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Black Girl, White School: Thriving, Surviving and No, You Can't Touch My Hair

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Olivia V.G. Clarke

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“That morning, like every morning, the first decision he made regarded his Blackness. His skin was a deep, constant brown. In public, when people could actually see him, it was impossible to get his Blackness down to anywhere near a 1.5. If he wore a tie, wing-tipped shoes, smiled constantly, used his indoor voice, and kept his hands strapped and calm at his sides, he could get his Blackness as low as 4.0.”

African AmericansBlacksBlacknessBlack Men
Book:Friday Black
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“I wasn’t allowed to be and stay what I was,” says Paul D. So, what is the being of blackness? Ultimately, (anti)blackness appears to be a matrix: a mold, a womb, a binding substance, a network of intersections, functioning as an encoder or decoder. It is an essential enabling condition for something of, but distinguishable from, its source—and therefore, it performs a kind of natality, performing a generative function rather than serving as an identity. If (anti)blackness is a matrix, then the normative conception of “the human” and the entire set of arrangements Sweet Home allegorizes have their source in abject blackness. In the process of distinguishing itself from blackness, normative humanity nevertheless bears the shadowy traces of blackness’s abject generativity. As “the defined” rather than the “definers,” the enslaved’s abjection places blackness under the sign of the feminine, the object, matter, and the animal regardless of sex.”

Blackness
Book:Becoming Human: Matter and Meaning in an Antiblack World
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“When I rebelled, even here in the ‘enlightened’ twenty-first century, I was lumbered with with the feeling that I was rebelling on the behalf on an entire people, and when I refrained from rebelling it was to challenge the opinion that I was proof of a black problem; acts of resistance considered fair game when enacted by white people assume a dangerous radical hue in the eyes of Western society when carried out by blacks. In essence, I wasn’t comfortable enough in my own skin in this Antifa stuff, partly because I felt the colour of that skin carried its own surplus surreality in the surroundings i grew up in; I could be wearing an Oxford shirt and chinos and driving a Toyota Prius, and still be enough of an outsider.”

ResistanceBlacknessAfropean
Author:Johny Pitts
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“Dear Black Man (Poem) ***** I love you because you make me feel things that I have never felt before. You erase my pain and you bring me so much gain. You embrace me and hide me in your well built African and manly body. You make me want to never look at other bodies. I love how you cut your hair. I love to feel your love in the air. The texture of your hair, so beautiful, so artistic. Your beautiful smile, so amazing; it reminds me of hiding places. You walk like you own the world; at least, I assure you that you own mine and the rest of my words. Black Man, you are beautiful. Your skin tone is so dark, it makes me want to bark. Please allow me to run my hands on the hills of that skin. You are handsome, my amazing king. The way you speak your language. The way you speak your Xhosa. Your Hausa. Your Zulu. Your Kituba. Your Tswana. Your Lingala. Your Venda. Your Gadomba. Your Tsonga. Your Shona. Your Bateke. Your Ga. Your Sotho. Your Igbo. Your eyes. Black Man, your eyes tell me a story never heard before. You teach me; from your wisdom, I learn. From your strength, I know 'I can'. Black Man, they enslaved you because they found you intimidating. But today, they look for you to be their mate in dating. You look at my stretchmarks with an eye of an artist. You appreciate my big behind with no judgement. You kiss my big lips with love. And in my big thighs, you hide. You love me when I have no hair. You love me when I have fake hair. Black Man, I thought of you and I wrote to you. All hail the Black king! From your Black Woman, (with African curves) .”

QuotesWriterBlacknessAfricanPoems By Mitta XinindluRoots And OriginsBlack Men And Black PeopleCelebration Of AfricaHistory Telling
Author:Mitta Xinindlu
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“Blackness doesn’t make you less, but it does frame your life. When you walk into a room, so does race. Frankly, it shows up before you do. It colors every conversation, shapes how you’re viewed, determines whether you’re even heard. From the day you get here, Blackness hangs over everything, from comments about your hair (‘Can I touch it?’) to mentions that certain Black people are ‘smart’ (’cause it’s assumed we’re idiots). The message comes through loud and clear: You’re not one of us, you’re less.”

RaceBlackness
Book:Coming Home
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“And the Creator said: With this Afro hair, I crown you as kings and queens. The natural heirs of the Earth. I crown you so that you never need to place a material crown upon your head as proof of your royalty, one wich loses value with time. Your Afro crown remains valuable through all lifetimes. I set you apart from the rest. I keep you covered in a natural shade. I give you hair that retains water, so you remain cool under the Sun. I crown you with natural antennas, connecting you to the skies above. I give you Afro Hair to set you as trees that never decay. Trees that stand tall, firm, and strong through all seasons. I give you this Afro hair as a mark that you're my chosen people.”

Mitta XinindluBlacknessAfricanKemetBlack SkinAfro HairHeritage And CultureKemetic Lifestyle
Author:Mitta Xinindlu
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“Racist insults leave you feeling dirty because, even at five years old, we already know on some level that, in this society at least, we are indeed lesser citizens with all the baggage of racialised history following us ghost-like about our days. We are conquered people living in the conquerors’ land, and as such we are people without honour. At five years old we are already conscious of the offence caused by our black body turning up in the wrong space, and have begun to internalise the negative ideas about blackness so present in the culture.”

HistoryRacismBlackness
Book:Natives: Race and Class in the Ruins of Empire
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