luvvdivine:

If Liv and Fitz TRULY ever become a legit couple, then it’d be the episode’s SERIES finale. Yall gotta relax.

blkgirlblogging:

there’s nothing wrong with being a little thick like me but am i wrong for just wanting to be able to shop at “regular size” stores? 

don’t come for me, thin privilege activists. i am talking about ME and what I am comfortable with, gotdammit. 

fuckyeahfeminists:

jongscookeys:

scoreswayze:

mixedbyziggy:

• rescue three white women who have been missing for a decade, and a baby
• become a national hero
• pull and even bosser move and tell the fbi to give the reward money to the victims
• media decides to dig into your past, and bring up your criminal record.

wonderful time to be black in america.

Wait, this is really happening?

wow…

sigh

dawnofconsciousness:

you-are-another-me:

There is a tribe in Africa where the birth date of a child is counted not from when they were born, nor from when they are conceived but from the day that the child was a thought in its mother’s mind. And when a woman decides that she will have a child, she goes off and sits under a tree, by herself, and she listens until she can hear the song of the child that wants to come. And after she’s heard the song of this child, she comes back to the man who will be the child’s father, and teaches it to him. And then, when they make love to physically conceive the child, some of that time they sing the song of the child, as a way to invite it.

And then, when the mother is pregnant, the mother teaches that child’s song to the midwives and the old women of the village, so that when the child is born, the old women and the people around her sing the child’s song to welcome it. And then, as the child grows up, the other villagers are taught the child’s song. If the child falls, or hurts its knee, someone picks it up and sings its song to it. Or perhaps the child does something wonderful, or goes through the rites of puberty, then as a way of honoring this person, the people of the village sing his or her song.



In the African tribe there is one other occasion upon which the villagers sing to the child. If at any time during his or her life, the person commits a crime or aberrant social act, the individual is called to the center of the village and the people in the community form a circle around them. Then they sing their song to them.



The tribe recognizes that the correction for antisocial behavior is not punishment; it is love and the remembrance of identity. When you recognize your own song, you have no desire or need to do anything that would hurt another.

And it goes this way through their life. In marriage, the songs are sung, together. And finally, when this child is lying in bed, ready to die, all the villagers know his or her song, and they sing—for the last time—the song to that person.

You may not have grown up in an African tribe that sings your song to you at crucial life transitions, but life is always reminding you when you are in tune with yourself and when you are not. When you feel good, what you are doing matches your song, and when you feel awful, it doesn’t. In the end, we shall all recognize our song and sing it well. You may feel a little warbly at the moment, but so have all the great singers. Just keep singing and you’ll find your way home.

The beauty in this post… :’)

thisiswhitehistory:

TW: violence, hate crimes, lynching

Day 6 of White History Month: Lynching

Is it possible for white America to really understand Blacks’ distrust of the legal system, their fears of racial profiling and the police, without understanding how cheap a Black life was for so long a time in our nation’s history? - Philip Dray, At the Hands of Persons Unknown: The Lynching of Black America

Lynching - extrajudicial killing - is depicted as an isolated event in US history books (when it is depicted at all). In reality, thousands of people of color - particularly Black people were lynched.. Lynching was not an isolated event, but rather a form of terrorism meant to strike fear in the hearts of Black Americans (primarily in the South) as well as other people of color  (on the West Coast) and to a lesser extent, poor white people. It was a savage and dehumanizing act that was meant to control Black Americans, yet with no representation in the government, the tradition of lynching was impossible to stop.

The Tuskegee Institute has documented 3,446 lynchings of Black Americans between 1882 and 1968. From 1882 until 1952, at least one lynching of a Black American was recorded per year. From 1882 until 1901, 150 Black Americans were lynched per year on average - peaking with 231 Black Americans being lynched in 1892.

Many Southerners argued that lynching prevented rape; in reality, most of these cases were simply violations of the “racial etiquette” that Black Americans had to observe. Most lynchings were actually solely caused by disruption of this “racial etiquette”, and lynching was doled out to Black Americans who did not “stay in their place”.

Lynching was rarely prosecuted, with police officers and courts often claiming that they could not prove who was there - when in reality they were often there in the crowd themselves. Coroner’s reports often listed “death at the hands of persons unknown”.

Occasionally, Black Americans were lynched during riots and violent outbreaks, such as the New York City draft riots of 1863, where at least eleven Black men were lynched.

Usually, however, lynching was an ordinary event. Entire families would attend lynchings and have a picnic. Concessions stands would set up shop and serve food. Postcards were made of lynched Black Americans. If you look at photos from lynchings, you can see jubilant onlookers revelling not despite, but because of the horror in front of them (TRIGGER WARNING for lynching and violence - photos can be seen here ).

Though not as common, Black women, Mexican Americans, Chinese Americans, and Native Americans were also victims of lynching, though in lesser numbers. It is difficult to get exact numbers of those who were not Black nor white since their lynchings were generally coded as “white” anyway.

The NAACP worked hard to advocate for anti-lynching laws. Ida B. Wells, Walter F. White, and W.E.B. DuBois are among the many leaders who worked to document and dismantle this practice. Republican Senator Leonidas Dyer pushed an anti-lynching bill which passed the house and which President Warren G. Harding promised to sign if it passed the senate. The Senate’s Southern Democrats - voted in office during a time where most Black people could not vote - were able to effectively kill the bill.

Sadly, no legislation was ever passed during the peak of lynching. In 2005, the Senate formally apologized for not passing anti-lynching laws when they were needed - a sentiment which unfortunately was much too late.

tw-americanhistory:

[TW: American History]: Thomas Shipp and Abram Smith were African-American men who were lynched on August 7, 1930, in Marion, Indiana.

They had been arrested the night before, charged with robbing and murdering a white factory worker, Claude Deeter, and raping his white girlfriend, Mary Ball. A large crowd broke into the jail with sledgehammers, beat the two men, and hanged them. When Abram Smith tried to free himself from the noose as his body was hauled up by the rope, he was lowered and then his arms broken to prevent him from trying to free himself again. Police officers in the crowd cooperated in the lynching. A third person, 16-year-old James Cameron, narrowly escaped lynching thanks to an unidentified participant who announced that he had nothing to do with the rape or murder.^[1] A studio photographer, Lawrence Beitler, took a photograph of the dead bodies hanging from a tree surrounded by a large crowd; thousands of copies of the photograph were sold.^[2]

James Cameron has stated in interviews that Shipp and Smith had, in fact, shot and killed Claude Deeter, a white man. He has said that he fled when he realized what was going on.

Mary Ball later testified that she had not been raped, contrary to the accusations against the three men.^[3] The police accused all three men of murder and rape.^[4]

read more at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lynching_of_Thomas_Shipp_and_Abram_Smith

VIEWER DISCRETION ADVISED.

bcapitalized:

“Tell Me Again”

Tell me again why we should forget
I see that you haven’t forgotten Pearl Harbor yet
Tell me again why you say you can’t
You paid everyone else for their time in the camps

Tell me again why we should ignore
The many times you said “you’re mama’s a whore”
Tell me again why because we fail to see
The reasons you hung all our men from a tree

Tell me again why our history you choked
For chaining us, killing us, suppressing our vote
Tell me again why we should share your terror
Our enemy’s long been who you see in the mirror

Tell me again why you wouldn’t relent
From calling our ancestors niggers and wench
Tell me again why so we’ll understand
And please with a straight face if you think you can

Tell me again why those little girls died
For once tell the truth not another ‘white lie’
Tell me again why now that you live in fear
It’s about time you felt what we felt all those years

Tell me again why because we’re not insane
We know no one’s cornered the market on pain
Tell me again why is it you find?
When you cry your tears they are wet just like mine

Tell me again why, we pray that you tell
Why when we made your heaven you gave us pure hell
Tell me again why what is your excuse
Why you won’t compensate us for all your abuse

Tell me again why because our ancestors need
To hear that you’re sorry for your hate and greed
Tell me again why, why should we forgive
The ones who detest the mere fact that we live

I’ll tell you why if I may be so bold
We have to forgive you to save our own souls.

From the gospel musical “Reaching For Freedom” by Jay Arrington