James Baldwin in an interview with Kenneth Clark.
Coal Black and de Sebben Dwarfs (…and that’s not a typo)
There’s no debate that if you even want to begin to discuss the stereotyped images of black people that we see today in the media, then you have to go back 30, 40, 50, 60 years ago and even beyond then to get an idea of how we were portrayed back then. It’s not too fine a stretch to say what you see today and get upset about can be directly traced to movies and other images long before you were a gleam in your parent’s eye. (And one could also argue that there isn’t much of difference between then and now either…)
Case in point, the notorious 1944 Warner Bros cartoon Coal Black and de Sebben Dwarfs by Robert Clampett who along with Friz Freleng and Chuck Jones was one of the Warner’s three top animation directors of the period. The cartoon is one of the infamous “Censored 11″ Warner Bros cartoons from the 30′s and 40′s including along with Coal Black, Angel Puss, Jungle Jitters and Tin Pan Alley Cats in which the offensive black caricatures are SO extreme and offensive that Warners withdrew the cartoons from circulation and basically pretended that they had never heard of them.
However they never really went away, usually screened in revival movie theaters (I first saw Coal Black at one in L.A. some 20 years ago to a stunned audience) and now with the internet, forget it. They’re everywhere. In fact there’s a rumor about that Warners has changed its mind because of the historical interest and constant demand of these cartoons and may finally issue a remastered collection of the 11 cartoons on their DVD-on-demand Warner Archive label. But enough talk. Watch the cartoon below for yourself and be stunned (..or maybe amused. Nowadays I can’t tell what you guys will say…)
Merrie Melodies “Coal Black and de Sebben Dwarfs” (1943)
Uploaded by 100X. – Full seasons and entire episodes online.
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Expatriate and Work Abroad Writing Contest
The Winner Earns $500 to Share their Living Abroad Experiences
Bahia view from Living Abroad With a Family in Bahia by Eleanor Stanford.
2010 Expatriate and Work Abroad Writing Contest Winners Many thanks for the many excellent submissions which were sent to us for the contest. In fact there were so many well-written and interesting pieces that it took us night and day to post them. The eclectic submissions ranged from excellent essays and narratives on being an expatriate to very useful practical guides on living abroad in a variety of countries. As far as we are concerned, all the submissions were potential winners and will be featured in a coming webzine issue (TAzine) —The Editor 1st Place Living Abroad With a Family in Bahia by Eleanor Stanford 2nd Place (tie) Teaching English and Living in Singapore by Nathan Edgerton 2nd Place (tie) Coffee Culture Al Bar: A Many-Splendored Set of Italian Rituals by Estelle Jobson 3rd Place (tie) Living Abroad and Working in Croatia as a Tour Guide by Alexandra Cram 3rd Place (tie) Internship Studying Ancient Medicine in Modern China by Lucy Hordern 3rd Place (tie) Living and Working in Istanbul: A Tale of Two Cities by Jo Knights 2010 Expatriate and Work Abroad Writing Contest Runners-Up A Working Holiday in New Zealand for the More Mature Gapper by Joanne Amos Living and Teaching English in Hanoi by Joss Berret Broadening the Expatriate Experience: Going it Alone in Japan by Camille Bromley Expatriate Living in Kuala Lumpur as a “Traveling Spouse” by Cindy Childress Living in the French Alps by Wendy Hollands Living in Prague as an Expat: The Times They Are a-Changin’ by Sezin Koehler Living in Cancun as an Expat: A Family Adventure Abroad by Ilana Long Island Fever in Okinawa by Mary Richardson Living in New Delhi: Choosing Your Own Adventures by Benjamin P. Rodgers
2009 Expatriate and Work Abroad Writing Contest Winners 1st Place The Anxieties of Otherness: Expatriate Life in Italy by Linda Lappin 2nd Place A Different Pace of Life: Living and Teaching in Korea by Lindsay Nash 3rd Place (tie) Aotearoa—"The Land of the Long White Cloud": A Year Living and Working in New Zealand by Lydia Horrex 3rd Place (tie) I Always Knew I Would Return: Living and Working in Argentina by R. Wade Alexander 3rd Place (tie) Opening the Door of Possibility: Living in Russia by Natalie Ridler 3rd Place (tie) Shaking Up the Routine: From Corporate Cubicle to Casual Colonial in Porto Alegre, Brazil by Jenny Miller 3rd Place (tie) Starting a New Life: Moving, Living, and Working in the Czech Republic by Pearl Harris 3rd Place (tie) Volunteering and Living in Kenya by Anena Hansen
2008 Expatriate and Work Abroad Writing Contest Winners 1st Place An English Teacher in Vietnam: The Rooster in the Cafe, and Other Sights and Experiences by Nathan Edgerton 2nd Place Living a Day at a Time in Small-Town Vietnam by Adam Bray 3rd Place (tie) Outside the Metropolis: Happenings in Nagano, Japan by Chris Gladden 3rd Place (tie) A Farewell Party, Korean Style by Sonya Natalia Heaney 2008 Expatriate and Work Abroad Writing Contest Runners-Up Awakened Dreams in Gölcük, Turkey by Karrie Hawkins Erenoğlu Living in Beijing: "One World, One Dream" by Megan Rhodes Living in Hong Kong: Hybrid Island by Micah Stover Living in Nampula, Mozambique: Just Left of Paradise by Caroline Cowan Living and Teaching in Thailand: "It Takes a Village" by Rachael Price The Carioca Kangaroo: Accidentally Becoming Brazilian by Aaron Smith Returning to Chaos: How To Be an Expatriate in India by Sonya Natalia Heaney
2007 Expatriate and Work Abroad Writing Contest Winners 1st Place Everywhere Is Home: Rhythms of Native Life in Fiji by Caroline Cottom, PhD 2nd Place Essence of Japan by Rebecca Combs Tilhou 3rd Place (tie) Feeling Comfortable With Strangeness by John Hillman 3rd Place (tie) Go East, Young Man by Tom Hale 2007 Expatriate and Work Abroad Writing Contest Runners-Up The Real Kazakhstan: Eager to Attract Foreign Expertise by Paul Bartlett French in the Fast Lane: Retire in Style on the French Riviera by Ferriel Brooks On Being an EPIK Ex-pat: Teaching English in South Korea by Eileen Han A Teacher's Tour of Duty in Taiwan: Rockets, Temples, and Tonal Languages by Brian Johnson
Guidelines for the 2011 Expatriate Writing Contest TransitionsAbroad.com invites you to enter its 2011 Expatriate Travel Writing Contest.
Professionals, freelancers and aspiring writers are invited to write articles which describe their experience living abroad. Often your experience abroad may be extended by working or studying in the host country, so living, working, and studying abroad are often inextricable, and we are interested in these aspects as well.
Making the move to live abroad is for many the ultimate transition — often the fulfillment of a lifelong dream, in other cases the result of chance and circumstance. We are seeking inspiring articles which also provide in-depth practical descriptions of your experience moving and living abroad, including discussions of immigration, personal and family life abroad, housing, work, social interactions with the natives, food, culture, study, language learning, and potential prejudices encountered.
Apart from practical considerations what were the most important physical, psychological, and social adjustments necessary to integrate into the local communities? Feel free to include anecdotes about locals who may have aided in your adjustment to the physical conditions and social mores of the host community, as well as the role of expats in providing information and support.
While we welcome a good narrative, a listing, sidebar, and/or reference to the most important websites, publications, and other practical resources which have aided you in the cultural adjustment process or enhanced your life abroad is strongly encouraged to help others who may find themselves in similar situations or even similar locations. The inclusion of useful sidebars will likely help determine the winners of the contest.
In sum, we do not seek diaries, travelogues, or personal blogs, but your own perspective in which the host country remains the primary focus, such that the color and taste of the people and land remain in the foreground.
Please see the Living Abroad section of our site for some examples of the types of articles we are seeking and see our writers' guidelines for a sense of our editorial preferences.
TransitionsAbroad.com will publish the winners' entries and will provide links to the authors' website or blog if so desired.
Contest Prizes The first-place winner’s entry will receive $500, the second-place winning entry $150, and the third-place winner $100.
Any other articles selected as runners-up for publication on TransitionsAbroad.com will receive a $50 payment.
Who is Eligible The Contest is open to professional, freelance and aspiring writers from any location around the globe.
How to Enter
- Submit an original and unpublished essay of between 1,000 and 3,000 words relating to your experience living, moving, or working abroad. Focus should be placed on a description of the experience abroad and not primarily on personal feelings, as the descriptions and perceptions of the author should imply the personal impact. Supporting photos in .jpg or .gif format are welcome to illustrate the experience and are considered part of the essay submission. Please read the writers’ guidelines for Transitions Abroad Magazine, previous winners entries, as well as sample articles on this site for a sense of our editorial focus.
- To enter the Contest, attach your essay in Word format or copy and paste it into an e-mail. Please include your full name, complete postal address, phone number, and the bio you wish to display in the body of the email and on the document. Please type "2011 Expatriate Writing Essay Entry" in the subject description of the e-mail and send the e-mail to expatriatewritingcontest@transitionsabroad.com.
- The Contest begins April 1, 2010, and all entries must be received by February 15, 2011. Transitions Abroad Publishing, Inc. will require first-time North American rights for all submissions which are accepted as contest winners and for publication. In addition, Transitions Abroad Publishing, Inc. will reserve the right to reprint the story in a future publication.
- Editors of TransitionsAbroad.com will judge entries based upon the following criteria:
- Sensitivity to the people and culture being described
- Ability to engage and inspire the reader
- Practical information which others can use
- Rich photographic/video illustrations
Winners will be chosen on or about February 22, 2011 and notified by phone, mail, or e-mail by March 1, 2011 for publication by in early to mid-April, 2011 to allow time for contact, acceptance, and international payment to writers, some of whom live in remote regions of the world. Contest Terms
- There is no entry fee required for submissions.
- Decisions of the judges are final.
- Transitions Abroad Publishing, Inc. is not responsible for late, lost, misdirected, incomplete, or illegible e-mail or for any computer-related, online, or technical malfunctions that may occur in the submission process.
- Submissions are considered void if illegible, incomplete, damaged, irregular, altered, counterfeit, produced in error, or obtained through fraud or theft.
- Submissions will be considered made by an authorized account holder of the e-mail address submitted at time of entry.
- The 1st, 2nd and 3rd place winners—along with any other runners-up accepted for publication—will be paid by Transitions Abroad Publishing, Inc. either by check or Paypal as preferred by the author.
- All federal, state, and local taxes are the sole responsibility of the Contest winners.
Submission Guidelines
Welcome to Passager! We look forward to reading your submissions, but we ask that you follow our guidelines closely. For example, please submit in accordance to the dates listed below. We publish two issues a year, an Open Issue, and a Poetry Contest issue. Guidelines for both appear below. Also, we urge you to become familiar with Passager before submitting work. Browse some past published work on this site, and visit our Subscribe page to order sample copies.
You can also print these guidelines as a PDF.
2011 Passager Poetry Contest
FOR WRITERS OVER 50Submit work: September 1, 2010 - February 15, 2011 (postmarked date)
Winner receives $500 and publication.
Honorable mentions will also be published.
- Reading fee: $20, check or money order payable to Passager
Reading fee includes a one-year, two-issue subscription to Passager.- Submit 5 poems, 40 lines max. per poem
- Introduce yourself with a cover letter and brief bio.
- Include name and address on every page.
- Include a Self-Addressed, Stamped Envelope (SASE) for notification of winners.
- Poems will not be returned.
- No previously published work.
- Simultaneous submissions to other journals are okay, but please notify us if the work is accepted elsewhere.
- No email submissions, please!
If you need more information, send us an email: passager@saysomethingloudly.com, or call: 410.837.6047.
Send all submissions to:
Passager
1420 N. Charles Street
Baltimore, MD 21201-5779
via ubalt.edu
Submission Guidelines for the 2011 Julia Peterkin Award
Eligibility
The 2011 Julia Peterkin Award is open to all writers of fiction writing original works in English. Previously published works are eligible for inclusion in the submission.
Manuscript Format Guidelines
Entries must be typed on quality paper, 8 1/2 by 11. Photocopies or copies from letter-quality printers are acceptable. Each entry must include one short story or chapter from a novel--a maximum of 16 pages. In addition, include a cover page with the writer’s name, address, daytime phone number, and title of submission. Also include a one-page biography. Author’s name should not appear on the manuscript.
Entry Requirements
- An entry fee of $15 made payable to: Converse College English Department. Deadline: Feb. 15, 2011.
- Send one copy of the manuscript prepared according to format guidelines.
- The winner will receive $1000 and travel expenses for a reading at Converse College. Winner must be willing to read in the Fall 2011 Visiting Writers Series.
- Results will be posted online on the Julia Peterkin Award Page in late spring. No manuscripts can be returned.
Send entries to:
The Julia Peterkin Award
Creative Writing Program
Converse College
580 E. Main Street
Spartanburg, SC 29302For more information, contact Prof. Rick Mulkey at 864.596.9111 or email at rick.mulkey@converse.edu
via converse.edu
FORTHCOMING ISSUE: TRANSITION 103
Cover Image: "Princesa Lantunada" Acrylic on canvas. ©2007 Nelson Lobo
From the issue:
"In many ways, [Cesária Évora] and her story have served as the loci for the inquiries that the curious outside world makes of Cape Verde more generally: Is it Portugal? Is it Africa? Is it the African Diaspora, the easternmost Caribbean, or even an extension of Brazil? Is it the New World’s first and original Creole?"
- Carla Martin
"My cousin would tell me that one of her mother’s brothers, Uncle Noronha, had emigrated in the nineteen-thirties. He had become the president of one of the societies promoted in the magazines. It made me a bit perplexed that her uncle belonged in a Black-American society. How had he got in? As far as I was concerned, Uncle Noronha was neither American nor Black. His skin was actually the lightest in his family!"
- Camila Mont-Rond
"Nonetheless, it still needs to be remarked that this willed condition—the refusal to confront history in its fullest implications—has led black leaders of the Diaspora in the recent past to embrace—at the expense of their kinfolk on the black continent—the heirs and perpetuators of the slave-master tradition, the Mobutu Sese Sekos, the Idi Amins, the Macias Nguemas, Sanni Abachas, Omar al-Bashirs, and company."
- Wole Soyinka"… they saw from their obscurity the morbid remains of His Excellency, that proud body, always gesticulating, reduced to a minute figure stripped of its proverbial arrogance, a simple cadaver, helpless and naked, highlighted by an erect, proud, and protruding organ perforating the air as an act of defiance against nothingness. It was the sum total of his power, the foundation of his authority, symbol of his portentous virility, vestige of his energy and secular domination of all living beings."
"What catches his attention, however, is the fact that the language that is other than Fang is alsoother than Spanish, that there is something like an otherness within and between black speaking subjects as well. Unable, for the first time in his young life, to understand a black person while nonetheless understanding a white person, the narrator-protagonist confronts a rift between the visible signs of the body and the audible signs of language that throws his national identity into question."
- Donato Ndongo
- Brad Epps"…[Thabo] Mbeki’s relationship with Mandela was a complex one. Both attended Christian missionary schools and were Anglophiles who greatly admired British culture and institutions. Both were formal men who rarely showed their emotions in public. But while Mandela lived all of his life in South Africa and spent twenty-seven years in jail, Mbeki spent nearly thirty years outside South Africa. Where Mandela ruled like a patriarch, leaving policy details to his lieutenants, Mbeki was a policy wonk who reveled in the mechanics of governance. Where Mandela was charismatic and popular among the masses, Mbeki relied on political maneuvering within the ANC."
- Adekeye Adebajo_______________________________________________________________
Cape Verde: A "Cluster of Writing and Art Work"
Transition (103) is the Cabo Verde issue. The issue also announces a new editorial team consisting of literary and cultural critic Glenda Carpio, multi-media historian Vincent Brown and philosopher Tommie Shelby in the wake of the departure of editor Abiola Irele from Harvard to assume the role of Provost in the College of Humanities and Social Sciences, Kwara State University, Malete, Nigeria.
Among the cluster of writing and artwork from Cape Verde—the first of its kind to be made available to an English-speaking audience--gathered by doctoral candidate Carla Martin for the issue, includes the article Contemporary Cape Verdean Literature by Russell G. Hamilton.
Excerpt (subscription needed):
...Cape Verdean intellectuals have long exalted in and struggled with their national and ethnic identity as Africans and as Creoles. Racially, linguistically, socially, and culturally, Cape Verde is a quintessentially Creole nation. Cape Verde has the distinction of having been the first and most comprehensive Creole society in Portuguese Africa. Much of this distinction can be attributed to the fact that many Portuguese men—including Sephardic Jews—arrived as settlers in Cape Verde, where they fathered children with African slaves. Manumission came early in the archipelago's history, and many mixed-race offspring of white fathers and black mothers were recognized as citizens of the colony, which was often referred to as a Portuguese Overseas Province. Here I quote from Robert Harm's The Diligent: A Voyage Through the Worlds of the Slave Trade, an account of a French slave
ship in the 1730s which devotes considerable attention to Cape Verde, one of the Diligent's ports of call:"A mestiço community on Santiago had been recognized as early as 1582, and by 1731, Santiago counted 394 whites and 2461 mestiços.… The Cape Verde islands represented a kind of cultural halfway house between the society [that the crew of the Diligent] had left behind in France and the ones they would encounter in Africa. Not only did the skin tones they observed on the island cover the full spectrum from white to black, but the cultural mixture also defied existing stereotypes. Santiago had literate black priests and illiterate white priests, and the only dynamic sector of its economy was dominated by enslaved weavers using African technology. Culturally, as well as geographically, the Diligent was halfway between Europe and its designated landfall in West Africa" (p. 113).In the Encyclopedia of Africa South of the Sahara, Eve L. Crowley elaborates:"A scarcity of human and financial resources made miscegenation with local populations a tactical necessity for Portuguese and Afro-Portuguese trade intermediaries.… In Cape Verde, superior education, cultural proximity to the Portuguese, and physical resistance to tropical diseases made the Creole offspring of Europeans and slaves from Senegambia, Guinea, and the Gold Coast (present-day Ghana) ideal employees in Portuguese firms and administration throughout Portugal's African colonies" (p. 380).Eve Crowley and Robert Harms are both communicating the historical reality of the early emergence in Cape Verde of a Creole elite. Because of the nature of the settlement of the previously uninhabited archipelago, a Creole intelligentsia established itself on several of the islands considerably before the emergence of acculturated elites in the four other Portuguese colonies of Africa. We know, for example, that the first secondary school in all of the former colonies was established in the mid-nineteenth century in the city of Praia on the island of Santiago. Schools that also served members of the Black and mixed-race population opened on the islands of São Nicolau and São Vicente soon after. It was because of the early emergence of a Creole elite that Cape Verde gave rise to the Portuguese African colonies' first comprehensive literary-cultural movement: the claridosos, those literate, educated Creoles who, in 1936, founded the historic journal Claridade and saw their poems, stories, and critical essays published there. The Claridade generation, followed by those who founded the journal called Certeza, and then those of the Boletim dos Alunos do Liceu Gil Eanes: all of these writers and cultural agents have shared in the legacies of crioulidade [Creoleness] and reflect the relatively homogeneous hybridity of a former colony that developed, before its time, the ethos of a nation-state.But if everyone agrees upon the significance of Creoleness for Cape Verde, the significance of Africanness is more hotly contested. Some, including Eve L. Crowley, maintain that Cape Verde's Creole inhabitants are substantially less African than their counterparts in other former Portuguese colonies, specifically São Tomé e Príncipe and Angola. The archipelago is situated about 385 miles off the west coast of the continent, and how the archipelago relates to its African past and present determines much of how Cape Verdeans view themselves in relation to the world.
War Isn’t Over When It’s Over
War is Not Over When it’s Over: Women Speak Out From the Ruins of War
by Ann Jones—Reviewed by Angilee Shah
You don’t need to go much further than the table of contents to know that Ann Jones’ War is Not Over When It’s Over is not an easy read. Among the chapter titles: “The Democratic Republic of Congo: Rape” and “Iraqi Refugees in Jordan, Syria, Lebanon: Blown Apart.”
What happens in conflict is so terrible, so unspeakable, that Jones’ challenge is to convince comfortable people to listen. She writes of girls in a Sierra Leone hospital: “Many were stuck in silence, but here in the hospital, in the presence of countless survivors, and with the support of counselors, some opened up and told us their stories, several on videotape. But their stories were so awful, I wondered if the world could bear to hear them.”
War is Not Over When It’s Over gives readers that chance, the opportunity to really listen. Personal stories as told by women who endure atrocities are the driving force behind the book. Still, you can’t escape the numbers: In Liberia’s three recent wars, 90 percent of women suffered physical or sexual violence; three out of four women were raped. Sierra Leone’s “trademark atrocity” was amputation, but an estimated 250,000 women and girls were sexually assaulted in that country’s civil war. Even after the war officially ended, rape persists, perpetrated mostly against girls aged six to 15. In the Kivus, a region of the Democratic Republic of Congo, 79 percent of women surveyed in 2005 reported that they had been raped by at least two attackers (but as many as 20) at once. Over 70 percent say they were tortured during rape.
Jones writes about the people behind this data with deep empathy, the result of a lifetime of writing, photographing and devoting herself to the plight of women who endure extreme violence. She argues that when wars officially end they actually just move from public spaces into private homes. She recounts her work documenting women’s lives with the International Rescue Committee, where she facilitated a program that gave women cameras and a chance to tell their own stories.
But her first feat in War is to frame extreme suffering, often seen as something “over there” and “far away,” with immediacy for readers in their comfortable and safe homes. She introduces her book about women in Africa, Asia and the Middle East with a story about her own experience. Her father was a decorated veteran of the Great War, and Jones writes: “That war is now commemorated with paper poppies, the Great War, in which my father served with uncommon distinction and from which he returned a hero, irrevocably changed, subject to nightmares and sudden rages and drunken assaults upon innocent furniture and my mother and me, and tearful reconciliations we were not permitted to reject.” She asks where her father learned “to act so swiftly, so effectively, so violently,” placing her global sojourn in context of a search for answers about her own life.
And so it is that the stories of these women are the stories of any country engaged in war. As we read the news about American veterans coming home, receiving medals of honor, committing violent crimes, being incarcerated, committing suicide, War is Not Over When It’s Over is no longer an abstraction in faraway places. For anyone with the fortitude to internalize its chapters, it implicitly begs the question, do we really understand the costs of our own long wars?
Buy the book: Skylight, Powell’s, Amazon
, Borders.
Excerpt: “One day I returned to the office in Voinjama to find a young American colleague visibly upset. She was reading a report on Liberia issued by a prominent international organization that repeated the popular historical theory about Liberian violence springing from the resentment of ‘marginal young people.’ Amid a hundred pages detailing the grievances of deprived young men, grievances so serious that they led the resentful young men — seemingly inevitably — to kill thousands of people and wreck their country, my colleague had come upon a single paragraph devoted to the subtopic ‘Gender.’ It included this sentence: ‘Women suffered greatly during the war.’
‘Suffered greatly? Suffered greatly?’ Her voice slid up the scale. ‘Is that all they can say? This report goes on and on about what these poor men must have felt that turned them into such butchers. But they don’t even say what happened to women, much less what they felt. Just this ‘suffered greatly.’ What does it mean?’“
Further Reading: Kabul in Winter: Life Without Peace in Afghanistan
by Ann Jones, A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier
by Ishmael Beah, War and the Health of Nations by Zaryab Iqbal
Angilee Shah is a freelance journalist who writes about globalization and politics. You can read more of her work at www.angileeshah.com.
*Photo of a shelter for victims of sexual abuse in the Congo courtesy United Nations Photo.
Associated Press December 11, 2010 09:49 AM Copyright Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.Candidates reject recount in sloppy Haiti election
Saturday, December 11, 2010
Ramon Espinosa / AP
A man drives a motorcycle past a barricade of burning tires in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Thursday Dec. 9, 2010. The barricade was set up by supporters of eliminated presidential candidates to protest the announcement that only government protege Jude Celestin and former first lady Mirlande Manigat would advance to a presidential runoff election. Haiti's electoral council says it will recount the ballots in the country's disputed presidential election.
(12-11) 09:49 PST PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AP) --
Two top candidates in Haiti's disputed presidential election are rejecting a proposed re-count, threatening to torpedo a compromise aimed at quelling days of riots and violence over allegations the vote was rigged, their campaigns said Saturday.
The snub by No. 1 finisher Mirlande Manigat and by third-place Michel Martelly leaves the impoverished nation dangerously volatile, with much of the population rejecting the officially announced outcome of the Nov. 28 election and many willing to protest with violence.
Only the ruling party candidate, Jude Celestin, supports the electoral council's offer to retabulate tally sheets from thousands of polling stations around the Caribbean nation.
Blockades and rock-throwing continued in a few areas, but violence had largely subsided in most parts of the capital by Saturday and many people rushed to reopened markets to stock up on food, water, fuel and other supplies in fear that more protests could erupt again.
Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, a potential U.S. presidential candidate, shrugged off a U.S. travel warning and arrived in the Haitian capital on Saturday, accompanying evangelist Franklin Graham on a visit expected to include cholera-treatment centers and other projects undertaken by his charity group.
Manigat, a law professor and former first lady, had 31 percent of the vote in the official preliminary count and is all but guaranteed a spot in a Jan. 16 runoff between the top two finishers.
She rejected the re-count because the electoral council failed to propose clear procedures or a timetable, her campaign said in a statement issued Friday. She said she was open to other initiatives to settle the crisis.
Martelly finished a few thousand votes behind Celestin and would be eliminated from a runoff if the current results stand. His supporters have led many of the protests that paralyzed the capital for most of the week and he joined many of the other 18 candidates in denouncing the election as rigged well before the polls closed.
"We cannot accept a re-count by the very same group that manipulated the elections in the first place," Martelly told The Associated Press on Saturday. He said a fair count would show that he placed first.
Celestin's campaign also claims the result was botched — saying he finished first rather than second. Sen. Joseph Lambert, who heads his campaign, told AP on Saturday that they "accept the recount process (to ensure) the transparency of the system."
Everyone agrees the election had widespread problems, taking place in a nation suffered from disorganization even before a January earthquake threw a million people into the streets and a deadly cholera epidemic began sweeping across the countryside.
Thousands of voters did not get ID cards in time for the election, could not find their names on incomplete voting lists still swollen with people who had died in the quake or were turned away inexplicably by poll workers. Official monitors reported killings, voter intimidation and ballot-box stuffing.
The U.S. State Department expressed concern that the results did not match pre-vote polling, which showed Celestin, the favorite of outgoing President Rene Preval, en route to elimination.
The United Nations, Organization of American States and Caribbean Community also acknowledged problems but said they should not invalidate the election.
U.S. Sen. Patrick Leahy, chairman of a Senate subcommittee that oversees appropriations for Haiti, said Friday said that President Barack Obama's administration should withhold funding to Haiti's government until the problem of the flawed election is resolved.
As soon as the results were announced Tuesday night, Martelly's supporters barricaded the streets of the capital, throwing rocks and robbing passers-by. Gunshots rang through the night. Protests spread to every major city in the country, fueled by widespread disaffection with Preval, and there were days of clashes with U.N. peacekeepers and police.
On Thursday, a group of men — some wearing Celestin shirts — shot and killed people in a shantytown beside the crumbled national palace.
Celestin and Martelly both called for peaceful demonstrations. But Martelly warned of violent infiltrators and Celestin's Unity party has suggested it may have supporters it cannot control.
View All Images via sfgate.com
_____________________________________________
All rights reserved by frank.thorp
_____________________________________________
DECEMBER 11, 2010 2:12AM
Haiti: Breaking the news lockdown-Direct street testimonies
Urgent information on the current situation in Haiti:
Direct testimony from the streets of Haiti obtained by HLLN
Direct testimony from the streets of Haiti obtained by HLLN
Photo: December 8, 2010. Election protest crowd in front of President Preval's house
***
"It pains me to give voice to what I'm hearing - The alternative if the fraudulent elections in Haiti are not annulled. Revolution has been reduced to "anything is better than Preval." The US and its international partners pay for the conflict and now they are on their way to 'restore order' as Haitians continue to die." - Ezili Dantò of HLLN
It pains me to give voice to what I'm hearing - The Alternative if Sham Elections Not Anulled
Ezili Dantò of HLLN, December 9, 2010:For years I've given voice to the voiceless in Haiti. And generally I've understood and sympathized with the message. Today it hurts me to give voice to what I am hearing. There's just hopelessness, despair or maybe it's my Western programming that can't take this. But even though it hurts, I'm writing it, the street view, right now in Port-au-Prince. This is what I just said in an interview and wrote in a comment. I reiterated HLLN's Haiti message to US Embassy in Haiti: The Will of the People . How they're tripping over lying tongue about "the will of the people" and then detailed the street view, the Haiti ground echoes I spoke with this morning. I'm not sure I see principles, goals and I may not have the capacity to see whether this spontaneous "coalition?" will have sufficient organization to sustain itself, and perhaps listen to more deliberate heads in order to minimize the cost to our people --without sacrificing principles to Martelly ("Switch Micky")'s personal objectives. Don't know enough, don't have a crystal ball, to hazard an educated guess.What I can say is that neither Martelly nor Manigat, I'm told, have any parliamentary back up to sustain an effective presidency. So, how will either rule without their own Senators and Deputies? But with a Preval's INITE parliament? Haiti heads are reeling from all the inhuman treatment that's swell into this cacophony of sound and feelings. The Interim Haiti Reconstruction Commission (IHRC) with Clinton and the NOAH click, some say, are perhaps pushing US-favorite, Mr. Guy Theodore, to fill in. There's lots of finger pointing at what's left of community leadership. Seems to me, the Haiti leadership vacuum has never been more profound.
THE ALTERNATIVE : THE STREET VIEW
Let it burn.It's been a long time coming.
It's too late.
Too many Haitians have died.
Haiti has been made into a haven for the internationals and a burning hell
for the masses since 2004. Those left have died a thousand deaths and they're ready to make it real.
There will be no calm.The earth is dying, ground is burning.
U.S. and internationals wouldn't listen, were drunk with their power.
By the time Haiti is finished, there is every likelihood, the UN will have
suffered such a fatal blow, with importation of cholera and it's proxy
slaughter of the people on behalf of the US elite that maybe, these past deaths, these Haitian deaths to come, will help save the planet.
Change things in
Rwanda,
Congo,
all over Africa and the planet for the poor and powerless.Even the comfortable US masses are paying attention to this noble and courageous people in little Haiti.
Some Haitians are saying that the Martelly card
came out of nowhere and
took the arrogant international community by surprise.Haitian analysts are saying the Internationals didn't see this coming.
That this is not the Lavalas Movement they've already marginalized and demonize.
No.
This is SOMETHING ELSE
and it's not controllable.
This is all the years of Haiti resentment,
all the frustrations of total marginalization
and people disenfranchisement
the US Embassy,
UN, Haiti puppet government
and the 16,000 charity organizations, collecting funds on their misery
have strummed up.This is young
and not so vested in the system to be co-opted as per usual.
Unlike President Aristide, who was always calm no matter the crisis
imposed by the US/Euros,
the STREETS animate Martelly at this moment.
Whatever his original intentions, events may have overtaken him.
Unlike Aristide, he's got no diplomatic words up his sleeve.
This is the STREET speaking.
And they don't give a "F" as someone just said to me.
Don't care about no law to confuse them
that's not applied to the rich, the Haiti Oligarchy, to the US Embassy.Haitian analysts say that if the run-off
goes between Manigat and Martelly.
No doubt Martelly will win.
And Martelly's followers have
no diplomacy,
no calm words,
they've got a soundtrack,
"we don't need no UN cholera water let the mfker burn burn mfker burn!"
Martelly has street back up.If only Celestin and Manigat go to the run off, Haiti will burn.
There won't be a place for any foreigners unless they nuke Haiti off
planet earth.
Or, send in the Marines and start firing drone missile into civilian crowds
like in Afghanistan and Iraq.The over-taxed US public may not go for it.
The US might-make-right people are stuck, some say.
Never saw this coming. By the time this is over, they'll wish Bush, Jr had left the priest to rule.Ezili Dantò of HLLN
December 9, 2010**********
UPDATE on: Dec. 9, 2010
FROM A TOTALLY BLOCKED PORT-AU-PRINCE
Burning tires, road blocks, American Airlines has canceled all flights in and out:An SOS for help to the press and doctors from wounded Sweet Mickey partisans sent to HLLN.SOS received this afternoon at 2:43, Dec. 9, 2010 via email.
Apparently, in the streets of Port-au-Prince right now , in order to past, you must be wearing a Sweet Micky T-Shirt. Certain elements are putting on Sweet Mickey T-Shirts in order to kill his partisans and scatter their protests. HLLN on the ground confirms this. So this SOS makes sense.Here's the SOS, in French original:
"Des partisans inites portent des maillots de micky...Ils battent et tirent sur les vrais partisans de micky Des armes et. De l'argent sont distribues now au stade sylviocator Des blesses et morts (partisans micky) victime d'inites sont abandonnes a l'hopital general. Il n'y a pas de medecin. Faire passer a la presse pr qu'on fasse appel a medecin sans frontiere pr qu'aille a leur aide. C'est une information sure."*
English translation:
"INITE supporters are wearing Sweet Micky T-Shirts" They are beating and shooting the real supporters of Micky. And are armed and. Money is being distributed now at the Sylvio Cator stadium. The wounded and dead (Micky supporters), victims of insider dealing, have been abandoned at the (State-run) general hospital. There is no doctor. Get this news out to the press. We must call on Doctors Without Borders to come to their aid. This information is sure."
*******************Ezili Dantò of HLLN, December 10, 2010:
Urgent information on the current situation in Haiti: Direct testimony from the streets of Haiti obtained by HLLN The world is being purposely misinformed and mis-educated about the current election disaster in Haiti. Yesterday the Haiti electoral council said they would do a recount. It's clear from reading the latest State Department Bulletin Op-ed, published in the New York Times, that the US and its international partners set up this Haiti explosion and will come in with military boots to put back order, as per usual! No change. Two wings of the macoutes will go to a run-off on January 16: Martelly and Magnigat. It's very simple, not so complex but it's up to those who can see to guide and educate. To that end, we publish the following testimonies. The irony is that even the folks being manipulated don't know they are being manipulated. Many of the starving and desperate young Haiti men, in the streets of Haiti, right now, asking that Martelly be made president as a result of an exclusive, blatantly fraudulent, not fair, not free election, believe that would be CHANGE! and REVOLUTION! Right now the long-suffering neocolonial subjects getting the most press from Haiti are those who have reduced revolution in Haiti to: "anything is better than Preval or Celestin."HLLN was told last night there is a US warship at the Port au Prince harbor since Tuesday, December 7, the day the 's'election results were announced. We've also been apprised that there are "cholera drops" - some think its not cholera medical air drops, but US military. That info is not confirmed. Yesterday we got an SOS asking for help for wounded Martelly supporters who we were told were being denied medical help at the General hospital. We circulated that SOS. This additional report on the incident came to HLLN today, Dec. 10, 2010, via email from an HLLN collaborator.Events in Haiti on December 9, 2010 on the Champ de Mars, according to a trusted source:"You know that we had the election on November 28th. It was a mess that day in some polling centers in and outside Port-au-Prince. In some neighborhoods close to Cite Soleil or in Tabarre the process for vote for some of them did not start and for others they were forced to stop for many reasons: people got upset because they did not find their name on the list sticks on the wall outside of the vote centers or people went inside with gun to intimidate the persons working inside and for several other reasons. In the countryside it was even worst.So everyone was waiting for the results on December 7th. Early in the afternoon people was rushed to go back home as the Electoral Council announced the results for 6:30 pm. I was in Petion Ville and I have seen people running on the streets because close to the big street market (not too far from where you stayed the first time), they were throwing stones and bottles and even burning tires at some corners. So it was panic. This day after 5 o'clock the streets were completely empty. I left Petion Ville by 7 pm and I've met only policemen who were blocking the area where the Council was about to deliver the results.Around 8:30pm the results were out and people did not take too much time to react. Very fast many streets in PAP were blocked with everything they could find (big stones, tires, bricks, pieces of wood, pipes made in cement for drainage, cars, big garbage dump...) That night they even broke some stores in Petion Ville. I was not at home and I had to wait 1 am to drive back home when those people went to sleep.Since then everything is closed in Haiti (Schools, businesses, stores even no vendors on the streets) Supporters of Martelly are demonstrating with big posters everywhere. Some groups are calm but others are very violent. Today, they even assaulted a young female journalist who was working on a motorbike with a driver.(This is what) happened on the Champ de Mars. I was not in PA, I was in Carrefour when I heard about it. Some people wearing Celestin's t shirt were demonstrating on the Champs de Mars by 1 pm. (wearing Celestin's t-shirt don't mean anything to me cause anyone can do it, anyone who wants an explosion in Haiti - it could be Celestin or anyone else) So they were around 50 according to witnesses. They had a car and a few motorbikes with them. As they were singing, dancing and walking on the streets some people on the champs de Mars started to yell "Micky, Micky" (Martelly's artist name) and one of the bikers got a bottle on his head. So he stopped his motorbyke and walked towards those people. He took his gun and shooted people just like , from one block of LePlaza and two blocks from the main police station of PAP. They talked about three to five people were killed and many injured. The closes health care facilities is the General Hospital. Dr Alix Lassegue ( who you met ) talked on radio to say that the hospital can still provide health to people sick or people injured, of course everything is not ok as usual because of the situation of the street but he needed help this afternoon because the X Ray lab is not working and the people injured needed X Ray in emergency.Many things are happening now. Rumors say that the Senator Lambert went to Cite Soleil today (December 10, 2010) and made big distribution of guns and bullets and very soon people from Cite soleil will come to PAP to face supporters of Martelly. That's the reasons why I left Carrefour fast because people were afraid and they were blocking again all the streets to avoid confrontation. So we don't know what tomorrow will bring to us.For two days now I've heard that two war battleships from the States are in the Bay but I do not have any confirmation of this. What I know is that on Wednesday afternoon Preval had problem at his home. The protesters were in front of his house and he felt unsafe. The house was under siege and he had to ask the Minustah to come and help him move from his house.
A new day just started, we don't know how it will be. Our very fragile Economy does not allow us to lose many days. Many vendors from the marginal sector live day by day and they are certainly suffering from this situation. In the country actually many clinics, hospitals, CTCs, UTCs have no more medical supplies. It is obvious that we will have a pic of death of cholera during those days. I am working with an orphanage in Jacmel and the person in charge called me this morning to tell me that five kids (4 boys and 1 girl) died yesterday because of cholera. She needs to come to PAP to get supplies but the highway is blocked. So what will be the end of this, only God knows."
END OF REPORT*******************
Bill Clinton To Be Named UN Special Envoy To Haiti. Jeremy Scahill on Democracy Now 5/19/09
Imagine ! Niggers Speaking French !!!
January 7 2004
by John Maxwell
Just eleven months ago, in his celebrated oration documenting the awesome details of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, the US Secretary of State, Colin Powell, made sure that he would not address the UN General Assembly against the background of Picasso's Guernica. Guernica is Picasso's celebrated protest in paint against superpower terrorism. The mural was hidden from sight on General Powell's orders, as he documented the compelling reasons for a pre-emptive invasion of Iraq, to keep the world safe from terrorism.Guernica memorializes the attack by Fascist German and Italian dive-bombers against the Spanish town of Guernica, an assault on the civilian population which helped doom the legitimate, socialist government of Spain and introduce nearly half a century of dictatorship.
The world considered the dive-bombing of Guernica an atrocity. Unfortunately for us, the world did not know of another Guernica, in Haiti, nearly 20 years earlier, when American dive bombers obliterated peasants, men and women armed with machetes fighting for the freedom of their country.
The Haitians are celebrating two centuries of freedom, two centuries since their slave ancestors rose in revolt to throw the French colonisers out of Haiti. They had to do it twice, when Napoleon newly installed in France, tried to recapture the richest colony in the world for France. The Haitians threw out a British army too, but neither of these extraordinary and heroic feats is reflected in our history books.
The unprecedented achievement of Toussaint,Christophe, Dessalines and the others has been devalued by historians who have seized on the extravagances of Christophe particularly to smear a glorious revolution. Since the revolution the history of Haiti like the history of most of the Americas, has been a history of war, violence, and exploitation financed and directed by foreigners, mainly Americans.
It is hardly known here that at the height of the US expansionist 'Manifest Destiny' period an attempt was made on Jamaica, after the 1907 earthquake. The Americans at that time, used all sorts of pretexts to intervene humanitarian reasons or to quell disorder or to restore financial stability or whatever.. In the case of Jamaica the then governor, Alexander Swettenham, ordered the express withdrawal of an American warship and its marines who had landed in Kingston, so they said, to restore order.
Swettenham lost his job, but those Jamaicans who were looking for an American godfather had to wait another 90 years.
If We Must Die
In an editorial a few days ago, the Jamaica Observer said, inter alia that CARICOM should have made it clear to the Haitian opposition that the bicentenary celebrations of the achievement of black slaves was of monumental importance to black people across the world and transcended the immediate domestic politics. Mr Mbeki of South Africa understood this. Unfortunately, Mr Patterson didn't.
The artificial instabilities of the 19th century in Latin America had their real genesis in the Monroe Doctrine, which decreed that countries in the Americas, except those controlled by the European powers were subject to US hegemony. George Canning, then Britain's Foreign Secretary, chortled: I have called a New World into existence to redress the balance of the Old.
France, the old colonial landlord of Haiti, had been so scared by the success of the Haitian revolution that it sold off for a pittance, the Louisiana territories to the United Sates, more than doubling the size of that country. But after Napoleon, France had second thoughts and finally managed, during another period of Haitian instability, to extort an agreement that condemned Haiti pay a substantial annual indemnity to France for the success of the revolution. This criminal burden was faithfully respected by the Haitians, though it caused them no end of grief With much of their revenue exported to France there was little left to develop Haiti. The Americans lent money to help them repay the French. Finally, just like today, the accumulated debt became impossible to pay and the American marines stepped in.
The first US marine general, Caperton, was a diplomat. He was able to set up a puppet regime of collaborators and secured a legal basis for the occupation in the Haitian-American Treaty of 1915. His successor, general Littleton Waller was different:"These people are niggers in spite of the thin varnish of education and refinement, Down in their hearts they are just the same happy, idle, irresponsible people we know of."
Not surprisingly, Waller's regime provoked resistance, mainly led by a man called Charlemagne Peralte. The puppet government had been forced to agree to changing the constitution to allow foreigners to own land and American capital poured in, destroying forests to plant coffee and citrus. The US next introduced forced labour, under an old Haitian law which commanded the people to give an occasional free day to build the country. In the American regime, the corveé was transformed into something indistinguishable from slavery.
Charlemagne Peralte was murdered by American troops in what would now be called a Targeted assassination. His people were bombed and otherwise massacred.
Haiti was safe for American democracy. One of those who made it so was American Marine General Smedley Butler, who, after he retired had second thoughts:
"I helped make Mexico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefits of Wall Street. The record of racketeering is long.
General Butler said: "I suspected I was just part of a racket at the time. Now I am sure of it. Like all the members of the military profession, I never had a thought of my own until I left the service. My mental faculties remained in suspended animation while I obeyed the orders of higher-ups. This is typical in the military service. Butler compared himself unfavourably to Al Capone. He said his official racketeering made Capone look like an amateur.
Floating barracoons in Kingston Harbour
The utter futility of the present government of Jamaica was never better expressed than 1994, when the cabinet, stooging for the Americans, allowed the mooring of American floating barracoons in Kingston harbour. On these ships Haitians fleeing the successors to Duvalier were processed most of them sent back to the country in which they were in danger of having their faces chopped off according to no less than President Clinton.
This unprincipled and barbarous betrayal of fellow human beings, our brothers, made me want to vomit. It still does. Because that stooging prepared the way for what now happens in Haiti, where forces antagonistic to every principle of the original revolution are determined, at long last, to make Haiti submit, to tie her down for eternal rape to use General Butler's word.
People will tell you that Haitians are the authors of their own misery. As other people say, people who dont remember their history are doomed to repeat it.
The dismemberment and strip mining of Haiti's economy, social, politician and intellectual life was under regimes tolerated or sponsored by the United States. To this day the United States protects some of the face-choppers, people who formed the US sponsored FRAPH, supposedly a force to rebuild Haiti according to democratic free-market principles.
Today elements of the same forces provide the opposition to President Aristide, defecating on their own history with a little help from their friends.
The Haiti Democracy Project was officially launched Tuesday, November 19, 2002 at the Brookings Institution in Washington, DC. The inaugural brought together over 120 guests and participants from the Haitian-American community along with members of the US academic and foreign-policy communities. This according to the Haiti Democracy project (HDP) website
Even the assistant secretary general of the OAS, Luigi Einaudi was there 'Einaudi opened the talks with dire predictions that Haiti was fast approaching a point where diplomatic means would no longer contribute to solve the crisis. According to Einaudi, those concerned about Haiti should at this time be gathering for a wake."' (Source HDP)
For an OAS official to take part in such a ceremony and say what he said, seems to me to be grossly improper, at the very least.
In June the HDP exhorted the OAS to disbar Haiti from membership and to intervene to remove President Aristide from office.
HDP and others blame Aristide for everything that is wrong with Haiti. After his re-election less than four years ago the multilateral agencies, at the urging of the United States, withheld all aid from Haiti until they were satisfied that Haiti had made itself into a democracy recognisable as such by Americans. The pivot of this blackmail was the fact that there were irregularities in the elections of a few Senators, a fact of much slighter significance than the irregularities in the election of President Bush. In Haiti, there was no abnsolutely question of the people's choice.
In the case of Haiti these irregularities now assume transcendental importance, and are cause for the world to condemn Haiti to starve in obscene misery. Without the money, Haiti's debt, incurred mainly by the Duvaliers cannot be serviced if the people of Haiti are to eat or go to school. Without the money, thousands perish every year from HIV/AIDS and starvation.
William Jennings Bryan, Secretary of State to US President Woodrow Wilson, eighty years ago expressed the contempt in which the Haitians are held by the Anglo-Saxon power structure:
Imagine! Bryan said , "Niggers speaking French!!!
Perhaps it would be to our mutual advantage if Mr Patterson might learn either French or Creole, like the Haitian revolutionary hero, Boukman, who was a Jamaican.
Copyright ©2004 John Maxwell
via haitiaction.net
John Maxwell, R.I.P.
John Maxwell, one of Jamaica's most respected journalists, and an adolescent hero of mine has died. He was 76 years old.
It was just a short time ago that Mr. Maxwell had retired from journalism, and in this time of Wiki Leaks and other journalistic scandals, his ethics, wisdom, and courage are surely needed. For if we had more writers like Mr. Maxwell, who was devoted to the discipline of journalism, then, I think, we would be able to make more informed choices.
I have written about John Maxwell several times on this blog, but I think this section from my post The Top Ten Things Every Writer Should Know says it best about Mr. Maxwell's commitment to writing:“We are delegates of the people…We are …the sensory organs of the body politic….the body politic's immune system… heralding, detecting malignant intrusions...In the circulatory system of the body politic, we are the white corpuscles and the T-cells.”“Ethical journalism is a human right: that people are entitled to the truth and that journalists are not entitled to tell lies or mislead.”
Walk good, John!
Photo Source: http://www.blackagendareport.com/?q=blog/129
http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/latestnews/John-Maxwell-is-dead
http://www.jamaica-gleaner.com/gleaner/20101204/lead/lead5.html
***
For more of Johns insights, please visit Maxwell's House: http://johnmaxwellshouse.blogspot.com/
This site presents a collection of columns by John Maxwell, a veteran Jamaican journalist and commentator who has covered Caribbean and international affairs for more than 40 years for the Jamaica Gleaner, the BBC, and the Jamaica Sunday Herald. He is currently a columnist for The Jamaica Observer.In 1999 Maxwell single-handedly thwarted the Jamaican government's efforts to build houses at Hope, the nation's oldest and best known botanical gardens. His campaigning earned him the region's richest journalism prize in the 2000 Sandals Resort's annual Environmental Journalism Competition. He is also the author of How to Make Our Own News: A Primer for Environmentalists and Journalists.
All columns are copyright © John Maxwell.
____________________________________________
Veteran journalist John Maxwell is dead
2010-12-10 20:56:17 | (5 Comments)
John Maxwell
Veteran Jamaican journalist John Maxwell is dead. He was 76. Maxwell died at his home in St Andrew about 5 p.m. after a long period of illness. Maxwell was a columnist with the Jamaica Observer and was also a lecturer at the Caribbean Institute of Media and Communication, University of the West Indies, Mona in Jamaica. John Maxwell entered journalism in 1952 when he joined The Gleaner Company's staff. Later he worked with Public Opinion and then the Jamaica Broadcasting Corporation (JBC). He also worked at the British Broadcasting Corporation from 1967 to 1971. He has had a very long a prolific career in journalism having worked in both the print and electronic media.
Aw, vintage racism! Nice!
I’ve seen a lot of these before.
What always kills me about a lot of that stuff (besides the buffoonery, stereotypes and meanness of it all) is the overly sexed nature of black characters in a lot of that stuff. America has an unspoken fascination with black sexuality that it’s never wanted to come to terms with. So it’s chosen to ridicule and degrade it.
Not only did they insult Black people, but, Little People and Japanese people. That was appalling. All those involved ought to be ashamed. The simple fact that the videos of today aren’t that much different with the gold teeth and all of the half dressed women. The blatant sexual content and lyrics; half of the artists out there are too young to even realize that they are confirming these stereotypes. Then they want to justify it by saying it’s just Hip Hop. We are doomed to repeat our past, because the young are not learning or being taught about it. It starts at home. Glamorizing going to jail, getting street credit or even a young girl wanting to become a video vixen because she is seeking the attention she lacked at home. The young generation don’t know their worth. All they want is fast money and will do what ever they can to get it. When will we really overcome. Mentally & Spiritually.
not to single out any particular group, but F it…the warner Brothers and the heads of some of these studios were ACTUAL people with actual ethnic backgrounds
and these people greenlit this dehumanizing drivel about other people, after having used their mediums and platforms to counter centuries old stereotypes about THEIR people….to humanize them.