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BEYONCÉ GOT A FEW DOZEN BLACK WOMEN DRESSED AS BLACK PANTHERS DURING BLACK HISTORY MONTH ON ONE OF THE MOST WATCHED PROGRAMS ON NATIONAL TV IN AN ELECTION YEAR. BITCH!!!!!!

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Beyonce Gets Political, and I Get Snatched Bald: An Overview of Themes and Motifs in the Formation Music Video

It is important that you know, I am not even a Beyonce stan like that. This must be distinctly understood, or nothing wonderful can come of the post I am going to relate. If we were not perfectly convinced of Jacob Marley’s death before the play began, then there would be nothing remarkable about him showing up at his “business” partner’s house to bitch him out in the middle of the night.

It’s also important to note that Beyonce usually doesn’t go in for this sort of thing. She’s not really the Artist/Activist type. This video is the most political she has ever gotten, and I swear it took the convergence of Black Lives Matter, Black History Month, Mardis Gras, a Nat Turner Rebellion movie, the blatant disrespect of casting a white man to play Michael Jackson, and all the planets to bring us this blessing. Many have said Formation is the phrase, “I love my blackness, and yours.” given physical form. It is all that and more.

This opening line prepares us for the realness to come

Let’s start with the fact that Formation features a voice over by Big Freedia the Queen Diva of NOLA Bounce. If you don’t know Bounce music, or you don’t know Big Freedia–and if you don’t know Bounce, you won’t know Big Freedia–let me direct you to Youtube so you can educate yourself. I recommend you start with Excuse, and Y’all Get Back Now. Big Freedia also has a very nice feature in Ru Paul’s Peanut Butter.

All throughout this video we are treated to imagery from Black queer culture, from Big Freedia’s voice-over, to dancers, to queens just slaying in the beauty shop. Again, if you are unfamiliar with the richness of Black queer culture, I direct you to the internet, because there’s just too much to explain. Start with Paris Is Burning on Netflix and go from there I guess? Like, literal books have been written and it is too big an undertaking for me alone. But Formation is an anthem for Black Femmes as much as it is for Blackness in general.

Beyonce heard all y’all talking that shit about “Why is her hair always done, but she can’t make sure her baby’s hair is done?” Uh, because Blue is a child, and that is her NATURAL HAIR, and she clearly is ROCKING IT.

In fact, this video features A WEALTH of natural hair, textured hair, weaves, perms, braids, Black hair in general.

Note: Baby hairs are small, fine, wispy hairs on your hairline that your mother would brush or gel in a specific way. If you don’t know what a baby hair is, ask a Black person, or someone with “ethnic” hair (gag).

In fact, every single person in this video is Black except for the cops.

And let’s talk about that scene

A little black boy dancing his heart out in front of a line of cops in riot gear,

and the cops put their hands up. YES YES YES YES YESYEYSYESYES!!!!!

Please note the multiple nods to Majorette culture (okay ladies, now let’s get in formation, prove to me you got some coordination, slay trick or you get eliminated) which is very southern.

Formation is very southern

From Southern Gothic imagery

to people dressed for Mardis Gras

To the scenes with people dressed in 19th century Creole garb, in their parlors, with fans.

Now let’s examine some of the lyrics:

My Daddy Alabama, Mama Louisiana

This is more than a statement about Beyonce’s roots. The vast majority of Black Americans can trace their ancestry to the South, after many of us moved to northern cities in the Great Migration. To this day, the majority of Black people in the US live in the South. I’m a New Yorker for generations back on either side, but guess what? The family reunion each year is held in Virginia, because that’s where my people come from.

I like my negro nose and Jackson Five nostrils

There has literally never been a more full-throated, stalwart, stark as hell positive affirmation of Blackness in mainstream, popular media since the original Black Is Beautiful movement in the 60′s. Maybe not since the Harlem Renaissance? I predict In a few years, people will be inverting their contours and getting plastic surgery to achieve the coveted Jackson Five nostril. Only by then they’ll rename it something more palatable to the mainstream (Read: white people).

I got hot sauce in my bag

Let me tell you something about my septuagenarian Grandparents: they literally always have a bottle of hot sauce in their car. Like many retirees, they like to travel, take cruises, do old people stuff. Never have they ever gone anywhere without a bottle of hot sauce. Never has my grandfather been in a restaurant and not requested hot sauce–even though he always has his own.

As I type this, I have a bottle of hot sauce on my night stand, next to my bed. Why? Because I put that shit on everything, and it’s just more convenient to keep it handy. I put hot sauce on pepperoni pizzas. Sometimes I sip out of the hot sauce bottle like it’s a fine wine.

I make all this money, but they’ll never take the country out me

A reminder to never forget your roots, a statement about preserving your identity under the pressures of assimilation, or commentary on respectability politics–no matter how much money you make, how famous you become, you’ll always be Black to the powers that be? Trick question. It’s all three

BLACK AS HELL

Note: Red Lobster is known to be the de-facto Black date night restaurant. I have no idea why.

All of this culminates in Beyonce, sprawled atop a NOLA police car, sinking into the flood waters of Katrina. She metaphorically drowns the police in a flood caused by the colossal abdication of responsibility by those in power at the expense of the disenfranchised. She is prostrated on the symbolic corpse of the oppressor as it is subsumed by water.

I Literally Can Not.

Other images that made me want to praise dance:

Black man riding a horse down the street. Little known fact, Black people were some of the first cowboys in the American west. For the most famous example, see the actual man The Lone Ranger is based off of.

The newspaper with the picture of Martin Luther King and front page headline that read, “More Than A Dreamer.” A reference to the #ReclaimMLK movement, which is about countering the sanitized, white-washed, commodified version of his message with the reality of his radicalism.

The fact that the portraits on the walls of the mansion are of Black women

I slay, I slay, I slay

@crissle, @melinapendulum, @chescaleigh, @jemandthediazepams

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BRUNO @ ALL OF US WHO THOUGHT WE WERE GONNA LEAVE UPTOWN FUNK IN 2015

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Leah is cancer-free, serving face and finger waves. Look at God.

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FORMATION

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NYPD assaulted pregnant woman, causing her to miscarry

Cops responding to a domestic-violence call roughed up a pregnant Staten Island woman so badly that she miscarried, a federal lawsuit claims.

Emelda Fitzroy, 27, contends she told police officers she was pregnant when they came to her house.

However, the cops “struck her in the stomach and threw her to the ground,” she claims.

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Lmao she flamed him

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DeRay McKesson, who gained prominence as an activist against police violence, has filed paperwork to run for political office, the Washington Post reported on Wednesday night.

The Baltimore Board of Elections stated that McKesson will enter this year’s Democratic primary for the mayoral election in Baltimore.

“Baltimore is at a moment,” McKesson told the Post. “I’m running to usher Baltimore into a new era where our government is accountable to its people and aggressively innovative in how it identifies and solves problems.”

McKesson, who has been part of the Black Lives Matter movement, reportedly filed less than an hour before the deadline of 9 p.m. local time. He formerly worked as an administrator in the Baltimore school system, where he was born. McKesson told the Post that he moved back to the city last March.

With current Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake (D) not seeking re-election, McKesson will enter a Democratic primary against 14 other candidates, including former Mayor Sheila Dixon, as well as Maryland state Sen. Catherine Pugh (D).

“I’ve lived through too many lofty promises and vague plans,” Mckesson said. “We’ve come to rely on a traditional model of politics only to be rewarded with disappointing results.”

Source: RawStory

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Work (Rihanna) , Hold Yuh (Gyptian) & a little of Wus Good (PND) @AqyilaD

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https://www.facebook.com/brian.crump.9

Um, if he didn’t write it (because he wasn’t up at 2am), but knew it was there, why didn’t he delete it 2 years ago?!

#Racism #RacistCop #NorthCarolina #BLACKLIVESMATTER #StayWoke

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Navajo Nation Contamination Far Worse than in Flint, Michigan

We’re all shocked, angry, and devastated by the gross neglect of the people of Flint, Michigan by the government, as we should be. Fortunately the public knows about the crisis because of dedicated activists in the area making sure the public knows about it.

But did you know that the Navajo Nation is drinking uranium? Coal run off, pollutants, and who knows what else has been allowed to poison the water in the Navajo Nation since the 1950s. This has been possible because of non-native/non-Diné attorneys assigned to the Navajo Nation, who trade away their land and rights for political favor (particularly that of Sen. John McCain, who not only throws the native people of his home state under the bus, but has taken hundreds of thousands of dollars in donations from the FLDS. TL;DR, John McCain is not a good man.)

Utah as well is to blame for the poisoning of the Navajo (and Shivwits, Apache and Hopi, who share the Four Corners region) for holding closed-door meetings and passing private votes. Less than 3% of the Navajo Nation agree with the decisions being made.

Klee Benally, of CLEAN UP THE MINES, is organizing a protest in Washington DC beginning January 26, 2016 to protest their rights being taken away.

WHAT YOU CAN DO: visit Clean Up The Mines. Sign their petition. Spread the word. Use their online form letter to contact your local representative. Express how important it is to protect our First Nations, their rights, and their lives. WE SHOULD BE APPALLED AT ANY US CITIZEN DRINKING RADIATION.

Spread the word!

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“The magic man.”

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Uzo Aduba, Dascha Polanco and Tituss Burgess Dish About Diversity: Slowly, but surely, television is becoming more diverse, portraying a whole spectrum of different genders, races, and sexualities. But how far have we come and how far do we still have to go?

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Graceful in defeat