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The Dancing Girl of Mohenjo-Daro

Tue May 22nd 2018 by abagond

The Dancing Girl of Mohenjo-Daro (c. -2500) is a small bronze figurine that is over 4,000 years old, found in the lost city of Mohenjo-Daro. It is the most famous piece of art from the Indus (aka Harappan) civilization (-2600 to -1600).

She is not that big: 10.5 cm tall (4.1 inches) – you could hold her in the palm of your hand. We do not know if she is a dancer – she just seems that way when you compare her to all the stiff-looking statues of the time.

She is made of bronze, a mix of copper and tin. Back then bronze was commonly used in India and Mesopotamia (Iraq) but not Egypt. In India bronze was used to make jars, pots, bowls, dishes, pans, knives, chisels, axes, bangles, rings, beads, and pins. But it was not a common material for statues.

She was made using the lost wax method. She was made first of wax. The wax was then used to make a clay cast. The wax was melted away and then bronze was poured into the cast. When the metal cooled the cast was broken.

The owner was not rich: It was found in a small house. There were much bigger houses in Mohenjo-Daro.

She is naked wearing only a necklace, 25 bangles on her left arm and four on her right. It was common in Harappan art to show genitals. What was not common was not giving her large breasts or wide hips.

Who was she? Some scholars say she was a real person, even if her arms and legs are too long. One scholar says she was Parvati, a goddess of love, even though her figure is more that of a girl than a woman.

Was she African? Like the Olmec heads of Mexico, she looks suspiciously African. Trade between India and Africa was not common back then, but an African woman from this period was found buried in the Indus Valley at Chanhu-Dara.

The Dancing Girl is culturally South Asian: she wears her hair and bangles in a style that is found in South Asia still to this day.

People in India looked Blacker back then. The statue was made nearly 1,000 years before India was taken over by the light-skinned Indo-Aryans from the north. Herodotus, some 2,000 years after the statue was made, said Indians looked Ethiopian (except for their hair). He never travelled to India but knew about the Indian soldiers in the Persian army.

Pakistan: Every now and then there is a call for India to “return” the Dancing Girl to Pakistan. Mohenjo-Daro is in Pakistan, but the statue itself is in India, at the National Museum in New Delhi. When the statue was discovered in 1926, Mohenjo-Daro was part of British India. In 1947 Pakistan broke away from India.

Under UNESCO rules Pakistan could possibly claim that the British stole it as an illegitimate colonial government. But the Pakistani government is itself is a spin-off of that same colonial government – giving it no more right to the statue than the British had.

– Abagond, 2018.

Sources: mainly Google Images (2018); ThoughtCo (2017); Huffington Post (2017); Outlook India (2016).

See also:

530

Posted in stuff | 6 Comments »

M.I.A. & Santigold: Get It Up

Sun May 20th 2018 by abagond

Remarks:

This song came out in 2008 and never charted, but it is genius: powwow + rap. Wow. They sound better together than apart. Just listen to the sampled “Hood Nigga” (2007) by Gorilla Zoe on its own. Diplo and Radioclit were the music producers on this one.

There is a Malawian version used for AIDS awareness.

See also:

Lyrics:

May I see your driver’s license please?

May I see your driver’s license please?
What’s that in your cassette deck?

All the hoes jockin’, beat steady knockin’
Middle of the stage, got the whole club rockin’
Maybe you can hate but ya bitch steady watchin’
Bet she can’t do it on a dick she poppin’
We bottle poppin’, you cock blockin’
Told ya girl you rap, but ya cd floppin’
You say you gettin’ money man, we ain’t seen nothin’
Ya girl is persistent, she ain’t stoppin’

Man, she say she want a
I keep the perp by the pound
The trunk stay bumpin’
Y’all know we run the town

And I keep a bad bitch around
Thick bitch, long hair, yellow, white, red, brown
(Hood nigga)
Got my chevy sittin’ on 24’s
Flats look like flapjacks
Pancakes? You ain’t know

I’m a play the game how it go
They can take me out the hood
But I’m a keep it hood folk

And I don’t need a scale for the work
I can eyeball perp, I am not you jerk
Hatin’ on me will make your situation worse
You don’t wanna take a ride in that long black hearse
All eyes on me, shawty I’m a bomb first
I’m the truth and they say the truth hurts
Hustle mean hard work, hard work
If you scared, go to church
Man, this rap shit is easy
Every beat I get, I murk

‘Cause I’m a
I keep the perp by the pound
The trunk stay bumpin’
Y’all know we run the town

And I keep a bad bitch around
Thick bitch, long hair, yellow, white, red, brown
Got my chevy sittin’ on 24’s
Flats look like flapjacks
Pancakes? You ain’t know

I’m a play the game how it go
They can take me out the hood
But I’m a keep it hood folk

Day and night
Realize I won’t be easy
Got no light
A job, a wife that’s easy
Always standing in the door
Always the same reason you’re stuck
No guts, no guts

What will you get it up for?
What will you get it up for?
Harder, you’re still stuck in the mire

What will make you want it more?
What will make you want it more?
Harder, get more bang for your dollar

Get it up, you can get it up
Get it up, you can get it up
Get it up, you can get it up

Get it up, you can get it up
Get it up, you can get it up
Get it up, you can get it up

Sometimes I think I harden
When I feel I get fucked up
Yeah, other times I think I harden
When I feel I get spat out

Yeah, I don’t really know what you’re thinking
But I already know what you are
And this is what makes us harden
In this concrete life we got

I break ’em in like shoes and my new jeans
I throw it in like a spanner in your work pen
I watch you want more, curious to dirty things
And make it swing from being slick to new things

I break ’em in like shoes and my new jeans
I throw it in like a spanner in your work pen
I watch you want more, curious to dirty things
And make it swing from being slick to new things

Get it up

Radioclit
Rewind
Diplo

Source: letras.mus.br.

Posted in stuff | 11 Comments »

race

Fri May 18th 2018 by abagond

What do these people have in common?

Believe it or not, I have never done a post on race:

Race (1774- ) divides humans into some three to seven breeds based on physical features like hair, eyes, nose, and, especially, skin colour.

For example:

Blacks in the US, circa 1998.

In 1985 in the US the main races were:

  • Whites – those who look like they are of pure European blood;
  • Blacks – those who look part African;
  • Asians – those who look like they are from East Asia or South Asia;
  • Indians – those who come from the Americas (Amerindians).

Coloureds in South Africa.

In 1985 in South Africa the races were:

  • Whites – of more or less pure European blood;
  • Blacks – of more or less pure African blood;
  • Coloured – mixed race;
  • Indians – those who came from South Asia.

Indians in South Africa.

Racism is the belief that some races are better than others. Not because of their power or money or religion or some other accident of history, but because of inborn qualities. Stuff like skin colour is seen as being more than skin deep. It is seen as a sign of inner qualities like intelligence, moral character, even human worth. Blacks, for example, are not just dark-skinned, but are seen as being naturally more violent, less intelligent, and less hard-working than Whites. They were just born that way. Racists believe that such differences is what leads to inequality.

Anti-racism is the belief that inequality is mainly caused by racist people and racist policies, not by any apparent racial differences (which are themselves often largely created by racist policies).

Scientific racism is racism supported by science. It was all the rage in the late 1800s and early 1900s, from Darwin to Hitler.

Map of blood type B.

Stuff to keep in mind:

  • Race is not a fact of nature. Or so says science since the 1970s. There are no White genes or Black genes – just genes that flow throughout the human species largely independent of race, like genes for blood type (pictured above). Even genes for skin colour are more determined by latitude than by race. And they have no known effect on completely unrelated stuff like intelligence.
  • Race is a social construct. It was made up by Europeans to excuse their own crimes, like slavery, genocide and colonialism. English-speaking Whites did not call themselves Whites till the 1600s. And their stereotypes about Black people arose after they had enslaved them on a large scale. People in the US would have become Tan long ago if racism did not keep apart Blacks and Whites.
  • Racial prejudice is not part of human nature. It is learned. The Us and Them feeling seems to be part of human nature, and racism takes advantage of that. But racism itself was rare before 1400. It was unknown to the Ancient Greeks, for example.
  • Race is not the same thing as ethnicity. Ethnic groups, like Arabs, Jews and Latinos, share a common culture, not a common set of physical features. Most Jews, for example, do not have a “Jewish nose”, nor is it a requirement to be counted as Jewish. But note that in English “ethnicity” and “ethnic” are often used as a nice way of saying “race” and “racial”.

Time magazine, April 10th 1972. Where the top image comes from.

– Abagond, 2018.

Update (May 24th): This post originally had this picture of “Blacks in the US”, showing Beyonce and Rihanna, which was causing some to miss my point:

See also:

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Posted in stuff | 162 Comments »

Us and Them

Thu May 17th 2018 by abagond

Us and Them (by -400,000,000) is where we divide the world into those who are like us – the Us, the in-group – and those who are not like us – the Them, the out-group. It seems to go back at least hundreds of millions of years, back to when we were fish. Upon it is built racism, religious bigotry, genocide and all the rest.

It is universal, it is deep, it is instant. It is as automatic as breathing. Which is why in the United States a White police officer can gun down a Black person and yet honestly say it had nothing to do with race. Because it took place too quick for his conscious mind to take part.

Implicit bias: The Implicit Association Test (IAT) measures, among other things, how much you favour Whites over Blacks (or the other way round). It measures reaction times that are too quick to be fully conscious. That implicit bias is the very thing those “split-second decisions” that get people killed are based on. And as the tests show, racism can be part of it.

Prejudice: the Us and Them thing is further screwed up by prejudiced thinking:

  • Us: We are better than we are (collective self-esteem), our shortcomings are due to circumstances (attribution error), we got to help each other out (in-group favouritism, the main cause of discrimination, not any sort of out-group hatred).
  • Them: They are all alike (out-group homogenization), they fit stereotypes as proved by selective sampling (confirmation bias), they are worse than they are (out-group derogation), their shortcomings are because they are (ew/gasp) one of Them (attribution error).

Prejudice can grow worse if the in-group feels threatened.

That is the bad news.

The good news is that, unlike fish, humans have amazing powers of learning. The line between Us and Them is learned. That is why it is different in different parts of the world: Jew and Arab in Palestine, Hutu and Tutsi in Rwanda, Muslim and Buddhist in Burma, etc. That it is learned and not inborn is why you can be prejudiced against your own, as with internalized racism.

Race: In the United States the line between Black and White goes back hundreds of years. But it only goes back hundreds of years: it is not part of human nature. It may feel “natural” and seem to function that way, but that is because it has hooked into the fish brain, so to speak. That is what gives these lines their terrible power, sometimes leading even to genocide.

The lines between Us and Them are completely made up. They are hammered into our heads by our leaders, political, national, religious, and social, to increase their own power. We can see that going on right before our eyes with President Trump. When these made-up lines become part of the culture they get passed down by parent and teacher, becoming part of “the way things are”.

The Charlottesville riot: “Make America Great Again”

– Abagond, 2018.

Source: partly based on “What Divides Us” in National Geographic (April 2018); Google Images.

See also:

571

Posted in stuff | 13 Comments »

net neutrality

Tue May 15th 2018 by abagond

(Illustration: The Verge)

Net neutrality (2002-2018?) is the idea that the companies which run the Internet – companies like Verizon, AT&T, and Comcast – should not play favourites but should treat all websites equally. They should not be able to block, slow down, or charge you extra for a website like Netflix, YouTube or Twitter.

Before net neutrality, police brutality was never a nationwide issue in the US, even when it led to riots that got nationwide attention, like Detroit in 1967 or Los Angeles in 1992. Because Whites controlled the media.

Without net neutrality the Internet in the US will likely go the way of the rest of the media: controlled by a handful of big companies which determine in effect what you see and hear. The Internet was the one ray of democratic sunshine in a plutocratic world.

For and against net neutrality:

  • For: Internet content providers (Google, Netflix, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, WordPress, me, etc), all Democrats in the US Senate, 86% of US voters, the ACLU, Vint Cerf (Father of the Internet), Tim Berners-Lee (inventor of the Web).
  • Against: Internet service providers (Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile, Sprint, Comcast, etc), and all but one US Republican senator – even though 82% of Republican voters favour net neutrality!

The main argument against net neutrality is that Internet service providers will make less money and therefore put less money into what people think of as the pipes and tubes of the Internet. But that is not what Internet service providers tell their investors!

The FCC, the Federal Communications Commission, is the part of US government in charge of setting and enforcing the rules for the Internet in the public interest. Under both Republican and Democratic leadership it had favoured net neutrality policies. Until, that is, President Trump came to power. He put Ajit Pai in charge of the FCC. Pai is a former lawyer of Verizon, one of the very companies that stands to make a fortune if net neutrality is overturned.

In December 2017, the FCC overturned the net neutrality rules from 2015. Pai says that anyone who does not like how Verizon and other companies run the Internet can take it up with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), a government agency which has little understanding of the Internet and little power to do much about it.

There are court challenges to the FCC ruling. And there is also:

Congress: At any time Congress can always make new rules to govern the Internet. The last time they did that was in 1996, when the Internet was little understood. There is a net neutrality bill now in Congress. It is likely to fail – even though 86% of voters favour net neutrality. You can thank in part gerrymandering and Citizens United for that, which help to make the US a functional plutocracy. But that is another story.

On June 11th 2018 the FCC’s decision to end net neutrality will take effect.

Net neutrality’s best hope will be for Democrats to take over Congress in the midterm elections in November 2018. That will depend on who shows up to vote.

– Abagond, 2018.

Update (May 16th, 22:45 GMT): The Congressional Review Act (CRA), which would overturn the FCC decision to end net neutrality, passed the Senate 52-47 in a surprise victory. It is unlikely to pass the heavily gerrymandered House. See how the senators voted at CNET.

See also:

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Posted in stuff | 9 Comments »

Mohe Rang Do Laal (मोहे रंग दो लाल, Colour Me Red)

Sun May 13th 2018 by abagond

Remarks:

This song comes from “Bajirao Mastani” (2015), one of the top grossing Bollywood films worldwide three years ago. The film tells the love story of Bajirao and Mastani, who lived in the Maratha Empire in India in the early 1700s.

Both the music and the dance in the video are in a style classical to North India. It won awards for both the singing and the dancing. Actress Deepika Padukone dances while lip-synching the singing of Shreya Ghoshal. The Twista parts are done by Pandit Birju Maharaj.

See also:

Lyrics (Hindi with English translation):

mohe rang do laal
nand ke laal laal
chheDo nahi bas rang do laal
mohe rang do laal

color me red,
O son of Nand, (Krishna)
don’t tease me, just color me red,
color me red..

dekhoon dekhoon tujhko main ho ke nihaal
dekhoon dekhoon tujhko main ho ke nihaal
chhoo lo kora mora kaanch sa tan
nain bhar kya rahe nihaar

I see you, enraptured,
touch my glass-like, untouched body,
why do you just keep looking at it..

mohe rang do laal
nand ke laal laal
chheDo naahi bas rang do laal
mohe rang do laal..

maroDi kalaai mori
haan kalaai mori
haan kalaai maroDi.. kalaai mori
chooDi chaTkai, itraayi
to chori se garwa lagaai
hari ye chunariya
jo jhaTke se chheeni..

he twisted my wrist,
turned it,
twisted and turned my wrist..
bangles were broken, and when I lugged,
he hugged this green scarf (of mine)
and snatched it with a jerk..

main to rangi hari hari ke rang
laaj se gulaabi gaal

I was colored green in the color of Krishna,
with my cheeks turned pink with shyness..

mohe rang do laal
nand ke laal laal
chheDo naahi bas rang do laal
mohe rang do laal..

Source: BollyMeaning.com, Wikipedia.

Posted in stuff | 1 Comment »

Robert Kennedy at Creighton University

Sun May 13th 2018 by abagond

St John’s at Creighton University.

At noon on Monday May 13th 1968, Robert Kennedy gave a speech at Creighton, a Jesuit university in Omaha, Nebraska. He was running for US president and the Nebraska Democratic Party primary was the next day.

The quadrangle: It was hot and sunny. He took off his jacket, standing in shirtsleeves. About 4,000 students showed up, lying on the grass of the quadrangle and sitting on windowsills. The students were largely White and middle-class.

The draft: At that time the Vietnam War was at its height, but men who went to university could put off getting drafted into the war by getting a student deferment. (Donald Trump was doing just that at the time – while John McCain was by then a prisoner of war, his plane having been shot down seven months before.)

Robert Kennedy said he would replace student deferments with a lottery. The students booed him.

He asked for a show of hands who believed in student deferments. Most students raised their hands.

Kennedy:

“How can you possibly say …. Look around you. How many Black faces do you see here? How many American Indians? How many Mexican Americans? The fact is, if you look at any regiment or division of paratroopers in Vietnam, 45% of them are Black. How can you accept that?”

More boos.

“What I don’t understand is that you don’t even debate these things among yourselves. You’re the most exclusive minority in the world. Are you going to sit on your duffs and do nothing? Or just carry signs and protest?”

Someone stood up and asked:

“But isn’t the army one way of getting people out of the ghettos … and solving the ghetto problem?”

Huh? Kennedy could not believe what he was hearing. Kennedy, who was himself Catholic, said:

“Here, at a Catholic university, how can you say that we can deal with the problems of the poor by sending them to Vietnam?

“There is a great moral force in the United States about the wrongs of the Federal Government and all the mistakes [President] Lyndon Johnson has made, and how Congress has failed to pass legislation dealing with civil rights. And yet, when it comes down to yourselves and your own individual lives, then you say students should be draft-deferred.”

This was not an abstract issue for him. His oldest brother, Joseph, died fighting for the country in the Second World War. His older brother, John, died while serving as president. He thought the Vietnam War was immoral, but love of country meant equality of sacrifice.

Kennedy at 24th and Erskine.

His next stop was a rally in front of his campaign headquarters at 24th and Erskine in the heart of Omaha’s Near North Side, a Black ghetto. As his motorcade drove into the ghetto it began to rain, but he kept the car top down so people could see him and touch him. When they turned the corner he saw a thousand people waiting in the downpour. He shouted, “These are my people!”

A month later he was dead.

– Abagond, 2018.

Sources: mainly “The Last Campaign” (2008) by Thurston Clarke.

See also:

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Posted in stuff | 14 Comments »

Ambedkar

Fri May 11th 2018 by abagond

Dr B.R. Ambedkar (1891-1956) was the Dalit (untouchable) who helped write the constitution of India. He is a hero to Dalits and Sudras, who live at the bottom of the Indian caste system.

He has no US counterpart: no Black man or Native helped to write the US constitution – it was White men all the way.

Reservations (affirmative action) was something he wrote into the constitution. It requires the government to reserve places in government employment and at universities for “backward” groups like the Dalits. It was only meant to last ten years (till 1960), but everyone wanted to be “backward”, so it became a way to win elections: count more people as “backward” and promise more places.

“Dalits” was a term he pushed. It means “broken men” in his native Marathi. He thought it was better than calling oneself “untouchable”.

Growing up Dalit, he was not allowed to drink from certain wells, eat with his schoolmates or learn Sanskrit. But with the help of British policy and an Indian prince, he became one of the best educated men in all of India.

Columbia University: He studied in the US from 1913 to 1927, becoming the first Dalit ever to get a PhD (in economics). At Columbia he learned to see history as the march of progress, of the power of equal rights to bring that progress, and of democracy to deliver those rights. From the example of Booker T. Washington he learned the value of compromise to secure what his people needed most to be free: education.

Caste: He did his doctoral thesis at Columbia on the Indian caste system. He did not see caste as a necessary division of labour. Nor did he see it as something that lighter-skinned Indo-Aryans forced on the conquered, darker-skinned Dravidians. It was worse than that. It came from people wanting to be like the Brahmans, the religious elite who kept themselves apart from everyone else. Copying the Brahmans wound up creating castes that kept themselves apart from each other. It left the Brahmans on top and society too divided to overthrow them or the caste system itself.

Gandhi: not a fan. He sometimes opposed him. Upper-caste Gandhi thought he could represent the Dalits. Ambedkar thought otherwise.

Writing the constitution: As a Dalit who was also one of the top legal minds in India, he was needed to write a constitution that could hold India together – especially after the Partition when Muslims formed what is now Pakistan and Bangladesh, leaving as many as 2 million people dead.

Legacy: In the 62 years since his death, castes have weakened overall and India has held together, as a liberal democracy no less. That is partly thanks to him.

Warning: He warned that without fraternity – treating everyone with dignity (not a feature of the caste system) – that liberty and equality “will be no deeper than coats of paint.”

In his last years he converted to Buddhism, which has no castes.

– Abagond, 2018.

See also:

520

Posted in stuff | 6 Comments »

Indian caste system

Thu May 10th 2018 by abagond

Caste: punishment (or reward) for your past lives. (Reuters/Amit Dave)

The caste system of India (by -1000) grew out of Hinduism and divides society from high to low into four main castes. On paper it has been done away with, but in practice it still shapes how people act and think, even if it is not as strong as it used to be.

According to Hinduism the god Brahma created people from his body:

  1. Brahmans came from his mouth. They became the priests.
  2. Kshatriyas came from his arms. They became the rulers and soldiers.
  3. Vaisyas came from his thighs. They became the merchants and farmers.
  4. Sudras came from his feet. They became servants, labourers and craftsmen.

Each of these castes in turn is divided into hundreds if not thousands of subcastes determined by occupation, region, family, etc.

Dalits, aka the Scheduled Caste, aka the Untouchables (not a nice word for them), are so low they do not even count as a proper caste. They clean human waste, kill animals, etc. The dirty work. Literally. See the picture above.

Lifelong: Caste is something you are born into and is for life. You are supposed to marry only within your caste. You are supposed to respect those of a higher caste (and can made to regret it if you do not). You do not have to respect those from a lower caste.

Perfect social immobility: Unlike class, you cannot move up or down the caste system – except through reincarnation. The caste you were born into was determined by how good or bad you were in your past lives. Thanks to the law of karma the whole thing is perfectly just, at least according to Hinduism.

Skin colour: The Sanskrit word for caste is varna, and one of its meanings is colour. But while the upper castes tend to be lighter skinned, you cannot tell a person’s caste simply from their skin colour.

Class: The higher your caste the more likely you will be well off: it will be easier to get a good education, to know the right people, etc. But that is an effect not a cause. You cannot tell a person’s caste from their wealth or education. Even a Dalit can be a professor, for example, though it is way less likely than for, say, a Brahman.

Religion: Millions have converted to other religions, like Buddhism, Christianity or Islam, to escape the caste system. But caste is so much a part of Indian society that it still affects them.

Foreigners: In general lighter-skinned foreigners are treated with more respect than darker-skinned ones. White people are respected as if they were an upper caste.

Caste is being weakened by capitalism, democracy, and big-city life. But even those who do not seem to care much about caste will suddenly care when it comes to stuff like who to marry or who to hire. The government and universities try to set aside places for Dalits, for example, but they still face plenty of discrimination in the private sector. And crimes against them go largely unpunished.

– Abagond, 2018.

Sources: Mainly “Culture Smart India” (2010) by Becky Stephen.

See also:

540

Posted in stuff | 6 Comments »

Childish Gambino: This Is America

Wed May 9th 2018 by abagond

“This Is America” (2018) is a song and music video by Childish Gambino, the nom de rap of US actor Donald Glover, he of “Atlanta” (2016- ). The video has gone viral, getting 33 million views on YouTube in the first 48 hours. It is now past 60 million.

Spoilers: If you have not seen it yet, I do not want to ruin it for you. Try this link (might not work in all countries or after five years or so):

Warning: graphic gun violence:

The video features a Charleston-style church massacre, schoolchildren who are up on the latest dance moves, a Ferguson-style uprising, a burning police car, even the White Horse of the Apocalypse (which is a sign of the end of the world in the Bible). It is a world where guns are valued more than people. This is America.

My interpretation: Gambino did not provide a cheat sheet. He left it open to interpretation. Here is mine:

The video goes like this:

  1. La-la-la-la singing and dancing.
  2. Randomly insert a shooting or some other act of terror.
  3. The singing stops, the music changes, becomes darker, and Gambino says “This is America”.
  4. After a minute or so the shooting has been forgotten. Go back to step one and repeat.

That is America! Suddenly, “out of the blue”, there is some senseless, hideous shooting and it is like everything stops – but then two weeks later the shooting is all but forgotten, only for the whole thing to repeat weeks or months later. On and on. It is strange to see it in a music video – because music in the US largely functions as a distraction.

The image that most sticks in my mind is Gambino singing and dancing
with the schoolchildren while all hell is breaking loose (pictured at top), and he says:

I’m on Gucci
I’m so pretty (yeah, yeah)

Even though he knows:

Police be trippin’ now.

Music, dance, religion, fashion and drugs all appear in the video as an escape from a world gone mad, as a way of not going mad yourself. And yet they help keep that mad world in place.

Stereotypes: The strange dance Gambino does at the beginning is taken from the minstrel show character Jim Crow. Gambino plays both Happy Darky and Black Brute, stereotypes driven by White paternalism (darkies) and White guilt (brutes). When shown together in a video, they seem strange and contradictory – because they are. But the fear of the Black Brute helps drive the need for Happy Darkies.

Happy Darkies are not enough: Gambino’s singing and dancing comes to an end as he is chased through the dark by White people, all of his grinning replaced by a look of terror on his face.

You just a black man in this world
You just a barcode, ayy
You just a black man in this world
Drivin’ expensive foreigns, ayy
You just a big dawg, yeah
I kenneled him in the backyard
No, probably ain’t life to a dog
For a big dog

This is America.

– Abagond, 2018.

See also:

Lyrics:

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah
Yeah, yeah, go, go away
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah
Yeah, yeah, go, go away
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah
Yeah, yeah, go, go away
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah
Yeah, yeah, go, go away

We just wanna party
Party just for you
We just want the money
Money just for you
I know you wanna party
Party just for me
Girl, you got me dancin’
Dance and shake the frame

We just wanna party
Party just for you
We just want the money
Money just for you
I know you wanna party
Party just for me
Girl, you got me dancin’
Dance and shake the frame

This is America
Don’t catch you slippin’ up
Don’t catch you slippin’ up
Look what I’m whippin’ up
This is America
Don’t catch you slippin’ up
Don’t catch you slippin’ up
Look what I’m whippin’ up

This is America
Don’t catch you slippin’ up
Look at how I’m livin’ now
Police be trippin’ now
Yeah, this is America
Guns in my area (word, my area)
I got the strap
I gotta carry ’em

Yeah, yeah, I’ma go into this
Yeah, yeah, this is guerilla, woo
Yeah, yeah, I’ma go get the bag
Yeah, yeah, or I’ma get the pad
Yeah, yeah, I’m so cold like, yeah (yeah)
I’m so dope like, yeah
We gon’ blow like, yeah (straight up, uh)

Ooh-ooh-ooh-ooh-ooh, tell somebody
You go tell somebody
Grandma told me
Get your money, black man (get your money)
Get your money, black man (get your money)
Get your money, black man (get your, black man)
Get your money, black man (get your, black man)
Black man

This is America (woo!)
Don’t catch you slippin’ up (woo, woo, don’t catch you slippin’, now)
Don’t catch you slippin’ up
Look what I’m whippin’ up (slime!)
This is America (yeah, yeah)
Don’t catch you slippin’ up
Don’t catch you slippin’ up
Look what I’m whippin’ up

Look how I’m geekin’ out
I’m so fitted (I’m so fitted)
I’m on Gucci
I’m so pretty (yeah, yeah)
I’m gon’ get it (ayy, I’m gon’ get it)
Watch me move
This a celly
That’s a tool
On my Kodak (woo, Black)
Ooh, know that (yeah, know that, hold on)
Get it? (Get it? Get it?)
Ooh, work it (21)
Hunnid bands, hunnid bands, hunnid bands (hunnid bands)
Contraband, contraband, contraband (contraband)
I got the plug on Oaxaca
They gonna find you like blocka

Ooh-ooh-ooh-ooh-ooh, tell somebody
(America, I just checked my following list and)
You go tell somebody
(You mothafuckas owe me)
Grandma told me
Get your money, black man (black man)
Get your money, black man (black man)
Get your money, black man (black man)
Get your money, black man (black man)
Black man

One, two, three, get down
Ooh-ooh-ooh-ooh-ooh, tell somebody
You go tell somebody
Grandma told me
Get your money, black man (black man)
Get your money, black man (black man)
Get your money, black man (black man)
Get your money, black man (black man)
Black man

You just a black man in this world
You just a barcode, ayy
You just a black man in this world
Drivin’ expensive foreigns, ayy
You just a big dawg, yeah
I kenneled him in the backyard
No, probably ain’t life to a dog
For a big dog

Source: letras.mus.br.

1101

Posted in stuff | 10 Comments »

Coates on Kanye

Mon May 7th 2018 by abagond

Snoop Dogg’s All-White Kanye.

In “I’m Not Black, I’m Kanye” (2018) Ta-Nehisi Coates, a Black writer who has been compared to James Baldwin, weighed in on the Kanye West controversy.

For those living under a rock – or living more than ten years from now – Kanye West has lately been saying stuff like slavery was a “choice”, that President Trump is his “brother”, that they share the same “dragon energy”. He has taken to wearing Trump’s “Make America Great Again” hat and repeating Fox News talking points.

But why take Kanye West seriously? He is just an entertainer. He is not even up on the news: he just found out about Trump’s anti-Muslim travel ban. It has been in the news for over a year.

Ta-Nehisi Coates, who is part of the Black thinking class, who is paid (by White people) for having really deep thoughts, says that what Kanye West says matters profoundly.

The drum: Coates quotes Zora Neale Hurston (kind of a requirement) about when Blacks were brought from Africa as slaves:

“They tore away his clothes so that Cuffy might bring nothing away, but Cuffy seized his drum and hid it in his skin under the skull bones. … So he laughed with cunning and said, ‘I, who am borne away, to become an orphan, carry my parents with me. For rhythm is she not my mother, and Drama is her man?’ So he groaned aloud in the ships and hid his drum and laughed.”

Coates:

“There is no separating the laughter from the groans, the drum from the slave ships, the tearing away of clothes, the being borne away, from the cunning need to hide all that made you human. And this is why the gift of black music, of black art, is unlike any other in America, because it is not simply a matter of singular talent, or even of tradition, or lineage, but of something more grand and monstrous.”

Michael Jackson and Kanye West were not just the best entertainers of their time – they were bearers of the drum that helped keep Black people human in a dehumanizing land.

Responsibility: So when Michael Jackson made his face whiter and whiter and when Kanye West wears Trump’s hat, it affects more than just their fans. It affects all Black people, like it or not, destroying them bit by bit on the inside. Far worse than what any White entertainer could do to White people as a whole.

Freedom: Kanye West claims the right to be a “free thinker”.

Coates:

“he is, indeed, championing a kind of freedom – a white freedom, freedom without consequence, freedom without criticism, freedom to be proud and ignorant; freedom to profit off a people in one moment and abandon them in the next; … a Confederate freedom, the freedom of John C. Calhoun, not the freedom of Harriet Tubman, which calls you to risk your own …”

Kanye West has chosen “collaboration” not resistance. Thus his “freedom”.

You can read Coates’ whole piece at The Atlantic.

– Abagond, 2018.

See also:

555

Posted in stuff | 13 Comments »

Norah Jones: Don’t Know Why

Sun May 6th 2018 by abagond

Remarks:

Born Geetali Norah Shankar, the daughter of sitarist Ravi Shankar changed her name to Norah Jones and became a jazz pianist. This is the song that made her name. It went to #30 on the US pop chart in 2002 and won three Grammy Awards in 2003, including Record of the Year.

See also:

Lyrics:

I waited ’til I saw the sun
I don’t know why I didn’t come
I left you by the house of fun
I don’t know why I didn’t come
I don’t know why I didn’t come

When I saw the break of day
I wished that I could fly away
Instead of kneeling in the sand
Catching teardrops in my hand

My heart is drenched in wine
But you’ll be on my mind
Forever

Out across the endless sea
I would die in ecstasy
But I’ll be a bag of bones
Driving down the road alone

My heart is drenched in wine
But you’ll be on my mind
Forever

Something has to make you run
I don’t know why I didn’t come
I feel as empty as a drum
I don’t know why I didn’t come
I don’t know why I didn’t come
I don’t know why I didn’t come

Source: AZ Lyrics.

Posted in stuff | 6 Comments »

Kanye West

Sat May 5th 2018 by abagond

Kanye West, 2015. (Photo by Brian J Ritchie/Hotsauce/REX/Shutterstock)

Kanye West (1977- ) is Kanye West’s favourite rapper. He is also one of the most famous hip hop artists in the US, though not (yet) of mythic, Tupac-like proportions. Like President Trump, he wears a “Make America Great Again” hat and has the same “dragon energy”, as West tells it. Both are narcissistic. Both are consummate attention whores and failed businessmen.

As lead artist:

Songs that made the top ten on the US R&B chart:

  • 2003: Through the Wire (#8)
  • 2004: All Falls Down (#4)
  • 2004: Jesus Walks (#2)
  • 2005: Gold Digger (#1)
  • 2007: Stronger (#1)
  • 2007: Good Life (#3)
  • 2008: Heartless (#4)
  • 2010: All of the Lights (#2)
  • 2010: Otis (#2)
  • 2011: Niggas in Paris (#1)
  • 2012: Mercy (#1)
  • 2012: Clique (#2)
  • 2013: Bound 2 (#3)
  • 2015: FourFiveSeconds (#1)
  • 2015: All Day (#6)

Songs that made the top ten across the Anglosphere:

  • 2004: All Falls Down (#8)
  • 2005: Gold Digger (#1)
  • 2007: Stronger (#1)
  • 2008: Love Lockdown (#5)
  • 2008: Heartless (#6)
  • 2011: Niggas in Paris (#10)
  • 2015: FourFiveSeconds (#4)

He has two new albums coming out next month (June 2018).

Kanye shrug, 2009.

Kanye West is also the country’s Professional Four-Year Old, saying things out loud that many are thinking but are too polite to say. His three most famous moments (so far):

  • 2005: “George Bush doesn’t care about black people” (said of the president in the wake of Hurricane Katrina).
  • 2009: “Yo Taylor, I’m really happy for you, Imma let you finish but Beyonce had one of the best videos of all time … one of the best videos of all time! *Kanye shrug*” (interrupting Taylor Swift on stage as she won an MTV VMA Award for her video “You Belong With Me”, which beat out Beyonce’s “Single Ladies”).
  • 2018: “I just love Trump, that’s my boy … When you hear about slavery for 400 years – for 400 years? That sounds like a choice” (because, as he later pointed out, “the numbers were on our side.”)

He took back the first one in 2010. The last one he defends as “free” thought.

Most Black people would likely agree with the first two (but not most Whites), while the last one was roundly mocked on Twitter under the hashtag #IfSlaveryWereAChoice.

Kanye and Kim, circa 2018.

Kimye: In 2012 he married a White girl, Kim Kardashian. They have two daughters, North West (b. 2013) and Chicago West (b. 2018, pictured), and a son, Saint West (b. 2015).

One of the great things about The Old Kanye (RIP) was that he did not bite his tongue about racism. But now, in middle age:

Donald Trump and Kanye West in 2016. Feel the dragon energy!

He has taken to repeating Fox News talking points – Trump is great, Black-on-Black crime, Blacks are mentally enslaved by the Democratic Party, etc. He admires Alex Jones of Infowars and likes the thinking of Candace Owen of Red Pill Black.

Kanye West in 2018. Click to enlarge.

People are making all kinds of excuses for him – it is a publicity stunt, he is losing his mind, he never got over his mother’s death, he is too cut off from ordinary Black people, he is seeking White approval, etc.

Georgina in the sunken place.

Some say he is in “the sunken place”, meaning his mind has been taken over by White people, like in the film “Get Out” (2017). He disagrees. As proof he tweeted a picture of his California mansion and said, “do this look like the sunken place” followed by a laughing emoji:

– Abagond, 2018.

Update (October 10th 2018): Kanye West, still in his Uncle Ruckus phase, will have lunch with President Trump tomorrow (Thursday the 11th). They will discuss “manufacturing resurgence in America, prison reform, how to prevent gang violence, and what can be done to reduce violence in Chicago.”

See also:

 

Posted in stuff | 43 Comments »

Programming note #36

Fri May 4th 2018 by abagond

Curried goat via Grace Foods (click on the link or the picture for the recipe).

For May 2018 I am going on a South Asian media diet. That means most of the books, songs, films, news, etc, that I consume will come from South Asia and its diaspora.

News:

Times of India (1838- ) – online. The largest selling English-language newspaper in the world. Comes out of Mumbai.

India Today (1975- ) – weekly news magazine very much in the style of Time in the US. Comes out of Noida, a satellite city of Delhi.

Film:

Dhadkan (2000) – a Bollywood film. I have never watched one all the way through. This one features Shilpa Shetty, who I did a post on. Even better, it is free on YouTube and dubbed in English (except the songs in Hindi, which are subtitled).

Books: I should be able to get through these in the space of a month:

Bhagavad Gita (c. -400) – best known part of Hindu scriptures. Prince Arjuna and his charioteer Lord Krishna talk about life, the universe and everything. I am reading it in the Stephen Mitchell translation.

Dhammapada (by -200) – best known of the Buddhist scriptures. Contains the traditional sayings of Buddha.

Tagore: Gitanjali (1912) – a book of 103 of his poems. It was such a hit it won him the Nobel Prize for Literature just a year later, making him the first non-White person to win.

Jhumpa Lahiri: Unaccustomed Earth (2008) – short stories. Lahiri is an Indian American writer. The New York Times Book Review named this their Best Book of the Year.

Sinharaja Tammita-Delgoda: A Traveller’s History of India (2011) – I got this book in the wake of my post on books I wish I had read sooner, where I noted that Indian history is a hole in my education.

Sunil Khilnani: Incarnations (2016) – a history of India in 50 lives. Buddha, Gandhi, Tagore, Malik Ambar, and loads of people I have never heard of, which in this case is a good thing.

Music:

I am open to suggestions!

Note: As always, if you think my media diet is keeping me in the dark about something I should post on, please let me know!

Thanks!

– Abagond, 2018.

See also:

 

Posted in stuff | 18 Comments »

Michelle Wolf

Wed May 2nd 2018 by abagond

Michelle Wolf (1985- ) is the White Liberal stand-up comedian who appeared last Saturday, April 28th 2018, at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner in Washington, DC. It is an event where she is expected to make fun of both the White House and the press. But when she did, the White House and the press were offended.

Sniff.

Wolf on President Trump, who was too chicken to show up, who famously boasted that women let him “grab them by the pussy”:

“Of course, Trump isn’t here, if you haven’t noticed, he’s not here. And I know, I know, I would drag him here myself, but it turns out the president of the United States is the one pussy you’re not allowed to grab.”

Wolf on Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the White House press secretary whose lies we in the US have to listen to day after day:

“She burns facts, and then she uses that ash to create a perfect smoky eye. Like maybe she’s born with it, maybe it’s lies. It’s probably lies.”

Some mistook that as a cruel joke about Sanders’ appearance. While it is a take-off on the “Maybe it’s Maybelline” make-up ads, the joke is about her lies, not her eyes.

Wolf on the press:

“You guys are obsessed with Trump. Did you used to date him? Because you pretend like you hate him, but I think you love him. I think what no one in this room wants to admit is that Trump has helped all of you. He couldn’t sell steaks or vodka or water or college or ties or Eric, but he has helped you. He’s helped you sell your papers and your books and your TV. You helped create this monster, and now you’re profiting off of him. If you’re going to profit off of Trump, you should at least give him some money, because he doesn’t have any.”

She ended with this:

“Flint still doesn’t have clean water.”

It was great, it was glorious.

Dave Chappelle agreed:

“I don’t know who those people think they are that she can’t say that to them, ’cause they offend people all the time. I think that for many people … it’s cathartic to watch that woman speak truth to power like that. … I know how hard it is to do what she did in front of that lame-ass crowd. And she – I think she nailed it. … I didn’t see her pander once and I thought that was beautiful.”

But Trump along with the press and many on the right did not agree.

The White House Correspondents’ Association itself, which represents reporters at the presidential palace, said:

“Last night’s program was meant to offer a unifying message about our common commitment to a vigorous and free press while honoring civility, great reporting and scholarship winners, not to divide people. Unfortunately, the entertainer’s monologue was not in the spirit of that mission.”

Since when does the press think unity is more important than speaking truth to power?

– Abagond, 2018.

See also:

542

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