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To Take Root Amongst the Stars: Earthseed

If I could follow Mary J. Blige featuring Ludacris and runaway love, I would be running away from the symbolic violence against Black women and police brutality / sanctioned violence against Black people. I would be seeking shelter from these two things as I see the havoc and harm they produce against Black people. I a thorough distaste for our education system and I a firm believer that it commits violent acts against Black people. From Black girls having their hair cut by teachers because “it was a distraction” to Black children being discouraged in their aspirations by college counselors to the lack of relevant curriculum to equip students for life. Education is so important, knowledge is something that no one can take from you. Its power is clear because why else would masters go to great lengths of preventing enslaved Africans from learning to read. I am also seeking shelter from police brutality. I recall being in high school when Trayvon Martin was killed and not knowing how to process the information. It felt as if this is not something that is supposed to happen today because we are supposed to have come so far and this was not the 60s. And with the height of social media, the images of control and white fragility being used against Black people anger and weigh heavy on my heart. From sanctioned violence by police to white women calling cops on children selling water or Black men having a barbeque. Why are people so threatened by us trying to live our best lives?

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“The destiny of Earthseed is to take root amongst the stars”

“All successful life is adaptable, opportunistic, tenacious, interconnected, and fecund. Understand this. Use it. Shape God.”

“Civilization is to groups what intelligence is to individuals. It is a means of combining the intelligence of many to achieve ongoing group adaptation. Civilization, like intelligence, may serve well, serve adequately, or fail to serve its adaptive function. When civilization fails to serve, it must disintegrate unless it is acted upon by unifying internal or external forces” - Octavia Butler, Parable of the Sower.

I have chosen these quotes because they emphasize the aspect of community and resilience. To be communal is to understand that you cannot serve yourself with the result of a thriving world. Because we are interdependent, we use our gifts, talents, knowledge, experiences, etc. to help one another. Ultimately, this is how we can achieve success and take root amongst the stars. I think tenacity and being opportunistic and interconnected is what Black people have shown throughout history. It is what immigrants show today. Community and solidarity are what allows us to be fecund. Implementing this as a value within our Earthseed, we can create a place that is beautiful and contrary to the world we live in today. We can take place amongst the stars where light is shed and what people reach for.

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Where will we reside? I imagine a somewhat rural space away from the city until we have the means and to go and “gentrify” / renaissance our communities black up. Places like Sylmar or Moreno Valley have lots of land.

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I would like to think of my community as inclusive, but I understand the dangers of people who are “all-lies” in their allyship and who are sunken. Black, white, brown, yellow, red, blue alike. For those who fall under those categories, sorry not sorry but you are not in the running in joining America's next top parable.

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The leadership I would like for my community would resemble a church. I believe the notion of departments and boards allows people to have a niche and place to be put to work as well as train up others. No department can stand on its own, they are all imperative to the successful function of the community as a whole. We will survive by maintaining community. We survive by planting our seed (values, ideas, etc.) in those that come after us. We survive by protecting one another from degradation or dehumanization. When I look at systems we operate in today and the injustices that constantly arise, I have an understanding that for anyone outside of the white-cis-hetero-rich male, it is functioning exactly as planned. Values that are not dehumanizing or meant to only support others are crucial. Humans were created to be interdependent, and that is something essential to survival.

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Sustainability is very important because, without an Earth that is in good condition and habitable, there is no purpose to Earthseed. I think Black people are instrumental in innovating opportunities and things creatively to overcome. So, as a means of creating a thriving community and improving life in our community, a sustainable way of accessing water as well as food is important. This is a nod to the water crisis still present in Flint, Michigan as well as the health concerns due to a shady FDA and diet. I would want a machine that can cleanse any digestible liquid or press it out of something and make drinkable water. Also, something that is reusable and multifunctioning, so that when you are done with it it can be replanted or used to create something else.

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In order to build a better future, the current indoctrination education system will be fully disrupted. There will not be a white hegemonic, eurocentric, faux meritocracy value. Education is mutual and collaborative and should be inclusive and relevant to the needs of people. In dismantling the police force which is founded on the dehumanization of enslaved Africans, I think there can be space for creating something more effective and true to its goals of protecting and serving (just look at the Dora Milaje). By breaking down the values that the U.S. of America holds that are rooted in racism, greedy capitalism, sexism, etc. we can walk to a better future.

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Aysia-Marie Perkins 

Blog 2: EARTHSEED 

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This is Afrofuturism

Afrofuturism is the escape I never knew I needed. This course has brought something unique and important to academia. It is an excellent way to highlight Blackness that in my education career has been lacking. Traditional education is a sprinkle of Blackness here and there in a white hegemonic setting. Black education looks like slavery, civil rights, Martin Luther King versus Malcolm X, and maybe a dash of police brutality. The story that is told about Blackness and Black history is riddled with struggle and although that is a major foundation resulting from white supremacy, that is not our whole story. I thoroughly enjoy that Afrofuturism addresses the plight of Black people with a critique and presents a vision for our future. An afrofuturist history education looks like Black Panther, Lion’s Blood, Cosmic Slop, and Many Moons. Yes, slavery is a hundreds of years story for Black Americans, but it is Afrofuturism. Enslaved Africans used music, song, and dance to time their work, to uplift their spirits, and communicate in code to coordinate secret meetings and escape in what looked like a good time to their masters and praises to Jesus. Enslaved Africans envisioned themselves in a space and time beyond what they saw before their eyes. These works embody this completely by considering history but putting a twist on it. From imagining Africa having never been colonized to white people being enslaved by Muslim Africans.

Afrofuturism also brings Black women into the light. The groundwork that Black women put into pursuing liberation is often overlooked. As my friend Jada puts it, Shuri ran so that T’Challa could walk! And this is often the story not told. Black women were central to Wakanda in all aspects, in leading, protecting, cultivating, and innovating. Throughout the film, you will find Black women putting in work. During slavery, Black women would cornrow maps onto their heads, beautifully constructing routes to freedom. Woven in their braids would be seeds or rice so they could feed themselves along the way. In Janelle Monae’s Dirty Computer, she displays resistance to brainwashing, memory erasing, sexual, symbolic, and physical violence. Her work embodies [Black] women’s empowerment and Black women’s liberation which comes with the liberation of all. Black women are bad mamma jammas, but we are also soft in pynk.

At the end of each day, as Kendrick says, we gon be aight! Our resilience is demonstrated time and time again. Afrofuturism is our past, present, and future in one and it is the education that I absolutely needed. It is what you need, have a seat...

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Aysia-Marie Perkins 

Blog 6 

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District 9 & All The Stars

“Tell me what you gon' do to me

Confrontation ain't nothin' new to me

You can bring a bullet, bring a sword

Bring a morgue, but you can't bring the truth to me

Fuck you and all your expectations

I don't even want your congratulations

I recognize your false confidence and calculated promises all in your conversation

I hate people that feel entitled

Look at me crazy 'cause I ain't invite you

Oh, you important?

You the moral to the story, you endorsing?

Motherfucker, I don't even like you

Corrupt a man's heart with a gift

That's how you find out who you dealin' with

A small percentage, who I'm building with

I want the credit if I'm losing or I'm winning

On my momma that's the realest shit”

District 9 is the place where alien refugees have sought asylum in South Africa under the thumb of white South Africans. A 90 percent rotten tomato earned thriller, many critics and moviegoers appeared to thoroughly enjoy the film. I, on the other hand, give it a thumbs down, splat, 0 out of 10 would recommend. While many people commented on the great imagination, effects, and originality of the film, I think they have completely missed it. It is clear that there is a social commentary of some degree. We can see anti-immigrant, anti-asylum sentiments, racism, and elitism as apparent themes. However, in executing these themes and the plot, I think the film strictly reinforces problematic tropes that work in opposition. While the film takes place in South Africa, there are no South African characters ( as in Black, any white South Africans are a result of colonizers and will be referred to as such) with development. They merely serve as prop characters to add or propel the main character, lanky and foolish Wikus. Black South Africans are portrayed as primitive and queer. As mentioned in discussion class, why is that they are the only ones who are intentionally seeking out to have sex with the giant aliens?  What does this say about them? If South African people are not being portrayed as scary thugs, they are serving as guardians and workers of Wikus. He is described as a kindred spirit, but he is anything but. Rather, he acts through interest convergence theory wherever he goes. He lacks a moral compass and partakes in the violent raids of district 9. He criminalizes them in his speech and actions and threatens to take away one of the alien’s child when he unsuccessfully tries to force his hand at their removal. Wikus’ attitude does not change until he begins to suffer the consequences of his colonizing ways. As he begins to turn into one of the aliens after touching things he has no business with, the company he works for blacklists him and decides to use him as one of their experiments, just as they were doing with the other aliens. Wikus has a sudden change of heart that led many viewers to feel sorry for him. WELL, I DO NOT. 

You reap what you sow and how foolish can you be to be surprised when the shady company who uses you as a pawn to do their dirty work would turn on you when the opportunity presented itself? Values and morals are very telling. Wikus was problematic from the jump and that is something that many critics seem to gloss over *insert tea*. Now Wikus wants to work with the alien and praise him, but only after he learns that the alien can make him human again. TRIFLING. This does not undo the dehumanization that has taken place and led to the death and violence against the aliens.

Wikus character very much so reminded me of the verse from All The Stars by Kendrick Lamar ft. Sza. Wikus is not the white savior he is painted out to be, “I recognize your false confidence and calculated promises...I hate people that feel entitled, oh, you important? You the moral to the story you endorsin?...Corrupt a man’s heart with a gift That’s how you find out who you dealin with”. This verse perfectly describes the privilege and entitlement that has spoiled Wikus. And throughout the story, we are able to see what the aliens are really dealing with. It calls out and brings into question whether his sacrificing of his life makes him the moral of the story...It does not! It was predictable and the bare minimum of his humanity. Wikus is an embodiment of all things problematic, so “fuck you and all your expectations, I don’t even want your congratulations”.

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Aysia-Marie Perkins 

blog 5

[thelemonade-tree]

Not Ya Daddy’s Son

Children of Men is a film about the end of the world, very similar to what we are presumably facing today. The premise of the film is that the end of the world has come because women are no longer able to conceive. It is a plague of infertility. You also see immigrants struggling to find sanctuary and asylum in Britain. Both fertility and immigration are major topics of discussion in our US government today.

The platform of Trump and his administration is “making america great again” and emphasizing how america is not a country if it does not maintain its borders (a very white social construct). The rhetoric surrounding immigrants has been violent as they are called rapists and drug dealers, etc. Immigrants are heavily criminalized and we have seen them put in cages and thrown around. However, this administration is not the first to conduct raids or deport immigrants and reinforce the notion that they are illegals or aliens. Geroge W. Bush played a role in dehumanizing and deporting immigrants and Obama’s administration deported even more than his predecessor. The topic of immigrants and their humanity is definitely seen in this film and although it was published in 2006, a lot of the imagery can be seen in our current climate in 2019.

The woman’s body has also been a topic for the past few years as well, mainly at the table talks of old, white, men. What else is new? 10 states on the southern side of the US have passed anti-abortion, anti-choice laws. While the film concerns fertility and the inability to birth children, the context as to today’s abortion laws partially reflects this. It is believed that a few deceased from 2019, the US population will be majority Latinx. People of color already are the majority although they are considered to be minorities. White men have become fearful that they are on the brink of extinction! Families of color tend to have more children than white families and this coupled with the fear of “illegal aliens” (who we have become conditioned to think equals Mexicans and other Latinx groups we assume are Mexican) are said to be influencing the abortion ban laws. The 10 states that have passed it are majority white. Living in a time where people want to “make america great again” means there are more extreme efforts to preserve whiteness. These laws also include the criminalization of miscarriages. Ultimately, poor people and people of color, like Black women will be disproportionately affected by these laws.

In the film, humanity is saved by…. A BLACK WOMAN. She is the only person known to be with child and she beautifully gives birth to a baby girl. What a testament to the work that Black women do for the liberation of all walks of life. In class, we have talked about how Black women are the future, and I have found no lies detected.

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Aysia-Marie Perkins 

Afrofuturism blog 4

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Sorry NOT Sorry

What. The. Heck. What did I just watch? Those were the first things that came out of my mouth after viewing Sorry To Bother You for the first time. I was excited to see Tessa Thompson on screen as well as the guy I recognized from Get Out, Lakeith. Little did I know what story these two would illustrate on screen. Drugs, horses, bourgeois art, what wasn’t happening in the film. There were themes of language, the horrendous consequences and realities of capitalism, extortion, morals, human experimentation, and more.

“ I realized I needed Cassius' voice to sound like the whitest guy in the world, the whitest person that people might recognize. And I realized that David's voice is a little whiter than yours." He was like, "Really? Oh yeah, his voice is whiter than mine," and started feeling proud about that.” - Riley Boots

Sorry To Bother touched on a major aspect of Blackness, code-switching / “the white voice”. Your name or speaking the king’s proper english is associated with whiteness. This association or assumed proximity to whiteness allows Black people to navigate predominately white spaces, from academia to corporate America with more ease than usual. While it is illegal to discriminate against people by race, it has been shown that people with non-european-American names are not afforded the same level playing field.

So, white America has no appreciation for the uniqueness of Black names and agency. There is also no appreciation for African American Vernacular English, consequently, we have code-switching. Black people are accustomed to switching up their behavior and language depending on the setting as a means of fitting in or protection from microaggressions in white spaces. However, choosing to “speak properly” can further lead to microaggressions with statements such as “you speak so well” or “wow, you are so articulate”. As if Black people do not have the capacity or ability to be sophisticated or articulate.

It is this white voice that Cassius Green utilizes to achieve success in his job as a telemarketer. When he speaks in his usual manner, he tends to always begin his calls with “Sorry to bother you”, but when he begins to use his white voice he carries himself differently during these calls, more confidently. The white voice gives him power that he can feel and it allows him to put on a performance, a performance where he is not sorry to bother the customer but is the one who's actually booked and busy and is doing a quick favor for the customer.

This reinforces the notion of code-switching and the white voice. Being Black and speaking however you want, whether it is “proper” (I put this in quotes because there is no right or wrong way to speak, white hegemony socializes us to believe that the king’s english is how educated and smart [white] people speak) or with slang, our Blackness makes us bothersome. We are socialized to not take up space and when we do, we apologize for it. Have you ever found yourself trying to squeeze by someone and whilst saying excuse me also throw in a sorry? Or apologized for crying? Apologized for anything that actually does not require an apology? I find myself doing this constantly and am undergoing a process to deconstruct this socialization. I do not have to shrink myself to make it easier for others to navigate experiences and spaces. And whether I choose to speak with slang, AAVE, or the king’s english, code switch, etc. I will always be one hundred percent Black. Sorry, not sorry!

Aysia-Marie Perkins

Afrofuturism blog 3 

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HΘMΣCΘMING: A Film by Beyoncé (2019) dir. Beyoncé Knowles-Carter 

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Soul is Afrofuturism 

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Jada Anderson

Afrofuturism Blog Post #1

4.19.19

Janelle Monáe and Dirty Computer: Black Excellence Queering Space

What I love about Janelle Monáe���s Dirty Computer Emotion Picture—and about Janelle Monáe as an artist—is that she unapologetically puts Blackness and Queerness on full display. And never confines them to these rigid definitions of what Blackness and Queerness are. Not only is she able to represent a community that is often distinctly separate from LGBTQ communities—Queer and Trans People of Color or QTPOC—she is able to challenge the ways audiences think about what it is to be Black, Queer, and Black and Queer. To me they have always gone hand in hand, especially considering that before it was reclaimed by marginalized communities, Queer held—and still holds—a basic definition of ‘strange / odd.’  But even more importantly to me, as a verb it has always meant “spoil or ruin.” In this sense, Black people have been framed externally as queering space since we have been around, seen as threats because of our difference. However to ourselves, our queering of space has been to disrupt a status quo that was exclusionary, harmful, and lacking movement.  Our “spoiling” of spaces looks like creation, innovation, originality—out of both hardship and inspiration, introducing concepts and enacting them in ways people had and have never seen before. Dirty Computer is a perfect example of queering space. It’s ability to disrupt constructed norms of pop music, and to transcend multiple genres, has a real ability to both make people uncomfortable and to create change. Janelle Monae deals with concept of this queerness of us being stripped away from us, & framed as “cleansing”. Our memories of our storied pasts which have allowed us to create our future have to get wiped away to prevent us from further disrupting the status quo. But in the end, we see how this “cleansing” is not strong enough to keep us silent or to keep us from persisting.

Admittedly I was annoyed when Dirty Computer did not receive a Grammy. Shook but not surprised that excellence was once again improperly recognized. The idea of Dirty Computer being “too ahead of its time” is not an unfamiliar critique to Black women’s art, whether in music, literature, or in other pockets of society. Those with the most power / ability to make decisions around what is deemed award-worthy have never quite seemed to understand what Black artists are accomplishing, what they are saying or trying to point out. Black people have always been ‘ahead of’ our time. We have had to exist in the future, out of the necessity to envision a better one for ourselves and out of our motivation to create new spaces for us to thrive. “Dirty computers” we may be, and as dirty computers we shall thrive.

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YOU DIRTY COMPUTER

Aysia-Marie Perkins

Afrofuturism:Aboard Mothership

Blog #1

YOU DIRTY COMPUTER

Janelle Monae’s Dirty Computer will gather errbody and they momma’s edges. The visual album, or emotion picture as she calls it, was an amazing introduction to our class Afrofuturism: Aboard Mothership. Through this album, Janelle provides visibility to the highest degree for Black women coupled with striking technological visuals, lighting, and scenery. She defies every label, stereotype, and caricature that has been placed upon Black women in Amerikkka by presenting a multidimensional picture of Blackness. My TA, Dante, brought up an excellent notion that happens often in the Black community- the flattening of Blackness. We believe that to be Black means to be x,y, and z within the Black community. I believe it to be a defense mechanism as a means to protect and guard what our Blackness is and from what society tries to paint us as. I also believe it to be a result of the intentional, violent stripping of heritage, culture, and every aspect of being of enslaved Africans. We were torn down to nothing but property, chattel, not even human. It’s a result of having to rebuild ourselves and redefining who we are and navigating respectability politics, code-switching, etc. Dirty Computer is pandora’s box of Blackness! She illustrates the capability of freedom, softness, confidence, and love that Black women are often barred from. Simultaneously, she also depicts and nods to the history that we have been through and what our journey to the future looks like. Bondage and policing of not only our bodies but our minds! The brain and knowledge are one of the most powerful weapons we have and control. “If you want to hide something from the Black man, put it in a book”, there is a reason why literacy for the enslaved was fatal. The fact that Janelle is undergoing a de-bugging and white males are in control of erasing her memories and dreams is disturbing but illustrates the battle that we face constantly. From the revision of history that occurs to the only access to a Black education is in higher academia. Being in control of your story is important to your being and your power. There is also a nod to the idea that white women may even be more dangerous than white men. Similar to Get Out, a white woman takes the lead in the erasure of Black identity. But still, we rise. Dante and our guest speaker DJ Lyneé Denise shared something that very much so resonated in me that Janelle Monae beautifully captures, Black women are the future and that our bodies are literally technology. From the physical building of this country to the culture and its music!

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Black Girl Horror

Aysia-Marie Perkins

Blog 5

Black Girl Horror

“You Black Girl Magic!  You Black Girl Flyy… You Black Girl Brilliance You Black Girl Wonder You Black Girl Shine! You Black Girl Bloom You Black Girl Black Girl” - Mahogany L. Browne

Horror, like many film genres, has the tendency to render Black women invisible. However, horror is a special place where Black women, without having been misconstructed or represented, have been able to tell their own stories. From navigating reconciliation, relationships, and literal Black girl magic.

Black women can often be seen as the glue that holds people together, the strong superhero, someone who gets it done and you do not want to mess with.

“Black girls and women have been routinely denied their humanity in the face of a world ruled by racism, sexism, colorism, classism, and the enduring belief that our backs were built to carry what others would consider unimaginable burden. When we call ourselves beautiful anyway, when we succeed anyway, when we cry though they might never have imagined we had the capacity to feel so deeply, and when they find themselves wanting to imitate us anyway, that's Black Girl Magic. We defy the limits they set for us, lies we refuse to enroll in. It's not about tapping into something supernatural, it's about claiming or reclaiming what others have refused to see.” - Ashley Ford

Black women are so essential to Black culture and Black Horror is a forum for us to express everything that we have peeped. Black horror is Black girl magic. Works such as “The Good House”, “Eve’s Bayou”, “Kindred”, and “Paralysis” show the humanity of Black women and how we continue to rise as Maya Angelou beautifully says. When Black horror is not just “Blacks in horror”, our stories are more than just senseless violence to show our humanity to white liberals. In Kindred, Eve’s Bayou, and The Good House, Black women are able to feel pain from personal and historical issues. Navigating relationships to our mothers, our grandmothers, children, and the men in our community. Not everything is centered around politics, anti-Blackness, systemic racism and sexism because our lives do not always have to be political or revolutionary statements. Black women get to just be. What it is like to be in an interracial relationship with someone who resembles those who enslaved your ancestors. What it is like to see your father be a flawed character who betrays your trust. What it is like to feel disconnected from your ancestral roots. Black horror made for Black people, and Black women specifically gives us the chance to take up space without complications. Black women in horror do it well, and quite frankly they do it better than your current fave. Do not @ me, argue with your mother.

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The Race Card

Aysia-Marie Perkins

Blog 4 | Sunken Place

The Race Card

When discussing systems of power,  privilege,  and disadvantages experienced varying on one’s level of melanin, people often consider this “playing the race card”. This card, just like race is a social construction. While people of color are often on the short end of the stick in these systems, race has always been a white thing. Race as a social construct was initially Black and white issue created by white folks to reinforce their white supremacy, otherwise known as white fragility. Race was made to be a hierarchy of white as right and on top and Black as the lowliest. Other ethnicities and races would be deemed like Blackness to keep the white race as Anglo-Saxon pure as possible. However, proximity to Blackness risked solidarity between ethnic groups that threatened white fragility. Consequently, white passing ethnic groups were assimilated into the white race. Race is not real, but it very much so has real consequences for people who did not create it.

So if race being a construction completely fabricated by white folks, how is that Black people are considered to be “playing the race card’ that they are invoking when they share their experiences navigating a white hegemonic world? Honestly, truly, I believe it is quite the opposite. When Black people and culture are discredited and exploited yet seen as devalued within their community because of their Blackness, that is playing the race card.

In the film “Abby”, there is clear race card playing through the white lens about Blackness and Black womanhood. Abby comes across as a picture perfect wife who uplifts her God fearing husband. But when she engages in self-pleasure, something frowned upon religiously, she awakens and invites a sex demon to take over her body. Abby turns into a sex lusting zealot who goes after the first man her eyes come across. Her first attack is right after her church choir solo of all times and places. Abby essentially becomes the opposite end of the spectrum of a pious and righteous wife, but rather one who degrades and emasculates her husband and partakes in vulgar festivities.  She has become the stereotypical Black woman, Jezebel and Sapphire. These are in total contrast of what the ideal woman is and what the ideal Christian woman is. Ideal being code for whiteness, the film “Abby” ultimately serves as a complete exploitation of Blackness and is an extremely gross representation of Black womanhood that reinforces the dichotomy of white womanhood and the “others”. Black women are seen as losing their innocence of child-likeness all the way to kindergarten. They are hypersexualized and seen as lacking morals according to the Jezebel and Sapphire stereotype. Not only do these archetypes sit outside womanhood normalcy, but also outside Christian womanhood normalcy. To be sexual and religious is believed to be only a tool unto your husband and not have pleasure as a woman for yourself. This calls into play the mammy archetype, one who gains fulfillment only from serving others. Abby does not provide any visibility for Black womanhood outside of these stereotypes.

Not only does “Abby” reinforce white hegemony surrounding womanhood and religion, but it simultaneously literally demonizes Blackness. Abby is overcome by the sex demon as a result of her father in law freed the Nigerian sex demon while in Africa. Blackness in America has been birthed from the violent stripping away of African roots and ancestry. By creating an African sex demon to take over a Black American woman’s body, it is being reinforced that the Blacker you are, the worse. Straight out of Africa in this film is being presented as immoral and that it is something to be fearful of. It pits American Blackness against African Blackness to see which is lowlier. This in itself is not only a gross and racist misconstruction, but a contradiction as Nigerian immigrant children have been seen as the highest performers in elementary academia within the immigrant population.

Abby is full of gross exaggerations of Blackness and Black womanhood that exploits the image of both under the guise of representation. It only reinforces white fragile and hegemonic philosophies. As a Blaxploitation film, it is a prime example of white people playing the race card.

Abby is a 1974 horror film written and directed by William Girdler in the Blaxploitation era.

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The First Purge - Why Can’t Black People Just Live?

Aysia-Marie Perkins

Blog 6  AfAm 188a | Sunken Place

03-14-19

The First Purge : Why Can’t Black People Just Live?

The Purge, an opportunity to experience lawlessness for a complete 24 hours with no repercussions! What sounds like a free shopping spree for food, clothes, electronics, and an increase in cash flow, and a chance to find someone to erase some family student loans turned out to be anything but. I have never seen any of the purge movies for the simple fact that when trailers came out and Black people seemed to be the victims of constant terror (wow, maybe an actual reflection of the harassment we do receive for no other than racist reasons). I was turned off and uninterested. I thought the film was unrealistic in that i do not know how many people would actually be concerned about killing each other. Why do that when you can “steal” anything you want and it can’t be considered stealing because it has been legal for 24 hours. Get a boat, get a jet, nab more than a few plane tickets, get a new wardrobe, get some free money! The possibilities are endless.

The film showed how when the ideas and stereotypes that people hold about others do not match up to reality, they seek to find a way to make it the reality. This is what I identify as BIRD BEHAVIOR. The purpose of the experiment, or purge, is to cleanse the nation of its populace. Specifically here, the aim was to cleanse Staten Island of a large portion of Black people while simultaneously showing that they are animalistic and “Black on Black crime” is real. What really takes place is a debunking of myths of the Black community, but at a high cost.

Black people will do anything for money - Well, who wouldn’t? Who doesn’t? Who hasn’t? In our capitalistic world we have no choice but to do any and everything to get a dollar. Some people have been privileged to take more socially acceptable ways of making money, but someone will always be on the losing side. Because that is how capitalism functions. The psychologist created the experiment for money, the guy running the experiment in Staten Island is doing it for money (and to fill some sick, racist fantasy), white, Anglo-Saxon colonizers murdered Natives and enslaved African people to make a dollar so they could increase their pockets with free labor. Majority of the people who stayed on the island partied and minded their business. Because this did not fit the mission of the operators behind  the purge, they decided to antagonize Black people to prove their ideologies right. We then saw military, the KKK, cops, and other mercenaries grace the screen to perpetuate violence against Black people. This portion of the film was all too triggering as a Black person and something I could have went without. While our two protagonists survive and work together to save each other and protect their neighborhood, it simply was not enough to deal with the violence and trauma they endured. Knowing that this film although having been directed by a Black person, was written by a white guy, I think it is very telling. It partially illustrates a faux white ally and savior in the white woman who was the brain behind the purge. Aside from that, there was nothing new to me offered on screen. I often find that non-Black people choose to antagonize Black people and even get paid for it and this is how i felt about what was occurring on screen and how I felt as a viewer. As mentioned in class, who was all the highly visually graphic violence for? Was the “social commentary” provided enough to outweigh the almost genocide of Black people? No. Ultimately, I would not have chosen The First Purge as something to see out in theaters. I am intrigued to see how the other films went and if they have some carelessness of the lives of people of color or if they do have some depth to offer. I would like to leave with this, BLACK PEOPLE ARE NOT HERE FOR YOUR RACIST EXPERIMENTAL PLEASURE AND WHITE AGENDA. JUST SAY YOU ARE RACIST AND GO. LET US LIVE, LEAVE US ALONE.

MANAGEMENT

[thelemonade-tree]

The Girl with All the Gifts: “THE GIRL WITH ALL THE GIFTS’ AND BLACK GIRLS DESTROYING THE WORLD TO SAVE THEMSELVES” - Hari Ziyad

The Sunken Place AfAm | Blog Post 3

Aysia-Marie Perkins

 “Black history is Black Horror”, but not today.

The girl with the gifts is Black girl magic, literally. Our star is Melanie, a Black girl who alongside the children left in the story is infected with a fungus that causes them to seek out flesh and blood, devouring until their hunger is satisfied. Consequently, those infected have earned the name “hungries”. Melanie is unlike all the other hungries however, because not only is she a genius who has the periodic table memorized and a unique, creative mind for writing, she has the ability to control her urge for human flesh. In the midst of being in a prison where guards call her out of her name, an abortion, hold guns in her face every second that they are in her presence, and she is locked down in a chair with immobility, still she rises! Melanie never curses the people who are treating her inhumanely. Conversely, she is particular in speaking and greeting everyone who crosses her path. When she discovers that one of children whose number she picked when the doctor asked for a number one-20 went missing, she decides to choose her own number on the next round. Black history is no stranger to inhumanity at the hands of others, yet Black people and very specifically Black women continue to rise. In the face of adversity, Black women remain strong and put in their all to counteract evil. As Michelle Obama said, “when they go low, we go high”.

While Melanie was a symbol of Mrs. Obama’s words, I was very anxious about her consequential willingness to take on the sacrificial negro movie horror trope. Black women often put their own lives on the line for their people as well as for others (often it is not reciprocated but that is another blog for another day). This is seen all throughout history, commonly with the mammy, the Black Lives Matter movement, #muteRKelly, etc. Black people have also served as experiments for the betterment of others, without proper consent and compensation, from the syphilis experiments to the invasion of Henrietta Lacks’ body that has provided major breakthroughs in medicine (without her knowledge and her family has seen not a shiny penny). Melanie is seen taking on leadership in a group of mostly selfish adults who fear her or view her as a sacrifice to save all of humanity. She goes beyond helping them on their journey and goes on to protect them from other hungries. The doctor who is on her last few dying breaths so desperately tries to convince Melanie that she is the end all be all to the future of the human race, that she has the power to die so that they may live. I was ready to turn the movie off and go home. I did not need to see a little Black girl turn her life over to these people who imprisoned her at birth and viewed her as a dirty creature so that they could go on with their tired lives. Thank goodness, Melanie came through with the good ole clapbacks! “Why should it be us who has to die for you?” The mic drops as Melanie sets the world on hungry fungal fire.

Melanie irrefutably is a representation of Black girl magic. While she took on the role of the “strong Black woman” and many other archetypes of Black women and Black girls who have their innocence revoked by adults at the tender age of five, she was fearless in her refusal to die. We stan! Perhaps this is a new fighter in Black girl magic to choose that Hari Ziyad explores in her piece about the film.  

Works Cited

'The Girl With All The Gifts' and Black girls destroying the world to save themselves. (2017, July 24). Retrieved from https://afropunk.com/2017/07/the-girl-with-all-the-gifts-destroying-themselves-to-save/

[thelemonade-tree]

Black is the New Black, Periodt.

The Sunken Place AfAm | Blog Post 2

Aysia-Marie Perkins

My Friend is so Black! How Black is she?

“The black cast member is always the first to die in a horror movie, but what happens when everyone is black?”

What is Blackness? The Blackening is a short film the brings up and comedically tries to answer this question, while also addressing the “first to die” and “sacrificial negro” tropes of Black people in horror, all in four minutes and twenty-two seconds. Similarly to “Get Out”, many characterizations are things shared amongst the Black community that only we may understand or laugh at (and even should be the only ones laughing). The group of 8 friends are faced with sacrificing the Blickkity Blackkety Blackest one of them all in order to save themselves from the consequence of participating in the supposed anti-Black activity of camping, being killed by a psycho white man. In the midst of their fear for being the sacrificed Black one, each character takes their turn in denying their Blackness and proving just how white they are. This was hilariously ironic as often times Black people have competitions between one another in proving which of them is the Blackest. There is even a card game for it, Black Card Revoked. The short geniusly captures what and how Black culture is made and validated.

“Well Lisa says nigga the most”- because the utterance of this word is only acceptable from a Black person’s mouth

“I am very white, I let my daughter call me a b*tch”- because we all know white kids be wildin’ saying off the wall stuff and don’t even get beat for it!

“Shantire is the Blackest, she’s wearing a Black Lives Matter t-shirt...I don’t know what you’re talking about, besides all li- *gags*, all lives ma-*gags* all lives matter!”- because if you’re saying Black lives matter you’re ignoring everyone else, and that’s like racist

“I like lightskin aunt Viv over darkskin aunt Viv”- a major controversy, if ya know, ya know. will the real aunt viv please stand?

“I voted for Trump”- sure sign that you are in the sunken place and working against the culture

“I’m the whitest person here”

The interactions and explanations between the characters illustrates the binary of whiteness and Blackness. But why aren’t they trying to prove their Asianness or Latinx-ness in their denial of Blackness? In the class “Understanding Whiteness”, we examined the precise construction of the white race and how race came about. Race originally started out as Black and white. Turns out, whiteness was so specifically crafted out to be the exact opposite to what they saw as Black and later ethnic grouping, who was able to assimilate into whiteness, and racial formation was all centered around avoiding what Blackness was. White is freedom, Black is slave-ish, whiteness is intelligence, Blackness is ignorance, whiteness is pious, Blackness is heathen. The purpose of constructing whiteness in this lens was to deliberately demonize Blackness and Black people to justify their inhumane treatment. As the characters navigate and deny their Blackness, they are further crafting what it is and is not by comparing it to whiteness. While many of their statements may appear small, silly notions of what Blackness is, it calls to my mind about how our culture can seem “made up”. But perhaps that is also the beauty of our resilience after being stripped of our ethnic culture. Perhaps that is also what makes us more susceptible to culture vultures. Unlike Namdie, the character who is “actually from Africa”, the others probably do not know their exact ethnic heritage. It brings up the discussion of how valid is our Blackness and does not knowing your heritage make you less Black?

In the end, our Trump voting Black friend gets sacrificed, but not because of his voting ways. The friends conclude however, that was a fair rationale, for the culture. They denied their Blackness all in effort to preserve it, to preserve Black culture.

Works Cited

YouTube. (2018, April 13). 3Peat Presents: The Blackening - Uncensored. [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QOPwQdDu-D8

[thelemonade-tree]

Real Eyes Realize that some Allies are All Lies

The Sunken Place AfAm | Blog 1

Aysia-Marie Perkins

Rose appears to be one of those “down” white people, or wypipo, who is woke and obviously not a racist. She stood up for Chris when the police officer made an unusual request for his license, she tried to deter conversations away from her father and brother’s cringey commentary, and was on the lookout for him. Rose is totally not a racist, but an ally! However, there was a very clear tell tale sign that Rose being an ally was all a lie.

Originally when i saw the film in theaters, all her woke ally character traits whoo-ed me over and I was bought until she was exposed for the fetishsizing evil villian she was with her Black body pinterest board photo hoarding in a box self. Upon watching the film for a second time, I realized the exact moment at which I, and many other people, should have known she was plotting from the jump. When Bambi randomly leaps across the road and gets hit by their vehicle, Chris was the only one intrigued. Chris walked over to where the deer was lying in the bushes while Rose called for him and ushered him to come along. The alarms should be going off in your head by now. Why did Rose not rush over to tend to the wounded animal? We should have known from this moment that she was off because wypipo LOVE animals and she was not in the least bit concerned about poor Bambi! Arguably they care for the lives of animals more than any other kind of life.

When discussions arise surrounding police brutality, Black Lives Matter, immigration, the border, and other social issues, white people can hardly ever agree on the basic fact that the people at the center of these issues are humans deserving to be treated as such. A lack of sympathy and compassion are consistently shown towards these subjects and rather they rationalize the horrors that occur. “Well if they came here legally there wouldn’t be a problem”, “He was a thug so he deserved it”, “I think all lives matter so saying only Black ones do is racist”.

However, when it comes to animals, all the compassion leaps out. Animal cruelty is an issue that garners all of the attention, concern, and call to action from white people. In 2016, when a man was charged for the rape and murder of a dog, many people were dissatisfied with his sentence, calling for a longer one and for legislature to re-write laws to come down harder on perpetrators.  “Kelly Oliver has recently noted that stranded “Katrina dogs” received more sympathetic attention in US media coverage of Hurricane Katrina than African Americans similarly stranded in New Orleans, “seemingly because many white Americans can feel more sympathetically toward dogs than they can toward African Americans” (Fielder, Brigitte, Animal Humanism). At a National Animal Rights Conference in 2017, a Latinx woman shared a story of how “a white attendee approached her randomly and asked in broken Spanish, “Why don’t Latinos care about animal rights?”. Another person shared a similar encounter and microaggression, “Hey, you would be the right person to ask this: Why aren’t there more African Americans at the conference?” (Encompass, One Person of Color’s Experience at the 2017 National Animal Rights Conference). The conference was said to be a predominantly white space. This further depicts the mass camaraderie, support, and compassion felt for animals amongst white people. Where are they when discussing the rights of their more melanated counterparts? In the 19th century, abolitionists sometimes employed animal comparisons to slaves as a means of gathering sympathy from white people (Fielder). In order for people to consider the inhumanity of slavery, the enslaved human beings that had been disregarded as such, slaves had to be likened to the kind of animal white people did like. Why?

Rose Armitage could not have cared less about little old Bambi dying on the side of the road. She had more pressing matters and plots to take care of, and that is when we should have known this woman was off, racist, and it is another one of the many signs Chris missed to get out.

Works Cited

“One Person of Color's Experience at the 2017 National Animal Rights Conference.” Encompass, 16 Aug. 2017, encompassmovement.org/one-person-of-colors-experience-at-the-2017-national-animal-rights-conference/.

Fielder, Brigitte. “Animal Humanism: Race, Species, and Affective Kinship in Nineteenth-Century Abolitionism”. American Quarterly, Volume 65, Number 3, September 2013, pp. 487-514