Black Star Power... a celebration of black excellence thread on-going
- Thread starter playahaitian
- Start date
-
- Tags
- black star power power
Damn he went up weak with the ball, if he would have went straight up he would have most likely gotten fouled.
Now, this is also in particular for the black women in particular who have spent their lifetimes dedicated to nurturing everyone before themselves. We can and will do better for you. Now, what we’ve been doing is looking at the data, and we now know that police somehow manage to de-escalate, disarm, and not kill white people every day. So what’s going to happen is we are going to have equal rights and justice in our own country, or we will restructure their function and outs.
I have more, y'all. Yesterday would have been young Tamir Rice’s 14th birthday. So I don’t want to hear any more about how far we have come when paid pubic servants can have a drive-by on a 12-year-old playing alone in broad daylight, killing him on television and then go home to make a sandwich. Tell Rekia Boyd how it’s so much better to live in 2012 that is in 1612 or 1712. Tell that to Eric Gardner. Tell that to Sandra Bland.
Now, the thing is, though, all of us in here getting money, that alone isn’t going to stop this. All right? Now, dedicating our lives to getting money just to give it right back for someone’s brand on our body, when we spent centuries praying with brands on our body, and now we pray to get paid for brands on our bodies? There has been no war that we have not fought and died on the frontlines of. No job we haven’t done, no tax they haven’t levied against us, and we’ve paid all of them, but freedom is somehow always conditional here. “You are free,” They keep on telling us. “But she would have been alive if she hadn’t acted so… free.” Now, freedom is always coming in the hereafter. But, you know what ,though? The hereafter is a hustle. We want it now.
And let’s get a couple things straight, a little side note, the burden of the brutalized is not to comfort of the bystander. That is not our job. Stop with all that. If you have a critique for the resistance, for our resistance, then you better have an established record of our oppression. If you have no interest, if you have no interest in equal rights for black people, then don’t make suggestions to those who do. Sit down. We’ve been floating this country on credit for centuries, and we’re done watching and waiting while this invention called ‘whiteness’ uses and abuses us, burying black people out of sight/out of mind while effecting our culture, our dollars, our entertainment like oil, like gold, demeaning our creations and stealing them, gentrifying our genius and trying us on like costumes before discarding our bodies like rinds of strange fruit.
The thing is, though, just because we’re magic doesn’t mean we’re not real. Thank you.
This dude right here, man? Big thangsBefore we get into it, I want to say I brought my parents out tonight. I want to thank them for being here, for teaching me to focus on comprehension over career, make sure I learn what the schools weren’t afraid to teach us, and my amazing wife for changing my life. Now, this award, this is not for me, this is for the real organizers all over the country: the activists, the civil rights attorneys, the struggling parents, the teachers, the students, that are realizing that a system built to divide and impoverish and destroy us cannot stand if we do. All right? It’s kind of basic mathematics – the more we learn about who we are and how we got here, the more we will mobilize.
Now, this is also in particular for the black women in particular who have spent their lifetimes dedicated to nurturing everyone before themselves. We can and will do better for you. Now, what we’ve been doing is looking at the data, and we now know that police somehow manage to de-escalate, disarm, and not kill white people every day. So what’s going to happen is we are going to have equal rights and justice in our own country, or we will restructure their function and outs.
I have more, y'all. Yesterday would have been young Tamir Rice’s 14th birthday. So I don’t want to hear any more about how far we have come when paid pubic servants can have a drive-by on a 12-year-old playing alone in broad daylight, killing him on television and then go home to make a sandwich. Tell Rekia Boyd how it’s so much better to live in 2012 that is in 1612 or 1712. Tell that to Eric Gardner. Tell that to Sandra Bland.
Now, the thing is, though, all of us in here getting money, that alone isn’t going to stop this. All right? Now, dedicating our lives to getting money just to give it right back for someone’s brand on our body, when we spent centuries praying with brands on our body, and now we pray to get paid for brands on our bodies? There has been no war that we have not fought and died on the frontlines of. No job we haven’t done, no tax they haven’t levied against us, and we’ve paid all of them, but freedom is somehow always conditional here. “You are free,” They keep on telling us. “But she would have been alive if she hadn’t acted so… free.” Now, freedom is always coming in the hereafter. But, you know what ,though? The hereafter is a hustle. We want it now.
And let’s get a couple things straight, a little side note, the burden of the brutalized is not to comfort of the bystander. That is not our job. Stop with all that. If you have a critique for the resistance, for our resistance, then you better have an established record of our oppression. If you have no interest, if you have no interest in equal rights for black people, then don’t make suggestions to those who do. Sit down. We’ve been floating this country on credit for centuries, and we’re done watching and waiting while this invention called ‘whiteness’ uses and abuses us, burying black people out of sight/out of mind while effecting our culture, our dollars, our entertainment like oil, like gold, demeaning our creations and stealing them, gentrifying our genius and trying us on like costumes before discarding our bodies like rinds of strange fruit.
The thing is, though, just because we’re magic doesn’t mean we’re not real. Thank you.
Last edited:
WTF is this? See? This is why I don't watch award shows and haven't since the nineties.
Alice Walker Wrote a Poem About Jesse Williams and His Powerful BET Speech
Jesse Williams has received his deserved share of praise for his powerful speechaccepting his Humanitarian Award at the BET Awards last week. Literary luminary Alice Walker apparently wanted to ensure that her words didn't get lost in a sea of compliments, so she wrote a poem in honor of Williams' big moment, entitled "Here It Is," and published it on her website. After voicing her annoyance that Williams' speech came right after a McDonald's commercial ("Surely there is a better way to honor our people than by encouraging belief that such a corporation cares about what they eat, unless it makes money for the corporation"), Walker explains in her intro that she wanted to write a poem "about fear of blackness in white culture."
The poem, as follows:
Here it is
the beauty that scares you
-so you believe-
to death.
For he is certainly gorgeous
and he is certainly where whiteness
to your disbelief
has not wandered off
to die.
No. It is there, tawny skin, gray eyes,
a Malcolm-esque jaw. His loyal parents
may Goddess bless them
sitting proud and happy and no doubt
amazed
at what they have done.
For he is black too. And obviously
with a soul
made of everything.
Try to think bigger than you ever have
or had courage enough to do:
that blackness is not where whiteness
wanders off to die: but that it is
like the dark matter
between stars and galaxies in
the Universe
that ultimately
holds it all
together.
Jesse Williams has received his deserved share of praise for his powerful speechaccepting his Humanitarian Award at the BET Awards last week. Literary luminary Alice Walker apparently wanted to ensure that her words didn't get lost in a sea of compliments, so she wrote a poem in honor of Williams' big moment, entitled "Here It Is," and published it on her website. After voicing her annoyance that Williams' speech came right after a McDonald's commercial ("Surely there is a better way to honor our people than by encouraging belief that such a corporation cares about what they eat, unless it makes money for the corporation"), Walker explains in her intro that she wanted to write a poem "about fear of blackness in white culture."
The poem, as follows:
Here it is
the beauty that scares you
-so you believe-
to death.
For he is certainly gorgeous
and he is certainly where whiteness
to your disbelief
has not wandered off
to die.
No. It is there, tawny skin, gray eyes,
a Malcolm-esque jaw. His loyal parents
may Goddess bless them
sitting proud and happy and no doubt
amazed
at what they have done.
For he is black too. And obviously
with a soul
made of everything.
Try to think bigger than you ever have
or had courage enough to do:
that blackness is not where whiteness
wanders off to die: but that it is
like the dark matter
between stars and galaxies in
the Universe
that ultimately
holds it all
together.
Oprah Winfrey was one of the leading speakers at this weekend's first everEssence Fest in New Orleans, and the mogul gave a speech full of hope and advice for the predominantly female, African-American audience. Imploring the room to allow themselves to believe in the possibility of their dreams, Oprah remembered a specific dream of her own that came true: Her trees. She said: "I used to dream the dream driving through the white peoples' neighborhoods. You'd see their fancy houses. Sometimes they had gates, but all of them had trees. I thought, 'Oh, rich people have trees. Some people want pocketbooks and cars, but I want me some trees.'" A few years ago, she remembers, "I was sitting in my kitchen window, making coffee in the morning and I saw the six trees. I was making the coffee. I saw the six trees. I went out on the porch to actually count the six trees, and this is what I noticed: That I could dream the six, but beyond the six trees in my kitchen window are 3,687 trees." How does she know? "Because," Oprah says, "I had them counted." "I dreamed the six. That was as much as my small mind and my imagination can see. I dreamed the six, but God can see beyond the six," she explained. Watch Oprah's words on trees above, and read other moments from her speech, courtesy of The Times-Picayune, below.
"I am living the dream. And I want you to live the dream because I'm not living the dream because I'm special. I'm living the dream because I was obedient to the call of the dream. I want you to leave here today thinking about what is the dream for you? What is God's dream for you? What does the creator's dream hold for you? So often we spend our lives hoping and wishing and hoping and wishing and desiring things. This is what I know for sure: You don't get what you hope for. You don't get get what you wish for. You get what you believe."
"When you've done everything you can do, you don't just have to stand. When you've prayed and ... wanted and dreamed and held on and believed and got turned down and turned back and turned around, it taught me when you've done everything you can do, Surrender all. Surrender all."
"You have no power over any territory other than your own, but you are the master of that. You get to be the captain of your own soul and if you just manage that, if you just took care of your territory, all the glorious, glorious, glorious wondrous opportunities and possibilities are waiting for you. The question is, what are you resisting?"
"Your life is big. Your life is huge, and we spend so much time wanting to be in somebody else's life, and you don't get honored, you don't get revered, you don't get celebrated wanting what somebody else has."
"For everything there is an equal and opposite reaction. ... It means no matter what you do, what you say, the energy of who you are is going out into the world, into your home, into your relationships and that energy is always coming back to you. You are responsible for the energy that you are putting out into the world because that very energy — bam! —is coming right back to you every single time, whether you believe it or not, because it is law. It is law."
"The key, the secret, the magic is to surrender to God's dream for you."
http://www.nola.com/essencefest/index.ssf/2016/07/oprah_winfrey_essence_fest_emp.html
