Federal Minimum Wage as of 2013 is only a mere $7.25. And we expect anyone to live off of that? Because most if not all of the ‘job that were added’ were minimum wage or part time jobs over the past four years. These are not jobs to make lives out of- but a quick fix to bump up the work force and make the economy look good on paper. But lives are at an all time low because of it.
You can’t live off that shit
AHAHAHA NOT QUITE, OP, NOT QUITE
FUCKING NAILED IT
A+ commentary!
THANK YOU
I had seen the original making the rounds. Glad to see it got a proper rebuttal.
(Source: flowers-for-mr-ukki)
Please complicate your analysis.
Today, I teach and write. And rap to myself. I am an above average writer and teacher. I am working on being better at being human. I am not a father, nor husband. The most mediocre white man at my bougie job has 16x the wealth I have. My grandmother has the beginnings of dementia, and she is still way smarter than me. She was only allowed to work the line at a chicken plant. She has no wealth, but lots of love for both of you. She prays for your safety. Please complicate your analysis. Working class white security guards have entered my office 3x times asking to see my ID. Every time, I tell them, “Fuck you. Show me yours.” I desperately cling to intellectual superiority over them. They powerfully claim whiteness and relative wealth over me. This has nothing, and everything, to do with my wanting to be a rapper and baller. I respect you. We respect you. Please complicate your analysis. Imani Perry writes books you should read. Please tell the truth.
Kiese Laymon is the author of Long Division and How To Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America.
Dear First Lady and President, | Cold Drank
Basically.
(via geedee215)
—
“Please complicate your analysis.”
(via dc-via-chicago)
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Saki Mafundikwa is a maverick visionary who left a successful design career in New York to return to his native Zimbabwe and open that country’s first school of graphic design and new media. Mafundikwa is the author of Afrikan Alphabets, a comprehensive review of African writing systems. He has participated in exhibitions and workshops around the world, contributed to a variety of publications and lectured about the globalization of design and the African aesthetic. In going home and opening his school, Mafundikwa’s ambition is nothing less than to jump-start an African renaissance. (aiga.org)
“I returned home last year after an absence that totalled twenty years, going to school and then working in the US. I decided to come back home to start ZIVA, a New Media Arts school. ZIVA, besides being an acronym for Zimbabwe Institute of Vigital Arts, is also a Shona word meaning “knowledge.”…
At the heart of ZIVA’s mission is a desire to create a new visual language – a language inspired by history, a language that is informed by but not dictated to or confined by European design, a language that is inspired by all the arts (sculpture, textiles, painting and Afrikan religion), a language whose inspiration is Afrikan. We are at a crossroads in the history of design right now with the young designers of the Western world rejecting the straitjacket confines of what design is and is not.
“African alphabets debunk the myth of the dark continent, they lay to rest the lies born out of ignorance that have been leveled at our beautiful Mama Africa” - Saki Mafundikwa
This less than 6-minute video is packed with so much information and essential knowledge about the history and importance of certain African writing systems and their value. As Saki emphasizes, this sort of information holds an incredible amount of weight in relation to our identities, and retracing these histories is of paramount importance.
The only area that I disagree with him on is when he says that the lies propagated about Africa(ns) were born out of ignorance - I’d be a little more specific and say that they were conceived from a place of hatred. Those who enslaved and colonized us despised us too.
Also, I love his subtle rejection of the word ‘tribe’.
Lies propagated about Africa(ns) were indeed conceived from a place of hatred. Some things shouldn’t be sugarcoated but some of us tend to be too considerate when it comes to the oppressors’ feelings.
When people think of the martial arts, immediately the Eastern martial arts tradition and disciplines come to mind, but did you know that Africa had its own martial arts traditions and disciplines as well? Get your weight up! Knowledge is power!
Fighting for Honor: The History of African Martial Art in the Atlantic World (Carolina Lowcountry and the Atlantic World) by T. J. Desch Obi
The presence of African influence and tradition in the Americas has long been recognized in art, music, language, agriculture, and religion. T. J. Desch Obi explores another cultural continuity that is as old as eighteenth-century slave settlements in South America and as contemporary as hip-hop culture.
In this thorough survey of the history of African martial arts techniques, Obi maps the translation of numerous physical combat techniques across three continents and several centuries to illustrate how these practices evolved over time and are still recognizable in American culture today. Some of these art traditions were part of African military training while others were for self-defense and spiritual discipline.
Grounded in historical and cultural anthropological methodologies, Obi’s investigation traces the influence of well-delineated African traditions on long-observed but misunderstood African and African American cultural activities in North America, Brazil, and the Caribbean. He links the Brazilian martial art capoeira to reports of slave activities recorded in colonial and antebellum North America. Likewise Obi connects images of the kalenda African stick-fighting techniques to the Haitian Revolution. Throughout the study Obi examines the ties between physical mastery of these arts and changing perceptions of honor.
Including forty-five illustrations, this rich history of the arrival and dissemination of African martial arts in the Atlantic world offers a new vantage for furthering our understanding of the powerful influence of enslaved populations on our collective social history.
I really wonder if such martial arts aren’t unique to the African Diaspora, I mean that I really don’t hear or see much about African martial arts within African countries.
Hatian stick fighting and tire machete ( art of fencing with a machete) is so fuckign brilliant.. and scary.. the movement..i had the chance to see it live 2 months ago.. this women was just so magnificent.. the slaver would not have had a chance if she was fighting them.. i’d love a documentary on the whole subject !
![thefemaletyrant:
stopwhitewashing:
somethingvain:
Neo-orientalism in fashion - generalisations that lead to racial stereotypes: Alexander McQueen F/W 2000 ‘Eshu‘
It was a show notable for a number of things. Firstly, it was McQueen’s first show in Paris fashion week after having shown his collections exclusively in London fashion week thus far - a symbolic move in itself to a globe that took the art of fashion, of sewing and of creation more seriously. Secondly, it was a show that had been preceded by rumours of bombs or PETA violence because of the shows controversial theme. Most importantly, it was a show that was a continuation and a development of a theme explored in his earlier show ‘Nihilism’ (S/S 1994) and a theme that is still relevant today: the misrepresentation of the ethnic minorities that perpetuate the neo-orientalism so dangerous to the modern mindset.
The collection was inspired by the Yoruba tribe and specifically, by a deity called Eshu that often created conflict to test and teach humans (Alexander McQueen: Evolution by Katherine Gleason, pg.75), and so the collection showed reworked representations of Yoruba clothing including the orthodontic-looking device that pulled a model’s lips apart into a painful-looking rictus (Gleason, pg.76) as shown above. Of the collection, McQueen himself said “[It] was a reaction to designers romanticising ethnic dressing, like the Masai-inspired dress made of materials the Masai could never afford.” (Alexander McQueen by Andrew Bolton, preface pg.III).
When Edward Said wrote his book ‘Orientalism’, he was addressing the motives of colonisation - both economic (as prescribed by Karl Marx) and nationalistic - in shaping the study of the ‘Orient’ or the Middle-eastern/Asian cultures that fundamentally changed the way they were viewed as an ‘other’, creating the alterity that separated the savages from the civilised westerners. To some extent, McQueen’s ironic statement by himself appropriating the Yoruba clothing in extremes addresses the crass commercialisation of culture in the economic motives that have shaped the representation of minorities in fashion. In this way, it is a statement on the Neo-orientalism that has shaped cultural appropriation in fashion as Orientalism shaped western perception in the 1800s, where the profit margin relegates complex cultures to exotic ‘others’, the timelessness of McQueen’s statement underscored by Victoria Secret’s 2013 ‘Sexy Little Geisha’ abomination collection.
The question remains, was McQueen successful in separating himself from this movement, even in his self-conscious acknowledgement to it? The meta-fashion that McQueen practices - fashion reflecting on fashion - perhaps saves him through his awareness. I find his obsession with the ‘Noble Savage’ incredibly interesting, and will perhaps explore it more thoroughly in another segment.
written by somethingvain
Santoine: I will always respect A McQueen and his genius. Nevertheless, neo-orientalism is still another reincarnation of the insidious acknowledgement and understanding of non-Western cultures, especially African and Asian cultues (among the most heavily appropriated cultures in fashion).
Read More
Where exactly is the Yoruba and Eshu inspired stuff? Because I’m not seeing in this disgusting photo.](http://25.media.tumblr.com/5e8b086f92c855e6b1ad76420dabf0bb/tumblr_mlfs5gNDC41qj10b5o1_500.jpg)
Neo-orientalism in fashion - generalisations that lead to racial stereotypes: Alexander McQueen F/W 2000 ‘Eshu‘
It was a show notable for a number of things. Firstly, it was McQueen’s first show in Paris fashion week after having shown his collections exclusively in London fashion week thus far - a symbolic move in itself to a globe that took the art of fashion, of sewing and of creation more seriously. Secondly, it was a show that had been preceded by rumours of bombs or PETA violence because of the shows controversial theme. Most importantly, it was a show that was a continuation and a development of a theme explored in his earlier show ‘Nihilism’ (S/S 1994) and a theme that is still relevant today: the misrepresentation of the ethnic minorities that perpetuate the neo-orientalism so dangerous to the modern mindset.
The collection was inspired by the Yoruba tribe and specifically, by a deity called Eshu that often created conflict to test and teach humans (Alexander McQueen: Evolution by Katherine Gleason, pg.75), and so the collection showed reworked representations of Yoruba clothing including the orthodontic-looking device that pulled a model’s lips apart into a painful-looking rictus (Gleason, pg.76) as shown above. Of the collection, McQueen himself said “[It] was a reaction to designers romanticising ethnic dressing, like the Masai-inspired dress made of materials the Masai could never afford.” (Alexander McQueen by Andrew Bolton, preface pg.III).
When Edward Said wrote his book ‘Orientalism’, he was addressing the motives of colonisation - both economic (as prescribed by Karl Marx) and nationalistic - in shaping the study of the ‘Orient’ or the Middle-eastern/Asian cultures that fundamentally changed the way they were viewed as an ‘other’, creating the alterity that separated the savages from the civilised westerners. To some extent, McQueen’s ironic statement by himself appropriating the Yoruba clothing in extremes addresses the crass commercialisation of culture in the economic motives that have shaped the representation of minorities in fashion. In this way, it is a statement on the Neo-orientalism that has shaped cultural appropriation in fashion as Orientalism shaped western perception in the 1800s, where the profit margin relegates complex cultures to exotic ‘others’, the timelessness of McQueen’s statement underscored by Victoria Secret’s 2013 ‘Sexy Little Geisha’
abominationcollection.The question remains, was McQueen successful in separating himself from this movement, even in his self-conscious acknowledgement to it? The meta-fashion that McQueen practices - fashion reflecting on fashion - perhaps saves him through his awareness. I find his obsession with the ‘Noble Savage’ incredibly interesting, and will perhaps explore it more thoroughly in another segment.
written by somethingvain
Santoine: I will always respect A McQueen and his genius. Nevertheless, neo-orientalism is still another reincarnation of the insidious acknowledgement and understanding of non-Western cultures, especially African and Asian cultues (among the most heavily appropriated cultures in fashion).
Where exactly is the Yoruba and Eshu inspired stuff? Because I’m not seeing in this disgusting photo.
I don’t know why I’m saying all of this on twitter when people mostly talk to me on tumblr. Marlon Wayans tweeted some foolish ass shit.
my point about ironic fans of rap music is why I can’t stand those shitty acoustic white ppl covers of rap songs
because you think it’s funny to juxtapose your whiteness with “ratchet” rap lyrics to show how “hilarious” you think the lyrics are when you try to put it in the context of an art form you find more legitimate and superior
you are completely stripping the music of it’s context and butchering it for your own amusement I can’t stand it
thank you.
“Capitalism and its values have spread across the world like a disease. In a system where people compete for wealth and the power that comes with it, the ones who are the most ruthless in their pursuit are the ones who end up with the most of both, of course. Thus the capitalist system encourages deceit, exploitation and cutthroat competition. And life has become little more than a commodity to be exchanged for money on the free market.”
