has no shame. The Brazilans are far ahead on the White Supremacist curve with this one.
The blogger,gatasnegrasbrasileiras summed up Afro-Brazilian invisibility this way:
@Kushite Prince
Good to see you there!
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I had also heard that Beyonce has been touted to play Saartjie Baartman!
No words.
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Hollywood has lost the plot a long time ago.
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I think the issue with Zoe Saldana, is she’s a phony. Her acting is par for the course. Nina Simone was a deep individual in her professional & personal life ( after seeing that Netflix documentary What Happened to Nina Simone? It has made me a true fan!) So there were a slew of Black American actors that would have made Nina Simone breath again with their acting. Remember What’s Love Got to Do With It, with Angela Basset? That’s what I’m talking about matching talent with storyline. Zoe was a bad choice. And I hope the box office will make it loud and clear!
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“I think the issue with Zoe Saldana, is she’s a phony.” This assessment is based on what?
“Zoe was a bad choice. And I hope the box office will make it loud and clear!”
Have you seen the movie, or are you judging her work on purely ideological grounds?
“The blog, Black Women of Brazil posted an article that dealt with similar themes of “whitening” (embranquecimento)Black historical figures.”
That’s nothing compared to Argentina, where Blacks have disappeared from the population completely. The last prominent “black” Argentinian was a guy a hell of a lot lighter skinned than Zoe Saldana. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ram%C3%B3n_Carrillo)
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@Danny
“To me there is no such thing as people of color”
Wo!!! That’s really going to endear her and make black people want to see this movie. If she said that then she has no concept of the woman she is portraying. Sh8t. That comment is worse than the blackface..
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@gro jo
You are right, most of South America has pursued the whitening course as a means of erasing the African descent population. No Black people, no demands for redress of historical injustices. No problem.
Dr. Chinweizu Ibekwe, a Nigerian born scholar, essayist and poet had this opinion:
“When…segregation began to prove counterproductive for white supremacy, it was attacked and dismantled and the autonomous infrastructures that segregation had spawned in black communities were broken down by the crusade for integration. It should be recalled that Martin Luther King and Malcolm X, as well as the Civil Rights and Black Power movements of the 1960s were products of segregated black communities.
All the emergent organizations and the potential leadership stratum of the black communities were eliminated by an Integration movement that creamed off, and scattered them into white neighborhoods…Black separatists, such as the Panthers, they were bloodily crushed by the violence of the US Government’s COINTELPRO. [the FBI covert counterintelligence programmes directed against radical political organisations, including the Civil Rights movement.].
Thus, Integration was a crafty device to shore up white supremacy by preventing Black power from germinating in the segregated communities.
To further divide the black communities of the USA, following their beheading by Integration, the “one-drop rule” is being discarded because it promotes a residual solidarity among the blacks.
Under “multiculturalism”, the old classification system is being replaced, on the Brazilian model, with a proliferation of racial categories. Designations like “biracial”, “mixed race”, “colored” are being encouraged among those African-American mixed breeds who would hitherto have been unequivocally classified as Blacks.”
I don’t agree with all of Dr. Ibekwe’s (he is often referred to as simply, Chinweizu) conclusions. They are thought provoking. They provide another angle to view how White Supremacist ideology adapts itself to changing conditions.
gro jo, do you have any other resources that discuss Dr. Ramon Carillo’s ethnic background. His African ancestry is not discussed in the wikipedia entry. Plus he looks pretty European.
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@Afrojem
Great comment you left. It’s good to see you here too.
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@Gro Jo
I really hope you’re being facetious. You can’t be serious.lol Its rare that they caste a darker black person for the role of a light skinned black. It’s only happened a few times if I recall. I do remember Denzel Washington playing Malcolm X though. And we all now Malcolm was much lighter than Denzel. But it doesn’t happen very often. You must not understand how white supremacy operates. In a system that denigrates and oppresses black people it is more likely that Hollywood will “whitewash” a black person…rather than darken them. The purpose is to dilute authentic African looking blacks. Mainly because whites want to brainwash the masses into believing that they are the TRUE standard of beauty. This is why many times they will hire a mulatto/biracial person in place of a black person. Your example of Thurgood Marshall was a nice try but it doesn’t stand up against the reality of racism/white supremacy.
You said:
“Your silence equates to complicity. Tell Hollywood no more! Do not support entities who want to darken us.
To the unwary, the above is parody of the idiocy of certain super black fanatics hellbent on making a mountain out of a molehill.”
This comment is pretty laughable. It’s not a surprise why no one has “liked” this comment. It’s because most of us are dealing with reality. Whereas you are living in fantsasyland. Some of us take the whitewashing of our people very seriously. It’s not a joke to us. You are either a racist white person or a very delusional and confused black/biracial person. Either way you’re off base in your reasoning.
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this is not even the worst of it they are having a white man play Michael Jackson. Hollywood will use white actors for telling the story of historical black and poc figures,yet white folks will get upset at fictional characters such as superheroes, book characters, and james bond being anything other than white.
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@mstoogood4yall: Good to read you.
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@Kushite Prince: Good to read you brother.
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@taotesan: The Beyonce as Sarah Baartaan has been scrapped because people were so outraged just like Zoe Saldana doing this trash. Thank goodness they Beyonce and her team scrapped this idea.
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I suppose my annoyance about Saldana as Nina Simone is that i have know black Latina’s like her and other Afro Latin Americans who have such anti-black sentiments and hate their blackness, i have met Puerto Ricans and Cubans who harbor this hatred. I have read interviews where Saldana makes these asinine statements about not believing in color and other stupid things. I just can’t with this chick.
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Afrofem @ gro jo, do you have any other resources that discuss Dr. Ramon Carillo’s ethnic background. His African ancestry is not discussed in the wikipedia entry. Plus he looks pretty European.
Linda says,
I had touched on Ramon Carillo slightly in another post about Argentina
Abagonds post:”Map of White People”
Dr. Ramon Carillo was considered moreno or trigueno , so he was not considered “black” in Latin America, but in the USA, he would be because he had African ancestry. (based on the USA’s “one drop rule”)
Trigueno literally translates to wheat coloured but it also is used to refer to people who are mixed-race: Spanish (European), African, and/or Native American – and this is how most Dominicans define themselves– as tri-racial.
Ramon Carillo was famous for making a statement to Josephine Baker when she visited Argentina in the 1950’s.
Josephine asked him
and Ramon replied
He had no qualms talking about his African heritage but the way race is viewed in Latin American countries, he was not considered black and you would be hard pressed to find many references in Argentine literature that refers to him as “black”
Here’s a better picture of him with President Peron and his wife Eva:
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There used to be more Africans in Argentina than Spaniards. In Argentina and many other Latin American countries, the government used various methods to eliminate the “African” from history… African heritage was silenced by by the pen and by blood.
In order to solve their “African” problem, the Argentine government imported thousands of Europeans from Italy, Ireland, and other European countries in a program designed to “whiten” the population.
They also encouraged racial mixing between black women and white men as another means to “lighten” the population.
During slavery, the Spanish would often tell the black men that if they fight in the military, they will receive their freedom. So Argentina sent many black men to their deaths in their many wars with the Native Americans.
Anyway, here’s an old Jet Magazine article from 1973 discussing race in Argentina and it also has the Josephine Baker/Carillo quote:
https://books.google.com/books?id=1dQDAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA74&lpg=PA74&dq=Ramon+Carrillo,+josephine+baker&source=bl&ots=ksn6UsBF5v&sig=PZhx-mMiwk7EapVq1-WJIWW62tI&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiNo_ne3qrLAhVEFx4KHYKJBWUQ6AEIJjAC#v=onepage&q=Ramon%20Carrillo%2C%20josephine%20baker&f=false
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@Linda: That was an interesting read about the disappearing of the Africans in Argentina. The things that were done to erase the presence of the African in these Latin American countries blows my mind. White Supremacy is a mofo.
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“You must not understand how white supremacy operates. In a system that denigrates and oppresses black people it is more likely that Hollywood will “whitewash” a black person…rather than darken them.”
Don’t make me laugh, your Hollywood is a figment of your imagination. Have you ever heard of Herb Jeffries
(born Umberto Alexander Valentino; September 24, 1913 – May 25, 2014), (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herb_Jeffries) who was the idol of black youths in the 1930s? Blacks ate up what he and his backers were offering. Some people even claim he was white. He did the same on his marriage certificate. Membership in the black race has always been rather fluid, so I reject your absurd claims.
Using your criterion, people like Walter White, W.E.B. Dubois and others would have to be reclassified as non-black. I hope you see how that would make telling the truth about Black history more difficult? Playing the color game is a losing proposition, in my opinion. Let dark skinned actors depict lighter skinned individuals and vice versa.
“You said:
“Your silence equates to complicity. Tell Hollywood no more! Do not support entities who want to darken us.
To the unwary, the above is parody of the idiocy of certain super black fanatics hellbent on making a mountain out of a molehill.”
This comment is pretty laughable. It’s not a surprise why no one has “liked” this comment. It’s because most of us are dealing with reality. Whereas you are living in fantsasyland. Some of us take the whitewashing of our people very seriously. It’s not a joke to us. You are either a racist white person or a very delusional and confused black/biracial person. Either way you’re off base in your reasoning.”
I’ll let you in on a little secret, I don’t care what people “like” and don’t give a damn if you think I’m a white racist or a delusional black/biracial. The idiocy of your claim rules you, and others like you, out from serious consideration as far as I’m concerned. Look up the word “parody” and you’ll understand where I’m coming from on this subject.
You and your claque are ignorant of real whitewashing as occurred to James Beckwourth in a 1951 film.
(http://www.badazzmofo.com/2015/02/23/lessons-in-black-history-james-beckwourth/)
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Mary Burrell@ The things that were done to erase the presence of the African in these Latin American countries blows my mind. White Supremacy is a mofo.
Linda says,
yest it is… and that’s why you can’t really get too angry at Latinos for their views on race… the anti-blackness of the Spanish in South American society was/is the same as white North America but the methods to eradicate blackness was different.
white America’s version was to “isolate and then eliminate”–
as I said before, if Abraham Lincoln had his way, black Americans would have been deported on mass to Africa, the Caribbean or Central America.
Latin America’s version was to “procreate to eliminate”
and the Spaniards diligently went about creating a new “race” of people using a racial caste system, this concepts purpose would ultimately lead society to a pathway of whiteness…
that’s why the terms “mestizo, moreno, trigueno, zambo” and others that were showcased by the Casta paintings, truly have meaning
This concept that Americans (USA) have of “Latinos can only be racially black or white” is irrelevant to Latin Americans because they do not view themselves in that way and American views on race is not universal
that’s why Dominicans/ Latinos come off as being “confused” by black Americans.
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There were categories for every possible mixture. Here’s a better view of the Mexican Casta Paintings:
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The casta paintings are hilarious. So, a Morisco,1/4 Black, and a White equals Chino (Chinese). What a sense of humor!
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Also, the Spanish system of using racial castes, was also designed to eliminate the Native Americans, who are also despised in many Latino countries.
That’s why a Mexican will call himself “mestizo” faster than Native American;
whereas, you have white Americans who are 1/96 part Native American, claiming they are Cherokee and seeking tribe membership.
but things are changing slowly… there is a group of Mexicans who are trying to reclaim their Native American ancestry… because they finally realize that this is what the white American government fears.
that the descendants of the Native Americans that they slaughtered and mass deported, are rightfully coming back home to live on the land of their Native ancestors.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2006/apr/16/20060416-122222-1672r/?page=all
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gro jo @ The casta paintings are hilarious. So, a Morisco,1/4 Black, and a White equals Chino (Chinese). What a sense of humor!
Linda says,
Wrong translation. Here’s a breakdown of some of the categories:
“The word chino derives from the Spanish word cochino, meaning “pig”, and the phrase pelo chino, meaning “curly hair”, is a reference to the casta known as chino that possessed curly hair.
(Since there was some immigration from the Spanish East Indies during the colonial period, chino is often confused, even by contemporary historians, as a word for Asian peoples, which is the primary meaning of the word, but not usually in the context of the castas.)
Chino or china is still used in many Latin American countries as a term of endearment for a light-skinned person of African ancestry.”
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I think the casting of Nina is not just a dark skin/light skin issue. It’s specifically because its Zoe Saldana, who has chosen to live her life pretty much outside of “race.” The thing is that because she’s Zoe Saldana, she can make that choice, because of her fame, talent, money, and the way she looks.
She epitomizes the very choices that Nina Simone did NOT have as an artist or as a Black person in her own time. In the end, that may not have a lot to do with how well Zoe can play the part, but it’s bound to be a controversial choice.
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@ Linda
Thanks so much for your detailed explanation of racial categories and attitudes in Latin America!
I’ve read some books and articles that covered this material, but you added an insider’s perspective. I feel as though I’ve just attended a mini-webinar.
I really took notice of your description of how North American anti-Blackness differs from South American anti-Blackness:
A lot of Black Americans have no idea that Lincoln, whom they revere as “The Great Emancipator”, was determined to toss their ancestors overboard the first chance he got. A loony Southerner’s bullet is all that stood between Jim Crow in the States versus forced exile to South America, the Caribbean or West Africa. Pain in either circumstance….
The desired goal of both versions of anti-Blackness is White Supremacy.
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AFrofem@ A lot of Black Americans have no idea that Lincoln, whom they revere as “The Great Emancipator”, was determined to toss their ancestors overboard the first chance he got. A loony Southerner’s bullet is all that stood between Jim Crow in the States versus forced exile to South America, the Caribbean or West Africa.
Linda says,
you’re welcome… I sort of get carried away sometimes… I enjoy history
Lincoln was actively trying to
deportfind offshore homes for black people before his death but many of the ventures failed.He signed a plan with Bernard Kock to relocate former slaves to the Île-à-Vache, Haiti –to start a plantation growing cotton but it failed.
Here’s the full story:
http://thompsongenealogy.com/2011/12/bernard-kock-colonized-cow-island-with-freed-slaves/
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The first article was from the Kock family descendants point of view.
what it glossed over was the fact that 25 of the black “colonists” caught small pox on the ship
and when they arrived at Île-à-Vache, they were abandoned in a newly built medical
shackfacility where they died… great way to start an adventure.here’s another article from historians perspective:
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/04/12/the-le-vache-from-hope-to-disaster/?_r=0
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An extraordinary woman and extraordinary life treated shabbily then, as she is now. Nina Simone was extraordinarily beautiful. It was a beauty reinforced and imbued by her courage, soul, depth as a creator, triumphant and that je nais ce quoi.
(When one truly apprehends that special quality of a Black woman, there is simply no counterpart to her).
Nina Simone is a Giant. And her memory can’t even be honoured with an actress of higher integrity,talent and with more resemblance than Zoe Saldana, who is a vapid lightweight, comparatively speaking. Why not honour her memory with fidelity to her life story?
Black actresses- I am thinking Cicely Tyson and Angela Basset turn down roles all the time. Ms. Saldhana could have recused herself from this role.
There is something very wrong about a white female director with white backing depicting a distorted fabricated story about a dark-skinned woman of depth and soul portrayed by a light-skinned, light weight woman whose appeal is to a white audience.
Both Nina Simone and Zoe Saldana are beautiful. The former, however, made not to feel beautiful for how she looked, but beautiful nonetheless in a stand alone way. And the latter, beautiful through white standard of beauty. But that caricature with boot polish pancake,prosthetic nose and wig is not beautiful.
This is just millennial old blatant disrespect for dark-skinned Black women. And in this case to Nina Simone’s daughter, too.
In reading criticism about this film, i have not picked up much criticism directed at the producers and director of this farce, mostly at Ms. Saldana.
What I most offensive though, is that the life of a Black Giant is intentionally misrepresented by white media.
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“The former, however, made not to feel beautiful for how she looked, but beautiful nonetheless in a stand alone way. And the latter, beautiful through white standard of beauty”
Are you saying that Saldana looks white? How so? Would you take her for a white woman? If yes, please describe the trait that would make you do so?
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@Linda
That system of racial stratification was originally here too. In all of the colonies there was distinction made between black and mixed raced “blacks”. It was basically a three tier system of racial classification with that intermediate class further divided as you describe. Basically white, black and mulatto. The three divisions. To make a long story short, this system of white supremacy where blacks were enslaved and mixed race people were allowed some modest degree of freedom, sometimes becoming slave owners themselves, was deemed not stringent enough for the newly formed United States so they set out to legally eliminate the mulatto class. They introduced the one drop rule and a two tier system of racial classification unique to this country.
White supremacy? Feel it in the one drop.
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@ Gro jo :Are you saying that Saldana looks white?
I am saying her looks are which are influenced by her white ancestry is more palatable to Hollywood and a white audience. And no, I would not take her for a white woman.
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editi: her looks which are influenced
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(Aargh;edit)
Nina Simone was the epitome of Black pride: “To me, we are the most beautiful creatures in the whole world, black people.”
If she was alive today , she probably would have been enraged at this caricature of her life.
I think they (white media bosses) know exactly what is going on. And it is not a simple matter of miscasting, but in tandem with other projects, the intentional misrepresentation to undermine Black women, by erasing Nina’s legacy of unapologetic embracing of her Blackness, thereby discouraging and disempowering African American women from emulating the positive role model of self-love by dark-skinned Black woman. You can’t have a Black woman loving herself now, can you?
Better minds than mine can unpack this propaganda directed against the Black woman.
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taotesan,
Thank you for clearly stating your view on this issue. You ignore the fact that Saldana was required to wear makeup to make her look more like Simone than herself, so I’m having difficulty seeing how her looks, influenced by her white ancestry, enters the equation to qualify her to play Ms. Simone. Is that fact really at the heart of your objection to Saldana?
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Would a much prettier dark skinned woman, such as Angela Bassett, have been more appropriate for the role? Of the three, Bassett, Simone and Saldana, Bassett is the most attractive. Are you saying that because she is the right color, her looks can be neglected?
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@Gro Jo
You’re a complete joke!lol To deny white supremacy is like denying that water is wet. It’s pointless to debate a moron like you. And for the record,I don’t believe in the “one drop rule”. That is utter nonsense. I don’t consider Walter White or WE Dubios black. They are clearly biracial/mixed men. The one drop rule is nothing but European pseudoscience. If you can’t see the deliberate whitewashing of authentic black people then you are either mentally retarded or just being disingenuous. It’s a waste of time and energy talking to a moron. I can be doing other constructive things. Begone fool!
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@taotesan
Well said. Ms. Simone was indeed a larger than life cultural figure.
The re-telling of Ms. Simone’s story is a part of the White Power structure’s effort to re-tell the story of the Civil Rights/Black Freedom Struggle Era. They want future generations to see a distorted version of history. A version of Black history processed and approved by White Supremacists.
What is that quote from Orwell’s 1984?
They have even reprocessed the Black Panther Party, Martin Luther King and Nat Turner’s Rebellion in film projects that suit the aims of White Supremacists.
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@ Linda
Thanks for the detailed links to articles about the ill-fated Île-à-Vache deportation scheme.
I’m reminded of what Frederick Douglass had to say about Lincoln in an 1876 speech:
Full article: http://www.ihr.org/jhr/v13/v13n5p-4_Morgan.html
Lincoln’s schemes fit in with your “isolate and then eliminate” strategy that North Americans employ to negate Blackness and Black people.
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@ Linda
It is fascinating to note that in the images of your comment https://abagond.wordpress.com/2016/03/03/trailer-nina/#comment-310818
the people of the darker castes (panels 5 through 11) are all bearing some sort of burden.
The Spanish were not very subtle in their views.
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@Afrofem
The lighter the skin the higher the social status. Encapsulated in the old folk saying:
If you’re white, you’re alright.
Brown stick around.
Black get back.
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@nomad
Yeah!
In my Southern neighborhood we had one more category:
If you’re yellow, you’re mellow.
My lighter skinned relatives liked that mellow part. (chuckle)
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The brown paper bag test shaking my head how long will we have to be plagued with colorism.
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[…] Source: Trailer: Nina […]
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Hysterical nonsense, dark skinned blacks have been picked to play light skinned blacks just as often as the other way around, as far as I can tell. When whites wanted to whitewash a black or mulatto they cast a white to play the role as occurred in the 1951 film I referenced above. I’ll gladly ignore you, unless you write something stupid again, forcing me to correct you.
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(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nf9Bj1CXPH8&w=420&h=315)
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@ nomad
Thanks for sharing that link.
Good to see her intensity and depth in her prime.
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I hope we don’t forget that race is just politics and it doesn’t actually exist. Once we anchor our discussion on that, there will be less confusion on what this Zoe Saldana issue is all about.
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@ Gro jo
I am not sure I understand your line of questioning, but I will try to answer to the best of my ability.
I had explicitly stated that I thought both women were beautiful in different ways. All three women (Angela Bassett) have a different kind of something. But I won’t be a ‘beauty queen judge” placing the contestants in first and second princess and overall winner.
The act of heavy of plastering of make up over a miscast actress takes away from that authenticity. Amongst things, it is the very disrespect of the act. Although I remarked on her looks, Zoe Saldana’s beauty is obscured by heavy make-up in this film, transmogrified into a blackface caricature of Nina Simone. If she had portrayed Ms Simone without disrespectful blackface, the outrage would be muted and the public perhaps rather quizzical about the miscasting.
So, to underline, the criticism is against a light-skinned Black woman (whatever her wishy washy views of Blackness are) donning blackface and perpetuating colourism in the film. Not just a light-skinned Black actress, per se.
The actress would be have to be beautiful because Ms Simone was beautiful.
My beef is mainly with the white puppet masters pulling the strings with the colourist casting of a light –skinned actress where the aesthetic difference is diametrical to the subject matter- in this case, a dark-skinned Black woman – iconic jazz musician and civil rights activist, maligned then and now because her beauty is still not celebrated.
Whilst the actress does not have to be a doppelganger, e.g. Angela Basset (whom I partial to), an absolute knockout , delivered tour de force performances as Betty Shabazz and as Tina Turner. We were transported to thinking that Angela Bassett and Lawrence Fishburne were Tina and Ike and the same in Malcolm X.
Common sense, a sense of propriety and respect for the subject, would have dictated that the actress portraying Nina Simone would bear a similar resemblance. There is bevy of gifted and beautiful actresses ( some who can sing), who, sans dark pancake make-up, could have rendered a more fluid and authentic portrayal of a woman who embraced her Blackness, namely India.Arie, Kimberley Elize , Alfre Woodard, Lupita N’Yongo, Angela Bassett, Jennifer Hudson, Viola Davis amongst others. (All, to my mind, beautiful).
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This is a film about a Black (pride) woman played by a light-skinned Black woman in blackface told and sold by white men and women to white men and women, to water down Black history.
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@ afrofem ( you are the better mind 🙂 )
“The re-telling of Ms. Simone’s story is a part of the White Power structure’s effort to re-tell the story of the Civil Rights/Black Freedom Struggle Era. They want future generations to see a distorted version of history. A version of Black history processed and approved by White Supremacists.”
I am struggling to find better language at the moment to offer a synthesis of my understanding of white supremacist propaganda in the US
My limited understanding is that there is a sustained orchestrated gaslighting against African Americans since Cointelpro in the 60’s ( Of course the discrediting of African Americans has been one of the biggest undertakings since they were kidnapped from Africa. It has not stopped, but refined with the addition of the corporate media, science, religion, history).
Not being on the ground, and commenting from afar,and trying to connect the dots: after Cointelpro it seems after the FBI smashed the Black Panthers and the civil rights activism, the white dominated media with the government , is undoing many of the gains made from that era. It has morphed into a gargantuan sinister behind the scenes invisible campaign waged against African Americans to induce sleep and confusion and to crush activism.
Corporate owned hip hop (formerly an authentic expression against the status quo);appropriation of rhythm and blues giving more airtime to white artists; slandering the names of, and blaming the victims of police brutality(Sandra Bland); persistent negative, misleading, and divisive portrayals in print ,celluloid and in cyberspace; the dominance of white (male) voices in academia and media, teaching revisionist history in schools, distortion and erasure of history, e.g. Gods Of Egypt and Nina, giving platforms to Black talking heads in bed with white supremacy, and much more, in conjunction with government psychological terrorism, is used against Black Americans.
It seems like a ‘pre-emptive strike” against resurgent activism i.e. BlackLivesMatter is being waged.
.
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@Gro Jo
You have corrected nothing. You just proved you’re an idiot. You just try to bully and intimidate others on this blog. You’re just a loud mouth punk who is a racism denier. You probably were picked on has a child. Did the big kids take your lunch money?lol Your comments are very entertaining. It lets me and other intelligent black people know the battle we are up against. You support anti-blackness and black degradation. Therefore you are an enemy to my people. Are you Haitian? That doesn’t matter to me. If you are black,then you’re a self-hating,boot licking Uncle Tom. You are lower than dog feces! You might scare others on this blog…but not me. You’re just a coward hiding behind a keyboard. Trust me,if we met in person you wouldn’t talk so tough. You’re not on my level Gro Jo sissy boy. Step off boy! You’re out of your league. Low life scum bag!!!
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@taotesan
You highlighted some of the external forces arrayed against Black Americans. As someone who grew up in this culture, there just as long a list of internal forces that Black people battle with:
1. internalized White Supremacy
2. everpresent anger
3. untreated trauma passed from parents to children
4. historical ignorance
5. lack of social cohesion
That is just a short list. I’m sure you see those forces at work around you everyday in your culture. The US and South Africa tend to operate from the same playbook when it comes to oppressing people of African descent.
To me the pre-emptive strike against resurgent activism occurred during the 1980s when the Prison-Industrial Complex was started. The 1960s took the powers-that-be by surprise. Revolutionary social change by young Blacks, Whites, Latinos and Native Americans against the top one percent nearly succeeded. The counterrevolution has been harsh and unrelenting (as they always are).
The Prison Industrial Complex is designed as a means of social control, population control and financial transfer of funds from low income Black folk in the cities to otherwise unemployed rural Whites. In this way, the Complex solves many problems for policy makers.
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@Afrofem
Look at them two pictures. Saphronia is playing Peaches.
You said
“Under “multiculturalism”, the old classification system is being replaced, on the Brazilian model, with a proliferation of racial categories. Designations like “biracial”, “mixed race”, “colored” are being encouraged among those African-American mixed breeds who would hitherto have been unequivocally classified as Blacks.””
Actually, if such a change is taking place, it’s a reversion to the former system of racial division before the establishment of these United States. The three tier system. Saphronia represents the hidden history of the black race and the polarity of the mulatto’s role. Unless we understand that role we will never understand our history.
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xOAlwaaZt-U&w=420&h=315)
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Kushite Prince, So your a tough punk? America’s warehouses i.e. jails are packed to the rafters with imbeciles like you. You can’t do sh*t about it. I’m not surprised you try to relive your glory days as a lunch money snatcher. As I’ve said before, I’ll give you wide berth until you write something stupid that requires correction.
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“Whilst the actress does not have to be a doppelganger, e.g. Angela Basset (whom I partial to), an absolute knockout , delivered tour de force performances as Betty Shabazz and as Tina Turner. We were transported to thinking that Angela Bassett and Lawrence Fishburne were Tina and Ike and the same in Malcolm X.”
You are correct, Basset looked nothing like Shabazz or Turner. The point I was trying to make was that among dark skinned women, you have as wide a variety in looks as you’d find among women of any color. I understand that you feel offended that Saldana had to use makeup. Basset might have pulled it off based on her acting abilities.
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Cynthia Mort, the director of this film, who’s white did not find anything wrong with blackening Zoe Saldana for this role. She came out defending her film but ignored the controversy surrounding blackface. Can we scorch this boob of a director for her tone deafness?
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There many actors and actresses got the power to turn down a role. Angela Bassett founded that role of Monster Ball is degrading. Even Dave turn down the cross dressing role in his awaking stage. Hollywood would either get a replacement black or racebend/colorbend. The biracial Josephine Baker done a blackface on stage.
I do question Zoe Saldana’s agenda. She married to white man and play as black woman romantically with white men.
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@Danny
Yeah! I bet there is one thing the director can hear…the jingle of those coins flowing into her bank account.
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@ nomad
Actually this is Dr. Chinweizu Ibekwe’s quote:
“Under “multiculturalism”, the old classification system is being replaced, on the Brazilian model, with a proliferation of racial categories. Designations like “biracial”, “mixed race”, “colored” are being encouraged among those African-American mixed breeds who would hitherto have been unequivocally classified as Blacks.”
It was Chinweizu’s contention that the Brazilian (racial classification) model divided Black people in a way that benefits the White Power structure. He felt that the “one drop rule” promoted “residual solidarity among the blacks”.
I will have to ask you for more information about your intriguing comment tomorrow.
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@ nomad
If I’m reading you right, the three tier system of the Colonial era you refer to is similar to Spanish racist classifications, but more compact?
I’m unfamiliar with the meanings of “Saphronia” or “Peaches”. I’m guessing but unsure how you are using the terms. (I’m dense sometimes).
If you are comfortable explaining the terms I’m all ears (eyes).
Thanks, Nomad.
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@Afrofem
Saphronia and Peaches are two of the four women in Nina’s song.
Her skin is yellow. Her hair is long. She represents the mulatto. Peaches the New Negro created by the African’s sojourn through American history. She’s Nina.
Though it took as its model the system long employed in the West Indies, colonial America radically altered the institution of slavery. They adopted the system but they modified it according to the emerging Aryan ideology. The legislators of the American colonies were determined to stem the development of an intermediate socio-racial class under their system. They had a “brave new world” in mind, one in which there would be sharp division between black and white and none at all between black and mulatto. They had in mind a radical restructuring of what had by that time become the traditional relationship between the two races.
Throughout the Spanish, Portuguese and French colonies a three-tier system of racial categorization was used. Despite the efforts of British colonists/early American authorities to eliminate the rights of the intermediate socio-racial class, the three-tier system became particularly well established in the former French colony, Louisiana, and in North Carolina.
Nevertheless, the colonial legislators pressed relentlessly towards a two-tier system of black/white relations. In a two-tier system the mixed individual is considered black. This being the case and because the features and skin color of mixed individuals vary so greatly, the precise dividing line between the two races became a critical issue. For mixed individuals it meant the difference between freedom and enslavement. For whites it was crucial to maintaining the purity of the white race. By the end of the 17th century, colonial America’s system of indentured servitude had been completely replaced by chattel slavery, focusing exclusively upon blacks and mulattoes. Whites were no longer kept as servants. Furthermore, there was no longer any perceivable distinction between slave and servant. Black and mulatto slaves/servants alike were required to serve in perpetuity.
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@ nomad
Thank you for explaining and adding detail to your earlier comment.
I had a conversation with a Black public intellectual a few years back about this subject: the differences between English White Supremacy and Spanish White Supremacy.
This person said the critical difference between the English and the Spanish was the English brought their women along to settle stolen lands. The Spanish and others primarily sent military men to guard the plunder of stolen lands.
The English women did not want their children competing under any circumstances with Native Americans, Africans or any admixture of the two non-European peoples. They felt their offspring should have the highest preferences to resources and opportunities.
His comments made me think of the ways Euro-American mothers manipulated the local educational system for years during the recent period of faux integration.
■Those women set up phone trees and later listserves so they could act in concert.
■They would clamor to move their children to the most experienced and skilled teachers, leaving the Black children with the least experienced teachers.
■They also pressured the school board for Advanced Placement (AP) college track classes that were always overwhelmingly White. Black mothers and fathers who tried to get their children into these exclusive classes were often put through a battery of hurdles or rebuffed outright. Their children were on the prison-track. Local schools were “integrated” in name only. In reality, it was a two-tiered system of intense segregation.
I think of that and more when some White Supremacist troll blathers on about “getting over” past injustices. They are too selfish to consider how the consequences of history affect all of us today.
Africans pull the wagon of history, Europeans are riding the wagon of history.
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nomad@ That system of racial stratification was originally here too. In all of the colonies there was distinction made between black and mixed raced “blacks”. It was basically a three tier system of racial classification with that intermediate class further divided as you describe. Basically white, black and mulatto. They introduced the one drop rule and a two tier system of racial classification unique to this country.
Linda says,
yes, I’m aware… the main difference between white Americans and the white British, Spanish, French in the Caribbean/South American, is how they dealt with and classified race, which was based on the majority/minority relationship of the population.
in the Caribbean, Central/ South America — Africans and Native Americans outnumbered Europeans, whereas, in the USA, Europeans outnumbered Africans and mixed-race people.
The whites in the Caribbean (British, Spanish, French) had to adhere to the 3-tier racial system because they were outnumbered by both slave and free black people.
They needed their mixed-race children (brown class) as allies to help them retain power, especially the British absentee land owners, whose mixed-race son’s ran the plantations.
The brown class in the Caribbean gained and still retain power in the islands.
In Central America, the British relied on their brown and free black “allies” to help in their fight against the Spanish.
In the United States, the Europeans were the majority population and they had no need of a buffer racial class.
Anglo-Americans had the same issues with race as the Spanish, French, and British but they had enough white man-power to eliminate what they considered “problems”, instead of having to work with and around it, like the Spanish
that’s why I said in North America, the US governments goal was to “isolate and eliminate” so that whiteness could be kept “pure”
This need for white Anglo-European supremacy was reflected in their expansion policies — and as they expanded south and west, their main priority was eliminating the Spanish/Mexicans and Native Americans, and keeping black slavery intact.
This is why there is a difference in attitudes and views between black and mixed-race peoples of the USA and the Caribbean/South America. Our views were shaped by the policies of our respective governments and society.
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@Gro Jo
Never been to jail in my entire life. You don’t know what the hell you’re talking about. Like I said…you’re an idiot. I’m moving on.
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the US “one-drop rule” was also a tool to eliminate Native American tribes, as well as the brown mulatto class, whose members also crossed over into the Spanish/Mexican. Native American tribes had also intermixed with black people.
by ethnically cleansing the NA tribes and making interracial marriage illegal, whites could “safely” intermarry with Hispanics or Natives without fear of being infected with African blood.
The USA despised Mexico for its intermixed population. Spanish law stated that “any child born to Native women were free”, so black men married Native women, so that their children would be free.
Mexico’s second President Vicente Guerrero, was mixed African/ Native American. He was the “George Washington” of Mexico in their war against Spain.
He was also despised by white Americans, especially after he abolished slavery in Mexico and Mexican territories in 1829 (ie Texas)
This disagreement about black slaves eventually led to the war between Mexico and the USA, which gave Texas it’s independence.
http://imdiversity.com/villages/hispanic/mexico-welcomed-fugitive-slaves-and-african-american-job-seekers/
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Afrofem@ His comments made me think of the ways Euro-American mothers manipulated the local educational system for years during the recent period of faux integration.
Linda says,
Afrofem… you hit the nail on the head — white women are the key to guarding white supremacy.. I view them as the most dangerous, especially when it comes to our black/brown children’s lives.
When I heard the the jury pool was made up of mostly white women during the Trayvon Martin trial — my heart just sank. I just knew they weren’t going to give him the justice he deserved, and dam, those hefers did not let me down.
Historically speaking, the white Anglo-American hatred of all things African became more sinister and ugly than the white Anglo-Caribbeans, so much so, that white Americans were famous for it.
Here’s a great historical example of white American women guarding the door:
In Jamaica, one of our heroes is nurse Mary Seacole, who was mixed-race and well known for her knowledge in bush herbal medicine. The British government would call on her to help with yellow-fever and cholera outbreaks in Panama and Jamaica.
In 1852, she was trying to get home to Jamaica from Panama, and she bought a ticket on an American ship sailing to Jamaica. She was kicked off the ship because the white American women refused to travel with her.
“After she boarded, the white American women started yelling and told Mary that ‘I never traveled with a n&88er yet, and I expect I shan’t begin now’
“The American ladies refused to have her in the saloon, their children spat in her servant’s face, and when an Englishman remonstrated and advised Mary to sit wherever she liked,
the American stewardess said, ‘If the Britishers is so took up with coloured people, that’s their business; but it won’t do here.”
In order to keep the peace, the captain gave Seacole her money back, and she agreed to get disembark. Two days later she traveled home on an English ship.”
http://the-history-girls.blogspot.com/2012/10/mary-seacole-and-black-and-white-of.html
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The reclassification of mulattoes by the fledgling United States could possibly be due to the relative size of the slave population. But I doubt it. It also presumes that if the pre-English slave trade could have adopted a one drop rule it would have. That they too would have classified mixed race individuals as born slaves. I have to reject that presumption. At any rate the antebellum US used its mulattoes in the same way that pre-English slavers used theirs. They used them basically to control the black slaves. No, I don’t think the source of the radical white supremacism established in early America was due to demographics but due to ideology and belief. A drive towards racial purity originating somewhere in the northern European’s psyche. Or may be just the English. Remember that the darker skinned southern Europeans had had much more intercourse with Africans centuries before the English got into the slave trade. They came upon firmly established social institutions. The three tier system of black white relations. Noting the color hierarchy they probably assumed that, since they were lighter than both Africans and southern Europeans, they were superior to both. I’m just guessing. But I think it’s going to turn out that the change was due to ideology. And also to simple color symbolism. White good. Black bad. At any rate these early Americans embarked on a campaign of racial purification.
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Excuse me, but just thought about what I said. Using mulattoes to control slaves. Who’dathunk that would still work in the 21st century?
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nomad @ The reclassification of mulattoes by the fledgling United States could possibly be due to the relative size of the slave population. But I doubt it.
Linda says,
In the USA, mixed race people were reclassified because white Americans were die-hard racists who thought they were superior to everyone with darker skin than their own…their ideology was supported by their weapons.
Unlike the Spanish, white colonial Americans did not need black people to make up the majority of their military.
The difference in the ration between white vs non-white determine the mechanisms used to marginalize, control, and exterminate the “unwanted” population.
The Spanish were able to absorb their darker population by mixing and expanding their version of “white”
The Anglo Americans did not have do so because they were in the majority and could commit genocide on paper and in reality.
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nomad @ “It also presumes that if the pre-English slave trade could have adopted a one drop rule it would have. That they too would have classified mixed race individuals as born slaves. I have to reject that presumption.
No, I don’t think the source of the radical white supremacism established in early America was due to demographics but due to ideology and belief.”
Linda says,
I never said that Americans established their white supremacists views based on demographics. I said that how each country developed their methods for dealing with and controlling their non-white populations was based on demographics.
Reclassifying people in America was a tool that was used to control the non-white population. The ideology was already developed.
The Spanish “absorbed”, the white Americans “excluded” because they could and the Spanish could not… so they both had to learn how to deal with the people they thought were their inferiors.
As the saying goes “familiarity breeds contempt” and the Europeans brought their already established views with them to the Americas.
Spain was ruled by the Muslims (Arabs/Africans) for 700 years– this interaction established the Spanish contempt for dark skin. That’s why they slaughtered the Native Americans like dogs.
We discussed the Spanish here:
The British held strict classist views formed from feudalism and religion before they got the Americas (hence their dislike for the Irish and ruthless treatment of their own lower classes)
but the American colonists views expanded based on the type of white immigrants and people sent to the American colonies (religious escapees, criminals,un-educated, low class Europeans, and fortune hunters), their interactions with the Native Americans and Africans, and their desire to hold onto slavery for dear life.
The “one-drop rule” is a white American view that became law, practiced by white Americans
even though it was British laws that established chattel slavery in the American colonies, the British outlawed slavery before the Americans.
even when African slaves were imported into England, where white people are the majority, a 2-tiered “black or white” racial system based on demographics did not develop.
Even until this day, mixed-race people are still classified as a separate category than black people in Britain.
so, no… I don’t think it can be presumed that the English would have made a 2-tier black or white system in the Caribbean if they were the majority and that is not what I said.
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@nomad
I think it was both/and. I think the source of English style White Supremacism is both due to demographics (e.g. the presence of large numbers of English women) and ideology. To me the demographic makeup of the early English colonies in North America was a contributing factor to the development of White Supremacist ideology.
However, the greatest factor in the development of White Supremacist ideology was economic. The upper classes of European colonists wanted cheap labor and a means to control the multi-racial rabble below. There was a time when the color line was extremely fluid and permeable. African descent people were not slaves for life and they intermingled freely with both the indigenous people and Europeans of the lower classes.
The turning point seems to have been Bacon’s Rebellion in1676. After that event, Whiteness was born and in the words of writer Quinn Morton:
(This is a second hand quote from this article:
http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/murderous-scam-white-elites-have-perpetrated-blacks-and-whites-least-4-centuries)
Multi-racial people were nearly as vulnerable to racism and exploitation as the darkest field hand. It wasn’t uncommon for White slave owners to sell their own children or give them as wedding presents. In the American South, Bi-racial people often labored as household slaves to their fathers, grandparents and half-siblings. Not really a place of power.
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@ Linda
Lot’s of great historical detail as usual!
I will have more to say tomorrow….
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@Linda
“The Spanish “absorbed”, the white Americans “excluded” because they could and the Spanish could not… so they both had to learn how to deal with the people they thought were their inferiors.”
“excluded” because they could and the Spanish could not”
Again, I don’t agree. And here again you are claiming that the reason for the difference is demographic. Yes there was a difference in the ratio of black to white but this (IMO of course) was not the reason that Americans embarked on their anti-mulatto campaign. The reason was a turn towards a more radical white supremacist ideology which found ultimate expression in the uniquely United Statesian one drop rule. Neither the demographic argument nor the economic one is persuasive to me. The ideological trail is the one to follow for the answer to that question.
This is a good marker for the advent of whiteness, Afrofem. Thanks.
“The turning point seems to have been Bacon’s Rebellion in1676. After that event, Whiteness was born and in the words of writer Quinn Morton:”
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@Linda
On the other hand…
In terms of power, I see what you’re saying. It is easier for the power structure to impose its will upon a minority population than a majority population. Hence the need to maintain an intermediate racial buffer zone. Perhaps the Anglos saw no need for this buffer race and proceeded to eliminate it. Quite a good theory after all.
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Nomad @ Again, I don’t agree. Yes there was a difference in the ratio of black to white but this (IMO of course) was not the reason that Americans embarked on their anti-mulatto campaign.
Linda says,
you’re only disagreeing with an “argument” I never made…
I realized you missed the point the first time, that’s why I took the time to say it again in more detail…
but once again, you came up with and are rejecting an assessment, that I did not make… I don’t need you to agree with me… I need you to stop misinterpreting my words.
I never said that demographics was the reason for the development or creation of the American “one-drop rule” or America’s “anti-mulatto” campaign – you somehow came up with that equation by yourself
The words you keep glossing over that I said, are “method and tools” — demographics determined the “method of the tool used” to carry out white supremacist ideology
methods and tools are instruments
guns are tools, omitting words and people from history is a method, reclassifying people is a “method and a tool”, promoting immigration policies to excludes and include is a method and a tool —
all of these instruments are not “reasons why” something developed or was created — they are tools to support an already developed creation or ideology
That statement seems pretty clear to me and should have been simple enough to understand but for whatever reason, you keep missing the point.
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@ Linda
Thanks so much for that link to imdiversity.com So much information to digest.
I was aware of President Vicente Guerrero and his huge contributions to Mexican society. I was not aware of the large colonies of African-Americans in Mexico from the mid-1800s to the 1960s.
I knew that as recently as the 1950s, Black folk (especially men) traveled to Mexico to work. A lot of them married Mexican women and settled in Mexico.
That makes the pervasive ideology of White Supremacy in Mexico, these days all the more heartbreaking. I think the rise of this toxic belief system is directly tied to the American media machine (Hollywood, et. al). A lot of US Black people are pretty unaware of how widely negative images of African descent people are spread all over the globe or how that impacts how people see Black people. The negative impacts are not limited to African Americans. Afro-Caribbeans, Afro-Latinos and Afro-Europeans are also affected by anti-Black Hollywood propaganda.
I don’t have a link and I can’t remember the name of the article, but some years back, I read about a group of Black American travelers meeting an indigenous man in Papua, New Guinea. He was surprised that they were well mannered and cordial to him. He told them that a lot of White American travelers often referred to Black people as “troublemakers” who were violent thieves. He also told them about all of the riots he had seen on television that showed Black people acting in ways that scared him.
At the time I read the article, I thought it strange that an ebony-skinned man with wooly hair, half a world away was shocked that Black Americans were ordinary people. I also thought about the power of images and how easy it is to get a false impression of people on television and movies.
A lot of modern day Mexicans have drunk the anti-Black koolaid…and I’ve met a lot of the koolaid drinkers here on the West Coast. Drinking the koolaid is synonymous to the power of the single story.
Abagond has a post that touches on The Single Story:
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@ Linda
Wow! Mary Seacole was quite an outsized personality! What a story. Thanks for the link.
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@nomad
Nomad, where does the ideological trail originate? What event or series of events laid the groudwork for the ideology?
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@Afrofem
“where does the ideological trail originate? What event or series of events laid the groudwork for the ideology?”
I don’t know. But I would start with the writings of the founding fathers. I’m sure Thomas Paine would be enlightening.. And the preachers. Anybody talking about sons of Ham. Anybody talking about manifest destiny.
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“half a world away was shocked that Black Americans were ordinary people. I also thought about the power of images and how easy it is to get a false impression of people on television and movies.”
@afrofem
As an older who person I have noticed and experienced the about turn from virulent Jim Crow and South African apartheid to sinister and subtle racism.
As a child of apartheid, it was an aspiration to be an American Black person. As Trevor Noah said: The coolest Blacks in the world. SuperBlack.
We were nurtured on the music of Teddy Pendergrass, James Brown, Smokey Robinson,Ray Goodman and Brown and all the greats. ( Back then when musicians sang about love). Because there was a ban on many books, James Baldwin strangely escaped the censors and was an icon to my mother. We were greatly influenced by the Civil Rights and the Black Consciousness Movement although we (I) did not know much about it at the time because of the repression. Arthur Ashe and Sidney Poitier were gods.
But I have been noticing more and more, the bombardment of negative images of African Americans on film and in music over the past twenty years or so. (As stated before, I believe there is a massive campaign run by the US government’s smashing of the Civil Rights activism since the 60’s.)
On the flip side, of the African Americans I have met and befriended in South Africa, some have (had) very strange ideas of Africa.
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@Linda
Well, as I said above I now find the demographic argument compelling. But, of course, that’s not the argument you’re making. Anyway, I’ll be adopting it as a counterpoint to my notion of an ideological source for the drive to abolish the mulatto class.
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Taotesan,
I was going to say something similar… growing up in Jamaica back in the day before cable TV, microwaves, electric typewriters, or Nintendo
we saw positive images of black Americans which inspired our fashions and gave us role models
I agree though.. all the negativity coming out of the music and on TV in the last 15 years, surely has not assisted in showing a “positive” image…TV shows are not what they used to be.
I also know one thing that has helped to tarnish the perception of black Americans abroad — white Americans… they talk pure sh’t about black Americans when they go to foreign countries
I’ve met white Americans in Jamaica who would make comparisons between their “blacks” to the “natives” after they lost their fear of being surrounded by black people:
“like, Jamaicans are so different than the black people back home– you’re so friendly!” (of course we are, b’tch, we want your money)
and I’m sure they did the same thing in places like New Guinea
I read an article that said that during WW2, the white American soldiers did the same thing
they would tell people in the foreign countries where they were stationed, that the black American soldiers had tails and said other lies that gave black men a bad reputation, especially amongst the local women. They told these lies in Europe and in Asia.
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Nomad,
Good luck using demographics to show how white Supremacy became a ideology…
but if you are looking for actual reasons on the origination of it and for reasons why the Mulatto class was abolished in America, you should look into the Eurocentric racial scientists of the Darwin era and the eugenics movement,
We had several discussion about both on this blog:
Walter Plecker, father of the “The Racial Integrity Law of 1924”– it’s unofficial name, the “One Drop Rule”
other names of interest:
The ERO’s Director, Harry Laughlin, who created and helped to pass the Immigration Restriction Act of 1924 through US Congress.
Plecker and Laughlin assisted the German Nazi’s to set up their own Racial Purity laws.
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Darwins cousin Francis Galton, was the father of the Eugenics movement.
The Eugenicists hated the thought of “miscegenation”, so they despised mulattoes.
http://www.publiceye.org/magazine/v09n1/eugenics.html
“Harvard Professor Louis Agassiz, a prominent natural historian of the 19th-century, was the most important promoter of polygenism:
Edward Byron Reuter wrote a dissertation for his doctoral degree in sociology (University of Chicago) in 1919, discussing the “Mulatto Problem” and “if and how” it should be solved
https://archive.org/stream/mulattoinuniteds00reutuoft/mulattoinuniteds00reutuoft_djvu.txt
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@Linda
Fascinating. When you think all of the histrionics that White Supremacists display when they discuss the “Race Problem” (meaning the presence of African descent people around them) you would never know that their wound was self-inflicted.
Europeans as a group made a conscious decision to run riot around the world, robbing, raping and murdering whole groups of people. No one forced them to leave Europe or unbutton those pantaloons in foreign lands. When faced with the consequences of their actions, their first impulse is more robbing, raping and murdering.
Back in the day, Brazilian musical artist, Gilberto Gil, made this comment about White racial complaints (I’m paraphrasing here):
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@taotesan
I’ll bet you have!
Most of us (African Americans) are like that man from Papua New Guinea. Most of our ideas and images of Africa and Africans come from White individuals and media that is focused through a White Supremacist worldview. White ignorance and fear becomes Black ignorance and fear.
Most Black people I know become angry when they finally learn factual information about modern Africa and historical Africa. They feel cheated. They are finally aware of how mislead they were for most of their lives.
I hate to imagine the silly questions and comments you’ve heard over the years. I know because I’ve asked them and exasperated African visitors and immigrants. Ignorance is not bliss.
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@ Linda
Yes, I have also had the displeasure of the white Americans asking :
“So what do you call your n gg rs here?
And thank you again for sharing your in-depth knowledge of history.
@ Afrofem
(please forgive my garrulity)
(dismiss as you see fit)
(last time)
I think there is a level of incredulity when the stereotypes manufactured by the white American media are not met in reality. But it is the strange stories of a whole continent that boggle the mind. I think the American media has grotesquely twisted the whole continent into a huge wilderness of mud huts, flies on distended children, child soldiers, female genital mutilation, contagious diseases and tin pot dictators, whilst simultaneously EXPORTING images of pornographic rap and gang bangers, crack in the 80’s in Black neighbourhoods and the gratuitous use of racial epithets for Black Americans, amongst others.
Part of the the intended audience for this gross distortion of Africa is the African American: “Hey look, you should be so grateful we enslaved you. Look what we saved you from”. And the intention of the exported defamation is that the world NO LONGER sympathizes with the African American who “wholly have themselves to blame” when they are under American governmental terrorist psychological siege.
Conversely, there is no machine in any African country churning out images and disinformation framing white Americans as: fat people dying of malnutrition, the Klu Klux Klan, stupid as George Bush Jnr, having children with easy to access to caches of sophisticated weaponry, the Goler clan, serial killers, mohels, as people out of “Deliverance”
( I remember a few years ago, a journalist friend of mine explained to me that they were not allowed to ask an American delegation in Johannesburg any questions. Instead only an American approved brief was allowed to be printed.)
To put into context, by way of contrast: when I, say, travelled to India, I had some idea that it was a very complex country not to be confused with, say, Bangladesh or Tajikistan. Never once did it enter my mind that I would be attacked by a tiger when I was Kerala or Kuala Lampur . I knew that the best place to see a tiger was in Madhaya Pradesh and specifically in Kanha National Park in India. An Indian person say, from Calcutta would have looked at me very strangely if I asked he owned an elephant or has ever rode on a tiger or spoke Indian or if he knew Abdul who lives in Gujarat. It is the level of strange, that I try to my wrap my mind around when asked questions from Americans.
I must say, I was also blessed with the company of really wonderful people who have affirmed my kinship and affinity with Africans in Diaspora, despite our differences.
“ Ignorance is not bliss”. I can see what you are saying. But I think tone and intention play a part and any misunderstanding and misconception is forgivable when humility, the desire to learn and understand, and the love for humanity is present.
For my part, any negative misconception can be understood in the context of the white American propaganda machine.
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@taotesan
Both you and Linda have provoked a lot of thought; the historical details, the breadth and depth of your lived experience. I have a response rattling around in my brain. It will take a bit of time to get it written.
Thanks for adding more learning to my visits of Abagond’s cafe. (smile).
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Afrofem, I’m glad I can add something to your journey.
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