57 Search results for "enslavement"

A Black feminist pleasure praxis acknowledges and affirms the possibility for Black women’s sexual pleasure
We must do the work to detach Black women’s sexuality from violence and we must start with our foremothers. by Haillee Mason This essay contains discussion of sexual violence. The myth of white supremacist history suggests that sexual pleasure and intimacy that enslaved Black women endured were unable to be detached from violence. While I […]
Our hair is a map to freedom: What I learned about resistance from the “1st” free Black town in the Americas
By Teju Adisa-Farrar When God made mountains He made runaway slaves — Nikki Giovanni, Chasing Utopia We were not supposed to survive. Last month, AfroPunk published an article about Argentina’s genocide of their Black populations. Unsurprisingly, Argentina is not much different from other countries who have tried to erase their Black populations or their impact […]
Saying “I am not my ancestors” blatantly disrespects how they lived and died for us
Ja’Loni Amor Owens In 2016, arguably the peak of activist apparel’s popularity, a number of businesses began to sell t-shirts, crewnecks, tote bags, buttons, pins and stickers with variations of the following: “I am not my ancestors; you can catch these hands”. It is understandable why variations of this phrase caught on so quickly. The […]
95 bodies—how sanitizing slavery keeps America’s hands clean
The remains of ninety-five Black people were recently found buried at a construction site in Sugar Land, Texas. The vast majority of reports about this discovery neglect to call these dead Black people what they really were: enslaved. This essay contains discussions of racialized state violence, slavery, and lynching. “African-American forced laborers” have […]
Calls to #AbolishICE are counterproductive unless they are also a call to #AbolishPolice
By Benji Hart In the last month, following the emergence of horrific images of migrant children being separated from their families and held in cages by border agents, the call to #AbolishICE has gone mainstream. Most notably, Congolese immigrant activist Therese Okoumou climbed the Statue of Liberty’s base on July 4th following an “Abolish ICE” […]
13-year-old #1000BlackGirlBooks creator interviews 11-year-old March for Our Lives advocate about honoring Black girls
The ancestors must smile at Black girls like 11-year-old Naomi Wadler and 13-year-old Marley Dias. Both used their creativity and access points in challenging society to ask, “What about the Black girls?” Many activists, commentators and policymakers lauded Wadler as the most compelling speaker at the recent gun control demonstration March for Our Lives for critiquing […]
Bioethics prof Deleso Alford explains why MLK calling healthcare inequity the most ‘inhumane’ injustice matters today
Healthcare equity is indivisible from Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s legacy. In fact, in a phone interview on the 50th anniversary of Dr. King’s assassination, critical race theorist Deleso Alford pointed to his quote, “Of all the forms of inequality, injustice in healthcare is the most shocking and inhumane.” In addition to being a time to […]
How “Christianity is the white man’s religion” feeds the damaging disconnect between the Diaspora and Africa
By Dilara K. Üsküp “Christianity is the white man’s religion. The Holy Bible in the white man’s hands and his interpretations of it have been the greatest single ideological weapon for enslaving millions of non-white human beings.” — Malcolm X (Autobiography of Malcolm X by Malcolm X & Alex Haley) While the idea that Christianity […]
Like my native tongue, Wakanda bridges the cultural gap between my African ancestry and Black American life
by Antoinette Gregg Until I moved to New York City for graduate school, I had never been asked the question, “What kind of Black are you?” Growing up, there was only one kind of Black that I knew of: Geechee. A hodgepodge of Caribbean, African, and European ways of life, Geechee/Gullah is the culture, language, […]
Welcome to Wakanda: ‘Black Panther’ is a love letter between the African Diaspora and the continent
I’m wondering what words there are in existence that could be used to accurately describe Black Panther. Stunning, breathtaking, and majestic come close. This film stands firmly in a class all its own. It is not perfect (and I have many feelings about it, but you won’t find any spoilers here), but it is still […]
Comic: We know why y’all keep trying to distance yourselves from slavery
by JeCorey Holder Look. I get it. The enslavement of Africans happened a HELLA LONG time ago from our contemporary perspective. It would be nice if we could all reasonably agree that it was a generally unpleasant time, but some people still wanna argue that U.S. chattel slavery is/was “good history.” Those who aren’t trying […]
Reading ‘Black Museum’ and ‘Get Out’ as comparative Afrofuturist zombie slave narratives
This essay contains spoilers for Get Out and Black Mirror S4, E6, “Black Museum” Can we just agree that Get Out is obviously a lost episode of Black Mirror? More specifically, it’s a companion tale to season four’s “Black Museum” (which feels very much like a series finale) that somehow found its way into Jordan […]