Duke Ellington: Take the A Train

Remarks:

Written by Billy Strayhorn in 1939, it became the signature tune for Duke Ellington and his 17-piece band. It is here performed in the film “Reveille with Beverly” (1943). As I know from my 1949 media diet, this song had several popular covers in the 1940s.

See also:

• songs
• 1949 media diet
  • Charlie Parker: Summertime
• Harlem
  • Cynda Williams: Harlem Blues

Lyrics:

You must take the “A”-Train
To go to Sugar Hill way up in Harlem
If you miss the “A”-Train
You’ll find you missed the quickest way to Harlem
Hurry – get on now it’s coming
Listen – to these rails a-humming – all board
get on the “A”-Train
Soon You will be on Sugar Hill in Harlem

Source: Vagalume.

 

Am I still homophobic?

Donald Trump and Mario Cuomo in Albany, New York on May 6th 1989. (AP Photo/Alan Soloman).

This is an update to “Am I homophobic?”, a post I wrote in 2008, in the dying days of President Bush II.

The main points I made in 2008:

1. I found sex between men disgusting and immoral, sex between women hot but still immoral.
2. I hate the sin but not the sinner. We are all sinners. I am no different.
3. I do not believe in same-sex marriage.
4. If my son came out, I would be saddened but would not disown him.
5. I have to function from some set of moral beliefs. Mine are mainly Catholic for both religious and practical reasons.

Most of the post was spent making the second point. Even when I talk about racism, something I am more used to talking about, it is a difference I have a hard time explaining. Or others have a hard time understanding. I think it is because of the way some people were brought up by their parents, which no amount of words on my part can overcome.

My view has since shifted. Back then I saw gays and lesbians mainly as sinners. Now I see them mainly as a persecuted minority in need of protection.

I believe in pluralistic democracy: live and let live. The law is not there to save souls but to save lives. It is to give us a way to all live together without killing each other. Yes, I know, in practice the law for the most part is used to make theft by the rich respectable. But we are talking about my beliefs and ideals.

A huge danger in any democracy is persecution by the majority. US history is full of that. So is the news – it is still going on. You see that now plain as day with immigration. Politicians will whip up the hatreds of the majority to win public office and then write those hatreds into law. So as a voter I must not give into that.

Therefore I am now for same-sex marriage to protect their rights. It still goes against my own ideas of marriage, but this is not a theocracy nor should it be. It is not my right to impose my beliefs on others.

I do not like saying that – because now I am sounding just like my father. Word for word. In my youth I saw him as what I called a Cuomo Catholic. Like Mario Cuomo, then the governor of New York (and father of the present governor), he left his Catholic beliefs outside the voting booth. Joe Biden is like that too – along with most Catholics in the north-eastern US it seems. It fits the north-eastern belief that religion is a private matter. Someone like Vice President Pence of the religious right is seen as a troglodyte. But I saw leaving your beliefs outside the voting booth as not only hypocritical, but to enter a moral void with no bearings, no way to make decisions.

Mike Pence and Joe Biden, November 16th 2016. Via Las Vegas Review-Journal.

– Abagond, 2018.

See also:

• Am I homophobic?
• Moonlight – the comment thread has a discussion on homophobia out of which this post came.
• Joe Biden
• Mike Pence
• The 11 nations of North America

557

Moonlight

“Moonlight” (2016) is a film about growing up poor, Black and gay in the US, in particular in Miami’s Liberty City, where it was filmed. It was the first all-Black film and first LGBT film to win an Oscar for Best Picture. Mahershala Ali, Naomie Harris and Janelle Monae appear as supporting characters. Barry Jenkins directs.

Cast: Not a single White person that I can remember appears in the whole film. Some of the kids at school might be Latino, but all the speaking parts are given to Black characters.

Production: The film was directed by Barry Jenkins, who wrote it with Tarell Alvin McCraney, on whose life it is loosely based. Both are Black. The production company, Brad Pitt’s Plan B, is White. It is the same company that gave us “12 Years a Slave” (2013).

Ali and McCraney also won Oscars,

Our story: It shows Chiron, the main character, at three stages in his life: as a boy, a teenager, and a man (pictured above). His mother is a crackhead. We are never told where his father is. Growing up Chiron is constantly picked on and bullied – he is gay but does not know it till halfway through the film. The rage in him builds till one day he does something that lands him in prison. He comes out of prison a man.

Mahershala Ali finds Chiron hiding in an abandoned house in the first scene. He and Janelle Monae show him more love than his own mother, Naomie Harris. But Ali is the one who sells his mother crack! Janelle Monae was a ray of sunshine in a grim film.

Cinematography: It was beautifully filmed, in the style of Hong Kong director Wong Kar-wai. But maybe too beautifully for its own good: Chiron hardly says anything! I watched this film having just read Janet Mock’s “Redefining Realness” a month ago. That was also a story of coming of age as a poor, queer Black person in the US during the Crack Era. But in Mock’s book we know everything she is thinking, how she comes to terms with what makes her different. Chiron is more an object of study. Does he even say the word “I”?

The best thing about the film: It shows what homophobia is like from the receiving end. If you did not know what needless, life-scarring suffering it causes, you know now.

The worst thing about the film: It strengthens the racist tropes of Black homophobia and Black pathology. I cannot help but think that is part of why it became the first all-Black film to win an Oscar for Best Picture. You know, given the history of the Oscars and all.

Realism: “Moonlight” is not a true story, but it could have been. It is not unrealistic in that sense. But it follows too closely well-worn Hollywood stereotypes: Blacks take drugs, Blacks sell drugs, Blacks are poor, Blacks are terrible parents, etc.

After all, how many all-White films about homophobia take place in Methlandia?

– Abagond, 2018.

See also:

• Janet Mock: Redefining Realness
• Crack Era
• Plan B
  • 12 Years a Slave
• Oscars So White
  • Monster’s Ball – Halle Berry wins playing the Jezebel stereotype
  • Precious – Mo’Nique wins playing the Welfare Queen stereotype
• stereotype
  • White racial frame
  • Black pathology
  • Black homophobia
• Janelle Monae
  • Hidden Figures
  • Janelle Monáe ft Erykah Badu: Q.U.E.E.N.
  • Janelle Monae: Tightrope
• Am I homophobic?

558

Black Panther

Chadwick Boseman as T’Challa, the Black Panther.

“Black Panther” (2018) is the first Hollywood blockbuster action film to star a Black superhero: T’Challa, the Black Panther. It features all-Black-everything Afrofuturism, special effects, shoot-outs, fight scenes, a chase scene, a battle, and even a rhino charge. Loads of PG-13 violence, no real love story. Ryan Coogler, who gave us “Fruitvale Station” (2013), directs.

Box office: It cost $200 million to make – and has already brought in $404 million worldwide after its first weekend. It looks set to become the first film with a Black-majority cast to break a billion. The highest grossing Black film to date is “Coming to America” (1988), which brought in $595 million (in 2016 dollars).

Cast:

• Chadwick Boseman: T’Challa, the Black Panther, king of Wakanda
• Michael B. Jordan: Erik “Killmonger” Stevens, the main villain (pictured below)
• Letitia Wright: Shuri, T’Challa’s kid sister and tech whiz (pictured above)
• Lupita Nyong’o: Nakia, spy, old girlfriend of T’Challa’s
• Danai Gurira: Okoye, head of the Dora Milaje (Wakandan special forces)
• Angela Bassett: Ramonda, the Queen Mother
• Forest Whitaker: Zuri, a wise, old, trusted adviser
• Andy Serkis: Ulysses Klaue, South African arms dealer
• Martin Freeman: Everett K. Ross, CIA agent

The last two are White, the rest are Black.

White power structure: The director and writers are Black, but the producer and studio (Marvel) are White. Marvel wanted Ava DuVernay to direct but she did not agree with their ideas for the film. Coogler apparently did.

Representation matters: Joe Robert Cole, who wrote the film with Coogler:

“As a kid I played a lot of make-believe and I would change every hero to black, so instead of James Bond I was James Black; instead of Batman, Blackman.

“Little brown kids, including my own, don’t have to do that. That’s amazing to me. This is the movie I wish I’d had to look up to.”

That is the great thing about the film.

Also great is the Dora Milaje, an all-female elite fighting force. It was great to see them in action.

Not so great: Killmonger, the only Black American character with more than a few lines, is the villain! He wants to use Wakanda’s wealth and power to free Black people all over the world. T’Challa, the moral centre of the film, sees that as a bad thing!!! In true Wakandan (White Liberal) fashion, he prefers handouts that keep the White power structure of the world in place.

Wakanda First: Even though Wakanda has been more powerful and advanced than the West for hundreds of years, it sat by and did nothing as Whites dragged off millions of Africans into slavery and still did nothing as Whites took over Africa piece by piece. And continued to sit by under T’Challa, the supposed hero. Hero to whom!!?

The most realistic part of the whole film was just that: if there were a Wakanda or a T’Challa it would probably go just like that: pro-Black in image but not in substance. We have seen that before.

– Abagond, 2018.

Update (March 19th): On March 10th “Black Panther” became the first Black film to gross a billion dollars.

Sources: the Cole quote, the top grossing Black films after inflation, box office figures for “Black Panther”.

See also:

• Wakanda – as told by Ta-Nehisi Coates in his first Black Panther book
• Lupita Nyong’o
• Angela Bassett
• “representation matters”
• Fruitvale Station
• White Liberals
• Obama retrospective

550

Diana Ross: Love Hangover

Remarks:

Proof that Diana Ross is better than Beyonce, Erykah Badu – or Diana Ross. It is pretty much the soundtrack of the late 1970s, at least in the Abagond Version of the Universe. It went to number one on the US R&B chart in 1976. I can remember when it was a new song on the radio, which is kind of like remembering the invention of string. The song is way too short, but all attempts to make it longer only make it worse.

See also:

• songs, the 1970s
• L.T.D.: Love Ballad – the best song of 1976, if not ever.
• Rose Royce: I Wanna Get Next to You – also from 1976, also better than “Love Hangover”
• The Golden Record – sent to the stars a year later without “Love Hangover”. Not sure who dropped the ball on that one.
• singers Diana Ross is better than:
  • Beyonce
  • Erykah Badu
  • Diana Ross

Lyrics:

Ah, if there’s a cure for this
I don’t want it
Don’t want it
If there’s a remedy
I’ll run from it, from it

Think about it all the time
Never let it out of my mind
‘Cause I love you

I’ve got the sweetest hangover
I don’t wanna get over
Sweetest hangover

Yeah, I don’t wanna get ove)
I don’t wanna get
I don’t wanna get…over

Ooh, I don’t need no cure
I don’t need no cure
I don’t need no cure

Sweet lovin’
Sweet, sweet, sweet, sweet love
Sweet, sweet love
Sweet, sweet, sweet, sweet love

Don’t call a doctor
Don’t call her momma
Don’t call her preacher
No, I don’t need it
I don’t want it

Sweet love, I love you
Sweet love, need love

If there’s a cure for this
I don’t want it
I don’t want it no
If there’s a cure for this
I don’t want it
If ther’s a cure for this
I don’t need it
Sweet, sweet, sweet, sweet love
Sweet, sweet, sweet, sweet love
Sweet, sweet, sweet, sweet love
Sweet, sweet, sweet, sweet love

Source: A-Z Lyrics.

Nefertiti So White

During Black History Month here in the US we have been treated to a recreation of how Nefertiti looked based on science. It was first shown last week on “Today”, a nationwide television morning news show:

Nefertiti according to White people in 2018.

The recreation was done for the Travel Channel on US television.

Compare that to the famous bust of Nefertiti, made when she was still alive:

Nefertiti according to Egyptians, circa -1345.

Reactions:

• White people were amazed at how much they looked alike.
• Black people noticed the strange difference in skin colour.
• The US news media gave it a pass. At least in the reporting I saw, none of their paid professionals thought to ask the artist, Elisabeth Daynes, why she made Nefertiti so white. Or looked for other reconstructions of the same mummy. And only in one case did they ask an independent expert.

Things to know:

1. Not Nefertiti: The mummy this is based on was most likely not Nefertiti.
2. Not science: The skin colour was left up to the artist. It was not based on science.
3. Not the first time: the mummy’s face was also reconstructed in 2003.

The Younger Lady: The reconstruction is based on a mummy known as the Younger Lady, a body found over a hundred years ago in the Valley of the Kings in Tomb KV 35. She had no name and her face was partly bashed in on purpose, presumably from murder. She was lying next to Queen Tiye. DNA tests show that she is Queen Tiye’s daughter and King Tut’s mother.

British Egyptologist Joann Fletcher has argued that the Younger Lady is Nefertiti. That has not been proved. And it seems unlikely:

1. Nefertiti’s parents are never named. Which means they were likely not kings or queens.
2. Nefertiti is often shown with her children. King Tut is never one of them.

No one yet knows the name of the Younger Lady.

Her face was recreated in 2003 too. Here is what that recreation looked liked (with hat and accessories added):

The same mummy reconstructed in 2003.

Unlike the 2018 recreation, they did not know they were supposed to be recreating Nefertiti.

Meet the parents of the Younger Lady, Amenhotep III and Queen Tiye:

Amenhotep III, the father.

Queen Tiye, the mother.

Skin colour: Ancient Egyptians came in all colours, from white to brown to black. They mainly painted themselves brown:

Ancient Egyptians, the high and the low, back in the day.

And, as it turns out, there was an Egyptian American standing right there when Becky Nefertiti was unveiled: Hoda Kotb. Even though it was in New York in the middle of winter, she was still darker:

Spot the Egyptian: Hoda Kotb, an Egyptian American, stands to the left dressed in white.

Why it matters: Ancient Egyptians did not think in terms of race, but the US was built on it. In particular it was built on the One Drop Rule: the idea that one drop of African blood makes you a lesser being compared to those of pure European blood, aka White people. All those brown-skinned Egyptians and their high civilization – that the West itself grew out of – shows what a lie it is. Thus the endless attempts by US media to Whitewash Ancient Egypt.

– Abagond, 2018.

See also:

• Welcome to Black History Month 2018
• How Black was Ancient Egypt?
  • Black people according to Herodotus
• Was Jesus White?
• One Drop Rule
  • Hollywood Whitewashing
• Racism before 1400
• Ancient Egypt
  • King Tut
  • Nefertiti
  • Queen Tiye

 

Programming note #34

For Lent (February 14th to March 29th) I will be giving up my English-language media diet: no books, music, news, film, television, radio or Internet in English. It is a bad habit of mine. And I want to learn Portuguese. I will be on a Portuguese-language media diet (which. if it has some English-language content like songs, that is fine).

Exceptions: I will make exceptions for work-related stuff, this blog (comments, research), anything teaching Portuguese, and, if I get a chance to see it, “Black Panther” (2018).

Suggestions: If there is anything you want me to do a post on, particularly something you think I am missing out on because of my diet, please let me know in the comments below. If it is seconded I will most likely do it.

– Abagond, 2018.

See also:

• media diet
  • Black media diet
  • Breitbart news diet
  • RT news diet
  • 1949 media diet
• The Vast Talking Machine – the most powerful filter bubble in history
• My thing for Brazil
• Portuguese

Wakanda

Wakanda is the most technologically advanced nation of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. In the heart of Africa, it is all Black everything and ruled by a superhero, the Black Panther, aka T’Challa.

Note: This post is based on “Black Panther: Nation Under Our Feet” (2016) by Ta-Nehisi Coates. The Black Panther film will not be out till this Friday in the US (Thursday in New York).

• Location: Marvel Cinematic Universe, in Africa just west of Lake Victoria (about where Uganda and Rwanda are in our universe).
• Ruler: T’Challa.
• Major cities: Birnin Zana (seat of government), Birnin Azzaria (seat of learning).
• Culture: Pan-African. Has Zulu and Maasai elements.
• Language: Wakandan. Has Swahili loan words.
• Religion: the goddess, the tree, orishas, shamans, spirits.
• Government: monarchy. The king is called the Black Panther. His power is supported by the Dora Milaje, an all-female fighting force, celebrated in fable and song.
• Technology: vibranium, nanotech, biomechatronics, kimoyo bands, midnight angel prototype.
• Economy: vibranium-based, non-colonial.

Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU): where Spiderman, Captain America, Iron Man, the Incredible Hulk and others live. (Batman, Superman, and Wonder Woman live in the DC Universe or DCU.)

Vibranium, the “vaunted metal”, comes from the huge Mena Ngai meteor strike in Wakanda. It absorbs kinetic energy and sound and can form a power network among its pieces. It powers Wakandan technology, from spears to personal bracelets (kimoyo bands). Because of its network quality, it is not something that can be easily carted away to make someone else rich, the fate of much of Africa’s wealth, from diamonds to chocolate to slaves.

The Djalia: the plane of Wakandan memory. A griot lives there, an old woman who is “a caretaker of all our histories, now lost to the acolytes of machine, and the prophets of this metal age.”

Torn: Wakanda is torn and has lost its way. There is an uprising in the south and revolution in the north. The king, T’Challa, can follow the souls of others but has lost his own. He allowed Queen Shuri, his own sister, to be killed and did nothing. His soldiers massacred vibranium miners. He was busy saving the world while Wakanda was falling apart. He brings shame to his people, not hope.

Wakanda, like most nations, is founded on lies and dishonesty. Unlike most, it is torn three ways by Wakandan science, animistic religion, and Lockean philosophy.

Changamire, the philosopher:

“Wakanda has all the intelligence any advanced society would want, and none of the wisdom that any free society needs.”

The griot of the Djalia:

“You have been told that the might of your country is in its wonderful inventions, in its circuits and weaponry. This is the mastery of things. But Wakanda was great before it had things, and its secrets are older than any vaunted metal. …

“Here we will arm you not with the spear, but with the drum, for it is the drum that carries the greatest power of all, the power of memory, daughter, the power of our song.”

– Abagond, 2018.

See also:

• Ta-Nehisi Coates
• John Locke
• shaman
• orisha
• Swahili
• Wakanda (as told by Coates) runs counter to these racist tropes:
  • White paternalism
    • White Saviour
    • Broken Africa stereotype
  • White Default

530

Essence magazine

Cover of the first issue: May 1970.

Essence (1970- ) is one of the top magazines in the US aimed at Black women, particularly the kind who think they are woke while wearing $735 Manolo Blahnik heels. It comes out of New York once a month.

This post is based mainly on the issues for March and May of 2017.

Time-Life: If you imagined a magazine for Black women put out by Time-Life, that would be Essence: heavy on beautiful colour photography, bad narrative flow, light on words, which often appear as text McNuggets. The horoscopes by “astrological intuit” Sonja Marie is the most down-to-earth part of the whole magazine, advising readers to put down their phones when talking to a friend in person.

DNA: Time, Inc owned Essence from 2005 to January 2018. But deeper in its DNA is Gordon Parks, a fashion photographer for Life magazine, one of the founders of Essence.

Essence is known for its yearly festival, which was shown in “Girls Trip” (2017). It is also on the Web (essence.com), Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube and SnapChat. Not Tumblr.

Target demographic: Black professional women, well-to-do, single, ages roughly 22 to 55. The $735 shoes are not aspirational or just for looks: they give the price and where to buy them.

Share of mind: It is heavy on what it calls “Beauty & Hair”. It accounts for about a fourth of its editorial content and maybe half of its advertising. It is also big on entertainment and celebrities. Social issues get more attention than fashion, but The Economist brings up “structural racism” more than it does – and Ebony said way more about ERPA. Essence gives regular career advice, little to nothing on food, education, or family life.

Wokeness: Angela Davis, Alicia Garza, and Michelle Alexander made their Woke 100 in May 2017, but so did Democratic Party loyalists like Michelle Obama, Joy-Ann Reid, and Angela Rye (pictured).

Product placement: Articles bring up things shown earlier in ads. The clothes and jewellery worn by women in its articles, even by the woke women, are listed on the Where To Buy page, complete with prices.

Follow the money: an incomplete list of advertisers for May 2017:

• beauty: Pantene, L’Oreal, Clairol, Burt’s Bees, Maybelline, Dark & Lovely, Olay, Cantu, Carol’s Daughter, Sally Beauty, Mary Kay, Lancome, Kinky Curly.
• non-beauty: McDonald’s, Coca-Cola, Chevrolet, Macy’s, Always, Colgate, Clorox, Vagisil, Novartis, Geico, Home Depot, MS Nina – Psychic Advisor & Reader.

Buy White!

Ownership: Richelieu Dennis, a Liberian American man, owner of Shea Moisture, a line of beauty products. Time, Inc owned Essence from 2005 to January 2018, with a 49% stake from 2000 to 2005. It was Black-owned before that. With the sale by Time to Dennis, it is independent and 100% Black-owned once again.

Dennis:

“[W]e are excited to be able to return this culturally relevant and historically significant platform to ownership by the people and the consumers whom it serves and offer new opportunities for the women leading the business to also be partners in the business.”

The best thing about Essence: “Black is beautiful” made visible, showing Black women in all their beauty, inside and out.

– Abagond, 2018.

See also:

• “Black is beautiful”
  • “Not one of them looks like me” – a great scene in “Americanah” (2013) that features Essence magazine
• Gordon Parks
• magazine
  • The Economist
• Who talks about structural racism?
• ERPA
• Woke 100
  • Angela Rye
  • Angela Davis
  • Michelle Obama – written in 2008!
  • Michelle Alexander: The New Jim Crow
  • Alicia Garza
• unwoke advertisers
  • L’Oreal
  • McDonald’s – Super Size Me
• Black-owned
• Don Cornelius

566

Bob Dylan: Oxford Town

Remarks:

This is Dylan’s song that “deals with the Meredith case, but then again it doesn’t,” as he put it. The general facts are there: racial discrimination, tear gas, two men killed in Oxford, Mississippi. But he kept it vague enough that it was about the racist violence of the 1960s in general. He wrote this in 1962 and there was plenty more of that soon to come.

The song itself never charted but the album it was on, “The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan” (1963), went to #22 in the US and #1 in Britain.

See also:

• songs, the 1960s
• Bob Dylan
  • The Death of Emmett Till
  • All Along the Watchtower (as covered by Jimi Hendrix)
• James Meredith
• Emmett Till
• Black History Month 2018

Lyrics:

Oxford Town, Oxford Town
Ev’rybody’s got their hats bowed down
The sun don’t shine above the ground
Ain’t a-goin’ down to Oxford Town.

He went down to Oxford Town
Guns and clubs followed him down
All because his face was brown
Better get away from Oxford Town.

Oxford Town around the bend
He comes to the door, he couln’t get in
All because of the color of his skin
What do you think about that, my frien’ ?

Me and my gal, my gal’s son
We got met with a tear gas bomb
I don’t even know why we come
Goin’ back where we come from.

Oxford Town in the afternoon
Ev’rybody singin’ a sorrowful tune
Two men died ‘neath the Mississippi moon
Somebody better investigate soon.

How to be more Brazilian

Kiss your girlfriend in public. A couple before performing on the first day of Carnaval in Salvador, Brazil, February 16th 2012. Via Business Insider. (Mario Tama/Getty Images)

Disclaimer: Not ALL Brazilians do ALL of these. Nor are Brazilians the only ones who do them. These are based on differences noted by Anglos living in Brazil and by Brazilians living in the English-speaking world. I have never been to Brazil myself – yet.

Culture:

• Put your old national identity to one side and make room for a new Brazilian one.
• Be a Lusophone: learn Portuguese – Brazilian Portuguese, of course.
• Be Catholic or at least Christian or at least respect religion.
• Use metric units.
• Use the 24-hour clock.
• Listen to Brazilian music.
• Watch Brazilian films.
• Watch soccer or Brazilian telenovelas. Or both.

Food:

• Eat rice and beans every day.
• Buy freshly baked bread every day
• Drink strong coffee, not that watered down stuff they drink in the US.
• Eat pizza with a knife and fork.
• Add sugar to your juice.
• Take a full hour to eat lunch. And then brush your teeth. (You did bring your toothbrush, right?)
• Order something not on the menu.

Hygiene and manners:

• Share, especially food (give others a first bite).
• Shower before you go out and before you go to bed.
• Brush your teeth before breakfast and after every meal.
• Do not burp in public.
• Do not blow your nose.
• Cough into your hands not into your arm.

People:

• Family comes first.
• Greet people warmly.
• Hug!
• Be friendly to strangers. Help them if they need help. But do not necessarily trust them.
• Your friend’s friend is your friend.
• Struggle to be on time. Better late than never.
• Parties: Arrive two hours late. Greet everyone personally when you get there.
• Linger at parties, restaurants, the beach.
• Sing along at concerts.
• Kiss your girlfriend in public, hold her hand.
• Bring back gifts from abroad.
• Be judgemental about how people dress, yourself included. The world treats people better when they dress well.

Talking:

• Take time to actually talk to people.
• When talking to someone try to put yourself in their shoes and speak to that. Get into what they are saying.
• Talk with emotion, not like blah-blah-blah-blah.
• Use strong eye contact to show interest.
• Include everyone in the conversation.
• Do not get straight to the point. Ask for things in a roundabout way.
• Lie to protect people’s feelings.
• Avoid saying no, even if it means making promises you later break or keeping your opinion to yourself.

Life:

• Life is about people.
• Measure your success by your happiness not your accomplishments.
• Remember that the glass is half full, not half empty.
• Be optimistic and fatalistic. Everything works out in the end. Things will get better tomorrow.
• Stop and smell the roses. Enjoy today instead of worrying so much about tomorrow (but still worry).
• Do something you love each day.
• Love beauty in nature, people and architecture.
• Complain about your country, especially the government, but be proud of your country too.
• Be class-conscious more than race-conscious.
• When asked where you are from, just give your nationality. Do not get into race or ethnicity or where your family came from.

– Abagond, 2018.

Sources: “Brazil – Culture Smart” (2006) by Sandra Branco and Rob Williams; Brazilian Gringo,  Global Citizen Year, Lexiophiles, and endless YouTube videos.

See also:

• Brazil
• My thing for Brazil
• Black Brazil in the Black gringo gaze
• Guide to Anglos
• How to be Parisian
• WWSD – What Would Sade Do?

561

James Meredith

James Meredith (1933- ) was the first Black American to go to the University of Mississippi, better known as Ole Miss. President Kennedy had to call in the army to get him admitted.

On September 3rd 1962 the Fifth Judicial Circuit Court ruled that Ole Miss had to admit Meredith. Medgar Evers and Thurgood Marshall had chosen him as a test case.

On September 20th Meredith went to register for classes. The registrar was Ross Barnett – the governor himself. He refused to allow Meredith to register.

On September 29th at the Old Miss football game, Barnett said:

“I love Mississippi. I love her people, her customs! And I love and respect her heritage.”

The all-White crowd waved their Confederate flags while chanting:

“Never, Never, Never, Never, N-o-o-o Never.”

“Ross’s standing like Gibraltar. He shall never falter.”

“Never shall our emblem go, from Colonel Reb to Old Black Joe.”

“Ask us what we say, it’s to hell with Bobby K.”

On September 30th, at 4pm, 123 deputy US marshals, 316 border patrolmen, and 97 prison guards had moved into position at the Lyceum, the administration building, to make sure Meredith could register.

Hundreds of Whites gathered, chanting stuff like “2-4-6-8, we ain’t gonna integrate. We hate Kennedy!”

By 7pm violence broke out. Whites threw rocks and bottles, overturned cars, smashed windows.

The state police pulled out, leaving the US marshals to fight the rioters on their own. The marshals had no bullets. All they had was tear gas.

As the violence raged, the governor and then the president got on television.

Governor Barnett:

“Surrounded on all sides by the armed forces and oppressive power of the U.S.A., my courage and commitment do not waver … To the officials of the federal government I say, ‘Gentlemen, you are trampling on the sovereignty of this great state … You are destroying the Constitution of this great nation … May God have mercy on your souls …’”

President Kennedy (not knowing what Barnett just said):

“Americans are free … to disagree with the law, but not to disobey it. For in any government of laws and not of men, no man, however prominent and powerful, and no matter however unruly and boisterous, is entitled to defy a court of law… “

White rioters progressed to fire bombs and gunfire. They even went after reporters, smashing cameras. One reporter was shot in the back. The marshals were running out of tear gas.

Barnett would break his promises to Kennedy – and get on the radio and say stuff like:

“I call on Mississippi to keep the faith and courage. We will never surrender.”

President Kennedy at last called in the army (also without bullets). Whites blocked them and slowed them down. It took them six hours to arrive at Ole Miss.

By 4.30am the army had restored order.

By the numbers:

• 160 marshals were injured, 28 of them shot.
• 2 men killed.
• 200 arrested, fewer than 50 of them students

At 7.55am, amid the shattered glass and overturned cars that were still smoking, Meredith went to register.

– Abagond, 2018.

See also:

• Black History Month 2018
• Bobby K – the president’s brother, then the attorney general, in charge of enforcing civil rights laws
  • The Baldwin-Kennedy meeting – the following spring
• Medgar Evers – shot dead the following spring
• Thurgood Marshall
• Confederate flag – “heritage not hate”
• Nina Simone: Mississippi Goddam
• other Black students
  • Dorothy Counts
  • Elizabeth Eckford
  • That Norman Rockwell painting
• American school resegregation

560

Happy Birthday Sandra Bland

I will never forget you.

Requiescat in pace.

– Abagond, 2018.

See also:

• Sandra Bland
• In memoriam: Sandra Bland

Art Jones

Jones addresses Aryan Nations in 2014. From his campaign website.

Arthur Jones (1948- ), a neo-Nazi and former leader of the American Nazi Party, will be the Republican candidate in the 2018 Congressional election for the 3rd District of Illinois. The Republican primary is not till March 20th, but he is running unopposed. He will run against the Democratic candidate in the general election in November. In 2016 Trump got 40% of the district’s vote.

The picture above was taken from his campaign website. He is not hiding the fact that he is a neo-Nazi.

Also from his campaign website: 

• On the Holocaust: “the biggest, blackest, lie in history … there is no proof such a so-called ‘HOLOCAUST,’ ever took place in Europe, against the Jews.”
• On the Confederate flag: “This flag represents to millions of White Americans, a symbol of White pride and White resistance. It is the flag of a White counter revolution.”
• On Mexico: “a nation whose leaders believe they can reconquer the American Southwest, by flooding our country with millions of illegal aliens. And, their plan is working.”
• On crime: “According to the FBI, in 2007, 14,000 WHITE FEMALES of all ages, were raped and/or raped and then killed by BLACK MEN, but NOT ONE BLACK WOMAN was raped by any WHITE MEN in that same year.”

And he still uses the word “Negro”.

Even Tim Schneier, the Illinois Republican Party chairman, called his views “racist”.

Issues:

• for: English as the official language, flat income tax of 10%, term limits for federal judges, gun rights, the Neighborhood Amendment (keeping neighbourhoods at least 90% White and Christian by law).
• against: US wars in the Middle East (= US subservience to Israel), sanctuary cities, amnesty for “illegal aliens”, Obamacare, abortion, homosexual marriage, NAFTA, TPP.

Trump: In 2016 he voted for Trump, but now regrets it: Trump has “surrounded himself with hordes of Jews including a Jew in his own family, that punk named Jared Kushner.”

Career path: Jones fought in Vietnam, worked at a foundry and, after a back injury, sold insurance for many years. He is now retired.

Jones salutes Joe McCarthy’s grave.

Politically he went from Young Republican and George Wallace supporter to Neo-Nazi. In the 1970s he marched in Skokie in full Nazi regalia. He now heads the America First Committee, Charles Lindbergh’s old organization that opposed the US going to war against Nazi Germany. Jones says membership is “open to any white American citizen of European, non-Jewish descent.” Thus his America.

Perennial candidate: Jones has been running for the 3rd District seat since the 1990s. In 2012 he got 11% of the Republican vote. In 2016 the state Republican party disqualified him after challenging some of the signatures on his petition. This time his petition was in order – and no other Republican qualified in time.

The 3rd Congressional District takes in parts of Chicago and some of its south-western suburbs. It is currently 74% White. It voted for Lincoln (1860), Eisenhower (1952), Humphrey (1968), Ford (1976), and Reagan (1980). After 1990 it was redrawn as a safe Democratic seat – and no Republican so far has carried it since, not in elections for Congress or for president.

– Abagond, 2018.

See also:

• campaign website: Art Jones for Congressman
• racist tropes
  • Holocaust denial
  • Confederate flag
  • Mexican Reconquista
  • Black rape statistics
• heroes:
  • Hitler
    • views on race
    • rise to power
    • Holocaust
    • Was Hitler evil?
  • Charles Lindbergh
  • Joe McCarthy
  • George Wallace
• Donald Trump
• neo-Nazis
  • Skokie
• 2018 US Congressional elections

558

Vanessa da Mata: Ainda Bem

Remarks:

This went to #21 in Brazil in 2006. I used to play it to death. All love songs should be sung in Portuguese 😉

See also:

• songs, the 2000s
• Brazilian songs I like

Lyrics:

Ainda bem
Que você vive comigo
Porque senão
Como seria esta vida?
Sei lá, sei lá

Nos dias frios em que nós estamos juntos
Nos abraçamos sob o nosso conforto
De amar, de amar

Se há dores, tudo fica mais fácil
Seu rosto silencia e faz parar
As flores que me manda são fato
Do nosso cuidado e entrega

Meus beijos sem os seus, não dariam
Os dias chegariam sem paixão
Meu corpo sem o seu, uma parte
Seria o acaso e não sorte

Ainda bem
Que você vive comigo
Porque senão
Como seria esta vida?
Sei lá, sei lá

Se há dores, tudo fica mais fácil
Seu rosto silencia e faz parar
As flores que me manda são fato
Do nosso cuidado e entrega

Meus beijos sem os seus, não dariam
Os dias chegariam sem paixão
Meu corpo sem o seu, uma parte
Seria o acaso e não sorte

Neste mundo de tantos anos
Entre tantos outros
Que sorte a nossa, hein?
Entre tantas paixões
Esse encontro, nós dois, esse amor

Entre tantos outros
Entre tantos anos
Que sorte a nossa, hein?
Entre tantas paixões
Esse encontro, nós dois, esse amor

Entre tantas paixões
Esse encontro, nós dois, esse amor

Source: letras.mus.br.