looking from the clouds

"I play it cool I dig all jive That’s the reason I stay alive My motto As I live and learn Is dig..."

Tue, 18 Jun 2013 22:03:52 -0400

“I play it cool
I dig all jive
That’s the reason
I stay alive
My motto
As I live and learn
Is dig and be dug in return”

- Langston Hughes (“Motto”)

Bob Marley & Lauryn Hill - Turn Your Lights Down Low

Tue, 18 Jun 2013 21:51:08 -0400

Bob Marley & Lauryn Hill - Turn Your Lights Down Low

Zoot Suits, 22 June 1948. Three Jamaican Immigrants (left to...

Tue, 18 Jun 2013 21:50:03 -0400

Zoot Suits, 22 June 1948. Three Jamaican Immigrants (left to right) John Hazel, a 21-year-old boxer, Harold Wilmot, 32, and John Roberts, a 22-year-old carpenter, arriving at Tilbury onboard the ex-troopship Empire Windrush, smartly dressed in zoot suits and trilby hats.

yeahwriters: buzzfeed: What do these books have in common?...

Tue, 18 Jun 2013 15:44:51 -0400

yeahwriters:

buzzfeed:

What do these books have in common? They’re all the literary equivalent of one hit wonders.

Hmm, interesting. Reminds me of Elizabeth Gilbert’s TED Talk on “Your Elusive Creative Genius” (she wrote Eat, Pray, Love).

celestial-fox: herkingdna: Janelle just snapped right...

Mon, 17 Jun 2013 23:21:18 -0400

celestial-fox:

herkingdna:

Janelle just snapped right here

Are we a lost generation of our people?
Add us to equations but they’ll never make us equal
She who writes the movie owns the script and the sequel
So why ain’t the stealing of my rights made illegal?
They keep us underground working hard for the greedy,
But when it’s time pay they turn around and call us needy
My crown too heavy like the Queen Nefertiti
Gimme back my pyramid, I’m trying to free Kansas City

Mixing masterminds like your name Bernie Grundman
Well I’m gonna keep leading like a young Harriet Tubman
You can take my wings but I’m still goin’ fly
And even when you edit me the booty don’t lie
Yeah, keep singing and I’mma keep writing songs
I’m tired of Marvin asking me, “What’s Going On?
March to the streets ‘cuz I’m willing and I’m able
Categorize me, I defy every label

And while you’re selling dope, we’re gonna keep selling hope
We rising up now, you gotta deal you gotta cope
Will you be electric sheep?
Electric ladies, will you sleep?
Or will you preach?

New York City’s Central Park from Above

Mon, 17 Jun 2013 22:37:05 -0400

New York City’s Central Park from Above

"The truth was a mirror in the hands of God. It fell, and broke into pieces. Everybody took a piece..."

Mon, 17 Jun 2013 10:52:09 -0400

“The truth was a mirror in the hands of God.
It fell, and broke into pieces.
Everybody took a piece of it,
and they looked at it and thought they had the Truth.”

- Rumi. (via theblacksophisticate)

Photo

Sun, 16 Jun 2013 23:22:06 -0400

"You know DAMN well…"

Sun, 16 Jun 2013 23:12:47 -0400

“You know DAMN well…”

- African American proverb (via blackproverbs)

kemetically-afrolatino: look at that melanin

Sun, 16 Jun 2013 23:11:32 -0400

kemetically-afrolatino:

look at that melanin

"The father is always a Republican toward his son, and his mother’s always a democrat. ~Robert Frost"

Sun, 16 Jun 2013 11:09:35 -0400

“The father is always a Republican toward his son, and his mother’s always a democrat. ~Robert Frost”

Sun, 16 Jun 2013 11:06:37 -0400

Boys - Angola Photo by: Miguel Costa

Sat, 15 Jun 2013 21:54:58 -0400

Boys - Angola

Photo by: Miguel Costa

Photo

Sat, 15 Jun 2013 21:35:58 -0400

The Africans who Influenced early Europe. (The Africans who...

Sat, 15 Jun 2013 21:20:14 -0400

The Africans who Influenced early Europe.

(The Africans who Taught the Ancient Greeks & helped civilize Europe)

Anthony Anaxagorou (Poet/Writer) explains how Europe was greatly influenced by African Civilization and why this historical fact has been suppressed or denied by many in modern academia.

Photo

Sat, 15 Jun 2013 18:32:39 -0400

Janis Joplin at the Hotel Chelsea NYC 1970 photographed by David...

Fri, 14 Jun 2013 12:02:56 -0400

Janis Joplin at the Hotel Chelsea NYC 1970

photographed by David Gahr

Harlem Intellectuals, 1924 (from left to right) Poet Langston...

Fri, 14 Jun 2013 11:52:59 -0400

Harlem Intellectuals, 1924

(from left to right) Poet Langston Hughes, Sociologist Charles Spurgeon Johnson, Historian E. Franklin Frazier, Doctor and Author Rudolph Fisher, and Legislator Hubert Delaney.

Photo from the collection of Regina Andrews

"people take black culture pour it out rub it into their skin, and try to wear us like they know..."

Fri, 14 Jun 2013 11:38:49 -0400

“people take
black culture
pour it out
rub it into their skin,
and try to wear us
like they know what we about.
but,
honey
it’s only ever gonna be a suntan.
you,
ain’t neva gonna be black.”

- imitation as flattery is getting old, it’s called appropriation, nayyirah waheed (via sad-dress)

Fear of a Black God – Renee Cox’s Yo Mama’s Last Supper by...

Thu, 13 Jun 2013 18:53:39 -0400

Fear of a Black God – Renee Cox’s Yo Mama’s Last Supper

by Shantrelle Lewis

The racialized, Eurocentric homo-gendered iconography of Catholicism automatically coerces someone existing outside of that spectrum to naturally experience isolation and distancing. This is especially probable for a Black girl child who wondered why nowhere in the Catholic Cathedrals where she genuflected, did she see an image of God in the form of sculpture, oil painting, or stain glass window that looked anything remotely like herself.

What happens then, when that same little Black girl, with Jamaican roots and upper-middle class upbringing, interacts with those negating images? She grows up into a Black woman, or most notably, a “rude gyal” with an attitude, who would thirty-something years later unabashedly confront that iconography, in the form of a series entitled Yo Mama. Although according to Genesis 1:26, God created (wo)man in the image of Him(her)self, nowhere in Christian texts could be found a brown skin God with the face of a girl child from the Diaspora. That is not until Renee Cox decided to photograph herself nude as Jesus surrounded by 12 fully-clothed male disciples, all of them Black with the exception of Judas, who was white, and titled the 5-paneled piece Yo Mama’s Last Supper. [Continue reading.]