Assumption Of Woman

By: Saint Twenty
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They told themselves that the people beneath them did not feel pain or heartache, were debased machines that only looked human and upon whom one could inflict any atrocity. The people who told themselves these things were telling lies to themselves. Their lives were to some degree a lie and in dehumanizing these people whom they regarded as beasts of the field, they dehumanized themselves.

Americans of today have inherited these distorted rules of engagement whether or not their families had enslaved people or had even been in the United States. Slavery built the man-made chasm between black and whites that forces the middle castes of Asians, Latinos, indigenous people, and new immigrants of African descent to navigate within what began as a bipolar hierarchy.

Newcomers learn to vie for the good favor of the dominant caste and to distance themselves from the bottom-dwellers, as if everyone were in the grip of an invisible playwright. They learn to conform to the dictates of the ruling caste if they are to prosper in their new land, a shortcut being to contrast themselves with the degraded lowest caste, to use them as the historic foil against which to rise in a harsh, every-man-for-himself economy.

Artist: Harmonia Rosales

Why I Say Play Brown Sugar

By: Saint Twenty
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Brown Sugar isn’t a glorification of slavery, or the objectification of black women with connotations of slavery, it is a historical account of how the African hyphen American came to be. Emphasis on the hyphen. Black is black I thought until going to Europe, blanketing the ethnic rainbow of us all.

“They’re going to love you over there, they rarely get to see African Americans.”
“What do you mean? They have black people in Paris…” I questioned and answered, while puzzled. An amalgamation of emotions all at once.
“Yeah Africans.”
Between reading Kindred and my Parisian experience, as if absorbing the former that year prepared me for the latter, I learned the distinction.

“Whereas some doubts have arisen whether children got by any Englishman upon a negro woman should be slave or free…’be it therefore enacted and declared by this present Grand Assembly, that all children borne in this country shall be held bond or free only according to the condition of the mother.’ With this decree, the colonists were breaking from English legal precedent, the only precepts they ever known, the ancient order that gave children of black women, the vast majority of whom were enslaved, as their property for life and for ensuing generations. It invited them to impregnate the women themselves if so inclined, the richer it would make them. It converted the black womb into a profit center and drew sharper lines around the subordinate caste, as neither mother nor child could make a claim against an upper-caste man, and no child escaping from a black womb could escape condemnation to the lowest rung. It moved the colonies toward a bipolar hierarchy of whites and nonwhites, and specifically a conjoined caste of whites at one end of the ladder and, at the other end, those deemed black, due to any physical manifestation of African ancestry.”

To be African American means being both the English slave master and the raped African woman. Brown Sugar tells the story of our creation, we are the embodiment of both, the epitome of duality. We are condemned and belittled by Africans for having tainted blood due to European lineage, whilst being told to go back to our country by hateful/ignorant whites. This is our country though, we built it.

“At the end of the day my line can be traced back to a warrior, yours to a slave master,” my African friend told me.
“My ancestry can be traced back beyond the slave master to a warrior too, the only difference is I don’t know where [or who]. Oh that’s right, you helped sell us. You’re part of the problem, why I don’t know my family history,” a venomous response.

Our argument started when I told her to read Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi, a novel that illuminates the split. She felt it was beneath her, believing herself better than me because her line was pure, no white weakness, never a slave. Except we were enslaved, as in forced, kidnapped, tortured. And if you want to talk warrior, we exemplified it. Did we not come here bound and illiterate? Are we not free from the chains that literally shackled us in a strange New World? Did we not make room for you to be in America? Beneath you? We are nothing short of miracles capable of the extraordinary. And look at the art we birthed from our blues, from music to fashion we left nothing untouched. We hyphens are the culture. I could not believe while I saw us as black, she saw me as black and lesser, because being black is to be distinctly African-American, not African. Unless you’re in America, then you’re black by force.

Everyone always tries to put black women down while stealing our aesthetic. Except our beauty was so coveted from the jump, they had to make laws to justify their lust, creating a whole new “race.” Black women aren’t just a swipe left on Tinder. ‘Brown Sugar’, which the majority of listeners believes praises Marsha Hunt and hot black women in general, is a reminder of that. It also limns the significance of black women’s influence in rock n’ roll as muses. Yes, it’s horrific, but it’s accurate and part of our narrative. The Rolling Stones aren’t singing about their ideal world, but the real one, that’s why it makes you uncomfortable. Banning the song from shows is an erasure of history specific to the AFRICAN-AMERICAN experience, our genesis. We get so little respect and do the most. My African friend only solidified my post Paris hyphen awareness.

I was fawned over by white Europeans and side-eyed by Africans who did not embrace me. How could they even tell the difference? Endeavoring to walk in their shoes I saw for the first time the glaring contrast in our complexions and features. I realized how ignorant I was, how American, how brown my skin is with it’s red undertone. This is how they knew. Like it or not hyphens, we are the coalescence of the master and their victims, an epigenetic hot mess. If black Alice in Kindred didn’t save redheaded Rupert, the slave owner, she would’t exist. He too was an ancestor. That’s why I say play Brown Sugar, it’s the story of our roots. Let it make you proud of our strength, as we reconcile being born from both the things we love and hate. Let it move you to action as we dismantle the paradigms of oppression, but don’t rob us of the truth. Via: The 60s Bazaar




Black Women Sit Down

By: Saint Twenty
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“They told themselves that the people beneath them did not feel pain or heartache, were debased machines that only looked human and upon whom one could inflict any atrocity. The people who told themselves these things were telling lies to themselves. Their lives were to some degree a lie and dehumanizing these people who they regarded as beasts of the field, they dehumanize themselves.”

Although you are use to black women raising your children, saving democracy, trendsetting, winning, styling to the tee and much more, we are not your mammy. We are people, with our own needs, our own problems, our own lives to save. Naomi Osaka, Simone Biles, Megan Markle, ME, deserve breaks after all black women endure for centuries. We don’t need to explain ourselves to anyone, about the how’s and why’s. When black women speak listen. It’s amazing how you can’t live without us and yet you take for granted all we do.

If anyone thought their relationships with people would impact my decisions, you’re bugging. Their insights mean NOTHING to me, where is it from which those insights derive? Exactly. They’re lucky to have found refuge in the first place. What role do black women play in your life? Do you even have black female friends? Question your conditioning, are you proud of all you stand for? Via: Black Women Thrive

Black Women As Lab Rats

By: Saint Twenty
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“The doctor, James Marion Sims, would later be heralded as the founding father of gynecology. He came to his discoveries by acquiring enslaved women in Alabama and conducting savage surgeries that often ended in disfigurement or death. He refused to administer anesthesia, saying vaginal surgery on them was ‘not painful enough to justify the trouble’. Instead, he administered morphine only after surgery, noting that it ‘relieves the scalding of the urine,’ and, as Washington writes, ‘weakened the will to resist repeated procedures.’

A Louisiana surgeon perfected the cesarean section by experimenting on the enslaved women he had access to in the 1830’s. Others later learned how to remove ovaries and bladder stones. They performed these slave cabin experiments in search of breakthroughs for their white patients who would one day undergo surgery in hospitals and under available anesthesia.”
–How does this passage give you a better understanding of feminism from a black females rappers perspective?
–Why does this make Lil Kim iconic?
–How does this passage give you a better understanding of the deep seated distrust African Americans have towards the medical industry?

*Bonus: how does this play into why I’m going to drag the Kardashian Jenner West family (as well as Ed Westwick) and affiliates? You guys messed with a smart bitch, I promise you I’m gonna beat your asses in more ways that one. Ima do y’all how Kourtney did Kim. Via: Word Up Official