Welcome to my blog. I examine Black history and the Black experience through discoveries in literature, politics, philosophy, art, food and more. It's a great adventure with lots of inspiration and a few surprises along the way!
I'm glad that you have come to visit. Hope you have a nice stay!
All in Black culture
In its negative form, Black rage is distorted so that oppressed Black people are viewed as uncontrollable, thus delegitimizing and undercutting the hundreds of years of slavery, racism and oppression experienced by Black people in America. However, the White privilege viewpoint shows a complete failure to acknowledge Black rage as coming from systematic white racism and oppression.
A part of the Negritude movement of the 1930s and 1940s, Franz Fanon (a citizen of Martinique) saw the attack on and diminishing of Blackness as derived from colonialism and the dehumanization of the Black race.
The narrators served as witnesses to the pain and struggle of slaves in the antebellum south of America, but they also bore witness to the aspirations, feelings, and victories of the Black American slave.
Yet many people do not understand or believe that the battle even exists; they see and criticize only the individual “bad actor” (or racist) rather than view the large number of “bad actors” as part of what Angela Davis wisely identifies as “the apparatus” of racism. They don’t have the “crisis situation” that forces them to choose a side.
Dr. Woodson was deeply committed to developing Black history as a scholarly subject to be analyzed and studied as well as a subject taught both in schools and at home.
A rarely discussed part of the African American experience is the African Americans who ventured beyond America’s borders. Many African Americans left the United States and took up residence in other countries; some for extended stays, others permanently.
Exploration is evolving to adopt new meaning and significance. In the past, exploration focused on scaling mountains, trekking across vast deserts, sailing to far away places, searching through underground cave systems or other “adventurous” activities. But exploration today goes far beyond these activities as illustrated by the literary-explorer who takes the reader into a realm presented by the writer and experienced by the reader.
They were exploring a “new” way of life—for both Black and White people--during the Jim Crow era in the American south. They were exploring their vision of a “new” society where equality, justice, and fairness would reign supreme—a “New World” in which racism and white superiority would not set the agenda.
Fables contain educational value that is often overlooked and underappreciated in our high-tech, modern world. Yet their value is matchless. Although some were written centuries (if not millennia) ago, the lessons on morality endure.
