This is one of the more disturbing videos I’ve ever seen, for meta reasons. How can just watching a video make you feel like a racist? Why does just knowing the racist depictions that play off images like this one somehow feel self-incriminating? This one fucked me up.
Via Denver Egotist.
Turns out that spaceships stand in for slave ships:
Echoes of Sun Ra and NOI [Nation of Islam] are audible in the music of George Clinton, who must have had both in mind when he transformed Parliament from a doo-wop group into a mother-ship-worshipping acid-funk congregation in the 1970s. Clinton’s mother ship, of course, was likelier to drop megatons of booty and cocaine than warheads, but hedonism wasn’t the only goal. In the opening bars of “Mother Ship Connection,” Clinton announces, “We have returned to claim the pyramids”—a nod to paleocontact theories, which hypothesize that ancient astronauts shared technological secrets with North Africans. Perceptible in this ripple of the Afronaut impulse is the yearning for and fantastical reclamation of an ennobling African history: A trip to space doubles as a return to roots.
The Afronaut universe, of course, comprises more performers than those mentioned here and extends beyond music, from the hero of Brother From Another Planet to Astronaut Jones, Tracy Morgan’s ridiculous SNL creation. Where hip-hop is concerned, though, the first Afronaut to speak of is Afrika Bambaataa. A gang leader turned community activist and DJ, Bambaataa spun Parliament-Funkadelic records alongside reggae, techno, and rock vinyl and wore elaborate African-Samurai-Cherokee-cyborg costumes doubtless inspired by the Arkestra. In the burnt-out South Bronx of the early ’80s, Bambaataa’s Afronaut mythology—championing Zulu valor and an interstellar utopianism—offered both racial pride and an escapist-hatch out of the bleak, inner-city quotidian.
The article failed to mention my personal favorite megaton of booty: Galaxy.
A grim, amazing bit of reporting, about a life that’s almost too hard to imagine:
Samuel Mluge steps outside his office and scans the sidewalk. His pale blue eyes dart back and forth, back and forth, trying to focus. The sun used to be his main enemy, but now he has others. Mr. Mluge is an albino, and in Tanzania now there is a price for his pinkish skin. “I feel like I am being hunted,” he said.
Discrimination against albinos is a serious problem throughout sub-Saharan Africa, but recently in Tanzania it has taken a wicked twist: at least 19 albinos, including children, have been killed and mutilated in the past year, victims of what Tanzanian officials say is a growing criminal trade in albino body parts.
Many people in Tanzania — and across Africa, for that matter — believe albinos have magical powers. They stand out, often the lone white face in a black crowd, a result of a genetic condition that impairs normal skin pigmentation and strikes about 1 in 3,000 people here. Tanzanian officials say witch doctors are now marketing albino skin, bones and hair as ingredients in potions that are promised to make people rich.
Image: Guillaume Bonn/NYT
…according to Dr Gene Ray, Cubic and Wisest Human. His theory has something to do with cubic time, “gays”, “jews”, “blacks”, and “God”. When crazy people get access to the internet, this is what happens.
Thanks to Carl Burton who’s blowing my mind with his incredible backlog of amazing shit
From an interesting/sad/slightly disturbing photo essay about “Ms. Ruth,” a 58 year old lady whose entire life consists of sewing Klan robes and hoods 7 days a week, caring for her quadriplegic daughter, and taking care of her house pets. Talk about a shadow of a life!
(Via Mightygodking)
Robert Downey Jr continues to ruin his life and the lives of others by playing a white man dressed as a black man in Ben Stiller’s new comedy, Tropic Thunder, which is about a film crew shooting the most expensive Vietnam movie ever.
Thanks to DG superfriend Poofy, for the comparison hilarity
Perhaps the team here at DG are late on this, perhaps not, but what appears to be an ongoing list over at stuff white people like is genius and embarrassingly accurate.
Is it wrong that an Obama/John Edwards ticket makes us think of Tubbs and Crockett?
Obama’s first-place finish in Iowa and a second-place finish in New Hampshire got us thinking. And talking. Even before Iowa, I was discussing the President Obama possibility with DG super-friend Julie, and we started running down the list of potential vice-presidential running mates. And from there it was a short step to the realization that they all look a lot like some of our favoritest black-guy white-guy buddy movies. And Julie, who knows a little something something about these movies, compiled the following list.
Obama/Edwards: Miami Vice (Jamie Foxx/Colin Farrell)
Edwards is a pretty boy with great hair who teams up with Obama’s street-smart black man to get rough on crime in no-wrinkle suits. But politically Edwards would be worse than casting Colin Farrell in Don Johnson’s role.
So earlier, Jim posted an introduction to a series of posts we’ve planning, titled the Year in Racism. The starting point was Jim’s observation that the black rage of Kara Walker and Clarence Thomas—on display in a recent museum show and book, respectively—come from similar places.
The themes they offer have huge overlaps. Both Thomas and Walker direct their anger at the whites that committed the original sin of slavery and their paternalistic, patronizing, politically-correct descendants. But Thomas and Walker are at their most unsparing and strident when addressing the role that blacks play in their own plights. They point out that black Americans have signed away some of their dignity by accepting guilt-stained handouts, while playing out their own self-hate in violence against fellow blacks. Racism isn’t a one-way street. It’s a morass that shows everyone involved in the worst possible light.
Given those similarities, we offer you, DG reader, a sample of Walker’s art, annotated with quotes from Thomas’s autobiography.