99 Matching Annotations
  1. Oct 2024
    1. During this period of reggae’s development, a connection grew between the music and the Rastafarian movement, which encourages the relocation of the African diaspora to Africa, deifies the Ethiopian emperor Haile Selassie I (whose precoronation name was Ras [Prince] Tafari), and endorses the sacramental use of ganja (marijuana). Rastafari (Rastafarianism) advocates equal rights and justice and draws on the mystical consciousness of kumina, an earlier Jamaican religious tradition that ritualized communication with ancestors.

      Diaspora: the jews living outside Israel (https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/diaspora)

      Interesting musical roots for Reggae... Wonder if this is still present?

      Mystical roots.

      (Note, I give this the fiction tag because I might want to look into this mystical religion for fiction writing as inspiration)

      Logical that marijuana (a drug) is correlated with the mystical concept of communicating with diseased spirits for marijuana makes you hallucinate (or perhaps it's demonic in nature?)

  2. May 2024
    1. In Afrika ist Gasinfrastruktur für 245 Milliarden Dollar geplant Vanessa Nakate ruft die westlichen Staaten auf, Afrika bei der Entwicklung erneuerbarer Energien zu unterstützen, statt Erdgasvorräte zu erschließen, Abhängigkeit und Verschmutzung zu steigern und die Klimakrise noch weiter zu verschärfen. Nakate argumentiert auch damit, dass nach dem neuesten IEA Report bereits 2025 ein Erdgasüberschuss herrschen wird. Nur 2% der Investitionen in Erneuerbare gehen im Augenblick nach Afrika https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/oct/27/rich-countries-fossil-fuels-africa-renewables-gas-climate

  3. Apr 2024
  4. Mar 2024
    1. 12:00 assassinations of many african leaders. Muammar Gaddafi, patrice lumumba of congo, sir abubakar tafawa balewa of nigeria, thomas sankara... history is repeating itself, only the actors are changing. -- 50 years ago, the empire called this "war on communism", nowadays the empire calls this "war on terror" or "war on nationalism" or "fighting for democracy" or "fighting for freedom"... and the empire will ALWAYS find useful idiots to fight for these lies, because human stupidity is the most stable resource of all, human stupidity is infinite.

      The great Alexander's empire collapsed,<br /> the empire of the ancient Romans<br /> and the empire of Napoleon fell into ruins,<br /> they were built on the power of weapons.

      But the Empire of New Rome<br /> has existed for almost 1500 years<br /> and will last for who knows how long,<br /> because it rests on the most solid foundation:<br /> the stupidity of humans.

      -- Otto von Corvin

    1. Read [[Martha S. Jones]] in Sleuthing the Card Catalog

    2. I fingered my way through where I thought I’d find entries: African American, Afro-American, Black. Nothing there. I had to then brainstorm like it was 1999, or was it 1989, 1979, or even earlier, to discover the right term. As far back as 1984, the Library of Congress, whose subject headings most research libraries in the United States utilize, admitted that it was “frustrating” to search for Black people in its catalog because two terms were simultaneously in use: “Afro-Americans” and “Blacks.”1 Neither term made it into the old Peabody Library catalog, so perhaps it and the terminology it reflected dated from an even earlier time.

      Research on keywords and their shifting meanings over time can make things difficult for the novice researcher. This example from Martha S. Jones certainly highlights this perspective even in under a century of semantic shift.

  5. Jan 2024
  6. Nov 2023
      • for: enthnography - Jarawa, African-Asian tribe, Alexandre Dereims, human origins - Jawara, anthropology - Jarawa, Andaman archipelago

      • summary

        • An extraordinary film by filmmaker Alexandre Dereims about the isolated Jawara people, believed to be one of the first peoples to migrate out of Africa and who landed in an island off the coast of India. Their way of life has not changed for tens of thousands of years but unfortunately, is being quickly eroded by the influences of modernity.
        • This film documents the life of this ancient tribe, who until recently lived in complete isolation from modernity. Dereims illegally entered the territory to film the Jawara tribe and give them a voice in the context of the Indian governments continual exploitation of the tribe for tourism and their agenda to confiscate their land for modern development.
        • The film is a realtime record of how rapidly colonialism and the transformation of takes place. We hear the voices of the Jawara as they speak of the incremental exploitation and corruption of the modern world on their people. When we see this, we realize how little has changed since the 14th century when global colonialism began.
        • Instead of preserving the Jawara to have a living reminder of our ancient past and the wonder of human evolution, we myopically exploit them. What a sad commentary on humanity.
      • new trailmark: deeper reflections

        • this trailmark is used to capture deeper reflections not captured in the initial annotation
        • this often occurs for me there next day after a night's sleep.
        • I believe it happens because the intuitive gut feeling that initially attracted me to the story is not so easily accessible. It could be complex, entangled and difficult to articulate and/or subconscious
      • deeper reflections

        • our own process of cultural construction
          • the living Jawara are so valuable ethnographically and anthropologically because they are living, breathing examples of how culture constructs us -
        • adjacency between - Jawara people - Ronald Wright's computer analogy for modern humans
          • Cumulative Cultural Evolution (CCE)
            • Deep Humanity
          • adjacency statement
            • The comparison between the cultural differences between the Jawara people and we modernly enculturated humans is striking. Perhaps not as striking as feral children but still striking. It shows us how easily we ourselves could have such a different experience of life and Worldview if we were born into the Jawara tribe today.
            • As Ronald Wright noted, there is likely no difference between the human mental capacity of our 50,000 year old ancestors and ourselves
            • The significance of their existence is living proof of CCE, a profound Deep Humanity teaching about how we humans construct the meaningverse and symbolosphere so critical to intertwingled individual and collective experience of reality
            • The Jawara and other isolated ingenious progress should be treated with the greatest respect and esteem for being the living examples of our cultural evolution that teaches us the deepest lessons of what we are as humans and how culture profoundly shapes us
            • At a minimum, all the tourists the the Indian government have allowed to visit them, as well as the tourist operators should have mandatory Deep Humanity training before being allowed any contact with them in order to preserve their dignity
            • striping away all the amenities of modern life, we can see how happy they Jawara people are with so little
            • this is a lesson on recognising the wonder of simply being alive, an invaluable Deep. Humanity lesson
      • for: future cities - Africa, CommuniTgrow, urban planning - Africa, African cities, futures - African cities, 2 Billion Strong, Gita Govin, Richard Rubin, Alistair Rendall

      • title:

        • 2 Billion Strong
          • A Regenerative Solution to Building Sustainable African Cities
      • author
        • Gita Govin
        • Richard Rubin
        • Alistair Rendall
      • date: 2012
      • summary
        • This book outlines the vision from sustainable architectural firm CommuniTGrow for a template for a future sustainable African city. The first project launching in 2024 is the Milkwood Development in Cape Town:
  7. Sep 2023
  8. Jul 2023
  9. Jun 2023
    1. Bei der Frühjahrstagung der Weltbank und des internationalen Währungsfonds ist die Klimakrise ein zentrales Thema. Die Reformvorschläge vor allem für die Weltbank gehen voraussichtlich nicht weit genug, um ärmeren Ländern einen wirksamen Kampf gegen die globale Erhitzung zu erlauben. https://taz.de/IWF-und-Weltbank-auf-Fruehjahrstagung/!5924846/

    1. Shepherd’s music also contain American jazz elements, including as bebop linesin his improvisations and his approach to harmonic progressions reminiscent of Keith Jarrett’s.His experiments with irregular meter connect with West African music practices. Theseattributes preclude a simple reading of the artists’ work ‘South African’ in a singular sense,and rather reminds us that the notion of a ‘South African’ jazz is in a continuing dialogue othermusic practices – whether this is with American jazz (which has historically powerfullyinformed South African jazz and continues to do so) or musics from other places or genres
    1. Only Stravinsky and Milhaud were able to use these new resources in such a way as to give rise to great works of art. Stravinsky concentrated on the rhythmic possibilities of the music, whereas Milhaud was attracted more to its "inner voice," especially the expressive potential of its instrumenta-tion, in particular the eloquent use of percussion. Excerpts from the above-mentioned chapter of his Etudes help us to follow the genesis of La creation du monde: Their primitive African herita~e still remains deeply anchored in the souls of Amencan Negroes, and thereto lies the source of their formidable sense of rhythm as well as their profoundly moving gift for a kind of melody that only people who have been long oppressed know how to utter. The first examples of Negro music were spirituals, religious songs sung by slaves and based on popular tradition. These songs have the same sort of melodies as are found in, for example, W. C. Handy's "Saint-Louis Blues" .... All have the same ten-derness, sadness, and profession of faith as do songs like "Go Down Moses," in which the slaves compared their fate to that of the Jews in bondage in Egypt and cried out to Moses to save them. Such reflections by Milhaud already indicate that his use of jazz ele-ments in La creation du monde was anything but superficial. But let us continue to read what he says about his choice of instruments: In addition to their dance music, with its unique improvisational quality, the Blacks also adapt jazz to theatrical spectacle in a most felicitous manner. ... In Liz a, an operetta by Mr. Maceo Pinkard, the orchestra consists of a flute, a clarinet, two trumpets, a trombone, an assortment of percussion instruments all handled by one player, a piano, a string quartet in which the viola is re-placed by a saxophone, and a double bass .... Moreover, Black jazz is far removed from the slick sophistication of so much contemporary American dance music. It never loses its primitive African character; the intensity and repetitiousness of the rhythms and melodies produce a tragic, desperate ef-fect. And it is this capacity to arouse deep emotions in its listeners that puts it in the same category as the greatest works of art.
  10. docdrop.org docdrop.org
    1. Although, mbaqanga became exceptionally popular both locally and internationally, it willnot be a key focus of the analysis presented in this dissertation as, like tsaba tsaba, its musicaltraits reveal it as being more of a hybrid, sub-genre of the original styles of South Africanjazz: marabi, African Jazz and kwela.
  11. May 2023
    1. Circles and Time: A Theory of Structural Organization of Rhythm in African Music

      cannot mark up text in frames - hence the markup on the referencing toc page

  12. Mar 2023
  13. Feb 2022
    1. a recitation of their names will be accompanied by a traditional libation, or pouring out of water, in accordance with West African traditions for honoring the deceased. "The ritual of libation holds the belief that saying people's names keeps them alive. It makes them free. It carries their personhood beyond their physical time on this earth," says event organizer Jasmine Blanks Jones, a postdoctoral fellow in the Program in Racism, Immigration, and Citizenship who is also part of Inheritance Baltimore, an interdisciplinary program for humanities education, research, and community engagement in Baltimore.

      The West African tradition of libation, or pour out of water, honors the deceased and holds the belief that saying people's names aloud keeps them alive.

  14. Jan 2022
  15. Oct 2021
    1. And at the end of the day, Gates is not accountable to governments or to communities. He was not elected, and there is no mechanism for him to be recalled, challenged, or held responsible for faulty policies. He could suddenly decide that he was no longer interested in supporting agriculture in Africa. In that case, the new food system Gates is importing to the African continent would collapse. Political and economic systems are being drastically altered, all at the whim of one person, one foundation.In fact, the differences between this situation — powerful individuals and institutions deciding to mess with the social, political, and economic realities of countries — and the earlier form of colonialism are thin. It’s still advertised as “good intent” and the desire to “civilize” an “uncivilized” people. The only difference is that neocolonialism is quieter and more covert. By design, it provokes less outrage. But the essential power structures remain the same.

      Concentrating power to one individual is dangerous. Large portions of the food security of African nations should not be so vulnerable to corporatism.

    1. Coronavirus Pandemic Data Explorer. (n.d.). Our World in Data. Retrieved March 3, 2021, from https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus-data-explorer

      is:webpage lang:en COVID-19 graph case death Germany Sweden UK Afghanistan Africa Albania Algeria Andorra Angola Anguilla Antigua Barbuda Argentina Armenia Asia Australia Austria Azerbaijan Bahamas Bahrain Bangladesh Barbados Belarus Belgium Belize Benin Bermuda Bhutan Bolivia Bosnia Herzegovina Botswana Brazil Bulgaria Burkina Faso Burundi Cambodia Cameroon Canada Cape Verde Cayman Islands Central African Republic Chad Chile China Colombia Comoros Congo Costa Rica Cote d'ivoire Croatia Cuba Cyprus Czechia Democratic Republic of Congo Denmark Djobouti Dominica Dominician Republic Ecuador Egypt El Salvador Equatorial Guinea Eritrea Estonia Eswatini Ethiopia Europe Europian Union Faeroe Islands Falkland Islands Fiji Finland France Gabon Gambia Georgia Ghana Gibraltar Greece Greenland Grenada Guatemala Guernsey Guinea Guinea-Bissau Guyana Haiti Honduras Hong Kong Hungary Iceland India Indonesia Iran Iraq Ireland Isle of Man Israel Italy Jamaica Japan Jersey Jordan Kazakhstan Kenya Kosovo Kuwait Kyrgyzstan Laos Latvia Lebanon Lesotho Liberia Libya Liechtenstein Lithuania Luxembourg Macao Madagascar Malawi Malaysia Maldives Mali Malta Mashall Islands Mauritania Mauritius Mexico Micronesia Moldova Monaco Mongolia Montenegro Morocco Mozambique Myanmar Namibia Nepal Netherlands New Zealand Nicaragua Niger Nigeria North America North Macedonia Northern Cyprus Norway Oceania Oman Pakistan Palestine Panama Papua New Guinea Paraguay Peru Philipines Poland Portugal Qatar Romania Russia Rwanda Saint Helena Saint Kitts and Nevis Saint Lucia Saint Vincent Grenadines Samoa San Marino Sao Tome and Principe Saudi Arabia Senegal Serbia Seychelles Sierra Leone Singapore Slovakia Slovenia Solomon Islands Somalia South Africa South America South Korea South Sudan Spain Sri Lanka Sudan Suriname Switzerland Syria Taiwan Tajikistan Tanzania Thailand Timor Togo Trinidad Tobago Tunisia Turkey Turks and Caicos Islands Uganda Ukraine United Arab Emirates USA Uruguay Uzbekistan Vanuatu Vatican Venezuela Vietnam World Yemen Zambia Zimbabwe test vaccine chart map table data case fatality rate mortality

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  16. Aug 2021
    1. What’s up with African American literacy rates? David L. Horne, PH.D. | 10/3/2013, midnight

      In the world of Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and other quick strike information processes, why is there a definite lack of evidence of a steady upward progression of reading and writing skills among African American contributors?

      Post secondary education statistics continue to demonstrate that far too many African American students who finish high school do so as functional illiterates—that is, they cannot read and write at a basic level requisite for functional participation in modern life. In California, both the California State University system and the University of California system still annually allow (and mainly require) a significant proportion of incoming freshmen to register for developmental English courses—sometimes called “dumbbell” English— in order to assist the students in preparing to take regular-level freshmen college basic education courses. These developmental courses generally do not count toward a student’s graduation but must still be paid for through regular tuition. Both university systems realize this is not a very efficient use of taxpayer dollars, however, the literacy levels of the students coming to them out of high school require this kind of intervention. As of 2009, the Department of Education reported that literacy rates for more than 50 percent of African American children in the fourth grade nationwide was below the basic skills level and far below average; and by the ninth grade nationwide, the situation had gotten worse, with the rate dropping below 44 percent. Yes, there is still an unemployment crisis in the nation’s Black communities, but what is feeding and ensuring the longevity of that crisis is the ballooning illiteracy rate among Black youth and adults. What happened to that post-antebellum slavery zeal that put educational attainment, including reading and writing skills, as the sustained priority for advancement in American society? How did we drop that ball? These are bedeviling questions especially with Sept. 24 labeled National Punctuation Day, and it was accompanied by a broad national reflection on the lack of proper writing skills among modern American youth. Officially, NPD, “is a celebration of the lowly comma, correctly used quotation marks, and other proper uses of periods, semicolons, and the ever-mysterious ellipsis.” Giving even a casual glance at regular comments typed into Twitter, Instagram and on Facebook pages, American youth are in deep need, accompanied by deepening denial, of literacy help. And, citing the old chestnut, “when White folks sneeze, Black folks catch the flu,” where there is this dire a problem among America’s youth in general, African American youth are staring at death’s door regarding functional literacy in America. What can be done about it, if anything? Where there is still parenting going on, we need to encourage the love of reading (not just urge our youth to read so-called great books), and we need to encourage African American youth to actually write sentences in letters, notes, homework assignments, etc. We might even spend a little time checking—proof-reading—their material ourselves. African Americans simply cannot afford this self-imposed hump onto already overloaded backs. It’s one thing to still have to fight everyday acts of random racism in our lives. That’s the nature of the beast we deal with. It is another thing altogether though, to handicap ourselves. Suicide has never been our favorite or most popular response to oppression, but we have to call this literacy problem what it is—cultural and political suicide. C’mon ya’ll. Let’s get with it. Forward not backwards. Professor David L. Horne is founder and executive director of PAPPEI, the Pan African Public Policy and Ethical Institute, which is a new 501(c)(3) pending community-based organization or non-governmental organization (NGO). It is the stepparent organization for the California Black Think Tank which still operates and which meets every fourth Friday.

      DISCLAIMER: The beliefs and viewpoints expressed in opinion pieces, letters to the editor, by columnists and/or contributing writers are not necessarily those of OurWeekly.

      Source: http://ourweekly.com/news/2013/oct/03/whats-african-american-literacy-rates/

      This article discusses an issue that has dogged that African American community for centuries.

  17. Jul 2021
    1. Billy: And jazz helped me discover that because it's like a chain. African American people help each other out through their music, that helped other people out, that helped me out. Eventually I took my friend out of a heroin addiction because of that, because of the music. And I started crying when he told me. He was like, "Dude, I just wanted to thank you because you took me out of my heroin addiction." I actually did something. So that music was really important for me. It gave me an identity.Anita: So, you were attracted to African American blues and jazz?Billy: Yeah, because my brother was listening to it and so I'm like, "Dude, what are you listening to? This is weird We usually listen to rock." He's like, "Man, this is called blues, bro. This is a really cool music, and it has to do with African American people back in the day and it tells the story of America."Billy: So, I just looked into it and I became obsessed with it. I couldn't stop. Once I discovered Louis Armstrong, that was just it. I could not stop playing jazz and so yeah, in North Carolina, I was just feeling kinda crappy and that music came at the perfect time.

      Time in the US, Pastimes, Music; Feelings, Despair, Hope

    2. Anita: That's pretty cool.Billy: Yeah, I'm sorry for doing that just, I have to burst out and sing.Anita: Yeah, no that was great. That was fantastic. So, as you can tell, Billy is a musician.Billy: I love music, I love to sing. It's just... it's like a form of therapy for me. Yeah. It really is.Anita: Do you sing Mexican stuff or just...?Billy: You know what, it's embarrassing because a lot of people tell me, "Oh, sing this Jose, Jose song or Mexican traditional songs,” and I don't know them and so it's like, "Bro, I'm sorry. I don't know it." I only play grandpa music.Anita: But it's grandpa American music?Billy: It's American music history and if it wasn't for that there wouldn't be a lot of genres today. I really like that old stuff, for sure.Anita: And how did you get exposed to that old stuff?Billy: So, that was in North Carolina. I was actually going through a really big depression. I didn't know what to do anymore, being illegal in the U.S, not being able to find jobs, not being able to go into college was difficult for me so I was falling into a depression. And then I came across this guy called Robert Johnson. Robert Johnson is the king of the Delta blues. He's one of the most important American musicians, ever.Billy: So, I started listening to his music and just the pain and the story of him uplifted me. He was letting me know, "You know what, you're healthy. You're young. Look at these African American people back in the day, what they went through and compared to what you're going through? Don't be a sissy and don't complain."Billy: So that music just uplifted me, and it gave me energy and it let me know, "Bro, you don't have to just be this kid with”—because I had a lot of anxiety—"This kid with anxiety. You can play music and make people feel good." And so that helped me out a lot and eventually that led me to, and this is going to sound weird but, it led me to discover the purpose of what a human is because, listen to this, when you play music, you're helping other people out, right? And you're really contributing to the change that you want to live in the future.Billy: And I was, like, "Dude, what's the purpose of a human being? Why are we here?" And it's simply to help others. That's all it is. It is to contribute to the change you want to live in and it's very fulfilling when you help somebody. And so that let me know, "Dude, you're here to help others and, yeah, just do it."

      Time in the US, Pastimes, Music, Playing, Favorite; States, North Carolina

  18. Jun 2021
  19. Mar 2021
  20. Feb 2021
  21. Jan 2021
  22. Oct 2020
    1. Elizabeth Freeman (Mum Bett), the first enslaved African American to sue for her freedom in the courts based on the law of the 1780 constitution of the state of Massachusetts, which held that "all men are born free and equal." The Jury agreed and in 1781 she won her freedom. Her lawyer had been Theodore Sedgwick.
    1. However, I do feel that the way that he speaks is particu-larly African American. Th is refers more to his rhetoric, intona-tion, and style. However, his speech or the extent to which he plays up his Black manner of speaking varies depending on his setting.

      what is a "black manner" of speaking? is the same as the statement above it that he speaks African American? does this imply the language or just a form of speaking like he can communicate and he knows what African Americans want?

      The website below explains that speaking African American is a unique vocabulary with different accents and grammar

  23. Jul 2020
    1. African Head Charge Songs of Praise + In Pursuit of Shashamane Land + Vision of a Psychedelic Africa + Voodoo of the Godsent + Churchical Chant of the Iyabinghi (On-U Sound)Following the Early Years reissues a few years back, these are a second tranche of releases exploring the back catalogue of African Head Charge, the band whose nexus was - and is - British-Jamaican percussionist supremo Bonjo Iyabinghi Noah and post-punk dub-meister Adrian Sherwood, with a revolving cast of On-U sorts popping in and out. These albums range over the band’s career since 1990: Songs of Praise from 1990, In Pursuit of Shashamane Land from 1993, Vision of a Psychedelic Africa from 2005, and Voodoo of the Godsent from 2011, while Churchical Chant of the Iyabinghi is a lovingly rendered collection of outtakes and dubs based on the first two of those albums. Songs of Praise may be the best-loved oAfrican Head Charge album, but perhaps this is because it hit a historical sweet spot when ravers needed something exactly like it to come down to after an ecstatic night out. That’s my story anyway. Like all the others, it comes as a two record set with the second disc devoted to previously unheard cuts, as well as a 12” x 24” insert containing an interview with Noah. Full of chants and explicit spirituality, it has an earthy quality, the whole built around endless pattering bongos as much as dub reggae. You can get lost in it and many of us frequently did. The follow-up, In Pursuit of Shashamane Land takes that blueprint and produces it up. Alongside the Jah vibes, there’s a conscious sense of connectivity with the newly rising electronic dance scene (check the groove on the sensibly titled “No, Don’t Follow Fashion”). After that, while Noah continued to release Head Charge albums here and there, and moved to Ghana (where he is to this day), the On-U Sound connection broke down (although he and Sherwood remained close). When they reconvened for Vision of a Psychedelic Africa, they hauled in the whole of Tackhead (Skip McDonald, Doug Wimbish and Keith LeBlanc), as lethal a rhythm section as anyone could ask for. The result, while absolutely Head Charged, has an added musicality to it, as well as a cleaner forward-thrusting pulse and playful instrumentation (check the twangy guitar on “Surfari”). Voodoo of the Godsent - which has Adamski on synths and also features original Aswad bassist George Oban – is also a shinier outing (“Stoned Age Man” has an almost Pink Floyd feel), with a tendency towards actual songs. But let’s not give the wrong impression, it’s still spaced out, oddball music, that smells strongly of ganja overload in the best way.
  24. Jun 2020
  25. May 2020
  26. Apr 2020
  27. Oct 2019
    1. "The Fifteenth Amendment stated that people could not be denied the right to vote based on “race, color, or previous condition of servitude.” This construction allowed states to continue to decide the qualifications of voters as long as those qualifications were ostensibly race-neutral. Thus, while states could not deny African American men the right to vote on the basis of race, they could deny it to women on the basis of sex or to people who could not prove they were literate." Before the 15th amendment women and colored men and women were not allowed to vote but the 15th amendment allowed these privileges and prevented discrimination amongst the rights of someone based on their race and gender and states cannot deny these rights to the people because it is a constitutional law.

  28. Aug 2019
    1. Hakima Abbas

      Hakima is an African feminist who has been active in social movements for two decades. Trained in international affairs, her work as a policy analyst, popular educator, advocate and strategist has focused on strengthening and supporting movements for transformation.

      Source: https://www.awid.org/staff

  29. May 2019
  30. Sep 2018
    1. man

      Paine is using "man" to refer to all of humanity. It is important to remember, however, that women were excluded from formal participation in politics as citizens. They could not vote. Neither could most African-Americans and Native Americans.

    2. Paine is using "man" to refer to all of humanity. It is important to remember, however, that women were excluded from formal participation in politics as citizens. They could not vote. Neither could most African-Americans and Native Americans.

  31. Jun 2017
  32. May 2017
  33. Apr 2017
    1. qualified voters

      "Qualified voters" meant almost exclusively white men. As the former colonies began the process of writing state constitutions, debates over who should be included as a "qualified voter" often divided conventions. Vermont and Pennsylvania had two of the most liberal constitutions. Vermont permitted all men, regardless of color, to vote, while Pennsylvania permitted all white men to vote regardless of income. Other states, like Maryland, had much more restrictive qualifications for voting and required that free white men also hold property.

    1. which hath stirred up the In- dians and Negroes to destroy us

      The charge that the British Crown had induced Native Americans to attack colonists was later repeated in the Declaration of Independence.

  34. Mar 2017
  35. Feb 2017
  36. Apr 2016
    1. Mexico’s 2015 population survey, released Dec. 8, counted 1.38 million people of African heritage, representing 1.2% of the country’s population (link in Spanish.) Most live in three coastal states, including Guerrero, where they account for nearly 7% of the population, and overall they are poorer and less educated than the national average, Mexico’s census bureau (INEGI by its acronym in Spanish) has found.

      Mexico has started counting its Mexican population.

  37. Nov 2015
    1. Mbembe points out that often thefunction of awarding infrastructural projects has far more to do with gaining access to governmentcontracts and rewarding patron-client networks than it has to do with their technical function.This is why roads disappear, factories are built but never operated, and bridges go to nowhere.

      Sounds like scheming for political gains.. This is easy to see in the work place or society when one befriends another or joins a certain group for political/hierarchal benefits rather than for the pure purpose of the action. African societies cannot be the only ones who follow these functional implementations of these infrastructural projects.

  38. Sep 2015
    1. The New England climate and soil made large-scale plantation agriculture impractical, so the system of large landholders using masses of slaves or indentured servants to grow labor-intensive crops never took hold.

      these slaves were treated poorly

  39. Jul 2015
    1. I first witnessed this power out on the Yard, that communal green space in the center of the campus where the students gathered and I saw everything I knew of my black self multiplied out into seemingly endless variations. There were the scions of Nigerian aristocrats in their business suits giving dap to bald-headed Qs in purple windbreakers and tan Timbs. There were the high-yellow progeny of A.M.E. preachers debating the clerics of Ausar-Set. There were California girls turned Muslim, born anew, in hijab and long skirt. There were Ponzi schemers and Christian cultists, Tabernacle fanatics and mathematical geniuses. It was like listening to a hundred different renditions of “Redemption Song,” each in a different color and key. And overlaying all of this was the history of Howard itself. I knew that I was literally walking in the footsteps of all the Toni Morrisons and Zora Neale Hurstons, of all the Sterling Browns and Kenneth Clarks, who’d come before.

      I love the details, the pride, the power of this description!

    2. or rather the progress of those Americans who believe that they are white,

      This is such a powerful articulation--borrowed from Baldwin as the epigraph makes clear--of the social construct of whiteness.

    3. the gap between her world and the world for which I had been summoned to speak.

      A riff on the title of TNC's forthcoming book, itself a a riff on WEB Du Bois's famous description of black experience in The Souls of Black Folk (1903). As he opens that book in a chapter entitled "Of Our Spiritual Strivings":

      BETWEEN me and the other world there is ever an unasked question: unasked by some through feelings of delicacy; by others through the difficulty of rightly framing it. All, nevertheless, flutter round it.

    4. My father was so very afraid. I felt it in the sting of his black leather belt, which he applied with more anxiety than anger, my father who beat me as if someone might steal me away, because that is exactly what was happening all around us.

      This reminds me of the incident during the Baltimore Uprising in April where Toya Graham beats her son. Stacey Patton wrote about this:

      The kind of violent discipline Graham unleashed on her son did not originate with her, or with my adoptive mother who publicly beat me when I was a child, or with the legions of black parents who equate pain with protection and love. The beatings originated with white supremacy, a history of cultural and physical violence that devalues black life at every turn. From slavery through Jim Crow, from the school-to-prison pipeline, the innocence and protection of black children has always been a dream deferred. http://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2015/04/29/why-is-america-celebrating-the-beating-of-a-black-child/

    5. JUL 4, 2015

      Hard not to relate this piece to another great statement of African American experience: Frederick Douglass's 1841 speech “What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?”

      Image Description

  40. Feb 2015
    1. Do you remember the day, baby, you drove me from your door?

      A line from Elvie Thomas's "Motherless Child Blues":

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vmj23UrVF80

      The trope of the motherless child is a popular one in African American art. Of course the destruction of families was a major consequence of the slave trade and the institution of slavery.