Unlike Vol 1, which you had to purchase to watch, Focus Features has decided to made Vol 2 of its Africa First Shorts Program films available on Hulu, for *free* (of course, you have to still watch Hulu's expected commercial interruptions; but I think most of you would prefer that to having to actually whip out your credit/debit cards).
All 5 shorts are now available on Hulu to watch, so get to them all below.
But first, a quick recap... I saw Vol 2 last year actually (except for 1 of them - A Good Catholic Girl), and I felt that Vol 2's group of shorts was stronger than Vol 1. Not that the freshman class of the program, which included Wanuri Kahiu's much talked about sci-fi film Pumzi, was weak. Certainly not that at all. Collectively, Vol 2's films were just more impressive to me. I recall walking out of the theater really energized by what I saw, and I was very much (and still am) appreciative of the program, and all the young African filmmakers it's given and continues to give opportunities to; and I looking forward to watching it grow.
The 4 short films, each 20-30 minutes long are: Rungano Nyoni'sMwansa The Great (Zambia - photo above), Matthew Jankes'sUmkhungo (South Africa), Daouda Coulibaly'sTinye So (Mali), Stephen Abbott'sDirty Laundry (South Africa), and, the one I didn't get to see, Matt Bishanga'sA Good Catholic Girl (Uganda).
BlackPublicMedia.org and the National Black Programming Consortium present their first episode of the new Ask A Muslim series.
While we know a large majority of Muslims in America are foreign born there is a large and growing native-born population with a significant voice on the modern face of Islam, and a good majority are black. The Ask A Muslim series focuses on this population gathering scholars, Imams, writers, and cultural observers - even the very first practicing Muslim US Congressman - to share their views on a myriad of topics provided by everyday citizens on the streets of Philadelphia.
Running, passing, hiding. This is the litany of the Dalit American. Growing up in southern California, my family was one of the first Tamil families to immigrate to Los Angeles. Representatives of the Indian brain drain that started in the 1970s, we were part of the first wave of Indian immigrants whose functions, sangams and religious communities helped establish the little India enclave in the now-famous Artesia.
We were also Dalits living underground. Caste exists wherever Indians exist and it manifests itself in a myriad of ways. The Indian diaspora thrives on caste because it is the atom that animates the molecule of their existence. In the face of xenophobia and racism abroad, many become more fundamentalist in their traditions and caste is part of that reactionary package. So, what does caste look like in the US?
Quite like in India, it is the smooth subtext beneath questions between uncles, like, “Oh! Where is your family from?” It is part of the cliques and divisions within those cultural associations where Indians self-segregate into linguistic and caste associations. It continues when aunties begin to discuss marriage prospects. They cluck their tongues softly, remark about your complexion, and pray for a good match from “our community”.
Many Americans can’t imagine what it looks like to pass. For my family, it was finding clever ways to avoid the ‘jati’ query.
For second-generation NRIs, flashing caste becomes a part of their cultural street cred with other communities. Some do it intentionally to elevate their identity while others operate from a misunderstanding of their own roots and blindly accept the symbols of their culture. Punjabi rappers throw down lyrics about being proud Jats. Tam- Brahms show off their sacred thread, recreate Thiruvayur in Cleveland, and learn Bharatanatyam while using their powerful networks to connect and succeed in the diaspora. Ultimately, we trade and calcify what is seen as proper Indian culture. But hidden within that idea of ‘proper’ lies the code for what is aspirational and ultimately upper caste.
It’s dangerous, this culture of caste-based intolerance in the diaspora for it extends beyond individual relationships. Individuals build institutions and institutions are steeped in caste. From Hindu temples to gurudwaras, there is a separate yet unspoken policy of worship for those that are Dalit. Furthermore, in the over fifty south Asian and Asian studies departments in North America, there are less than a handful of tenured Dalit faculty. And, crucially, as the Campaign to Stop Funding Hate has shown, NRIs in the US have directly funded and fuelled communal violence in India by supporting cultural and aid programmes that are fronts for local Hindutva organisations.
Through it all, Dalits Run. Pass. Hide.
For while caste is everywhere in the diaspora, there is a damning silence about naming caste. And in the silence there is violence.
I know because my family passed for many years. It was confusing, painful and lonely. We could never truly unpack the memories that my parents fled in India, nor could we confront the same infrastructure being rebuilt here in the shining land of the American Dream.
Many Americans and Indians can’t imagine what it looks like to pass. For my family it was finding ever clever ways to sidestep the ‘jati’ question, attending temple functions and never speaking about “our community” in public functions ever. We got away with it because there were so few of us in the beginning, and every Tamil was a valuable connection while learning to navigate this new country.
The leverage of our new lifestyle however allowed my family to support Dalit causes back home and work underground through a network of uncles who debated caste issues over phone calls, meetings and conferences. And, of course, while the men were active in this way, the women, like my mom, would pass on Dalit songs and stories holding on to that space—which was important even if we could not share it.
For though it has been almost 100 years since Ambedkar came to study at Columbia University, Dalits like my family are still struggling to find a foothold that is uniquely our own. Unlike other Indians, Dalits do not have their own public institutions within the diaspora. There is no way to go into any city and find and connect with local Dalits unless you are already plugged in to the unofficial Dalit underground communities held together by mailing lists, Facebook groups and phone trees that help us survive the double whammy of racism and casteism.
I do not know exactly what age I understood I was untouchable, for it was always around me. But I knew exactly when it was that I became a Dalit. It was only when I was 17 and picked up a book about Ambedkar that had grown dusty in our family library that a lightning rod singed my soul. I read his work alongside my Dad’s battered copies of works by Black activists, Stokley Carmichael’s Black Power and Malcolm X’s Autobiography. Through their words, I found the courage and conviction to be able to address the profound lack of information and access to Dalit history in the diaspora. I was part of a powerful tradition of resistance.
Despite having two parents who are doctors, I returned to my caste’s profession of singing and telling stories and found dignity in this. When I assumed my performance name, Dalit Diva, it was a declaration of the joy of being part of such an incredible line of creators, survivors and leaders. And there have been repercussions. I have been served by Indian friends in ‘different utensils’, curses and even death threats have been hurled at me. But I have never regretted coming out. I sing the Dalit history of resilience, resistance, revolution.
(Thenmozhi is a filmmaker, singer and transmedia artist. Her first solo album, Broken People, is out in October 2012.)
Skin-lightening/bleaching is a problem, but it's only really a sign of much deeper inter-related issues, namely, self-hatred, a race-based identity crisis, and the internalisation of western-created cultural ideas that are inimical to the mental health of black people everywhere. At least with hair weaves and fake accents (other manifestations of an identity crisis), no one is in danger of kidney damage, or damage to the nervous system, or skin rashes, skin discoloration and scarring, or reduction in the skin’s resistance to bacterial and fungal infections. And, rather than the practice dying out as African economies boom, it is reportedly on the rise (partly thanks to increasing urbanization). According to the World Health Organisation, 77% of Nigerian women use skin lightening products on a regular basis (I suspect the study was done among Yoruba women), as do 59% in Togo, 35% in South Africa, 27% in Senegal and 25% in Mali. These products are also used in Zimbabwe, Ivory Coast, Gambia and Tanzania. These figures seem unusually high, but even if they're overblown, the problem is more than just cosmetic, it is culturally destructive.
Will we manage to emancipate ourselves from mental slavery (in the words of Bob Marley) or will the problem eventually just go away as the world turns beige from increased interracial marriage? It's going to take a long time for the latter to happen, so we've got no choice but to do the former because most Africans are dark-skinned, and we have to see the beauty in that for our own psychological well-being.
Our thinking seems to be: the darker we are the more "African" we are, which wouldn't be a problem if some of us didn't think there was something wrong with being African. Why do we think that? Malcolm X once asked, “Who taught you to hate yourself? Who taught you to hate the texture of your hair? Who taught you to hate the colour of your skin?"
We were taught to hate ourselves through centuries of the slave trade (Arab and trans-Atlantic) and the colonial period that followed, and we are still being taught to hate ourselves through a western consumer culture that is sold through today's global media. And many of those who don't go in for skin-lightening also tacitly accept the idea that lighter is better (particularly if it comes with European, rather than African, features), so we're all part of a system that promotes self-hate. When people defend skin-lightening/bleaching by saying what people do to their skin is their own business, it's usually a sign that they too value lighter skin over dark skin, whatever their own skin tone.
Does self-hatred sound too strong a term? What else is one to conclude when you have someone like South African kwaito star Mshoza proudly stating that she started undergoing skin-lightening and plastic surgery because she was "tired of being ugly"?
This internalised form of racism is an invisible presence in our psyches, and some of us don't even realise it's a factor in how we perceive ourselves and others. Thus, for instance, black guys (not only in Africa) think their attraction to light-skinned girls is just a matter of taste, and some who lighten their skin can't articulate why they do so beyond saying that it's just prettier, as though skin lightening were akin to putting on lipstick. It's a matter of identity, self-worth and self-acceptance, that, in some respects, is even existential.
The legacy of slavery and colonialism
Colonization of Africa
There is some evidence of colorism (system of privilege, discrimination and hierarchies based on social meanings attached to skin tone) in Africa before contact with Europeans in the 16th century, but by and large, Africans used shared culture, language and traditions, rather than skin tone, as a means of identification. But part of the process of creating an European empire was to define the European self in contrast to everyone else. How could you justify dominating and enslaving other people if you didn't tell yourself you were better in every way? Europeans placed themselves at the pinnacle of the human race and dark-skinned Africans at the very bottom. To be black was to be primitive, backward, inferior, dirty, ugly, evil, devilish, deviant, corrupt and unappealing, while to be white was to be virtuous, beautiful, refined, humane, intelligent and godly.
By the nineteenth century, spurious scientific "evidence" was being produced to support this dichotomy, thereby providing an ideological justification for colonialism. It also provided a means of control: tell the lighter-skinned black Africans that they are more beautiful, intelligent and industrious than their darker-skinned brothers and sisters, and soon you will create divisions that make control easier. A 1930 French ad for Dirtoff showed a dark African man washing his hands, with the soap washing away his blackness. Such ads were common in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Blackness had become a pathological condition - there was something fundamentally wrong with you if you were black - while whiteness became the paradigm, the standard, the ideal, and who doesn't want to be ideal?
Meanwhile, in America, skin tone was also used to control and sow divisions among black people, and, as a side bonus, to warp their minds. Bi-racial offspring of white masters and black slaves were made house slaves and separated from their darker-skinned counterparts, who remained in the fields. Thus the feelings of inferiority created by the condition of being enslaved permeated even deeper. Black people in America were repeatedly told that everything about them was evil, ugly and unwanted. There were even debates among white Americans questioning whether or not black people were human beings with souls. This would be irrelevant to what was, and still is, going on in Africa if it weren't for the fact that colorism is very much alive in America (and Europe) today, and is manifested in the images from America (and Europe) that many Africans use to assess and define themselves.
After centuries of pushing this way of seeing the world, Caucasian features and white skin became established as the hallmarks of beauty and status, and it is such an intrinsic part of the global system of capitalism today that it is taken for granted: white, or light, is right.
Colonial mentality in the post-colonial world
Colonialism didn't end that long ago. If you are reading this, then your parents or grandparents either suffered from or benefited directly from colonialism. As Africans, we freed ourselves and won our independence, but psychologically we continued to view ourselves through the lens of whiteness. In other words, we were left with the shackles of colonial mentality.
According to Wikipedia, colonial mentality occurs "when a foreign colonial or imperial power is too strong to be effectively resisted, the colonised population often has no other immediate option than to accept the rule of the foreigners as an inescapable reality of life. As time progresses, the colonised indigenous people-natives would perceive the differences between the foreigners and themselves, between the foreigners' ways and the native ways. This would then sometimes lead the natives to mimic the foreigners that are in power as they began to associate that power and success with the foreigners' ways. This eventually leads to the foreigners' ways being regarded as the better way and being held in a higher esteem than previous indigenous ways.
In much the same fashion, and with the same reasoning of better-ness, the colonised soon equates the foreigners' racial strain itself as being responsible for their superiority. The native soon strives to that strain to give their children a better standing in life than just their native genes."
So there were parents who, after colonial rule, would compliment their light-skinned kids on their "beautiful, light skin", unaware to the potential psychological damage their comments might be causing. Suddenly the kid is made conscious of something he/she needs to maintain in order to be liked. Meanwhile, any dark-skinned kids overhearing the compliment start to have a complex about their skin tone. And their skin tone, they grow up with particular ideas about standards of beauty. You still hear such compliments today, parents complimenting kids, men complimenting women, and women commenting on other women's skin tone.
"Who taught you to hate the colour of your skin?” Arab slave traders, then Europeans, and now we're continuing the work ourselves (with some assistance from afar).
Reinforcing the message a thousand times a day
Rihanna
Thus the idea of lighter being better is reinforced by some parents today, but the most powerful way this message is reinforced is through consumer culture and global mass media. The mass media form for us our image of the world. The images they present and how these images are presented subliminally and yet profoundly affect the way in which we interpret what we see or hear. Even our images of ourselves is greatly influenced by what media shows us about our own group. People who lighten their skin and those who associate light skin with positive virtues and dark skin with negative ones aren't stupid. They just don't have the psychological resources to withstand and deluge of images they are presented with every day. Thousands of images from magazines, TV, film, ads, and the news, all equating light skin with beauty, affluence, happiness and success, and portraying dark-skinned black people as aggressive, unintelligent, criminals, crude, lazy, etc.
Even black-owned media do this. There was a brief period during the Black Power Movement of the 1960s and its accompanying Black is Beautiful campaign when dark-skinned women graced the pages of the popular and influential magazine Ebony, but by the eighties it had gone back to featuring predominantly light-skinned black stars, and this was particularly so for the women it featured. This practice is common across all media, so dark-skinned women are hugely underrepresented on the catwalk, in the fashion press, in cinema and on TV.
There is no conspiracy that says this is how we want to represent the world, but there is a unconscious mindset of racial superiority that determines what gets promoted as beautiful and desirable, and in that mindset there is no room for the idea of dark-skinned beauty. Or hardly any room. Alek Wek (South Sudan/UK), Ajuma Nasenyana (Kenya), Naomi Campbell (UK) and Eunice Olumide (Nigeria) are among the tiny handful of high-profile dark-skinned models on the international stage, but as Eunice says, “… it is still rare to see a very dark-skinned model on the cover of a magazine. I’d love that to change.”
Skin lightening ad, Kumasi, Ghana
Most of the foreign media and movies consumed in sub-Saharan Africa are from America and Europe, so we take in these images and mimic the practice of colorism in our own ads and magazines. We see which black women are considered beautiful by the mass media, we see that the black models and singers who are making it are mostly lighter-skinned – Rihanna, Beyoncé, etc., we see which actresses get to play love-interest roles and which ones get relegated to bit parts, and we see which ones make it onto those Top 100 lists. We echo the message we receive and perpetuate the system that excludes dark skin from the spectrum of beauty. We see pictures of Obama and we see don't just see a black man, but a mixed-race, light-skinned black man. Some argue that the beauty ideal is shifting from white to a more cafe-au-lait-complexion, and that this is demonstrated by the fact that women like Beyoncé, Halle Berry and Jennifer Lopez now routinely top some of these "most beautiful" lists. But what seems to have happened there is that the previous practice of promoting only white women as beautiful was simply not sustainable when a significant proportion of the American population was clearly non-white, so the parameters were widened to include a handful of non-white women who are not too many skin tones away from being white. Now black people everywhere can feel they're included in the international beauty spectrum without really being included. Might it have been better for black people if the old unspoken pollcy of "whites only" had been allowed to continue? If the mass media really wanted to include black people, there would be no need to lighten the skin of the already light-skinned black women, as L'Oreal did with Beyoncé in its 2008 campaign, and as many magazines continue to do. Google "most beautiful women in the world" and try to spot any dark-skinned black women on any of the lists you find.
When you look at the Nigerian film industry (to take the largest of its kind in Africa), you find that its lead characters tend to be light-skinned. Fela's condemnation of the practice in Yellow Fever (1976) doesn't seem to have done much good. Check the Ghanaian film industry and you'll find the same.
For dark-skinned black people, being excluded in this manner says black is not beautiful, and the epitome of beauty is a light-skinned person, so this is what you should aspire to if you're dark-skinned. It says it from every billboard, magazine cover, TV ad, packaged product on the shelf, and film thousands of times a day. Every day. So we continue to be socialised into accepting light skin (and straight hair) as defining standards of black beauty. We continue to succumb to - and create - images that reinforce a psychologically-damaging message. And some of us go to great lengths to achieve the beauty ideal of black people as defined by Europeans and people of European descent, people who look nothing like black Africans.
A woman in Senegal holding photos of herself when she was lighter.
If women in Africa are more susceptible to this than men, it is merely because women are judged much more heavily on the basis of appearance. Men are more likely to be considered valuable when they have wealth, education and other forms of human capital, while women are considered valuable when they are physically attractive, even if they lack other capital. Flick through those magazines and you'll find that the women featured are almost always a few shades lighter than the men. Black men don't need to be light-skinned to be worth paying any attention, but black women do. In one Tanzanian study, women claimed Tanzanian men preferred white, soft-skinned girls. Thus, skin-lightening was of utmost importance in attracting men. And once you've got a guy, you wanna hang on to him: another woman in the study explained that she used skin-lightening products to prevent her husband from being attracted to other girls, while yet another, a 25 year old, reported that she “started bleaching to be beautiful and to look like Arabians or Europeans and attractive to people, especially men.” We are all competing for mates, and we do whatever we can to give ourselves an advantage over the next person. Men would probably be content to live in caves if they didn't have to acquire the trappings necessary to compete for the most desirable women, and there would be less incentive for women to lighten their skin if men didn't keep valuing lighter skinned sisters over darker skinned ones.
The women in the study also said they lightened their skin to enhance opportunities in life (especially job opportunities), and to reduce the experience of negative stereotypes that are applied to dark skinned people. Negative stereotypes. It puts one in mind of the associations with skin colour drawn out from black American kids by black American filmmaker Kiri Davis when she recreated the 1940's "doll experiment" a few years ago in A Girl Like Me:
Another study found that women in Senegal associate fair skin tone with elegance, beauty and a higher social status. And in the Tanzanian study, many participants felt that their lighter skinned peers have higher status, income, education, job opportunities, as well as more friends. These women are not deluded; misguided, definitely, but not deluded. They see the evidence around them. It is not surprising then that some “darker skinned people are often envious of those with lighter skin and attempt to achieve the same status by engaging in skin-lightening practices.”
So, predominantly women, but not solely women. Skin-lightening is practiced by men in the Democratic Republic of Congo, too.The most high-profile case so far is probably that of soukous singer Koffi Olomide, but Google "Congo" and "skin-lightening" or skin bleaching" and you'll find others who've done the same, to general approval.
Koffi Olomide before
After
A global problem It isn't only African Americans and Africans who are yet to free their minds. Jamaicans don't seem to have heeded Bob Marley's words any more than Nigerians did Fela's. In 2007, the Jamaican government had to run a campaign called 'Don't Kill The Skin' to highlight the dangers of using skin-lightening products because the practice was becoming increasingly commonplace, so commonplace in fact that some people started holding bleaching contests.
The same year, former Jamaican Prime Minister Edward Seaga stated: There is no greater sin of slavery than the systematic brain-washing that occurred for over 300 years that instilled a belief in the second class character of the people of African descent…. This distorted image received by people of African descent continues to haunt their psyche until today as an en-during sin of slavery.
Meanwhile, Jamaican celebrities continue to line up to endorse these products. Last year, one well-known dancehall artist, MOBO-nominated artist of the year Vybz Kartel, even launched his own range of men's cosmetics including a variety of "skin-brightening" items.
Vybz Kartel
The Surinamese take a different approach to skin lightening. Instead of chemicals, some parents advice their kids to marry a white person to "tone down the black". Such parents have been known to pinch and massage the nostrils of their babies to prevent them from becoming flared. Marry lighter, get better hair and a finer nose. You will find this sort of thinking among the descendants of city Creoles, the ones who lived close to their previous colonial masters, the Dutch. Interestingly, the descendants of the Lowermang, which means "runaway slaves" remain proud of their culture, traditions, and African roots. They're the ones who still understand the dialect of their forefathers, and would be able to converse with Ghanaians if you dropped them in the middle of Accra today. This group of Surinamese don't go in for any of that "tone down the black" nonsense.
Marry lighter. There are dark-skinned people everywhere, men and women, who subscribe to this. Do people understand that if a dark-skinned person has a kid with someone whose skin is pale due to skin-bleaching, that their kid probably won't be light-skinned? Perhaps those who lighten their skin feel they'll cross that bridge when they come to it. First get the man and the job opportunities. Until then, they'll support the global skin lightening industry, which is projected to be worth $10 billion USD by 2015. The products cost anywhere between 50 cents and $150, so almost everyone can afford to do it, if they really want to.
In Brazil, individuals with lighter skin and who are racially mixed generally have higher rates of social mobility, and dark skinned people are more likely to be discriminated against. Most South American actors and actresses have mostly European features - light or light-mixed eyes, protruding narrow noses, straight hair and/or pale skin. So there's pressure for dark-skinned Brazilians to lighten their skin, too.
Colonial mentality reigns across Asia, too. Most Indian actors and actresses have light skin, and the Indian obsession with light skin recently reached a new low with a campaign for a product to lighten the skin around your vagina.
When Alek Wek appeared on the Oprah Winfrey show, the host confided: "If you had been on the cover [of a magazine] when I was growing up, I would have had a different concept of who I was." If we wait for the global mass media to routinely include dark-skinned black people with African features in their spectrum of beauty, we will wait a long time to develop a healthy concept of who we are.
The video at the top of this article is an exploration of race, gender and beauty by graduate student Ng’endo Mukii who said of her film, Yellow Fever:
I am interested in the concept of skin and race, and what they imply; in the ideas and theories sown into our flesh that change with the arc of time. The idea of beauty has become globalised, creating homogenous aspirations, and distorting people’s self-image across the planet. In my film, I focus on African women’s self-image, through memories and interviews; using mixed media to describe this almost schizophrenic self-visualization that I and many others have grown up with.
Indeed, until we re-educate ourselves, we will remain alienated from ourselves, and, in a sense, live schizophrenic lives: being black, being seen as black yet hating black.
"If we really want to control the spread of the skin-bleaching virus, we first have to admit that there's an epidemic of color prejudice in our society," said Carolyn Cooper, a professor of literary and cultural studies at the University of the West Indies, writing in The Jamaica Gleaner newspaper. A similar acknowledgement needs to happen across sub-Saharan Africa (and America, Europe and Asia).
The mindset starts in the home, so we first need to work on ourselves in order to reject the "lighter is better" mindset at an individual level. No one can force anyone else to start seeing and appreciating dark-skinned beauty, but it wouldn't hurt for us to start questioning our beliefs about race, beauty and skin tone. Recognise that those who created the dominant cultural ideas we've internalised did so for their benefit, not ours, and that the psychological conflict this internalisation causes is self-destructive. Self-hatred continues the cycle of self-degradation, and we can't teach our kids about their self worth, and get them to take their history seriously, if our own sense of self is distorted through a white lens. Kiri Davis, director of A Girl Like Me, said that at the age of five, her eldest sister told her that she was ‘young, gifted and black’ and should not let anyone convince her otherwise. That positive affirmation of her blackness carried her throughout her life and served as a shield of resistance against any negativity she encountered as a result of her ebony hue. This is what we need to be telling our kids, and our grand kids, nieces, nephews, brothers, sisters, grannies and pretty much everyone we know who is black. Because they need to be able to resist the "beauty is light-skinned" message. But more importantly, we need to show what we believe through our actions, through what we celebrate and how we present ourselves. If we don't feel comfortable in our skin, it won't go unnoticed by our kids. You can't get up in the face of strangers, but if someone in your peer group starts to lighten their skin, have a chat with them about self-hatred.
The above is only relevant to people who are already know there's something deeply wrong with skin-lightening, though. The practice doesn't exist independently of the wider system that places a higher value on light skin than on dark skin and encourages people to lighten their skin, so we're unlikely to get far if we don't simultaneously work towards altering the system.
There are enough black people in America, Europe and Africa who are discomfited by the skin-lightening phenomenon, so, people, stop using your money to support the system! Stop buying those magazines that perpetuate the idea that beauty is only light-skinned. Write to stations, TV producers, magazines to let them have a piece of your mind.
Become more vocal about musicians who only feature light-skinned models in their videos, and call out magazines ad agencies and fashion designers who do the same.
The Black Pride movement celebrating heritage, personal pride, authenticity and afro-centricism needs to be consciously and actively injected into expressions of pop culture by artists, musicians, filmmakers and writers. It doesn't mean uncritically celebrating anything by dark-skinned black people, but it does mean seeking out and recognising things that are worth celebrating.
Most effective of all, though, would be a global movement similar to the American Black Power Movement of the 1960s and its accompanying Black is Beautiful campaign. Rather than wait for America to lead the way again, this one would need to start in Africa. If the continent's economic boom continues as predicted, perhaps that will give us the self-confidence to start such a movement of mental emancipation. A movement about pride on its own won't work; it needs to be connected to something concrete like true economic independence.
Various governments have banned the sale of skin-lightening products and run campaigns about the health risks of using these products, but those won't be nearly enough. Most of those who lighten their skin know they're running serious health risks, so clearly, for some people, the perceived benefits of skin-lightening outweigh the risks. This doesn't mean the governments running those campaigns should stop. It just means they have to reconsider their message. Are their campaigns based on the underlying reasons we think light skin is preferable to dark skin? It's a bit like the anti-smoking campaigns that have been running across Europe for years. They didn't abandon the health-risk message, but they changed things up by also running campaigns to make smoking socially-unacceptable/very uncool.
In the end, though, most of the work is down to each of us. The shackles of self-hatred were forged centuries ago, so freeing ourselves from them won't happen overnight or easily, but it is possible. It has to be, for our own sakes.
This award-winning documentary charts the extraordinary and inspirational story of mysterious 1970s musician Rodriguez.
In the late '60s, a musician was discovered in a Detroit bar by two celebrated producers who were struck by his soulful melodies and prophetic lyrics. They recorded an album that they believed was going to secure his reputation as one of the greatest recording artists of his generation. In fact, the album bombed and the singer disappeared into obscurity amid rumors of a gruesome on-stage suicide. But a bootleg recording found its way into apartheid South Africa and, over the next two decades, it became a phenomenon. Two South African fans then set out to find out what really happened to their hero. Their investigation led them to a story more extraordinary than any of the existing myths about the artist known as Rodriguez. This is a film about hope, inspiration and the resonating power of music.
In the early 1970s, an obscure musician from Detroit, Michigan was signed on to Sussex Records. After releasing two albums that met with low sales and mixed reviews, he was dropped from the label and apparently faded into obscurity. This musician is Sixto Rodriguez, the amazing focus of the documentary from Swedish director Malik Bendjelloul, Searching for Sugar Man.
Often described as mysterious, or labelled a drifter who people did not know much about, Sixto Rodriguez was discovered while performing at a decrepit bar, The Sewer. He was born to Mexican parents and sang about the difficulties endured by the poor and working class people of Detroit, and of the inner city. His first album Cold Fact failed to perform well in the United States, possibly because most of the songs on the album had themes that were quite political. However, it was most likely these themes that ensured Rodriguez's success in other countries such as South Africa and Australia. Searching for Sugar Man shines the limelight on the popularity Sixto Rodriguez unexpectedly found in South Africa. While Rodriguez did not make it to celebrity in the United States, his music found exponential popularity in South Africa where legend has it that his album Cold Fact was brought into the country by a woman from the United States who came to visit to her boyfriend.No one knew much about Sixto Rodriguez but his music found a place in the homes of white liberal middle-class South Africans. Living under the conservative apartheid government, white South Africans found inspiration in Rodriguez's music. Songs such as “This Is Not a Song, It's an Outburst: Or, The Establishment Blues" and “I Wonder” brazenly addressed topics that were scandalous to the South African government then. During the time of the South African apartheid, the majority of whites in South Africa were either complacent or too frightened to speak up against a government that oppressed the rightful citizens of the country. Thus music became a means of protest for the minority of white South Africans who were uncomfortable with the racist system. Sixto Rodriguez encouraged white South Africans to express rebellion through music and inspired a generation of bands such as Big Sky. Rodriguez grew to be bigger than Elvis in South Africa even as no one knew about him in the United States, Rodriguez himself had no idea that his album was selling huge amounts in South Africa. Yet despite Rodriguez's popularity, his South Africa fans did not have any concrete facts about their idol. For years, Rodriguez remained a character shrouded in mystery and rumours. There were several myths regarding his death, including one about him committing suicide on stage after performing before a tough crowd, and another about him dousing himself in petrol then setting himself alight before the audience. The fact that nothing was known of Sixto Rodriguez despite his immense popularity, drove two fans on an investigation to uncover the truth. Cape Town record store owner Steve Segerman and music journalist Craig Bartholomew-Strydom joined forces to find out what happened to Rodriguez. After unsuccessfully trying to decipher more about the artist from his lyrics, attempting to trace the money through the record companies that released his albums in South Africa, and setting up a website to learn more about Sixto Rodriguez, they finally learned that Rodriguez was not dead as they had believed. In fact, he was still alive in Detroit, working in hard labour: demolition, renovation and restoration. Rodriguez had moved on and had a family, he even dabbled in local politics. Steve Segerman and Craig Bartholomew-Strydom were able to convince Sixto Rodriguez to come to South Africa and perform. There was scepticism from many angles, firstly no one who worked with Rodriguez in Detroit could believe that he was a famous rock star in South Africa, while in South Africa fans who thought Sixto Rodriguez were dead kept on believing this even as they bought tickets and turned up at the concert. On the other hand, Rodriguez's family, his daughters did not expect a large turnout and imagined there would only be 20 people at the concert. However, the large turnout of South African fans surprised everyone, not only was it now clear that Sixto Rodriguez was alive and well, but Rodriguez got to met people who had idolized him for years.Despite not knowing of his fame in South Africa for most of his life, Rodriguez insisted that he was not disappointed by his lack of information. He still maintains a humble life, giving away most of the money he earns from performing to family and friends.In apartheid South Africa, “Sugar Man”, the song featured in the title of this documentary, was banned – the label scratched off records so that the track could not be listened to. The song itself is an excellent example of Sixto Rodriguez's work; while on first listen it is clear that the song is about drugs, deeper exposition reveals that “Sugar Man” was someone who actually existed. He was called Volkswagen Frank and he sold drugs, referred to as “sugar”.The documentary Searching for Sugar Man builds up the legend of Sixto Rodriguez with just the right amount of tension before the big reveal. The only slight disappointments are the too brief mention of royalties, the music industry and Rodriguez's lack of knowledge of his popularity outside the United States. This is not fully explored and left hanging; we still do not know why Rodriguez never knew of his fame outside the United States. There's also a lack of discussion regarding how Rodriguez's racial background and class may have prevented his two albums from reaching a celebrated status. This was only hinted at during an interview with Clarence Avant, former Chairman off Motown Records who mentioned that Rodriguez's music did not perform well because he was not white.
I listened to this again after years and was spellbound, Abd Al Malik’s incredible ‘Gibraltar’ — for all you non-French speakers…the lyrics….astound…:: the story of a young black man’s dervish-trance into self-realisation in a bar in Gibraltar and turning back to go back across that sea that leads to Africa’s coast….Here’s a taste….
On the straits of the Gibraltar there is a young black man who comes to life,who sings, who says at last “I LOVE YOU” to this life
Like this dancing sun, they want to soak up stars and tear off this fear which veils them
On the straights of Gibraltar there is a young black man who is no longer a slave, who cries out like the brave, even death can no longer hold him back…
The Visiting Writers Program at Farmingdale State College is pleased to announcethe twenty-second annual competition for The Paumanok Poetry Award.
One First Prize $1500 and expenses for a reading in our 2013 - 2014 series
Two Second Prizes $750 and expenses for a reading in our series
Interested writers should send the following items to Margery L. Brown, English Department, Knapp Hall, Farmingdale State College, 2350 Broadhollow Road, Farmingdale, New York 11735:
a cover letter
a one-paragraph bio
3-5 of their best poems (no more than 10 pages, total)
the required $25 entry fee
Poems may be published or unpublished, and there are no restrictions on style, subject matter, or length of poems submitted: quality is the single criterion. Please note that the writer's name, address, and phone number should be clearly indicated on the cover page. Multiple entries will not be accepted. Entries from previous winners will not be considered.
Make checks payable to Farmingdale State College, VWP.
Poems will not be returned, but writers who want to know the results of the competition by US mail should enclose a business-size SASE for results (notification by late December). Results are also published on this website.
Deadline: Postmark no later than September 15, 2012.
Please direct any questions or requests for clarification via email to Margery Brown.
Judge: Brian Doyle Winner: $1,000 and national publication in the Bear Deluxe Magazine, writer’s residency at the Sitka Center for Art & Ecology in Otis, Oregon. (up to 10 weeks) Finalists (1-3): Honorable mention in The Bear Deluxe Magazine Deadline: September 4, 2012
Submission Guidelines
We welcome submissions of previously unpublished short stories up to 5,000 words, relating to a sense of place or the natural world, interpreted as broadly or narrowly as you wish. If you are not familiar The Bear Deluxe, a sample copy of issue #32 (in which the 2010 winner appears) is available through mail for $5 at the address below. Issue #29 (including the 2008 award winner and one finalist) and issue #26 (including the 2007 winner and two finalists) are available for $5 each as well. When requesting sample copies, indicate your preferred issues. Simultaneous submissions are not permitted. Multiple submissions are allowed but must be mailed separately with separate entry fees. Upon acceptance, Orlo and The Bear Deluxe Magazine assume first-time publishing rights and Web-publishing rights for the period of one year following print publication.
About 2012's Judge
Brian Doyle, award-winning author, essayist, and editor of the University of Portland's Portland Magazine.
Portland is annually ranked among the ten best university magazines in America, and ranked first in 2002 among all American university magazines.
Brian Doyle’s essays have appeared in The American Scholar, The Atlantic Monthly, Orion, Commonweal, Georgia Review, and Harper’s, among other periodicals. His essays have also been reprinted in the Best American Essays anthologies of 1998 and 1999, in Best Spiritual Writing 1999, 2001, and 2002, and in the anthologies Thoughts of Home (1995), Family (1997), In Brief (1998), and Resurrecting Grace (2001). He also reviews books for The San Francisco Chronicle, The Oregonian, and Preservation magazine; is a columnist for The Age newspaper in Melbourne, Australia; and is the recipient of The American Scholar’s Best Essay Award in 2000, for an essay on Plutarch.
About 2011's Judge
Rivka Galchen’s first novel, Atmospheric Disturbances, received a significant amount of attention for a debut novel, including favorable reviews on the cover of The New York Times Book Review and by critic James Wood of The New Yorker. Wood wrote that the novel was best understood as “a contribution to the Hamsun-Bernhard tradition of tragicomic first-person unreliability.” The novel was named as a finalist for the Mercantile Library’s 2008 John Sargent Sr. First Novel Prize, and for the Canadian Writers’ Trust’s 2008 Fiction Prize. In 2008, the novel was named as a finalist for the 2008 Governor General’s Award, one of Canada’s most prestigious literary prizes. She is a Contributing Editor at Harper’s Magazine and has written for several national magazines such as The New Yorker, Harper’s, the New York Times and The Believer. In 2010 Galchen was chosen by The New Yorker as one of the top 20 American writers under the age of 40. She was a 2006 recipient of the Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers’ Award for women writers. Galchen teaches writing at Columbia University.
About the Sitka Center for Art & Ecology Residency Program
The Sitka Center offers workshops, residencies and community events, while maintaining a facility appropriate to its needs in harmony with its inspirational coastal environment near Cascade Head and the Salmon River estuary. Along with the $1,000 cash prize, award organizers are partnering with the Sitka Center to offer a writer’s residency of up to 10 weeks to the winning author. Due to Sitka's residency program structure, you must be able to participate in the whole residency time period of 3 1/2 months. There are two residency periods per year: October to mid January and January to late May. Unfortunately, if you cannot participate in the entire residency time, you will need to forfeit this award. For more details on residency benefits and requirements, visit www.sitkacenter.org.
Deadline, Mailing Address, Online Submissions
Entries must be postmarked by September 4, 2011. Mail your entry to Doug Fir Fiction Award/Bear Deluxe Magazine, 810 SE Belmont, Studio 5, Portland, OR 97214. Online submissions and payments can be made at www.orlo.org/donate (please indicate "Doug Fir submission 2012" in the notes with your payment).
Entry Requirements
An entry fee of $15. Make check or money order in U.S. dollars, drawn on a U.S. bank, payable to Orlo/The Bear Deluxe Magazine. All entrants receive a copy of the issue in which the winner appears. All entry fees are nonrefundable. Please include a self-addressed, stamped envelope for notification of contest results.
Manuscript Format Guidelines
Manuscripts must be typed and double-spaced on 8 ½ x 11 paper. The author’s name must not appear anywhere on the manuscript. Please submit two title pages: one with the story title, author’s name, address, telephone number and email address; and one with just the story title.
Terms
- Your submitted story must be an original work of which you are the sole author.
- Submitted stories must be unpublished in both print and Web formats.
- Your story must be submitted in accordance with the eligibility requirements, format guidelines, entry requirements, deadline, and terms, or it will be disqualified.
- This competition is open to all writers in English, regardless of nationality.
- The Bear Deluxe Magazine reserves the right to edit the winning story for length and clarity upon consultation with the author.
- entry fees or manuscripts will be returned.
- Participating writers will receive an email notification upon receipt of their submission. If access to email is not possible, include an additional SASE for notification.
- Participating writers will be notified no later than January 30, 2013, of the award results.
- Writers currently involved with Orlo or The Bear Deluxe Magazine are not eligible for the award. To avoid a conflict of interest, or the appearance of a conflict of interest, friends and current or former students of the award judge are not eligible for the award.
- The competition is void where prohibited or restricted by law.
Colonization of Africa
Rihanna
A woman in Senegal holding photos of herself when she was lighter.
Vybz Kartel
Ajuma Nasenyana, Kenyan model who is 
