#Also if they wanted a black egyptian queen from egypt who- in the most non revisionist way possible - was also gnc Hatshepsut

[calowlmitygoddess]

yt recomended me videos about that cleopatra netflix docu series and i was like interesting, bcs the coversation around it is genuely interesting to me

but then the entire video instead of like being a discussion about it, the guy just kept going on on 'it bad because black ppl in it' and it rubbed me the wrong way. Then i tried to see if any like poc were commenting on the issue, and all the recomended were by white dudes more interested in 'the culture war' instead of the historic erasure.

[egypt-ancient-and-modern]

I've been asked to weigh in.

So.

No, Cleopatra wasn't black. She wasn't even African. Her family was Macedonian Greek, and they were infamously the most incestuous family in Egyptian history. No African DNA got in there. People who saw her while she was alive described her as having, "honey skin." She wasn't Elizabeth Taylor white, but she also wasn't what we'd call black.

That being said, there are PLENTY of Black figures in Egypt. The further back you go in Egyptian history, the less amount of trade routes with other nations, the more African they were. That means that the pyramid builders like Khufu, Khafre, and Menkaure were all likely black. Hatshepsut, the first woman to rule in her own right who established highly successful trade routes with Punt, was likely black. Tutankhamun's grandmother Tiye has always been depicted with dark skin. Queen Ahmose Nefertari was depicted as this:

Then there's the entire Kushite Dynasty from Sudan who were black. This was a non-issue for Egypt. The biggest issue was if you worshipped their gods and respected their ways. If you did, then you were in. Alexander the Great was received like a hero because of this while the Persians were hated because of their disrespect for Egyptian culture.

3. Egypt even had what historians considered to be Asian rulers. The Hyksos invaders who ruled Egypt were from West Asia and some historians have posited that they were from the Indian subcontinent. (This has not been confirmed.)

Egypt was a melting pot with people from all over because of the lucrative trade routes. They were ruled by Greeks, Romans, Persians, Assyrians, Kushites, Hyksos, Libyans, etc. They had a blended culture.

So, it is interesting to me that this documentary chose a woman who was very clearly documented to NOT be black when Egypt has no shortage of Black figures to choose from. You'd think you'd want to tie yourself to the great legacies like Hatshepsut who made Egypt wealthy and stable over Cleopatra who lost Egypt its independence.

4. The one thing I CAN say for certain is that the actual Egyptians were NOT white. When I hear conspiracy theories that Ramses II was white from Scotland because he had red hair, it makes me so angry. They were not. Great things can and did come for non-white nations. Writing, language, government, medicine, etc ALL came from non-white nations. Egyptians referred to the Celts as Barbarians for a reason. Cleopatra, while she ruled Egypt, was NOT Egyptian. And that always gets forgotten. She hailed from a conquerer's line, not Egypt itself.

The thing about Egypt was they realistically depicted skin-color in Egyptian art. Maybe one day we'll find something of Cleopatra that will put this to rest. All we know is that her coinage shows her with distinctive European features, like a long, narrow, hooked nose. She has her hair in the Greek style.

[creepingsharia]

A Month of Islam in America: August 2020

The jihad continues.

Vote wisely. And get involved in the election to prevent massive voting fraud here.

Click any link below for more details and a link to the original source (which is most often the DOJ/FBI website).

Jihad in America:

Texas: Muslim on FBI Ten Most Wanted List for ‘Honor Killing’ Two Daughters is Caught; Son and Brother Arrested for Harboring Fugutive

Texas: Family members arrested for hiding fugitive Muslim who (honor) killed his two daughters (for dating non-Muslims)

Minnesota: Muslim Woman Who Tried to Join al Qaeda and Burn Down St. Catherine Univ Pleads Guilty

Hawaii: Man who proclaimed allegiance to ISIS charged for threats to kill teachers and students, bomb police

California: Former Sacramento prison counselor arraigned, lied to FBI about fighting with jihadi group in Syria

New York: Muslim convert gets 15 years for material support of Pakistani jihad group (LeT)

North Carolina: Man who wanted to join Islamic State (ISIS), use girlfriend’s “Buddy Pass” to aid jihad, gets 5 year sentence

Massachusetts: Egyptian immigrant who stole classified national defense documents gets just 18 months prison

Wisconsin: Muslim Woman Sentenced to 90 Months for Attempting to Provide Material Support to ISIS

Utah: Muslim arrested for providing support to Islamic State (ISIS) - complains about jail’s coronavirus testing

Muslim cleric extradited from Jamaica to NYC, held without bail for ‘trying to recruit NYPD cop’ to ISIS

New York: Man Who Disseminated ISIS Propaganda and Bomb-Making Instructions to Incite Jihad in New York City Pleads Guilty

Islamic - Black Lives Matter - Antifa-related Jihad in America

New York: Bosnian illegal immigrant’s ambush of cops during BLM riot, while shouting “allah akbar,” was Islamic jihad attack (VIDEOS)

Florida: St. Pete protester caught with Molotov cocktail, loaded gun, charged with terrorist activity

Maine: Muslim caught driving stolen car, spits on cops (possibly trying to spread coronavirus)

Previous monthly reports here.

Immigration Jihad also known as Hijra:

Refugee admissions to the US resumed on July 31st

Another Muslim enclave in U.S.:  Little Egypt - Astoria, Queens, New York (VIDEO)

Houston, Atlanta, Brooklyn, NYC, Michigan - Muslims in US celebrate el EID slaughtering animals, not social distancing (VIDEOS)

West Virginia: Illegal alien from Kuwait pleads guilty to dealing cocaine near WVU

Latin America too: Guyana elects Muslim as president, a first in South America

Rape Jihad:

Virginia: Rape suspect of “Middle Eastern descent” released from jail over covid concerns, KILLS accuser

Fraud for Jihad:

DC: Feds Dismantle 3 Islamic Terror Financing Cyber Campaigns

New Jersey: Owner of Car Dealership Admits Engaging in Large-Scale Fraud

DC: Two Muslims in U.S. Charged with Moving U.S. Currency to Iran

Mosque Jihad:

Boston Mosque Preaches Jihad with Weapons Not Established in America Because of “the weakness of the Muslims”

Michigan: Mega-mosque with 60-foot dome breaks ground in residential neighborhood home to Chaldean Christians (who fled Islamic tyranny)

Government collusion with and failure to prevent jihad:

Virginia: Another judge releases another jihadi - convicted and sentence to life - over coronavirus

Boston: Federal Judge Releases Muslim Ten Years Early Despite Guilty Plea in ISIS Plot to Behead Anti-Jihad Blogger!

Mass: US appeals court overturns death sentence for Muslim terrorist who killed 3 and injured 260+ at Boston Marathon

Canada: Muslim who joined ISIS in Syria arrested, then released on bail in Calgary

Joe Biden’s Jihad:

Democratic convention featured second imam - this one called for release of convicted cop-killer, defended al-Qaeda medic

Democratic National Convention hosts imam from Islamic extremist institution

Fact Check: The Travel Ban Is Neither a ‘Muslim Ban,’ Nor Unconstitutional [and it should be expanded]

Video: The Muslim (Brotherhood) operatives behind Joe Biden’s presidential campaign

Straight up Sharia in America

Paypal Bans Author of ‘Muslim Mafia’ After He Calls BLM Domestic Terrorists

U.S. Navy grants Muslim sailor special Islamic sharia grooming accommodation

  Wins or at least set backs for sharia?

New Jersey: Judge Orders New Election for Paterson Council Seat After Mail-in Voter Fraud Charges

New York: Palestinian immigrant convicted of funding terror-linked Muslim charities deported to Rwanda

Previous monthly reports here.

Please share this and other posts on your social media sites.

[peremadeleine]

in response to @tiny-librarian​’s oft-repeated Stacy Schiff quote on Cleopatra VII’s skin tone I saw someone say “Is it just me or do I sense hostility towards the idea Cleopatra might’ve been black? Or am I reading wrong?”

yes, you are reading that wrong! 

there are, I’m sure, bigots and idiots who probably are hostile to that idea--but the historians and biographers and history lovers sharing this information are simply trying to clarify historical fact vs. historical myth

for one thing, Cleopatra was not dark-skinned; not lily-white, certainly, but definitely not what most people would now consider black, either (it’s also important to note is that modern ideas about race were formed between 350 and 500 years ago; these ideas would not have been ascribed to or even necessarily understood two thousand years ago!) she came from a light-skinned (or, at least, “honey-skinned”) and, by the way, xenophobic non-Egyptian family, and she was the product of centuries of incestuous marriages

when people say this, what’s being stated is this: a member of a dynasty of FOREIGN CONQUERORS (Greeks in this case), most of whom couldn’t even be bothered to learn the native language(s) of their conquered and subjugated people (Egyptians), and who almost exclusively married their own sisters/bothers or uncles/nieces in order to keep their bloodline “pure,” was of neither the same ethnicity nor the same appearance of the people whose lands their dynasty ruled

it’s not a value statement, simply a statement of fact; and in any other context, most people would probably never claim that a family of Westerners (the Greek Ptolemies) who usurped power over a non-Western country (Egypt) were of the same ethnicity as their non-Western subjects (native Egyptians), but for some reason people really want Cleopatra to have been, ethnically/genetically, something she was very much not

some awesome ancient Egyptian queens who were ethnically African:

Hatshepsut, Pharaoh of the 18th Dynasty

Nefertiti, Great Royal Wife of Akhenaten

Nefertari Merytmut, Great Royal Wife of Ramses “the Great” II

these women are among the most famous (and a quick google search away)--there are literally hundreds of others, though, given the thousands of years during which Pharaohs ruled in ancient Egypt

Cleopatra VII was extremely intelligent--and politically astute; she actually learned the native Egyptian language--and charismatic--she held sway over Julius Caesar, for God’s sake--not to mention extremely famous, historically. But she was not of Egyptian descent. She was Greek.

[myviewmyvoice]

    Overview This project was inspired by and drew from Alexander Weheliye’s Habeas Viscus, Hortense J. Spillers “Mama’s Baby, Papa’s Maybe: An American Grammar Book” (1987) and Sylvia Wynter’s “‘No Humans Involved’: An Open Letter to My Colleagues” (1994) in connection to the Black woman’s body through time and space in conjunction with “Fragment of a Queen’s Face,” a figure in the Metropolitan Museum of Art (The Met) in New York.

Theory I: Flesh and Fragment Theory I is an epistolary to “The Fragment of a Queen’s Face.” The figure was made from yellow jasper during the Amarna Period (ca.1353-1336) during the reign of Pharaoh Akhenaten in the late 18th Dynasty. The most significant feature of the figure is that more half of the head is missing and only the lips are visible. In the letter, I use personal history and connect various works that articulate historical and sociopolitical views of the Black female body.

The Visits describes my first visit and subsequent returns to the “Queen’s Face” and my affinity to the figure. Decoding the Hieroglyphics features theoretical groundings of how the “Queen” came to be. #SayHerName challenges the silence about the violence experienced by Black women throughout history. The Killmonger in Me discusses the role Black women in science and cultural institutions. The Riddle connects the past to the present. P.S. The Ties that Bond makes universal connections.

The Visits

I first met you when I was 16. As an US History assignment, I had to visit cultural institutions and landmarks around New York City including The Met. When we got there, my home girl and I headed towards the Ancient Egyptian section. I was in awe of all the artifacts. Out of them all, I was most intrigued by your warm and welcoming polished yellow jasper. I was looking at half of you, yet you still seemed complete. I had never seen anything like you. Your label read, “Fragment of a Queen’s Face.” Who were you and why do you look foreign yet familiar? We circled the museum and bounced, but since then I have always returned to see you. When I was bored, when I broke up with him, when I started college, when I wanted to escape New York without leaving the city—it was a no-brainer, all I needed was a MetroCard and time.

I have since wondered about how you were damaged: who damaged you? Why do I feel such an affinity with you? The damage done aligns with the history of removing noses is hardly a coincidence. The fracture right above your cupid’s bow looks like whoever struck you was trying to destroy your nose and ended up taking off most of your head. However, I see the attention to detail that went into creating you. Your smile line, the creases in your neck…You were loved. Your plaque reads: She cannot be securely identified with certainty.

The Met speculates that you are either Queen Nefertari or Kiya. The museum also gives possible reasons for what happened to you, among them a territorial conquest, but after looking up other the images and figures of Nefertari and Kiya—some of their noses are missing as well. Apparently, when the artists created their works with wide noses, they were likely to be destroyed.

In November of 2017, I needed to escape and decided to pay you a visit, but this time was different. My knowledge of the Black experience had grown exponentially, now you weren’t just a face of curiosity. In my naiveté, I was a bit voyeuristic; now I looked and thought of you critically. Without words and sealed lips, you began to tell a story. I listened with my eyes.

She cannot be securely identified with certainty.

Decoding the Hieroglyphics

hieroglyph, n. 1. a. A hieroglyphic character; a figure of some object, as a tree, animal, etc., standing for a word (or, afterwards, in some cases, a syllable or sound), and forming an element of a species of writing found on ancient Egyptian monuments and records; thence extended to such figures similarly used in the writing of other races. Also, a writing consisting of characters of this kind. 2. a. transf. and fig. A figure, device, or sign having some hidden meaning; a secret or enigmatical symbol; an emblem. b. humorously. A piece of writing difficult to decipher. 3. One who makes hieroglyphic inscriptions. Rare.

A few ways that we identify people is by how they look (from their physical appearance to their fashion statements), the way they speak (soda vs. pop) and their name (Hayashi vs. Hernandez). This is not perfect because it is always an incomplete picture. I state this because somewhere along my life journey, I learned how looters and destroyers—who called themselves archaeologists, soldiers, historians, geographers, and the likes—visited Egypt and did as they pleased. Their colonial practices  excavated and disrupted histories and legacies in the name of research, imperialism and culture. Despite the great cultural history here, ankhs as a symbol of religion and wide noses, signifying Blackness, were damaged and destroyed.

“I would make a distinction in this case between ‘body’ and ‘flesh’ and impose that distinction as the central one between captive and liberated subject-positions. In that sense, before the ‘body’ there is the ‘flesh,’ that zero degree of social conceptualization that does not escape concealment under the brush of discourse, or the reflexes of iconography.” (Spillers, 1987: p.67)

By highlighting the works of Hortense Spillers and Sylvia Wynter, Alexander Weheliye (2014) argue that racial assemblages—humans, not-quite humans and non-humans—determine differentiation and hierarchy of races through sociopolitical processes. Using the term habeas viscus (you shall have the flesh), Weheliye relies on Spillers’ distinction between the flesh and the body along with the writ habeas corpus (you shall have the body) to examine the “breaks, crevices, movements, languages and such zones between the flesh and the law” (p. 11).

I decided to look at Spillers’ (1987) and Wynter’s (1994) work and how they examine language in relationship to the violence against Black bodies. In reference to the violence committed against Black bodies during slavery, Spillers (1987) argues that flesh tells the narrative of the body and when it came to physical trauma—breaks, fractures, brandings, punctures, missing parts, etc.—the body kept score. This is what Spillers called the hieroglyphics of the flesh.

         According to Spillers, the hieroglyphics of the flesh is not just the violence committed against the Black body, like the “chokecherry tree” on Sethe’s back in Toni Morrison’s Beloved, but the flesh itself as a marker for racial violence no matter the institution whether scientific, social, political, educational or economic, it is the color of the flesh, which determines if and what kind of violence is inflicted on someone (Spillers, 1987). For example, the impact of mass incarceration on the Black and Latino communities versus white communities. Blacks and Latinos get harsher sentences than their white counterparts simply because they are not white.

Wynter’s and Spillers’ work overlaps when they discuss “captivity.” Spillers writes about the “captive body” while Wynter references James Baldwin’s term “captive population” which describes how Black lives are viewed and how we are a nation within a nation (Baldwin, 1968/2017). From these captivities emerge questions surrounding the value of captive lives and how they communicate our truths and what happens when we refuse the hegemonic “truth.”

“A riot is the language of the unheard.” Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

When discussing the rhetoric of the hegemonic “truth,” Wynter (1994) calls out grammarians, the scholars (gatekeepers) who over centuries have perpetually reproduced gender and racial inequities through their literature. Wynter argued that rhetoric in the Humanities and the Social Sciences creates and maintains a caste system of racial hierarchy where whites are on top (dominant) and Blacks on the bottom (inferior). However,  grammarians, who can identify as any gender or race, erase race and codify racialized language using economic and geographical terms such as “middle class suburbia” to mean white and “inner city poor and jobless” to equal young Black males (Wynter, 1994). Of course, there are exceptions to who is being identified and discussed within these categories, as previously mentioned, but for the most part, this framing of language conceals the racial oppression and the “hidden cost” of “subjective understanding” (pg. 60).

I wanted to argue about “today’s world,” but truthfully the hidden cost has always been a thing post-1492. In Spillers’ analysis about the “truth” value of the words that represent race, she wrote “We might concede, at the very least, that sticks and bricks might break our bones, but words will most certainly kill us (p. 68).”

You not only have markings, but part of you is missing. Was someone clumsy or was it a violent sociopolitical process used to maintain hierarchy? If those who committed this act against you were rivals during ancient times, why didn’t they just break you down to rubble? What purpose does keeping half of a face serve? We know the natives used to go in and steal gold and things that bling bling. You’re not that. Or maybe your lips weren’t destroyed because they thought no one would listen to what you had to say? I study your fractures again, especially the groove above your cupid’s bow…

The Met can keep their postulations. I’m wiser now.

She cannot be securely identified with certainty.

#SayHerName

While looking at you, Sarah Baartman (1789-1815) came to mind. Of course there is a huge difference between the exploited life of a Black woman and the exploited life of statue of a Black woman, but parallels are present. Born approximately 4,000 miles south from where you were on the same continent, Sarah Baartman was called a “freak” and was used for “science and spectacle” because of her large buttocks (McKittrick, 2010 p. 117). Enslaved people were commonly being used for medical research without any ethical consideration (Spillers, 1987). Sarah Baartman was no different because her body was used to explain inherent Black inferiority. As McKittrick (2010) argued:

“…across time and space, and sometimes across race, Baartman is the analytical template through which racist pornography, the grotesque, and the lewd seduction of black female popular-culture figures can be understood in relation to a history of racial imprisonment, bodily dismemberment, sexism, and white supremacy.” (p. 118)

I sat with that. In between those lines is a patriarchal component that we, as Black women, sometimes unconsciously privilege before our own lives: the lives of our brothers. Sometimes we don’t think or know how to articulate the violence inflicted on us (Love, 2017). I think of my brothers safety in this world knowing that I am just as vulnerable. Not until the last two years, did I center the violence inflicted on me because that is the way the world turns and I have things to get done….until one day it caught up to me. I began to do a survey of my spirit injuries—more than I thought—and some were unrecognizable, a hieroglyph. I guess I should consider myself lucky because I know what needs healing while many others don’t and/or can’t. Adrien Katherine Wing argues that if there are many injuries it results into a what Williams calls a “spirits murder” (1990).

Then there is the actual murdering of Black (trans)women and the lack of recognition when she has taken her last breath at the hands of the state. Things are starting to change with social media platforms like Twitter, to share our sisters’ stories. Think tanks such as African American Policy Forum (Crenshaw, Ritchie, Anspach, Gilmer, Harris, 2015) and sites like Black Perspective that make sure these women are not erased. The margins in which these stories reside are now disrupting the mainstream. We are learning their stories, honoring their lives, finally having these conversations and saying their names…

#ShantelDavis #MyaHall #KendraJames #LaTanyaHaggerty #FrankiePerkins #KathrynJohnson #DanetteDaniels #AlbertaSpruill #EleanorBumpurs #MargaretMitchell #ShellyFrey #YuvetteHenderson #KaylaMoore #TanishaAnderson #ShereeseFrancis #MichelleCusseaux #KyamLivingson #ShenequeProctor  #RekiaBoyd #AiyannaJones #TarikaWilson #AuraRosser #JanishaFonville #NewJersey4 #YvetteSmith #FrankiePerkins #KathrynJohnson #DanetteDaniels #AlbertaSpruill #DuannaJohnson #NizahMorris #IslanNettles #RosannMiller #SonjiTaylor #MalaikaBrooks #DeniseStewart #ConstanceGraham #PatriciaHartley #KorrynGaines #AlteriaWoods #CharleenaLyles #MorganRankins #CariannHithon

The Killmonger in Me

After Baartman’s death in 1815, her body was dismembered and placed in the Museum of Natural History in Paris until 2002. You, Queen, were “gifted” to the Met in 1926…The year my favorite girl was born…In Black Panther, when Killmonger stared at the mask with intrigue and Ulysses Klause asked if it was from Wakanda, Killmonger replied, “Nah. I’m just feeling it.” Killmonger wasn’t just “feeling it.” The connection is  much deeper than that. N’Jadaka (Killmonger) saw something in that Igbo mask. There was an affinity; a connection. I thought of our relationship, me and your fragmented face. I am not a psychoanalyst, but I know a lil’ sumthin’ sumthin’. For me, we are both fragments of a disjointed story. Our story.

Killmonger effortlessly challenges the history of artifacts placed in the museum. “How do you think your ancestors got these? Do you think they paid a fair price? Or did they take it…like they took everything else?” Art reflecting life.

Killmonger later states, “You got all this security in here watching me since I walked in…” He is addressing the surveillance of the Black body which determines the imprisonment, dismemberment and sexist cataloguing the body is to undergo (McKittrick, 2010; Spillers, 1987). As I write this there has been a surge of videos in where white people are calling the police because of the mere presence of Black people, which demonstrates the criminalization that follows the Black body in different spaces Anderson (2004) and the non-police surveillance of Black bodies (Dancy, Edwards and Davis, 2018).

Your life in a glass case is for the white gaze. You weren’t initially placed there for me to learn about my history. Of course, some could argue that if you weren’t brought to the museum, how would I get to see you. To that I say, if my ancestors and their artifacts weren’t brought over here, there wouldn’t be anything to debate. Therefore, I will need the colonizer and their pigmented minions to stay silent on the matter.

Speaking of pigmented minions, on May 25, 2018 at approximately 3:30pm, Mike and I went to the Met and I was showing him another sculpture with a missing nose and as I was raising my hand to its’ face, a security guard standing by the partition of your gallery and Gallery 119 yells at me, “Don’t touch!” My back was turned so I don’t know how long she was watching me, but clearly she had her eyes on me. I finessed a clapback that let her know I’m not the one without getting kicked out. She tried it.

Anyways, you’re made of jasper, a semi-precious stone which is a six and half to a seven on the Mohs scale of mineral hardness. Jasper can be harder than steel depending on the composition and when broken has a conchoidal fracture. Your impeccable smoothness and detail may have confused a perpetrator into thinking that you were actually weaker than you looked. Perhaps thinking you were going to break like granite, which was used for many of the figures. I think of all the Black women who have endured so much, but you wouldn’t know by looking at them. Even if you can see it, they are still standing despite the violence committed against them.

She cannot be securely identified with certainty.

The Riddle

Another movie filmed in a museum came to mind…when I was a little girl, I used to watch Don’t Eat the Pictures: Sesame Street at the Metropolitan Museum of Art all the time. Long story short, in the movie, a young Ancient Egyptian prince, Sahu or the “hidden one”, was trapped in the Met until he met two criteria: to answer the riddle, “Where does today meet yesterday?,” and his heart had to be lighter than a feather. If he fulfilled the requirements, he would reunite with his family as a star in the sky. The Sesame Street gang was also locked in and tried to help Sahu.

As the night went on, Big Bird and Snuffleupagus kept thinking of the answer. Finally, Big Bird figured out the answer: a museum. He also negotiated the weight of Sahu heart that was heavier than a feather because he missed his family. In the end, Sahu was able to reconnect with his family. That was real cut and dry, but my point is, like the riddle, you are part of my history and I am part of your future and we met at a museum; where today meets yesterday.

She cannot be securely identified with certainty.

P.S…The ties that Bond

“Words are a pretext. It is the inner bond that draws one person to another, not words.”  Rumi

I started to grow impatient with this project because I started it in the fall of 2018; the seasons changed, life and death happened. Black Panther and Everything is Love were released. I continued to learn about Black women, #Blackgirlmagic, Black Feminist Theory, Black Girls Rock!, Professional Black Girls, the ways in which Black women heal, the ways in which we love, and most importantly, our different survival mechanisms. We have survived a lot (shout out to Lorde and Gumbs).

I also realized that the universe is in concert, seeing N’Jadaka (Killmonger) in the museum scene staring at that Igbo mask gave me goosebumps. When I saw Beyonce at Coachella donned in Ancient Egyptian garb, it motivated me to step up and complete this project despite my demanding priorities and Murphy’s Law. Beverly Bond’s book, Black Girls Rock!, is filled with the narratives of Black women, young and old for us to embrace each other and to tell our stories. Then the Carters dropped Everything Is Love and their visual for “Apeshit” in the Louvre (the Met of Paris); lyrical references “I will never let you shoot the nose off my Pharaoh” and a nod to Prince’s Purple Rain (a project I completed, but not ready to share with the world) in “Black Effect”; “Black queen, you rescued us, you rescued us, rescued us” on “713” and; how can I forget the mature Jamaican woman explaining love and laughing. I realized we are all telling stories of Black women, Black experience. No matter where you get the message from the story will be told through the screen, audio and text whether in print or digital format. Kruger, Bond, The Carters…and people like me. We were all telling these stories in our own way. (Shout out to the homies, Kia Perry and EbonyJanice!)

Of all the bonds connected to this work, this is in honor of my grandmother, aka My Favorite Girl and my shweeheart. The woman who only had a third grade education, but a Ph.D. in Life from the School of Hard Knocks. The woman whose heart was bigger than her body and had a warrior spirit. In honor of her strength, her courage, her sense of humor (because sometimes you can’t do anything, but laugh) and her undying love. Although she is no longer here physically, her prayers, love and lessons still with me. Every once in awhile a lesson whispers in my ear. As I was making final edits, I heard: Nothing is due before its’ time. I miss you and thank you. 

Sources

Anderson, E. (2004). The Cosmopolitan Canopy. The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 595, 14-31.

Baldwin J. (1968/2017) “Captive population.”  Esquire.

Crenshaw, K. Ritchie, A., Anspach, R., Gilmer, R., Harris. L., (2015). “Say her name: Resisting police brutality against Black women,” African American Policy Forum, Center for Intersectionality and Social Policy Studies, Columbia Law School

Dancy, T. E., Edwards, K. T., & Earl Davis, J. (2018). Historically white universities and plantation politics: Anti-blackness and higher education in the black lives matter era. Urban Education, 53(2), 176-195.

Love, B. L. (2017). Difficult knowledge: When a Black feminist educator was too afraid to #SayHerName. English Education, 49(2), 197–208.

McKittrick, K. (2010). Science quarrels sculpture: The politics of reading Sarah Baartman. Mosaic: An Interdisciplinary Critical Journal, 43(2), 113-130. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/44030627

Spillers, H. J. (1987). Mama’s baby, papa’s maybe: An American grammar book. African American Literary Theory, 257-279.

Weheliye, A. G. (2014). Habeas viscus: Racializing assemblages, biopolitics, and black feminist theories of the human.

Williams, P. (1997). Spirit‐murdering the messenger: the discourse of fingerprinting as the law’s response to racism in: A. Wing (Ed.) Critical race feminism: a reader New York New York University Press 229-236

Wing, A.K. (1990). ‘Brief reflections toward a multiplicative theory and praxis of being’ Berkeley Women’s Law Journal, Vol. 6: 181–201.

Wynter, S. (1994). “‘No Humans Involved’: An Open Letter to My Colleagues.” Forum N.H.I.: Knowledge for the 21st Century, in N.H./. Forum: Knowledge for the 21st Century’s inaugural issue “Knowledge on Trial.” 1, no. 1 : 42-73.

  Theory I: Flesh and Fragment Overview This project was inspired by and drew from Alexander Weheliye’s Habeas Viscus, Hortense J. Spillers “Mama’s Baby, Papa’s Maybe: An American Grammar Book” (1987) and Sylvia Wynter’s "'No Humans Involved': An Open Letter to My Colleagues" (1994) in connection to the Black woman's body through time and space in conjunction with “Fragment of a Queen’s Face,” a figure in the Metropolitan Museum of Art (The Met) in New York.

[tiny-librarian]

peremadeleine:

in response to @tiny-librarian​’s oft-repeated Stacy Schiff quote on Cleopatra VII’s skin tone I saw someone say “Is it just me or do I sense hostility towards the idea Cleopatra might’ve been black? Or am I reading wrong?”

yes, you are reading that wrong! 

there are, I’m sure, bigots and idiots who probably are hostile to that idea–but the historians and biographers and history lovers sharing this information are simply trying to clarify historical fact vs. historical myth

for one thing, Cleopatra was not dark-skinned; not lily-white, certainly, but definitely not what most people would now consider black, either (it’s also important to note is that modern ideas about race were formed between 350 and 500 years ago; these ideas would not have been ascribed to or even necessarily understood two thousand years ago!) she came from a light-skinned (or, at least, “honey-skinned”) and, by the way, xenophobic non-Egyptian family, and she was the product of centuries of incestuous marriages

when people say this, what’s being stated is this: a member of a dynasty of FOREIGN CONQUERORS (Greeks in this case), most of whom couldn’t even be bothered to learn the native language(s) of their conquered and subjugated people (Egyptians), and who almost exclusively married their own sisters/bothers or uncles/nieces in order to keep their bloodline “pure,” was of neither the same ethnicity or the same appearance of the people whose lands their dynasty ruled

it’s not a value statement, simply a statement of fact; and in any other context, most people would probably never claim that a family of Westerners (the Greek Ptolemies) who usurped power over a non-Western country (Egypt) were of the same ethnicity as their non-Western subjects (native Egyptians), but for some reason people really want Cleopatra to have been, ethnically/genetically, something she was very much not

some awesome ancient Egyptian queens who were ethnically African:

Hatshepsut, Pharaoh of the 18th Dynasty

Nefertiti, Great Royal Wife of Akhenaten

Nefertari Merytmut, Great Royal Wife of Ramses “the Great” II

these women are among the most famous (and a quick google search away)–there are literally hundreds of others, though, given the thousands of years during which Pharaohs ruled in ancient Egypt

Cleopatra VII was extremely intelligent–and politically astute; she actually learned the native Egyptian language–and charismatic–she held sway over Julius Caesar, for God’s sake–not to mention extremely famous, historically. But she was not of Egyptian descent. She was Greek.