head in the clouds, feet on the ground

booksbluntsbeats:

For those of you who enjoyed the new Chris Rock film Good Hair, I would urge you, if you haven’t already, to read the literary masterpiece that is Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye. Morrison, as you may or may not know, won the Nobel Prize in Literature for her beautiful and poignant novel Beloved; however, in my opinion it should have been for this book. This book is one of the most powerful pieces of literature I have ever read, and I read A LOT of SHIT. The story is about a young dark skinned, coarse haired, “homely”, girl by the name of Pecola Breedlove. All of her life Pecola had been told that she was ugly because of her dark skin and “nappy” hair. Noticing how everyone loves the little white girls, dolls and Shirley Temple so much, Pecola believes that her life would be so much better if only she looked like them or more specifically if she had blue eyes. It is a painfully glaring story of self-hatred and Colorism in the black community, and gives insight to the reasons why black women are so self conscious about their hair and skin tones. Another must read for black men and women. Especially black men, for it is us who need to make sure our women know the magnitude of their desirability and to  never feel the need to question their beauty in a world where we are proliferated by images of Eurocentric notions of beauty throughout the media. Morrison, a former Howard student and instructor, clearly drew some of her inspiration for the novel from the “Doll Test” conducted by former Howard psychologists Drs. Kenneth and Mamie Clark in 1939. In the experiment, the doctors placed white and black dolls in front of little black school children(male and female) and asked them which doll they preferred, and crazy enough the vast majority chose the white dolls over the black ones, connecting the white dolls with qualities such as “good” and “beautiful” while the black ones were deemed as “bad” and “ugly”. Sadly enough, in 2007 a 17 year old New York City film student, Kira Davis, conducted the same experiment hoping for a different outcome in the new millennium, but to much dismay the outcome was generally the same. I bring these things up to inform everyone about where these issues begin. It is much deeper than weave or skin lightener and “the desire to look nice” as some people put it. No, it is about the images that are shown to our mothers, sisters, daughters, aunts, grandmothers and nieces and the Ideological State Apparatus, the media, that deems only certain images as beautiful. I applaud Chris Rock for his effort to tackle this issue, but I want you all to know where the inquiries began.

Dr. Kenneth Clark and student in experiment, 1939

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didn’t forget about you, thepo.  here’s my first attempt at a mixtape or w.e.  dunno if the dl link is gonna work, so here’s the track list just in case =)

Rollin’ (Remix) - Kid Cudi feat. Jackie Chain

Above the Clouds - Gang Starr feat. Inspectah Deck

What They Do - The Roots

Unanswered Question - Amel Larrieux

Fall in Love (Dilla Tribute) - Flying Lotus

Sunshine Strut - Flyphonic ft. Andreas Oberg

Stratus - Uyama Hiroto

Green Eyed Love - Mayer Hawthorne

Amnesia - Blu

It’s Whatever - Aaliyah

Wallpaper for the Soul - Tahiti 80

Leisure Suite - Feist

Love Theme from “Spartacus” - Akiko