Working With or Against the System

For Howard University’s 2016 commencement, President Barack Obama delivered the keynote address. When I listened to his speech, what resonated with me the most was the following section:

Future Projects Laced with Past Mistakes

Throughout this semester, I think that the most common misgiving that people have vocalized in regards to Spike Lee is his perception on black women. At best, he engages in bad feminism, and at worst, he hates black women. He does not afford black women the same complexities that he gives men, and he’s more inclined to redefine black masculinity over discussing problems relating to black women. The movies that elicited this response the most were Mo’ Better Blues, School Daze, and his most recent film Chi-Raq, and there were also problems with female representation in Malcolm X and Get On The Bus.

Refugee v. Evacuee

According to the UNHCR, the 1951 Refugee Convention defines a refugee as someone who “owing to a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion, is outside the country of his nationality, and is unable to, or owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail himself of the protection of that country.” This describes citizens of countries with destabilized or oppressive states, underdeveloped countries, countries experiencing civil wars, and countries that do not have the infrastructure to withstand climate change.

Appreciating Art Not Meant For You

When Lemonade came out, there were many tweets and articles that came out about how people who were not black should not talk about Beyonce’s visual album.

Performance Text in Chi-Raq

In regards to Crooklyn (1994), I wrote about how the use of text, more specifically subtitling, disables listening (Found here:Text as a Source of Deafness).

So how does this relate to Chi-Raq (2015)? Similarly, Chi-Raq uses text, but the text performs. In the opening scene, Nick Cannon raps in the song “Pray 4 My City”.

Earrings in SORR and Crooklyn

Before I entered into the Friendly Reading Room for Sing Our Rivers Red (SORR), I did not anticipate the earrings and the letters that were written in honor of the murdered and missing Indigenous women. The physicality and sheer number of each distinct earring created a notable presence for each woman who is no longer there, but there was a symbolic absence in the way that the earrings were collected and displayed.

Yuri Kochiyama & Malcolm X

After Malcolm X’s trip to Mecca, he started to view race differently in that people of different races can work together to reach a common goal. In his letter letter from Mecca he states: