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August 2, 2017.

Whew. I’ve always thought about starting a blog. And so I did… I created a tumblr in January 2013. But I never actually completed the task, I never posted original words of my own. And it baffled me, I had once started this blog to post how I felt because I knew those around me couldn’t hear it. So I thought maybe they could see it. So here I am in 2017, posting how I feel. I have grown a lot since then but I continue to grow everyday. There are things that I experience everyday that change my outlook and understanding and have an IMPRESSION on me. That is what this blog will be about, so here I go.

I saw a post on Facebook earlier today and it was an ad about the racist Procter & Gamble ad that was released on July 24, 2017. The title of the article was “Sick sick sick racist Procter & Gamble ad crosses every line! If you are white, brace yourself before watching”. The post was by a friend’s father, so it had me really intrigued. I read the article and it was discussing the new ad released by P&G and attempts to break apart the ad as a stab at white people and explains vulgarly every part of the ad, my guess in hopes of enraging the audience before they watch the ad and giving them an already negative opinion of the advertisement. “The ad, titled “The Talk,” shows scenes of black parents, spanning generations, telling their kids about how the system is stacked against them, how racist white people are and teaching them to fear the police. One of the scenes shows a black mother(*daughter), who appears to be from the 1940′s  or 1950′s, holding a white doll and telling her mother that a woman at the store told her she was pretty for a black girl. ‘That is not a compliment,’ the mother said. ‘You are beautiful, period. OK?” “A subsequent scene shows a mother during a bygone era telling her daughter headed to camp that she can do anything ‘they’ can do.” “In another scene a mother from current times tells her daughter what to do ‘when you get pulled over,’ as if it is going to happen.” These are all direct quotes from the article. This pissed me off so much. I knew that I had to see the video immediately.

When I watched the video, as I thought, many important details were left out of the article. 

Many forget that even today many African Americans, both men and women alike, can remember a time where they didn’t like the color of their skin, the thickness or texture of their hair. We all have had this twisted mentality of maybe wanting to be lighter, wanting longer finer hair, or wanting to not be black at all. The young girl in the ad was playing with a white doll, presumably because black dolls were not sold in stores until 1980. Aren’t dolls supposed to be thought of as adorable, innocent, or cute. It represents a face of beauty. Does this not apply to black dolls as well? Representation matters. Seeing black dolls on the aisles is something that reminds young black girls to that they don’t have to aspire to be white or light skinned to be thought of as attractive or to find themselves beautiful. They can love themselves exactly how they are. But soon they forget that they used to paint their face and mock us publicly for the sole purpose of entertainment. Now we should not tell our children that ‘pretty for a black girl isn’t a compliment’?! The AUDACITY.

The next scene that was described gives the impression that the black mother is telling her daughter that she not only has to be just be like these young white girls but better and smarter. The article did not mention that this was an overnight camp or that it was also an academic centered camp about space. And for more obvious reasons the article did not point out that she was the ONLY little black girl going to this camp. The ONLY black girl…. does that sound familiar? ONLY 62 years ago, Ruby Bridges was the first African American child to integrate a southern school? People, mostly white people lined up by the dozens along with their neighbors and children to protest Ruby being at this school, but that was not humiliating enough. These people lined up EVERYDAY, Ruby and her mom had to be escorted by United States Marshals to ensure their well-being, she was even threatened to be poisoned, forcing her to bring lunch everyday. White parents pulled their children out of school because they had not wanted their child near black kids. So does it not seem appropriate for the mother of this child to take this opportunity to encourage her child not to give up even if it seems as if she doesn’t belong? It must be perceived as a threat and not as love?

The final scene which the article depicts is one of a mother and daughter, both African American in the car. The daughter is obviously excited to be driving with her mother. Her mother stops her for a moment and begins to tell her what she should do when she is pulled over. The daughter insists that she is a great driver, however the mother insists that this isn’t about getting a ticket, its about keeping her life. This has been a heated debate in America recently with the overwhelming amount of ‘publicized’ police brutality. As someone who was wrongly pulled over by an officer, this is not something that should be seen as disrespectful. My step-mother had this same conversation with my sister and I. We need to be careful because those that are supposed to be upholding the law, are just holding it in their hands and manipulating it. This is not something that shouldn’t be talked about in fear of hurting the feelings of cops. This is a conversation that ALL parents should be having with their children, not just those of color. But it has been proven that African Americans are stopped at a rate of 75% more than caucasian’s in America.

It breaks my heart that a very known company is being bashed for having the courage to speak up and let its customers know that they are not alone in this fight. This fight on racism that is still being experienced today. Yet some are so blind to it. The scene where the mother prays for her son, even long after he is gone is not mentioned. The look of fear and worry on her face is not mentioned. But does that mean this fear and worry unwarranted? Absolutely not. Just recently a blind black man was brutally beaten then taken to jail for refusing to cooperate. He requested an interpreter but was denied every time.

I just hope that this post can make an impression like it did on me.

-Day.

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It's the first day of #BlackHistoryMonth ✊🏾✊🏾✊🏾

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where were you?  [ PSA // dvcpro codec databending

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We are our own art ✊🏾🙏🏾✨

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Black Futures Month celebrates bodies of all kind today. This wonderful poster was created by Sharee Miller @coilyandcuteblog and is titled, Be Positively You. You can also find her at www.instagram.com/coilyandcute and twitter.com/coilyandcute

The accompanying article, written by Jamal T. Lewis, can be read here: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jamal-t-lewis/there-is-freedom-in-the-w_b_9284868.html?1456067675

#BlackFutureMonth #BlackLivesMatter #VisionsOfABlackFuture

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Glenn Ligon, Give us a Poem (Palindrome #2), 2007

“Glenn Ligon made this neon piece […] in 2007, and I saw it a little while back on the wall of the Studio Museum in Harlem, where it’s part of the permanent collection. The work is built around an incident that occurred at Harvard in 1975, when Muhammad Ali had just finished a speech and a student in the audience asked him to improvise a poem: ‘Me/We’ was the pithy verse Ali offered. Even then, at the height of the Black Power movement, it was an intriguingly opaque statement that could have been read as a gesture of solidarity between the black boxer and his white audience, or as an underlining of their difference. In Ligon’s work, the two words become a visual palindrome, of sorts – symmetrical top and bottom – and alternate being lit (white) and unlit (black), which just increases the tension inherent in them. In 2014, in a museum in Harlem, it strikes me that the tension is between the artist and the audience he addresses – with the issue of race still there, but now wrapped up in larger issues of aesthetic communities and the class, and color, they imply." Blake Gopnik, The Daily Pic