....THE PURPOSE OF THIS GROUP IS TO HAVE VARIOUS DISCUSSIONS ON POLITICAL, ECONOMICAL, AND SOCIAL ISSUES AND TRY TO FIGURE OUT IDEAS ON HOW ONE COULD ELIMINATE STEREOTYPES AND VARIOUS CONTROVERSIES THAT HAVE AND ARE STILL HAPPENING IN THE AMERICAN SOCIETY AMONGST AFRICAN AMERICANS ( WHICH I TRUELY BELIEVE THAT IF WE START TO EDUCATE OUR FAMILIES ON THESE CONTROVERSIAL SUBJECTS AND PSYCHOLOGICALLY OPPOSE TO THE EMBEDDED RACISM OF SOCIETY BY TEACHING OUR FAMILIES HOW TO PSYCHOLOGICALLY DEAL WITH THE DEGRADATION AND ENCOURAGE THEM TO GO ABOVE AND BEYOND IN SOCIETY REGARDLESS OF THE ODDS BEING AGAINST THEM SINCE THEY ARE AFRICAN AMERICANS, ONLY THEN CAN WE MAKE CHANGE TO THESE STEREOTYPES AND NOT FEED INTO THESE IMAGES OURSELVES. ALSO BY TEACHING AND EDUCATING OUR FAMILIES AND PASSING IT DOWN FROM GENERATION TO GENERATION THEN ONLY CAN WE TRUELY BE ABLE TO FULLY FIGHT AGAINST SUCH AN ONGOING PROBLEM WITHIN THE AFRICAN AMERICAN COMMUNITY.) ADDITIONALLY THIS GROUP WAS DESIGN TO EDUCATE SOCIETY THAT NOT ALL AFRICAN AMERICANS PORTAY THESE STEREOTYPICAL IMAGES DISPLAYED THROUGH THE MEDIA AND IN FACT ARE THE TOTAL OPPOSITE. WE ARE PRODUCTIVE SUCCESSFUL INDIVIDUALS TRYING TO MAKE A WAY IN SOCIETY FOR OURSELVES AND FAMILIES DESPITE THE RACISM AND STEREOTYPICAL IMAGES THAT HAVE DOWN PLAYED US. PLEASE FEEL FREE TO SAY WHAT'S ON YOUR MIND. EXPRESSION IS ENCOURAGED IN THIS GROUP. BE YOURSELF!..
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Topic: The degradation of women in the African American community and where we stand in today's society of the year 2008. How the degradation of Black women has been magnified 10 times fold...
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From the time of slavery, which began in around the 1660s when slavery was sanctioned by law for African American indentured servants, they were treated as less the human beings by the slave master and his family. A.A(abbreviated African American) Men and Women were forced to pick crops such as cotton, tobacco, and etc... so that the master could make a profit of off the crops that were picked by his slaves. Moreover, if the slave disobeyed the slaver master he was whipped( with a whip called the bullwhip) till a person could see the sores on his back. In other cases the slave was whipped to death by the slave master and no one would care that he killed his slave because the slave was considered his property. Consequently, the slave master wasn't punished for whipping a slave. Furthermore, the slave master would also force African American men and women to have sex with each other in order to make babies. Once the babies were born , the master would sell the babies, once they were old enough to perform task, to the slave market. Meanwhile, the mother of the child after giving birth, had to go back to picking cotton for her master.Also since the A.A. men and women were forced to have sex with each other, they really didn't have a say so in whom they wanted to have children with. This means that, even if the slaves didn't like each other, they had to do as was told by the master. In some cases, A.A. men and females were as old and the ages of 52 and up , were also forced to have sex with each other to make children because African Americans weren't considered human. Additionally, the slaver master broke the family ties between African men and women because they were often seperated from their children. The slave master would also seperate the men from the women becuase they didn't want then to communicate with each other for fear that the slaves might turn against them and kill them. They were seperated for economic purposes when the slave master wanted a new slave from the market, he would trade with other slave owners.
Which means that the male and female didn't have a chance to for a healthy relationship between each other becuase it was always sabotaged by the slave master. African males and females were also called degrading names such as niggress, and nigger for example. A.A. women and men were often rapped and/or forced to have sex with their slave masters and mistresses for their sexual desires. Consequently , men and women were robbed of their human rights. They weren't able to have a family, and were often restricted by their masters to walk outside of the perimeters of the plantation. They were also degraded in which they were forced to have sex and it wouldn't be at their on will. They were often called degrading names that demeaned their character and classified them as being less than human.African American males and females had to deal with this degradation amongst their slave masters, family, and friends during the times of slavery. Now that we are in the year of 2008 , the degrading is still a continuous battle that African American males and females have to face in society amongst others, and more importantly, "NOW AMONGST OURSELVES". Degradation has been constantly seen through hiphop videos in which African American such as Young Buck and 50 cent hiphop artist refer to African American women as bitches and hoes for example. Also, hiphop artist call themselves niggas, goons, and etc.... Additionally .... African American women in hiphop videos parade around in half naked clothing, or no clothing at all shaking their asses. hiphop artist and women in the videos don't realize the damaged that have caused by portraying these images that the hiphop industry wants them to portray because that is what is considered as being "hot".
Furthermore, society looks at the hiphop artist and their videos as that being a depiction on the African American community when it is not. There are productive A.A. males and females in the A.A. community, but we have a tendency to get "stereotyped" because society thinks that all African Americans are gangstas, bitches, hoes, etc.... In addition, the youth looks at these hiphop videos where women are being degraded and women are shaking their asses and thus; have a tendency to be influenced by these often false images. So then you have young A.A. males going around calling young females bitches and hoes . Also calling themselves niggas or goons. Then you have young females going around dressing skimpy and shaking their asses up on some dude at a party which could then lead to rape because he may think that the female wants to have sex when in fact she just wants to dance. Where is the guidance of the parents and the community as a whole? Its time to stop pointing fingers and fix the situation by working on our families and friends. Asking them why do they degrade each other, "EDUCATE" and help them to understand why they shouldn't so if someone in ur family should be the next hiphop artist or female in a video they can show society an alternative way in which the African American community presents themselves as instead of always looking at the negativity. There has to be some sort of balance. The African American community doesn't represent hiphop, hiphop represents the African American community.
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Stereotypical Exploitation themes Of African American Women In Society Through Films and Television
African American females please realize that you don't have to go around Shaking your asses or dressing in a revealing way for whatever reasons you choose to do it as. There are other options out there you can look into. If you find yourself in that situation i'm addressing and want to get out of that situation but don't know how to get there and need help. Please feel free to contact me. Your matters will be private. (this goes the same for African American males that find themselves leading on the life of a gangsta and want to stop portraying themselves as that and want to seek out a different lifestyle that is more positive) Its time to heal the masses!
Saartjie Baartman
A.K.A HOTNTOT VENUS
Some say was the first video vixen
Came over to Europe from Africa
Was sold into the circus
ARTICLE ON SAARTJIE BAARTMAN/HOT N TOT VENUS..
South African President Mbeki
on Saartjie Baartman
Letter from the PresidenT
"In the early nineteenth century, when the study of Khoi women became fashionable in European society, she was convinced to leave her home to become a dancer, with a contract that she may or may not have seen. A man from England promised her that she could make money to bring home to her tribe. What followed was five years of exhibition in museums and at fashionable parties, her spectacular buttocks and breasts bare, French and British men and women clustering around her, mocking her at the same time that her body made them uncomfortable with their own desire. Her days were punctuated by rape and scientific examinations.
"She died, probably of syphilis, and her body was given to Georges Cuvier, a French scientist who made a plaster model of her brain and preserved her buttocks and vagina to be displayed at the Musee de l'Homme. They remained on display until ten years ago."
Another article says: "The effects of climate on the physiology of black women were used to support theories about the sexual promiscuity and fertility of black races, exemplified in the description by J. J Virey, of the 'degree of lascivity unknown in our climate' among black women 'for their sexual organs are much more developed than those of whites.'
"Similarly, David Spurr quotes Richard Burton who 'merely affirms the conventional wisdom of his age in claiming that in damp-hot climates ...the sexual requirements of the passive (female) exceed those of the active (male) sex; and the result is a dissolute social state, contrasting with mountain countries, dry-cold and damp-cold, where the conditions are equally balanced or reversed'."
Nancy Stepan explains the Victorian mindset that created the gory exhibits in this Paris museum, which included the remains of Saartjie Baartman: "Of all the boundaries between peoples, the sexual one was the most problematic to the Victorian mind. In the area of racial thought, there had been since the earliest of times a prurient interest in the strange sexual customs of alien peoples, especially the African.
Did African women, for instance, mate with the great apes who came out of Africa? Were the sexual organs of Africans larger than those of whites? Did a tropical climate encourage an unbridled sexuality that resulted in promiscuity? It was not surprising that anthropological accounts of strange peoples provided a surrogate pornography for Europeans."
This Letter and the preceding quotations are occasioned by the return of Saartjie Baartman from France to her homeland, South Africa.
The scientist who dismembered Saartjie's body when she died, Georges Cuvier, the founder of comparative anatomy, said when commenting on Africans: "These races with depressed and compressed skulls are condemned to a never-ending inferiority. (Saartjie's) moves had something reminding (one) of the monkey and her external genitalia reminded (one of) those of the orang-outang."
Saartjie Baartman, a daughter of the Khoi people, was born in the Eastern Cape in 1789. Later she served as a slave or servant in the employ of a white colonist. It was while she was thus employed, that a British Naval Surgeon, William Dunlop, had her transported by ship to London in 1810.
Dunlop, intent to use her to make money for himself, told her she could make a fortune by displaying her naked body to curious Europeans. She was paraded at circuses, museums, bars and universities. At times, she was displayed in a cage and forced to behave like "a wild beast". Especially on display were her prominent posterior and her genitals.
In 1814 and 1815, she was exhibited in Paris by one Henry Taylor and then by someone called Reaux. By the time she died on January 1, 1816, she was owned by an animal trainer. During this period, she was also forced into > prostitution and, in despair, resorted to heavy consumption of alcohol.
After her death, her body was handed to the scientist, Georges Cuvier. He cast her in plaster and then dissected her body, removing the brain, the vulva and the anus, which were placed in glass jars in a preserving fluid. He then removed all flesh from the skeleton. These remains were kept in the exhibition rooms of the French Museums, open for public viewing, until 1974and 1976.
When we gained our freedom in 1994, we requested the French government to assist in returning the remains of Saartjie Baartman to the land of her birth. Ultimately, this required that the French Parliament should pass special legislation authorising the release of these remains to our country.
The debate of this law in the French National Assembly took place under the theme "Repatriation of the Hottentot Venus". This is the circus name that Saartjie Baartman had been given by her European owners.
On the day the necessary legislation was adopted, on 21 February 2002, Research Minister Roger-Gerard Schwatzenberg, said: "Saartjie Baartman was firstly a victim of the exploitation suffered by South African ethnic groups during colonisation. Secondly, Saartjie Baartman was the victim of colonialism and sexism because her dignity as a woman and her rights were denied. Thirdly, she was also the victim of racism which was the characteristic of anthropology at the time, the latter being very much > turned to ethnocentrism.
"I see in this bill a double symbol. Firstly, it gives us the opportunity to turn the page of decades marked by colonialism, racism and sexism. It will mark the end of a painful period, when non European populations were not viewed as equal to the European ones. Secondly, it marks our will to acknowledge equality among people. This is an important moment of unity around an essential principle - the dignity of any human being, whatever his/her religion, origins and condition."
Saartjie Baartman was called Saartjie Baartman by those who colonised her, her people and her country. By depriving her of her Khoi name, they took away her identity. By turning her into a non-person, they defined her as sub-human. As such a subhuman, she became an object intended to be fully owned, used at will and freely disposed of by those who had robbed her of her identity. Her few years in Europe gave the fullest expression to this reality that she was nothing more than an object to satisfy the needs of those who were her owners.
The inhumane and barbaric fate she met exemplified the destiny of the colonised and oppressed in our country, including the Khoi and the San.
Denied their identity, defined as subhuman, dispossessed of their land, their country and their freedom, millions became chattels in the ownership of others who convinced themselves that they were true masters of all they surveyed.
Even scientific inquiry was perverted to serve the cause of racism and the domination of human beings by other human beings. Thus did Saartjie Baartman become a mere biological specimen to be dissected and dismembered to arrive at predetermined conclusions that justified her categorisation as a mere biological specimen.
And thus did entire peoples fall victim to racist beliefs, underpinned by false intellectual propositions and a corrupted theology, which justified the perpetration of crimes against humanity on the basis that these peoples, including our own, were proper objects of a civilising mission.
The struggle for the return of the remains of Saartjie Baartman to her motherland was a struggle to uproot the legacy of many centuries of unbridled humiliation. It was a struggle to restore to our people and the peoples of Africa their right to be human and to be treated by all as human beings. Her return stands out as a defining moment in the continuing process of our emancipation.
The Khoi people of our country and the descendants of the Khoi have every right solemnly to celebrate the return of one who was their daughter. They have every right to demand that this historic act of redress should be given its true meaning by the restoration to the Khoi and the San their place of pride as Africans equal to all other Africans.
Those who sought to dehumanise Saartjie Baartman also have the responsibility to join hands with the millions whose fate she exemplified, to help rebuild South Africa and Africa, in a common effort to give meaning to the vision that all of us, regardless of race or colour, were created in > the image of God.
As our ambassador to France, Thuthukile Skweyiya, together with Deputy Minister Bridgitte Mabandla and her delegation from South Africa, received the remains of Saartjie Baartman at our Embassy in Paris, she said: "Saartjie Baartman is beginning her final journey home, to a free, democratic, non-sexist and non-racist South Africa. She is a symbol of our national need to confront our past and restore dignity to all our people."
Speaking on behalf of the government and people of France, Minister Schwatzenberg said: "After suffering so much offence and humiliation, Saartjie Baartman will have her dignity restored. She will find justice and peace."
The remains of Saartjie Baartman returned home a few days after our Freedom Day, 192 years after she left her motherland. Welcome home, our Saartjie!
Thabo Mbeki, President, South Africa
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on January 1 1816, probably of pneumonia. But even then she was to suffer indignity. Less than 24 hours after her death she was carved up by Baron Cuvier. He had her body cast in wax, dissected and her skeleton articulated. Her genitalia and brain were pickled and displayed at the Musee de l'Homme (Museum of Mankind). They were finally withdrawn from public view in 1974, and her remains were assigned to a storeroom and forgotten.
But some Africans never forgot Baartman. Nelson Mandela made a request to France in 1994 for her remains to be handed back. Her cause gained momentum amid post-apartheid South Africa's new awareness of tribal identity. All over the country, aboriginal peoples are asserting their heritage rights, claiming not only political and cultural recognition, but also the restitution of ancestral land and the protection of intellectual property rights. The San, once known as the bushmen of southern Africa, have successfully reclaimed historic tribal land and won a share in the proceeds of internationally marketed drugs made from their traditional medicinal plants. And now Baartman's Khoisan tribe, which has been recognized by the United Nations as an indigenous "First Nation," has won a victory for tribal recognition by securing the return of the 'Hottentot Venus' to South Africa.
African American Women Exploited Through Images Of Mammies and Tragic Mulattos In Early 1920s-1950s Films
Mammy-, the mammy character was perceived as being independent and cantankerous. The mammy character was considered unattractive; therefore, the film industry depicted her as being a mother figure that took care the white children and the master. Furthermore, the mammy’s offshoot was the Aunt Jemima character in which derogatory terms were used to describe her as “Handkerchief head”. Aunt Jemimas were toms (socially acceptable good negro characters) into religion or mammies who tried to become socially accepted into white society. Jemimas usually were sweet, jolly, and good-tempered. Mammy roles, however, were caregivers, care takers, or mother figures.
Tragic Mulatto-The tragic mulatto was a role normally played by light-skinned black females who were attempting to pass for white. Tragic mulattos were made to be likable and sympathetic because of the white blood they possessed. Similarly, the film industry saw the tragic mulatto as never being successful in life because of the one drop of Negro blood which prevented her from excelling in life.
Hattie Mcdaniel portrays herself as the Mammy character in the movie Gone With The Wind as she is exploited by the film industry as a African American Women through the depiction of how "white society" veiwed African American women during the 1920s-1950s.
Lena Horne plays the Tragic Mulatto character, Ethel Waters plays the Mammy/Aunt Jemima character, and Eddie Anderson plays the coon character in the Movie Cabin in the Sky as they are exploited by the film industry as an depiction of how "white society" viewed African American males and females during the 1920s-1950s
African American Women had to play these stereotypical roles in order to make in into the Film and Television industry.
If African American women tried to deviate away from Stereotypical Images they would have to be in the industry for a while, but still had to portray the stereotypical images that society depicted them as.
Exploitation Of African American Women In Hiphop Videos as Video Vixens
Video Vixen- seen as a women that dresses sluttish, dances seductively like a stripper, and talks erotic. Often labeled as a video hoe or hoe(slang for a whore).
What people don't realize no matter if these women willingly exploit themselves, they are sacrificing their self respect as women to be famous. Furthermore the hiphop industry has Black women dressing, acting, and talking sexually as a marketing strategy to sell records because they say “sex sales”. If an African American woman tries to deviate away from the degrading and stereotypical image of a video vixen she is kicked off the set or has to have been in the industry for a period of time. Once again, African American women fall into the trap of being depicted by and exploited by the hiphop industry (which is predominately controlled by whites) of how they view African American women.
Prostitution occurs in the hiphop industry in which a women is often solicited for sex or willing offers sex to the hiphop artist in order to further her career as a video vixen.
Male Hiphop artist often play the role as Johns( men that prostitute women for sex)
Are we going to continue to let these stereotypical images determine what our sisters, brothers, cousins, mothers, aunties, uncles, and etc... what they should become in life? Or are we going to take a stance by fighting back and telling our families that we can achieve and become successful in other professions such as a doctor or lawyer through going to schools and educating ourselves... because if we don't.. who will?
If a woman is suppose to be mother earth in the sense that she can bring children into this world, how can she be a Bitch or a Hoe?
"The Frustrated Voice of an African American Woman"
..Why Are There Only A Few Conscious HipHop artist Today, Where Did It Change? Will We Go Back To It? I Don't See Anything Wrong With It.....
KRS-One A Friend
..Topic: African Amercians Vs African Americans...
The Willie Lynch Letter
GENTLEMAN:
I greet you here on the bank of the James River in the year of our Lord, one thousand seven hundred and twelve. First I shall thank you, the Gentlemen of the Colony of Virginia, for bringing me here. I am here to help you solve some of your problems with slaves. Your invitation reached me on my modest plantation in the West Indies where I have experimented with some of the newest and still the oldest methods for control of slaves. Ancient Rome would envy us if my program is implemented. As our boat sailed south on the James River, named for our illustrious King James, whose bible we cherish, I saw enough to know that your program is not unique. While Rome used cords of wood as crosses for standing human bodies along the old highways in great numbers, you are here using the tree and the rope on occasion.
I caught the whiff of a dead slave hanging from a tree a couple of miles back. You are not only losing valuable stock by hangings, you are having uprisings, slaves are running away, your crops are sometimes left in the fields too long for maximum profit, you suffer occasional fires, your animals are killed, gentlemen...you know what your problems are; I do not need to elaborate. I am not here to enumerate your problems, I am here to introduce you to a method of solving them.
In my bag here, I have a fool-proof method for controlling your black slaves. I guarantee everyone of you that if installed correctly it will control the slaves for at least 300 years. My method is simple, any member of your family or any overseer can use it.
I have outlined a number of differences among the slaves, and I take these differences and make them bigger. I use fear, distrust, and envy for control purposes. These methods have worked on my modest plantation in the West Indies, and it will work throughout the South. Take this simple little test of differences and think about them. On the top of my list is "Age", but it is there because it only starts with an "A"; the second is "Color" or shade; there is intelligence, size, sex, size of plantations, attitude of owners, whether the slaves live in the valley, on a hill, East, West, North, South, have fine or coarse hair, or is tall or short. Now that you have a list of differences, I shall give you an outline of action--but before that, I shall assure you that distrust is stronger than trust, and envy is stronger than adulation, respect, or admiration.
The Black Slave, after receiving this indoctrination, shall carry on and will become self refueling and self generating for hundreds of years, maybe thousands.
Don't forget, you must pitch the old Black vs. the young Black male, and the young Black male against the old Black male. You must use the dark skinned slaves vs the light skinned slaves, and the light skinned slaves vs. the dark skinned slaves. You must use the female vs. the male, and the male vs. the female. You must also have your servants and overseers distrust all Blacks, but it is necessary that your slaves trust and depend on us. They must love, respect, and trust only us.
Gentlemen, these kits are your keys to control, use them. Have your wives and children use them. Never miss opportunity. My plan is guaranteed, and the good thing about this plan is that if used intensely for one year, the slaves themselves will remain perpetually distrustful.
One could Say that Willie Lynch's plans actually worked and still exist as a problem today in the African American Community as a social issue.....
..On Double Consciousness..
..by W. E. B. DuBois..
After the Egyptian and Indian, the Greek and Roman, the Teuton and Mongolian, the Negro is a sort of seventh son, born with a veil, and gifted with second-sight in this American world,--a world which yields him no true self-consciousness, but only lets him see himself through the revelation of the other world. It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one's self through the eyes of others, of measuring one's soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity. One ever feels his twoness,--an American, a Negro; two warring souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder.
The history of the American Negro is the history of this strife,--this longing to attain self-conscious manhood, to merge his double self into a better and truer self. ...
