Voices and Soul
by
Justice Putnam
Black Kos Poetry Editor
It is said we should overcome any limitations imposed on us. It is said that strength lay in the embrace of limitless possibilities provided by a benevolent and bountiful universe, made just for us. It is said that eternal life is to be had if we simply believe it. It is said that what is said says it all.
I wish I could translate the hints about the dead young men and women, And the hints about old men and mothers, and the offspring taken soon out of their laps.
What do you think has become of the young and old men? And what do you think has become of the women and children?
They are alive and well somewhere, The smallest sprout shows there is really no death, And if ever there was it led forward life, and does not wait at the end to arrest it, And ceas'd the moment life appear'd.
All goes onward and outward, nothing collapses, And to die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier.
--Walt Whitman
Song of Myself
“… I was taught in College physics how
Time
Like particles And waves
Could shift From red To blue
Move fast Or slow.
But in that Alley I perceived in a Constant Rhythmic Chill.
I could see Molecules of light Play on the White dumpster
And the low Stone black Wings of death Shadow colors Refracted from A multitude Of broken bits Of glass.
I could hear The scratching Of the electrical Transformer At one end Of the Alley
Harmonize With the Reverberation
Of traffic At the other.
I felt The heavy Bass Of buses And semi's Mix liquid With the Treble Of car stereos Gained-up
Playing Classic rock Rap and Latin.
I could also Taste my own Salt tears Barely dilute The thick blood From deep inside me
And excreted Out my Mouth and nose.
Tears Falling On paper and dust While Blood rusted A path over Flesh and metal
Discarded and crushed… “
-- Justice Putnam
from "The Nature of Poetics Collapsed Outside My Window"
The subtlest strain a great musician weaves, Cannot attain in rhythmic harmony To music in his soul. May it not be Celestial lyres send hints to him? He grieves That half the sweetness of the song, he leaves Unheard in the transition. Thus do we Yearn to translate the wondrous majesty Of some rare mood, when the rapt soul receives A vision exquisite. Yet who can match The sunset’s iridescent hues? Who sing The skylark’s ecstasy so seraph-fine? We struggle vainly, still we fain would catch Such rifts amid life’s shadows, for they bring Glimpses ineffable of things divine.
-- Henrietta Cordelia Ray
"Limitations"
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News round up by dopper0189, Black Kos Managing Editor
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Almost a century before the 2016 protests about the lack of minority representation among Academy Awards nominees, a group of African American entrepreneurs sought to transform the predominantly white American film industry. Among the very first was Oscar Micheaux. The son of slaves and an autodidact, Micheaux became the first African American to produce a full-length feature film.
Micheaux was a revolutionary filmmaker who wrote, produced, and directed groundbreaking movies with all-black casts that countered stereotypes and explored explosive racial issues. His films addressed interracial relationships, “passing,” and lynching, taboo subjects that were central to the black experience in the early twentieth century. Micheaux sought, he later explained, to “present the truth, to lay before the race a cross section of its own life, to view the colored heart from close range. . . . [in order to] raise [African Americans] to greater heights.”
Despite limited access to capital and equipment during the Jim Crow era, Micheaux became a prolific producer of “race pictures” that were primarily restricted to theaters for African American audiences. All in all, he directed more than forty black-and-white silent or “talking pictures” over the course of his lifetime.
In spite of these impressive accomplishments, Micheaux died in poverty in 1951 at age 67 and his name gradually faded into obscurity during the decades that followed. After his death, Micheaux’s wife burned his business papers and many of his powerful films were lost over time. In recent years, however, historians have finally begun to recover much of the story of one of the nation’s earliest black filmmakers.
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“‘Passing’ describes the choice to identify as a member of another racial group rather than face social prejudice,” writes Sil Lai Abrams in her memoir, Black Lotus: A Woman’s Search for Racial Identity. “Today the term is used almost exclusively to describe black people who consciously adopt a white identity.”
But for Abrams, born to a Chinese immigrant mother and a white American father, passing was a result not of choice but of ignorance. All her life she had been told that the reason her skin was darker than the rest of her family’s was that she was born in Hawaii. And then, when she was 14, the man she thought of as her father told Abrams that her actual biological father was black.
Black Lotus is Abrams’ awakening as a biracial woman in America and her journey to embrace her black cultural identity. She describes being made aware of the inherent racism against black Americans at age 14 through the experience of her first kiss: The boy asks her, angrily, “‘You’re not black, are you?’” Writes Abrams in reflection: “My takeaway from my first kiss wasn’t sexual. It was social.” As a girl newly conscious of her black heritage, she was learning about the layers of stereotypes and racism in America; she was learning about the intersection of race and gender and their specific, often painful violence on the body of the black American woman.
In this brutally honest and deeply felt memoir, Abrams weaves together personal narrative, history and social analysis to heal from a legacy of interpersonal and societal violence. Here, too, is a discussion of the repetition of destructive relationships in families. Abrams’ parents, both alcoholics, would leave the newborn Sil Lai home alone to go pub crawling. Three years later, her mother would lock Sil Lai and her little sister out of the house while their father was at work. “I knew better than to reach out for comfort from my mother,” Abrams writes. But while their mother often showed affection to her nonblack children, a distance was always kept with Abrams. “To a child, it’s unfathomable to think that your mother doesn’t like you, and if she doesn’t it’s because of something you did—not who you are.”
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Find out what popular natural hair blogger Nikki Walton has to say about taming your mane. Ebony: Curly Nikki Is Redefining ‘Good Hair’.
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Nikki Walton’s creative idea wasn’t just lucrative, it has changed the way Black women feel about themselves. In 2008, the 33-year-old psychotherapist launched her site CurlyNikki.com as a space for ladies to celebrate their natural hair journey and share resources. Almost a decade later, Walton’s “hair therapy sessions” have helped fuel a movement that has put the stereotypical definition of “good hair” to rest.
In her latest book, When Good Hair Goes Bad, which is free here, the entrepreneur shares tips for maintaining naturally great hair. Recently, EBONY.com spoke with Walton about her new book, and how you can keep your hair looking right for the remainder of the long, hot summer.
By: Montrose Tyler
EBONY.com: Your first book Better Than Good Hair was a huge success. What feedback helped fuel the content for your new release?
Nikki Walton: When I was writing the first book people were writing me, “Nikki how do I do it?” How do I go natural? How do I embrace it?” Today, I still get thousands of emails but now they’re more like, “Hey, I’ve been doing this for three years it’s been going smoothly but I colored it last week and now it’s breaking,” or “I decided to blow it out and it won’t curl back up,” or “I’m tired of this twist out I need to try something else.”
It’s about more practical questions for maintenance because we are so free now. Most people have truly started embracing their hair. We’re not seeking inspiration or empowerment as much because natural is the new normal and we’re looking for ways to keep it healthy because it’s so versatile.
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In February, James Robertson won re-election to the Parliament of Jamaica. It was the latest in an unbroken string of victories for the 50-year-old politician since winning his first campaign in 2002.
During that time, Robertson, a member of the conservative Jamaica Labour Party, has survived a political career that would have derailed many. He was reelected in 2012, when a backlash against the JLP’s association with a drug trafficker forced the prime minister to resign, and the rival People’s National Party (PNP) nearly swept the elections. When he tried to push out his party’s leader in 2013 and lost, he kept his deputy leader position in the party anyway. But those episodes were child’s play compared to what he faced in 2010.
That year the U.S. State Department revoked Robertson’s visa for reasons never made public. Then he was accused of murder.
The accusations against him dominated headlines in Jamaica. But Robertson was never charged and has denied the accusations, attributing them to political enemies. He’s never been charged, let alone convicted. His accuser, a small businessman, has left the country. Officials made no comments. The news media eventually dropped the story. The matter seemed to simply disappear.
Until now.
Leslie “Les” Green, a former assistant commissioner of police for the Jamaican Constabulary Force who has since retired, revealed to the Miami Herald that he investigated accusations that Robertson tried to arrange at least two murders, and found enough evidence that he recommended that prosecutors charge the politician.
“Investigations have been conducted alleging serious offenses against Robertson and others,” said Green, who is English and a former Scotland Yard detective. In 2006, the Jamaican government hired him on contract to help professionalize the force. “The Department of Public Prosecutions made a ruling there was sufficient evidence to charge Robinson.”
But after carefully assembling his case, Green said, Jamaica’s Ministry of National Security refused to offer to protect one of the key witnesses. The witness fled, and the case fell apart.
The guilt or innocence of Robertson aside, the episode highlights a problem holding the powerful accountable in a region dogged by violence. The U.N.’s Caribbean Human Development report noted in 2012 that Latin America and the Caribbean made up 8.5 percent of the world’s population, but tallied 27 percent of its homicides. Jamaica has the highest homicide rate in the Caribbean.
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IF THERE is a modern gateway from the east to Africa, it is arguably Addis Ababa’s airport. Passengers passing through its dusty terminals on their way to some far-flung capital will be surprised to find that getting an Ethiopian meal is remarkably difficult. Asian dumplings, however, are available at two different cafés. Signs marking the gates are in English, Amharic and Chinese, as are announcements.
Dozing gently on the beige loungers are untold numbers of young Chinese workers waiting for flights. They are part of a growing army of labourers, businessmen and engineers who can be seen directing the construction of roads, railways and ports across much of east Africa.
Concerns about China’s involvement in Africa are often overplayed. Accusations that it is buying up vast tracts of farmland, factories and mines, for instance, are blown out of proportion. Even so, its growing influence on the continent has nettled India and Japan, who are both boosting their engagement in response.
As with previous rounds of rivalry in Africa, such as during the cold war, at least some of this activity relates to access to bases and ports to control the sea. China’s involvement in Africa now includes a growing military presence. Thousands of Chinese soldiers have donned the UN’s blue helmets in Mali and South Sudan, where several have been killed trying to keep an imaginary peace. Chinese warships regularly visit African ports.
China maintains a naval squadron that escorts mostly Chinese-flagged vessels through the Gulf of Aden. But some diplomats fret that China has been using these patrols to give its navy practice in operating far from home, including in offensive actions. “You wouldn’t normally use submarines for counter-piracy patrols,” says one.
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SOME call it Africa’s second liberation. After freedom from European colonisers came freedom from African despots. Since the end of the cold war multi-party democracy has spread far and wide across the continent, often with impressive and moving intensity. Remember 1994, when South Africans queued for hours to bury apartheid and elect Nelson Mandela as president in their country’s first all-race vote.
Many of Africa’s worst Big Men were swept away. Mengistu Haile Mariam fled Ethiopia in 1991; Mobutu Sese Seko of Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of Congo) decamped in 1997; a year later Sani Abacha of Nigeria died in office (or, as rumour has it, in the arms of prostitutes). In parts of Africa autocrats are still in power and wars still rage. But most leaders now seek at least a veneer of respectability; elections have become more frequent and more regular; economies have opened up.
And yet, as our reporting makes clear (see article), African democracy has stalled—or even gone into reverse. Too often, it is an illiberal sort of pseudo-democracy in which the incumbent demonises the opposition, exploits the power of the state to stack the electoral contest in his favour and removes constraints on his power. That bodes ill for a continent where institutions are still fragile, corruption rife and economies weakened by the fall of commodity prices (one of the fastest-growing regions of the world has become one of the slowest). For Africa to fulfil its promise, the young, dynamic continent must rediscover its zeal for democracy.
The latest worrying example is Zambia. It was one of the first African countries to undergo a democratic transition, when Kenneth Kaunda stepped down after losing an election in 1991. This week Edgar Lungu was re-elected president with a paper-thin majority in a campaign marred by the harassment of the opposition, the closure of the country’s leading independent newspaper, accusations of vote-rigging and street protests.
Especially in central Africa, incumbent leaders are changing or sidestepping constitutional term limits to extend their time in office, often provoking unrest. Kenya, where political tension is rising, faces worries about violence in next year’s general election. Freedom House, an American think-tank, reckons that in 1973 only about 30% of sub-Saharan countries were “free” or “partly free”. In its latest report the share stands at 59%. That is a big improvement, obviously, but it is down from 71% in 2008. Countries that are “not free” still outnumber those that are. A big chunk in the middle is made up of flawed and fragile states that are only “partly free”.
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