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‘Separate Cinema’: Unsettling and gorgeous posters from the age of segregated movies
03.20.2015
02:16 pm
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Birthright, 1939. A black Harvard graduate confronts racism.
 
The images on this page come from a remarkable book that came out late last year, Separate Cinema: The First 100 Years of Black Poster Art, by John Duke Kisch; it’s an incredibly wide-ranging look at the posters of “black cinema” writ large, a category that includes not just the “race films” shown here but also Birth of a Nation, earnest Hollywood dramas, The Jazz Singer, Blaxploitation flicks, South African movies addressing apartheid, breakdancing movies from the 1980s, and much more. The book’s credibility couldn’t be greater, insofar as Henry Louis Gates Jr. supplies the foreword and Spike Lee the afterword.

The posters depicted here tell a tale of true segregation, a “separate but equal” industry, so to speak, that served up gripping melodramas to its chosen audience just as surely as Warner Bros. did for white audiences. The undisputed master of this period is Oscar Micheaux, who directed a couple of these movies. By Kisch’s lights “the most successful early black independent film producer and director,” Micheaux was the son of a Kentucky slave before working as a railway porter and homesteader; around World War I he started directing and producing movies, of which he directed more than 40 before he was done. Kisch describes his basic formula as follows:
 

Micheaux’s features were usually far superior to those made by other independent black studios, largely because he took a familiar Hollywood genre and gave it a distinctive African-American slant. Committed to “racial uplift,” he cast black characters in non-stereotypical roles, as farmers, oil men, explorers, professors, Broadway producers, or Secret Service agents.  … He brought to the screen diverse social issues that faced black America, and also portrayed an ideal world in which blacks were affluent, educated, and cultured. In the 1930s, his films represented a radical departure from Hollywood’s portrayal of African Americans as jesters and servants.

 
In our age, posters like this are simultaneously dazzling and upsetting, almost as taboo as the interracial drama The Exile (below) was in its day. Underlying so much of the rhetoric surrounding the racial situation in America is the understanding that all those bad things belonged to and are limited to the past; the horrors of Ferguson, Staten Island, Cleveland in 2014 showed everyone that no such assumptions are safe—even as Steve McQueen’s 12 Years a Slave (it’s included in the book too) both harks back to these unsettling movies and signals the potential for lasting change. 
 

Bosambo, 1935. British District Officer in Nigeria in the 1930’s rules his area strictly but justly, and struggles with gun-runners and slavers with the aid of a loyal native chief.
 

Black Gold, 1928. A town abandons its previous ways of life for the glamour and drama of the oil drilling trade.
 

The Flying Ace, 1926. A veteran World War I fighter pilot returns home a war hero and immediately regains his former job as a railroad company detective.
 
More after the jump…

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Posted by Martin Schneider
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03.20.2015
02:16 pm
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Vincent Price has some thoughts on racial prejudice and religious hatred
03.20.2015
10:09 am
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As if anyone needed any further proof of the ultimate badassery of Vincent Price…

In this crucial speech from the conclusion of the “Author Of Murder” episode of The Saint, which aired on NBC Radio on July 30, 1950,  Price lays out his feelings on prejudice being antithetical to a free society. Price denounces racial and religious intolerance as a “poison” which fuels support for the nation’s enemies. These are powerful words for 1950, but just as important, necessary, and applicable today.

And, of course, Price’s delivery always guarantees chills.

Ladies and gentlemen, poison doesn’t always come in bottles. And it isn’t always marked with the skull and crossbones of danger. Poison can take the form of words and phrases and acts: the venom of racial and religious hatred. Here in the United States, perhaps more than ever before, we must learn to recognize the poison of prejudice and to discover the antidote to its dangerous effects. Evidences of racial and religious hatred in our country place a potent weapon in the hands of our enemies, providing them with the ammunition of criticism. Moreover, group hatred menaces the entire fabric of democratic life. As for the antidote: you can fight prejudice, first by recognizing it for what it is, and second by actively accepting or rejecting people on their individual worth, and by speaking up against prejudice and for understanding. Remember, freedom and prejudice can’t exist side by side. If you choose freedom, fight prejudice.

From the original broadcast:
 

 
From: The Vortex of Our Minds

Posted by Christopher Bickel
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03.20.2015
10:09 am
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White supremacist heavy metal murderer’s secret to picking up white chicks
03.16.2015
09:53 am
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Varg in his younger days.

Unless you’re a big Burzum or Mayhem fan, probably the only context you have for Varg Vikernes is that he’s that one Norwegian black metal dude who murdered that other Norwegian black metal dude and then became a white supremacist—and you’d be right! But with all the murders and church burnings and virulent racism (and possible attempted terrorism) that surround such a polymath of a man, it’s easy to forget that Varg is first and foremost a romantic at heart… but like, a really, really racist one.

Vikernes regularly communicates with his fans via video and blog, but black metal neo-Nazis have more on their minds just than heavy tones and the Zionist conspiracy—namely, they want some o’ dat fine white Aryan tail! In what appears to be a car with his kids in the back, Vikernes reveals the key to winning your very own alabaster bride—be a hero! Chicks love that shit! And remember, the fitness of the race is on the line here!
 

Present day Varg, with the little woman…

So let’s not forget ol’ Varg’s partner in whiteness, Marie Cachet. She has also written on the subject. From her blog post/polemic, “The Role of Women”:

It is terrible to see some “pro-white” defending the fact that the white woman is first and foremost a free woman, and that she has the right to go around half-naked in the street if she wants. This is not why we fight, this is not freedom. We are not fighting for what they call “progress” we are fighting to save the heart of our forebears.

Continues after the jump…

READ ON
Posted by Amber Frost
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03.16.2015
09:53 am
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Young, Black and Victorian: Wonderful photographs of Victorian women of color
03.09.2015
02:29 pm
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Here are some photographs of Victorian women of color that date from 1860 to 1901. Unfortunately, a lot of these photographs have no names attached to the women posed in the photographs.

I’d love to know the stories behind each photo. What each woman’s life was like. Sadly, we’ll probably never know.

According to the website Downtown LA Life:

Photos of Women of Color from this era are hard to come by, especially “family” photographs.
~
A couple of these photos were taken when there was still slavery in the United States.


 

 

Aida Overton Walker
 

 
More after the jump…
 

READ ON
Posted by Tara McGinley
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03.09.2015
02:29 pm
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‘You jive white motherf*ckers!’: Jazz legend Freddie Hubbard spectacularly blows his cool onstage
02.25.2015
11:10 am
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The year is 1966 and legendary jazz trumpeter Freddie Hubbard is onstage in Graz, Austria as a sideman for Sonny Rollins.

Distracted by whistling and heckling, Hubbard furiously castigates the audience:

Fuck you white motherfuckers! FUCK YOU white motherfuckers! Well, okay. I’ll go home. If you don’t like me, kiss my ass! That’s right, cuz you jive. You jive. You jive. You white MOTHERFUCKERS! You the ones who started this shit! Lemme tell you - you the ones. Fuck you! FUCK YOU, you jive white motherfuckers! If you don’t like me, KISS MY BLACK ASS! You motherfuckers! Fuck it, I don’t care!

Johannes Probst writes on Big O:

I was talking to James Spaulding, who was in that group, and he remembered the night vividly. Hubbard was drunk and started cussing out the audience. So in the intermission the police kicked in the dressing-room door and took both Hubbard and Spaulding into custody. James was very angry with Freddie, because he had to spend the night in jail.

 

 
Below, hear the influential bebop trumpeter completely lose his shit on a room full of jive white Austrian motherfuckers:
 

Posted by Christopher Bickel
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02.25.2015
11:10 am
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‘Getting Racists Fired’ becomes Tumblr sensation
01.26.2015
11:57 am
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racbat.jpg
 
How can we stop racism? By better education? By enforcing laws? By outing racists on the Internet and then campaigning to have them fired from their jobs? This is how one group of activists have gone about the problem with their Tumblr site Getting Racists Fired.

Getting Racists Fired is where oeople can out racists by submitting their toxic and dumbass Facebook posts, tweets, comments and images to the site, where they are shared in a bid to shame the individual. The site then urges its followers to write and phone the individual’s employer to have them fired for clowning themselves in public with their racist social media pollution…

To this end, they have posted details of what to say when phoning a company about a racist employee:

Here’s a script of what you can say while calling employers

“Hello can I speak to a manager on duty? I have a complaint to make about one of your employees”

“Yes hello, my name is ______ and I’ve been seeing some very disturbing and disgusting racist comments coming from one of your works. Their name is ____”

” I know that your business is not one that would condone such behaviour. Considering that this person has your company listed as their workplace, they represent it and the ideals your company was built on. I would like to think that your company isn’t one that supports these vile comments and actions, and that’s the purpose of my call today”

“I was also wondering if there is an email address I can send the proof of these comments too, just to solidify these claims, if you find it necessary”

IF THEY SAY THEIR “Hands are tied” say this: “Well if you are not willing to take care of this issue at your level I will be forced to take it to your supervisor and go from there” that usually gets them. And if not ask for their supervisor’s number and call them.

It is absolutely vital that you CALL BACK to check on the status of the issue. Make sure you hold them to their word and that something is being done. Stay calm and cordial. Channel your inner slightly annoyed PTA soccer mom and you’ll be fine.

As a response to the tragic events in Ferguson the site also posted a template for “messaging/emailing businesses about their racist employees.”

___(place of business)___,

In light of recent events in Ferguson, MO, and the resulting protests that have spread out across the country and beyond (of which I’m sure management is aware), just as many people have come to light with violent words as there have those been with support.

I am writing to respectfully request that you do firm checks into the racist behaviors and words of your employees, who post their hate publicly on social media accounts that are tied with your place of business. For both moral and business reputation reasons, other businesses have begun to terminate and/or warn employees who exhibit racist behavior online.

Your employee, ___________, is seen to have posted racial slurs and racially charged discriminatory claims on their facebook wall. I’ve attached a screenshot that contains the posts in question. Warnings for racial slurs and racist language
Yours,
____________


Now some may think this all sounds like bullying, but when queried about this, and why they were seemingly “not even going after racists,” but “going after people who make so called ‘racist’ jokes or comments,” the moderators replied:

Unfortunately, this blog or the actions of its users, which amount to sharing their opinions about whether or not a racist or bigot should continue to be employed, don’t account to ‘ruining lives’. The majority of these individuals will resume employment without much to impede them since they’re white.

The thing about white sociopathy is that only a racist would find such statements to be ‘funny’ or amount to jokes. So your excuse that these are just innocuous comments or jokes are simply not the case, especially since these same individuals are ones that hold jobs and positions with which they can wield institutional power.

You deeply misunderstand the purpose of this blog. By holding individuals accountable to their actions in public, we force change and remove dangerous individuals from positions of power from which they could do harm. The nature of this blog makes it so that as moderators we exist solely in anonymity, such that it is impossible for us to be motivated by personal satisfaction. This is about how People of Color, together, are indeed powerful.
Spoiler alert: the vast majority of the world is not white. It is the tens of thousands of users here, following this blog, that are reading your inane message with varying mixtures of disgust, humor, and pity. Anyway, I’m going to go back to hopefully getting your ass fired.

Bye

There have also been questions raised over privacy and possible “stalking” one moderator replied:

First off what a submitter does is not stalking. Stalking is a very serious issue and shouldn’t be equated to this or thrown around lightly. Checking a couple public sources to get information freely given to report racist public behavior to an employer is nowhere near the sort of criminal behavior of stalking. Demanding accountability for racist actions and words is not stalking.

In the US people may have freedom of speech, but so do we and employers have every right to terminate an employee based on what they choose to say publicly. This isn’t “gettingracistsarrested” it’s “racistsgettingfired”

Getting Racists Fired does have one caveat:

Do not message, contact, threaten, harangue, or harass the individual, their family, friends, or acquaintances; only contact their place of work or study.

And one moderator has further clarified the intention of the blog:

We do not condone sending messages to the accounts of racist people submitted to this blog and suggesting to send messages to a family member was completely uncalled for. Neither me nor Mod N would ever want anyone to harass a family member or to harass or threaten the people in these submissions.

If you are looking for people to message and threaten then this is the wrong place to look. Harassing and threatening a person to the point of them deleting their page is not the intent of this blog and can very well be illegal. It also breaks links to public posts that are sent to employers and schools which is completely counterproductive to the intent of this blog.

We are looking for public accountability not for people to delete and remake their social networking pages.

Three hours after setting up the blog, Getting Racists Fired had 4,000 followers. Now they have more than 40,000.

Racism is a learned behavior. It can be unlearned too.

Below: some examples from the site of the kind of racism they are outing
 
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Posted by Paul Gallagher
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01.26.2015
11:57 am
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A paler shade of White: ‘The History of White People in America’
01.20.2015
05:50 pm
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“Not all white people are the same, don’t get me wrong, but they all have a few things in common that make them inescapably white.”

In Martin Mull’s pioneering 1985 mockumentary, The History of White People in America he makes a journey into the heart of whiteness examining the life of a stereotypical white suburban family, the Harrisons of Hawkins Falls, Ohio. They own a Weber self-cleaning barbecue grill, they all have personal jars of mayonnaise and they are not terribly self-aware people. (Sound like anyone you know? Of course not, I’m only joking.)

“No bargaining, no finagling. Full price. The white person’s way.”

The Harrison family’s patriarch is played by Mull’s Fernwood 2Night co-star Fred Willard in what is probably one of his best-remembered roles. Certainly it’s a role that he was… er… born to play, having been type-cast for his entire career as the ultimate clueless Caucasian guy. Cast as Willard’s wife is another Caucasian comedic genius, the very wonderful Mary Kay Place (Mull’s Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman co-star in the mid-70s). Mull and his mockumentary crew also visit The Institute for White Studies in Zanesville, Ohio (where scientists try to prove that white people aren’t boring) and Dinah Shore Junior High School.

“Look how clean this place is!”

Written by Martin Mull and Alan Rucker and directed by Harry Shearer for the Cinemax Comedy Experiment. Produced by Mull and future Friends producer/director Kevin S. Bright. There were two sequels, the superior The History of White People in America Volume II (on YouTube in several parts) and Portrait of a White Marriage, which was still funny, although less successful than the first two installments.
 

 
After the jump, part II

READ ON
Posted by Richard Metzger
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01.20.2015
05:50 pm
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Republicans block historical marker of Ku Klux Klan massacre
01.19.2015
04:04 pm
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On November 3, 1979, members of the Ku Klux Klan and the American Nazi Party shot and killed five protesters at a “Death to the Klan March” in Greensboro, North Carolina. Of the protestors killed, four were members of the Communist Workers’ Party (the organization responsible for the march), and one was a supporter. Despite clear video evidence and many witnesses, both of the two criminal trials resulted in acquittals by all-white juries. Six years later, a civil suit accusing police of collaboration with the Klan resulted in a $350,000 judgment against the city and both hate groups, but to this day only one plaintiff (the widow of a doctor who ran a clinic for low-income children) has received her payment.

Despite none of this being in dispute, the Greensboro Massacre, one of the darker moments in American history, is currently the subject of a partisan friction. Recently, the North Carolina Highway Historical Marker Advisory Committee voted to erect a commemorative marker reading, “The Greensboro Massacre—Ku Klux Klan and American Nazi Party members, on Nov. 3 1979, shot and killed five Communist Workers’ Party members one-tenth mile north,” but the project remains in deadlock over objections from City Council members. The marker’s major suporters on the council are two black Democrats, and a few members remain ambivalent. Those most ardently opposed? You guessed it—two white dudes from that Grand Old Party!

The idea that this is some kind of conflict is both frustrating and predictable, but in lieu of a diatribe, here’s actual footage of the Greensboro Massacre. It’s violent, but not gory; the ugliest thing about seeing it is knowledge of the future, where justice is evaded and history is whitewashed.
 

 
Thank you Eric M. Fink

Posted by Amber Frost
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01.19.2015
04:04 pm
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That time Tom Petty tried to stop the Rodney King riots with song….
01.14.2015
09:53 am
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I am not up on what is supposedly cool or uncool these days in regards to acceptable Americana, but I have always held a deep and totally unironic love for Tom Petty. In addition to his later work, which I think does amazing stuff with folk, jangle, country and rock sounds, I’d argue he’s the only artist that really successfully integrated twang into proto-punk. As far as I’m concerned, “Anything That’s Rock ‘n’ Roll” has all the great elements of a good Dictators or New York Dolls song—but with this lovely Southern flair. Tom Petty is cool.

Like almost every artist though, I cannot defend his entire canon. “Peace in L.A.” was Petty’s 1992 comment on the events that unfolded after the Rodney King verdict, a weird miss for a relatively socially conscious guy known for lambasting record companies and playing Farm Aid. Part of it is that the song is just really bad (the dated production is even forgivable), but it’s also that this particular incident simply did not require Tom Petty’s musical commentary.

Cringe-along with the lyrics:

We need peace in L.A., what happened was wrong
We all feel betrayed, but we got to be strong
If the powers that be let evil go free
You must understand, don’t play into their hand

We need peace in L.A., peace in L.A.

Don’t need beating and shouting, don’t need burning and looting
Tonight we all pray, that our children are safe
There’s hurt and frustration, there’s a hard realization
But how can we help if we steal from ourselves?

We need peace in L.A., peace in L.A.
We need peace in L.A., peace in L.A.

Stay cool, don’t be a fool
Stay cool, don’t be a fool

The song was apparently written and recorded in one day, and then rush-released to radio stations the very next day. Its effect on the rioters has never been quantified (for some reason!). Oh Tom, I still love you, but I’m so glad you didn’t try and write a song about Ferguson! Take a listen below, if you dare—it gets really bad around the bridge… I mean spoken-word bad.
 

Posted by Amber Frost
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01.14.2015
09:53 am
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‘No Pakistanis’: The xenophobic roots of one of the Beatles’ most iconic songs
01.12.2015
01:10 pm
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Get Back” was a bluesy Beatles number so down ‘n’ dirty that it might almost have passed for a Stones song. So it might not be so surprising that in the sessions leading up to the recording of the song, the Beatles, specifically the future Sir Paul McCartney, used the song to spout some racist sentiments that may (or may not) have been intended as satire. The recording of “Get Back” was a protracted affair for the Beatles; as Kenneth Womack notes in The Beatles Encyclopedia, “Over the course of 17 days in January 1969, the Beatles rehearsed some 59 iterations of ‘Get Back.’” One of those iterations would infamously become known as the “No Pakistanis” version, well known to Beatles collectors and xenophobes alike. In the “No Pakistanis” version of “Get Back,” you can hear the familiar melody and chorus, but the verses express a darker vision of the white U.K. underclass. The verses include lines like ‘Don’t dig no Pakistanis, taking all the peoples jobs.”

With a good deal of nonsense words filling out the lines, you also get “Ronan Relimun, was a Puerto Rican, working in another world. / Want it thrown around, Say Puerto Rican, livin’ in the USA. / Pretty Ado Lamb, was a pakistani, living in another world, / Want it thrown around, don’t dig no pakistanis, taking all the people jobs.”

As Andrew Hickey writes in The Beatles in Mono,
 

Yet another blues-based rocker, this track had the most unfortunate genesis of any track on the album, starting out with lyrics including the line “don’t dig no Pakistanis taking all the people’s jobs.”

McCartney claims—relatively convincingly—that this was intended as a satire on racist attitudes. But coming as it did straight after conservative politician Enoch Powell’s infamous “Rivers of Blood” speech, which ignited a wave of neo-Nazism in Britain that is still unfortunately there today, it would have been ill-judged at best to put it out. At least one neo-Nazi band has in fact performed a cover version of the song with these “no Pakistanis” lyrics, and had it been released that version would be the worst blot on the Beatles’ discography.

 
The best source on “No Pakistanis” is an April 2013 article that appeared in Salon by Alex Sayf Cummings under the title “‘No Pakistanis’: The Racial Satire the Beatles Don’t Want You to Hear.” Per Cummings, the song “tells us much about the limits of what musicians, even hugely popular and politically engaged ones, can say in popular music.” Cummings points out that “in a recording known as ‘Back to the Commonwealth’ or ‘The Commonwealth Song,’ the band blasts the politician by name”—this just a few days before the recording of “No Pakistanis,”

Here’s Womack again:
 

“Commonwealth” finds its roots in a January 9 session in which Lennon and McCartney improvised the song. “Commonwealth” was concocted in protest of the Conservative party’s reptriation movement to limit the sudden influx of thousands of Indian and Pakistani immigrants who had been denied the right to work in Kenya. … While “Commonwealth” never advanced beyond the Beatles’ January sessions, “Get Back” eventually began to take shape in its place, with McCartney originally satirizing Powell’s anti-immigration position, singing “Don’t dig no Pakistanis taking all the people’s jobs.”

 
After his “Rivers of Blood” speech, Powell was dismissed from his position as Shadow Defence Secretary in the Shadow Cabinet of Edward Heath—xenophobes and white supremacists in Britain would take up his betrayal as a sort of code, muttering “Enoch was right” as a way of signaling a common understanding of white resentment, rather in the way that conservatives in the U.S. will throw around the terms “Benghazi,” “death panels” or “Kenyan Socialist” to signal fervent allegiance to anti-liberal causes.

Predictably, there’s a thread on (definitely NSFW or anywhere where your Internet usage might be tracked) a stromfront.org forum (“the voice of the new, embattled White minority!”) in which the Beatles are adopted as allies in the white suprmacist cause: “It seems even the Beatles knew that packistani immigrants were bad for the economy!” A white supremacist band called Battlecry has apparently covered the song but I couldn’t find it.

The notion that Paul McCartney harbored racist ideas or was himself a xenophobe seems rather unlikely. The recording sticks out of the Beatles’ catalog like a sore thumb, “rich fag Jew” or no “rich fag Jew.” The Powell speech was clearly rattling around McCartney’s head, he was adopting the persona of a somewhat more “badass” band than the Beatles usually were, and, probably most pertinently, he was somehow enchanted by the magical syllabification of “Pakistani,” which is an unusually interesting word to say out loud. To listen to “No Pakistanis” is to hear a master musician drunk on words, yes playing with personae to be sure but also just really into the sounds of the words, dig? In the line “don’t dig no Pakistanis, taking all the people jobs” you can also, perhaps, hear a multi-millionaire international celebrity doing a certain degree of slumming but then again, it hadn’t been all that long before this when Paul and the gang were stuck in working-class Liverpool wondering what the future might hold.

“No Pakistanis”:

 
“Back to the Commonwealth”:


 

Posted by Martin Schneider
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01.12.2015
01:10 pm
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