mermaidsofcolor:

Mami Wata, found here

heroineheroine:

2jam4u:

dynamicafrica:

Spotlight: Photographer Damion Reid and the “Beauty of the Black Woman” Project.

How do you describe what a black woman is? How do you even begin to define her?

You don’t. You leave that up to her.

As black women, as black people, we are well aware of our complexities - whether inherited or otherwise. What’s more, despite our differences being used to divide and separate us, whether through experience or heritage, history has played out in such a way that we are and will always be connected to each other in ways words cannot even begin to describe. As romantic as this may sound, and though there is so much beauty in who we are, there’s a lot of pain that we are still forced to triumph through. Despite all this, as we combat that which has manifested in our lives through both structural and internal racism, it’s so important that we look for ways to find and recreate ourselves on our terms.

Living in a world where black women have to constantly defend their existence and personally find ways to continuously reaffirm their beauty and self-worth, it’s hard not to love what Damion Reid does.

As a Communications Major, Reid was, to say the least, troubled by the negative images and stories he’d often come across of Black women and Black people in the Diaspora. In the Spring of 2002, armed with his camera and desire to show the multi-faceted reality of Black women, he began approaching women he’d see in public in an attempt to capture the “Beauty of the Black Woman.”

Ridding himself of mainstream notions of what beauty is or is supposed to look like, Reid opted to go for something deeper when approaching women, “I share a spiritual bond with Black Women. They are the only people that can understand what me a Black Male goes through. That is beauty to me. I go with my feelings. If it feels right to approach someone, I will do it.”

So far, the responses Reid has received have been incredibly positive and wonderfully surprising, “Sometimes the Women are shocked that I want to photograph them. They were not used to be called beautiful, much less photographed.”

For Reid, this is a “never-ending project.” He does plan on taking things further and is currently working on a project that concerns Black men in the Diaspora. 

All photos courtesy of Damion Reid.

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oh lol I’m included!

I want to be all of them 💕

asamstudiesintro:

Just got an email about a new book coming out. Looks interesting.

Transpacific Antiracism introduces the dynamic process out of which social movements in Black America, Japan, and Okinawa formed Afro-Asian solidarities against the practice of white supremacy in the twentieth century. Yuichiro Onishi argues that in the context of forging Afro-Asian solidarities, race emerged as a political category of struggle with a distinct moral quality and vitality.

This book explores the work of Black intellectual-activists of the first half of the twentieth century, including Hubert Harrison and W. E. B. Du Bois, that took a pro-Japan stance to articulate the connection between local and global dimensions of antiracism. Turning to two places rarely seen as a part of the Black experience, Japan and Okinawa, the book also presents the accounts of a group of Japanese scholars shaping the Black studies movement in post-surrender Japan and multiracial coalition-building in U.S.-occupied Okinawa during the height of the Vietnam War which brought together local activists, peace activists, and antiracist and antiwar GIs. Together these cases of Afro-Asian solidarity make known political discourses and projects that reworked the concept of race to become a wellspring of aspiration for a new society.

Yuichiro Onishi is Assistant Professor of African American & African Studies and Asian American Studies at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities.

                                               __________

Reviews

• In this exhaustively researched and beautifully written book, Onishi uncovers a hidden history of Afro-Asian radicalism and internationalism. He presents bold and generative arguments about the ways in which the affiliation of kindred spirits across the Pacific enabled anti-racist intellectuals and activists from Japan and the U.S. to forge a new philosophy of world history and formulate practical programs for liberation.

  —George Lipsitz, author of How Racism Takes Place

• This fascinating and ground-breaking book offers a new window into the vital history of Afro-Asian solidarity against empire and white supremacy. Meticulously researched, it recovers the epistemological breakthroughs that emerged at the intersection of radical struggle and geographical reorientation. Through his sharp analysis of cross-cultural and transnational collectivity, Onishi provides a guidepost for all those interested in the study of utopian, boundary-crossing projects of the past, as well as the creation of future ones.

  —Scott Kurashige, author of The Shifting Grounds of Race and co-author of The Next American Revolution

• “[Onishi] adds to the new, growing, but still under-studied scholarly field of African Americans in the transpacific context.”

  —Y. Kiuchi, Choice

• “Yuichiro Onishi’s Transpacific Antiracism is a unique and valuable contribution to the scholarship on Afro-Asian relations…there are things that Onishi does that few have done before.”
  

  —, American Studies

• “…Transpacific Antiracism contributes invaluably to the study of social movements…It beautifully captures the desire of oppressed people to develop revolutionary ideas and practices by learning from ‘ancestors’ whose skin color might have differed from their own.”
  

  —, Against the Current

yung90sense:

femdomfox:

FKA Twigs.

BadXo

mysoulhasgrowndeep-liketherivers:

unimpressed2chainz:

god, white women give me acute stomach pains 

white mediocrity is once again uplifted

modernpostism:

Frida Kahlo