When Black Ain't Beautiful, Skin Bleaching is a Global Issue (Repurposed Post)

I recall my sister buying Ambi Fade Cream when we were in high school. She said it was for blemishes, I knew otherwise. She still hasn't shaken her esteem issues around her color and beauty.

This is not just an African-American issue, or a black issue, but a practice that is rampant across the globe. Lighter is beautiful in Western aesthetics.

When Sammy Sosa's photo revealed the dark brown Dominican's attempt to look like a ligher Latino, it opened the flood gates of the worldwide bleaching phenomenon that has never been excluded to women.

Then the recent photos of Vybz Cartel, murdering his complexion to make it appear an ashen, yellowish color akin to a zombie, deepens the conversation of serious issues within the African Diaspora around colorism. Back in the days, I guy would just marry a light-skinned girl or white woman. You know, do it the genetics way, but we all know that, that method is like rhythm birth control, sometime the timing is off so doesn't work all the time.

Vybz, if you thought you got no action because of your skin then, you can cancel any hopes now.

Removing myself from the sarcasm, Vybz is whitewashed and zombified, inside and out. But celebrity whitening isn't new. The king of skin bleaching, Michael Jackson made it damn near acceptable for people to appear like ghosts, if they got money and have talent. The other day I had to do a double take when I saw a photo of Rihanna. Damn, since when did she get that white? Talent question aside.

But why marry light, when cosmetic surgery can repair what you don't like? In 2002, boxer Percey Oblitei Commey lost a fight, plus got his ear torn almost off, his skin peeled and a gash on his cheek due to the incessant skin bleaching and plastic surgery to Europeanize his African features. He was laughed at by his country-folk, but lots of women and men there were rubbing toxic bleaching tonics on their arms and legs as they bawled in laughter.

Photos taken from Village Voice article by N. Jamyla Chisholm.

The fact is, skin bleaching has heavy and irrepairable health consequences. In Africa, users of the bleaching began to be diagnosed with skin cancers and tumors after prolonged use. And in all developing or low-wealth areas where people of color reside, tons of bleachers are imported without the approval of any federal or governmental agency.

Africa is a haven for skin bleaches that can kill. One report speaks of a Nigerian couple that created a skin whitener that was primarily bleach, killing people in the UK. One report showed that one bleaching cream contained chemicals similar to Draino, a plumbing liquid that is used to unclog pipes.

According to a great skin bleaching site, an article on bleaching in Africa stated:

“The humidity, vectors, ignorance, way of life of people and skin bleaching which now starts at an early age have compounded the situation and Ghana is gradually moving towards an epidemic stage,” Dr Edmund N. Delle. Dr Delle, Dermatologist and founder of Rabito Group of Clinics said tampering with the skin, and skin disorders compromised beauty, and led to withdrawal from society.

However, I must mention, bleaching expands outside of the borders of Africa and its Diaspora. The products found in Africa are just a touch of what you see throughout Asia, America and Europe

Though this article highlighted men who bleach, still, more women practice skin lightening because it is often related to marriageability. (Click photo to hear an audio blog about Asian whitening)

 What folk don't talk about is the pressure to be white is prominent in Asia. In ads throughout Japan, Korea, China and India, celebrities are used to promote how whiter skin leads to better partners and more success.

In India, Bollywood stars often promote skin bleaching cream, and companies in the US often take their skin bleaching ventures to the East, like Dove (Fair & Loveley) and Garnier. So much for Dove's beauty advertisements in the US that celebrate true, inner beauty and expose photo shopping.

This Indian add promotes fair skin as beautiful.

One blogger, Will Robinson describes this issue:

The infatuation with light skin can’t be blamed on the British. There has always been a connection between skin color and caste in India, though overt displays of the caste system are less pronounced nowadays. In India today, caste usually is manifested more as class. Most upper-caste/class Indians are lighter skinned, and most darker Indians are lower class (though being light-skinned doesn’t automatically make one upper-class/caste).

In Africa and the Caribbean it is heartbreaking.

If you ever see an African woman or Caribbean woman who has tons of make-up on, it might be due to the damage caused by lighteners. I saw that a lot in Africa.

Unfortunately, getting lighter has become steeped into daily rituals of women and men who seek attractiveness of the skin tone of their former colonizers. There is something about cultural Imperialism that holds firmer than military dominion any day.

A couple of years ago a Nigerian scholar told me that James Brown's song, "Say it Loud, I'm Black and I'm Proud" was a spiritual epiphany to his mother who cut out her perm and wore her black skin with pride.

There is a need for an affirmation, that black skin is in.

The Revolution Will Be Blogged: Black Bloggers Protests Help Shut Down Scientifically Racist Research

Satoshi Kanazawa can kick rocks and kiss every black woman's arse.

Black Bloggers who addressed and shut down the insidious racist and demeaning pseudo-scientific research by evolutionary psychologist Satoshi Kanazawa who published an article exploring why "Black Women are Less Attractive" on Psychology Today several weeks ago, should be proud of themselves.

On Friday, Psychology Today issued a formal apology stating that:

We deeply apologize for the pain and offense that this post caused. Psychology Today's mission is to inform the public, not to provide a platform for inflammatory and offensive material. Psychology Today does not tolerate racism or prejudice of any sort.

Soon after the post on Psychology Today, the well-established publication had to pull the article due to the flood of comments and emails sent by people all over the world. It was after the criticism did they decide to review the research only find out, that measuring beauty is a subjective process, and could never be objective.

No shit? You are still fucking idiots.

Anyway, the racist shut down gets even better, the students at the London School of Economics are demanding that the research, Satoshi Kanazawa be removed from his position.

However, let put this in a perspective in which everyone is held accountable by starting with the institution that published Kanazawa's work and the one that funds his research. This is where snubbing true racism gets lost in the emotional and political sauce. They all knew of his work, and they okay'd it. Kanazawa is a little fish.

I suggest a boycott of Psychology Today, fuck an apology. And serious review of the Psychology Department at LSE, and the school itself. I attended a conference there in 2010, right after the Underwear bomber, and I got profiled damn near every time I went through those fucking gates.

But for now, I will celebrate with you lot. We did something revolutionary. Even the ones who call themselves bourgeois, uppity, house Negroes, and the like. We burned one plantation house down, even if you loved to live in it.

And my sisters, you are beautiful.

The Plight of Dark Skinned Girls & Women

I remember my big sister wrote a letter to Ebony magazine, asking them why they always portrayed the children models with fair skin and wavy hair.

My sister, who is brown with thick lips and hips, never got an answer. She lives with shame to this day of her complexion. So much so, that the fathers of her children are fair-skinned. Nope she is not a hood rat, but on her second marriage with a medical degree, and still is not happy with the skin she inherited.

I really wish she could see the beauty we all see in her, and see she is worthy of being adulated and revered like all women.

All of my sisters, including me are a darker shade of brown. I clearly remember having the door slammed in my face by some brothers who opened it for my fair skinned-roommate, the first week I was at Florida A&M University.

They called her redbone. It was the first time I ever heard that name. I asked her what that was, and she explained. Since my mom comes from Louisiana, color complexions varied much in my family, and my folks never favored in complexion. So it was disturbing to be in Florida where color really mattered in most social circles.

I am not saying that I was immune to it. Growing up in Los Angeles, the choice pick was a light-skinned man with pretty eyes and good hair. However, in the black community, to have a physical feature that was as far from being associated to "black" was a luxury and serious bonus when it came to beauty points.

What I mean by that was to have light skin, or a fine nose, or wavy hair, or long hair, or light-colored eyes, brought adoration. So to be big-bootied, big-boned, dark, with kinks was considered inferior. And I have seen so many girls who desired attention would give their bodies and souls to the first bidder, just because they wanted to be wanted.

Still, dark-skinned black girls and women are suffering in many ways.

And it is not a figment of the imagination. Ask why CNN continuously casts fair-skinned newscasters, especially "black" women who are racial-ethnic rainbows. Or why Carol's Daughter, the natural hair care mogul, has all fair-skinned models to represent the line, when dark-skinned women put stock in that effing place.

It hurts to not be liked or loved because of skin color. Getting passed over for a lighter woman, or being treated like shit because you are darker does monstrosities to the self-esteem.

It is disgusting and disheartening when black people still devalue a color that everyone craves. Then, black women must get appreciation from others in order to feel beautiful

This video points to the pain of many.


Dark Girls: Preview from Bradinn French on Vimeo.

And though I love this song by Black Star (Talib Kweli & Mos Def) it boggles me that Mos Def married a bi-racial stripper after being with her for less than a week. It killed me a little inside when I saw his wife because all the time I had been rocking that song, it felt like he never was really singing it to me.

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When an Elder Dies a Library Has Burned, RIP Gil Scot Heron

Maybe one day we can do prose together...

Meshell N'degeocello covers "Heron's The Revolution Will Not Be Televised"



"Whitey's on the Moon" Me, fa-vo-rite

Shaquesha's Song . . . The Politics of Naming Black Babies

As a member of the African-American community, as a former High School and Junior High teacher, and as a former civil servant, I can't tell you the times I've had roundtable discussions around the naming of our children.

Ghetto.

That's what I used to call it.

Until I had an epiphany. Black people in the West were re-named, re-assigned, and re-categorized by European and Arabic conquerors. To seize that act of placing the energy and essence of your child, is an act of freedom. Names are linked to tones, and are linked to energy.

I am sorry, but I don't vibe to Mary. And since I was reared in SCLA where Aisha is a staple, I have a harder time remembering the Mary's and John's instead of the Shaquesha's and Dontay's.

What makes Inga, or Peter the "correct" name? This is a question I posed to myself, and discovered that many folk naming their children is their own liberation, to name, after being named by somebody else.

Naming is critical in the African-American community. And if you look at them, it is ancient.

However, a US federal judge finds some of these names, some hard to pronounce by Anglo-Caucasian-trained tongues, and has ruled that (some) mothers have lost the right to name their children.

Here is a snippet of the article, "Black Women Losing Rights to Their Children's Names" from Essence.

(DETROIT)- In a decision that’s expected to send shockwaves through the African-American community—and yet, give much relief to teachers everywhere—a federal judge ruled today that black women no longer have independent naming rights for their children. Too many black children—and many adults—bear names that border on not even being words, he said.

“I am simply tired of these ridiculous names black women are giving their children,” said U.S. Federal Judge Ryan Cabrera before rendering his decision. “Someone had to put a stop to it.”

The rule applies to all black women, but Cabrera singled out impoverished mothers.

“They are the worst perpetrators,” he said. “They put in apostrophes where none are needed. They think a ‘Q’ is a must. There was a time when Shaniqua and Tawanda were names you dreaded. Now, if you’re a black girl, you hope you get a name as sensible as one of those.”

Few stepped forward to defend black women—and black women themselves seemed relieved.

“It’s so hard to keep coming up with something unique,” said Uneeqqi Jenkins, 22, an African-American mother of seven who survives on public assistance. Her children are named Daryl, Q’Antity, Uhlleejsha, Cray-Ig, Fellisittee, Tay’Sh’awn and Day’Shawndra.

Beginning in one week, at least three white people must agree with the name before a black mother can name her child.

“Hopefully we can see a lot more black children with sensible names like Jake and Connor,” Cabrera said.

His ruling stemmed from a lawsuit brought by a 13-year-old girl whose mother created her name using Incan hieroglyphics. For more click here.

Now if white people have to vote on an adequate name, then let me vote on the recent names I have seen in the news from these white celebs.

Bob Geldef & Paula Yates three children are named Fifi Trixibelle, Little Pixie, and Peaches Honeyblossom.

Then Paula Yates has a kid by someone else named, Heavenly Hiraani Tiger Lily. 

Christie Brinkley's daughter is named Sailor Lee.

Penn & Emily Jillette named daughter, Moxie CrimeFighter.

Rachel Griffiths' kid, Banjo.

Simon Libon's daughter, Saffron Sahara.

John Cougar Mellencamp's son is named Hud.

David Reigny's son Bogart Che Peyote.

Sylvester Stallone's son is named Seargeoh and daughter Sage Moonblood.

Frank Zappa's seeds. Dweezil (son), Ahmet Emuukha Rodan (son), Moon Unit (daughter), Diva Muffin (daughter)

Bruce Willis & Demi Moore's daughter Tallulah Belle.

Getting Sexy & Healthy @ a Local Memorial Day Getaway

Years ago I went to a bellydance class in my hometown Los Angeles. There was a sister by the name of Sunyatta Amen who got a group of women moving their hips and ass. I was floored to see how stiff most of us were, as we tried to maneuver big butts, ample thighs and curves that were more than enough to feed an African village.

Well, Eco.Soul didn't have a problem with juking and wining', but I never forget the next day. Not only were parts of my body sore that I didn't expect, but I had massive dumps (bowel movements) for the next week. Yup, got cleaned out by belly dancing and firebreaths.

Since, I've followed Sunyatta and went to her studio in Takoma Park, MD some years ago. Though I gag at Michael Baisden, I do bear to listen if I hear Sunyatta's on. She is the goddess of sexy. Well, after me.

For real, for real, if you are in the DC area, I totally advise you to check out the "Movement & Wellness Expo" this Memorial Day Weekend.

It is a weekend of indigenous movement workshops from Belly Dance, Tribal Movements to Tahitian Dance, to sexual tantra Yoga, yummy.

Women and men flood this event as there are things for everyone. Brothers, if you are single, this is a great place to be. And sisters, this is a great place to network and meet cool peeps.

http://www.drsunyatta.com/mamasita/
http://www.bellydancersofcolor.com/home.html

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Dismantling Public Schools by Privatizing Education: Jailing Black Mothers Who Seek Better Future for Their Children

Kelley Williams-Bolar is shown in a "perp" walk as she is escorted to a hearing for allegedly falsifying paperwork to have her child go to school in a better part of Akron, Ohio.

Black women can't win for shit in the United States. Not if they are being progressive, educated, or good mothers who are concerned about the quality of their children's education.

In the past months we have seen three cases in which black women have been jailed for fighting for a better education for their children.

In Detroit, twelve expecting teen mothers were arrested for peacefully protesting to keep their school, Catherine Ferguson, open and running so they could continue to maintain an inner city farm. This is very important since Detroit doesn't have a major grocery store in the city and residents have taken to using community farming.

Then you have Kelly Williams-Bolar from Akron, OH and Tonya McDowell of Norwalk, CT, facing jail time for enrolling their children in districts they don't live. Williams-Bolar thought she went through the proper channels by using her father's address and McDowell used her babysitter's address, but are being charged with felonies of falsifying information.

Okay, so here I am confused again. First, black women are berated for being bad mothers and welfare mothers. Now they are being criminalized for being good mothers?

The attack on black mothers who seek better education is the attempt to remove a continuum women who educate their communities by any means necessary. There are documents of slave women who would teach other slaves at midnight schools in the swamps and woods during slavery, and impart all that they knew to others in the community to uplift.

Even the women of the Black Club's Women's Movement in the late 19th Century, early 20th Century who took on the duty of educating and providing basic social services to severely neglected black communities under the banner, "Lifting As We Climb".

Much of the schools throughout the south and urban black communities of the North were kept alive through the tireless efforts of black women. Feeding children, cleaning the schools, making sure everyone had clothes or some type of school supplies. It was the women who fought for access, a far cry from black men, who often used education as a source to gain status and entry into socially and politically exclusive areanas.

Osceola McCarthy

My father is from Mississippi, and he vividly remembers how the mothers of the students would cook hot meals for children in the morning and after school to make sure they had dinner that night. That was the original breakfast program, waaaaaaayyyyyy before the Black Panther Party.

The history of black women involved in education as been one of selflessness. Even when a black woman could not eat or go to school, she made sure the children of the community were well-fed.

People such as Mary McCleod Bethune who sold pies to open a vocation school for girls that turned into Bethune Cookman College. Or Oseola McCarty, who had to drop out of school in the sixth grade in order to be a laundress, donating her life savings of $150,000 to University of Southern Mississippi to set up a fund for poor students.


And it is known fact in general American history that once women were taught how to read, the society as a whole moved forward. This is why the jailing of black mothers who seek better education is imperative for dismantling public education. Black women have been tireless advocates for access to education, and to criminalize their efforts is sending a message to dissuade others.

When one has the ability to fight for not only free education, but the quality of education, then they become an involved citizen in shaping a society. And if a black woman is putting in her 2 cents, she is flipping that bitch to be $20, best believe.

This is the second in a indefinite series exploring education in America by Eco.Soul.Intellectual

She's Talented, Yes She's Gifted: Black 5-Year-Old Girl Speaks Seven Languages, Plays 6 Instruments and That's Just the Beginning

WTF Are You Reading? EcoSoul's Dirty, Stank Nasty Library

I live in my head and the books I read. Someone asked me the other day, "What are some good books?" And followed up with something like, they really were intrigued to see what a little controversial critter read.

I am mixing up my favorite reads of new and somewhat old, and will be posting more. I love fiction based on historical evidence and indigenous oral history and/or myth. And I love black women writers who dabble in intellectual dankness.

For me, the most romantic place in the world is a bookstore. Kind' of freaky, hunh?

Well, enjoy, and read on.

Segu or Segou by Maryse Conde must be in your collection. It is a literary bombshell that captures several generations of Bambara people who are affected by internal conflicts in Africa due to the Arab/Muslim invasion and holy wars and slavery then the Euro-Christian slave trade that followed.

Andrea Levy writes in such unpredictably, savvy dryness that weaves the complicated lives of individuals who live migratory lives in Small Island. The biracial daughter of white and black Jamaican heritage narrates the story of Jamaicans who immigrate to the "mother country" of England just after WWII. It is told around a British woman waiting for her husband who served in the war, and Jamaican man who served in the English Armed Forces, and his comrades who deal with England society attempting to deal with the influx of migrants from its former colonies.

A PBS movie was made from the book. A snippet of the first episode is after the image.

I am addicted to Nalo Hopkinson's writing, and her first book, Brown Girl in the Ring, gave me goosebumps. It is told around an apocalyptic Toronto, Canada, and what happens when the dispensable population (mostly folks of color and West Indian immigrants) get sequestered in the inner city. An intertwining of Yoruba, Santeria folklore, and Trinidadian-Jamaican Obeah ritual, this shit is unforgettable. Don't let the cheesy cover fool you.

If you want to see how Catholicism/Christianity has brainwashed Africa, you must read Chimamanda Ngozi's, Purple Hibiscus. This centers a Nigerian, Ibo family whose patriarch is fanatically religious and down right rabid-ass crazy.

With a name like Attica Locke, you know the book has got to be ill. Told with a heavy play-writing style in some pockets, Black Water Rising, unfolds the complicated life Houston-based, black attorney who attempts to be "normal" after his college days of working in the black liberation struggle. Great references to the CIA, Cointelpro tactics, and the post-traumatic stress/ political backlash that former liberation army folk still experience.

Tananarive Due is my top three of all writers because she can tell a mojo story like no other with her 90s debut book, My Soul to Keep. This is a trilogy about a Florida-based investigative reporter who discovers her husband is an Ethiopian immortal who drank the blood of Jesus. Wicked, absolutely fabulous.

I must drop one more by Tananarive, but this detector series is in collaboration with her husband Steven Barnes, and actor-author, Blair Underwood. This book, From Capetown With Love, is the latest in a series around a struggling actor who once upon a time, slanged-his-thang to make ends meet as an "escort," and has turned himself into a some what respectable detective/foster dad/good citizen. But his past, and his dick somehow, keep haunting him. Sexy, sleazy, mysteriously great.

The Other Raping in the Congo are Natural Resources & Minerals

Copper and Cobalt. It is in every cell phone you used, and if you have a mobile device of any kind then you contribute to the current civil war destabilizing the Democratic Republic of Congo that has left 100,000s of women, girls and boys traumatized from a war culture in which they have been subjected to rape.

The conflict in the Congo is about the control of its opulent natural resources and minerals. Some call it the "Cell Phone War," and the re-colonialization of Africa to others.

It is not just cell phones, but it is a fact that half of the products in your house have a raw material from Africa; especially if it is "Made in China" because China is the #1 trader with Africa.

Lemme give you an example. In 2008, the Congolese government agreed to a trading deal with China in which it would ship 10.6 billion tons of copper and 626,000 tons of cobalt. To harvest these natural resources not only are bodies used, but the removal of people from land is necessary, and the fight of over who gets the profits has been a huge contention.

Women, girls and boys are fodder for a war where the real players have never set a baby toe on any African soil.

With a GDP that totals $13.1 billion, Bill Gates can buy this country by the second round of golf on lazy summer morning in Georgia.

Let me restate that, the whole country of the Congo supplies every cell phone in the world, but grosses $13. 1 billion a year.



Natural Resources of the Congo
Cobalt
Copper
Niobium
Tantalum
Petroleum
Industrial and gem diamonds
Gold
Silver
Zinc
Manganese
Tin
Uranium
Coal
Hydropower
Timber

Even the Rat Was White: Racist Facts You Should Know About Western Science

During the early 1800s British and American scientists concluded that the Negroid race was inferior to Caucasoid race due to the small measurements of the skull or the crane. This scientific postulation was carried over to a scientific movement called Craneology. Today this science is now called "pseudoscience". Yeah right.

The black blogosphere has been abuzz with the recent online article posted in Psychology Today that revealed "research" stating black women were the least attractive.

I did not have the opportunity to read the article because it has since been pulled from Psychology Today's site due to the flood of online protests and critiques.

Nevertheless, this article should not be shocking because Western science, Psychology included, is founded on racist ideology and worldview that operates from a hierarchy placing Caucasian or white as the superior race, while African/Negroid are the bottom feeders of the totem pole.

I really am not interested in using my brain power to dissect the absurdity of these claims, rather, I will provide some historical facts around the racism that is still pervasive in Western medicine, which is considered modern medicine.

There is a book called, Even the Rat Was White by Robert V. Guthrie, that provides a historical view of the racist foundations of science, and heavily look at Psychology.

Lastly, let me state that black people, starting with enslaved people, have been the disproportionate population that has served as guinea pigs in scientific studies. Even today, prison populations and the military subject people to a slew of scientific study that falls under the umbrella of "bettering the human race."

BTW, ask a person in the military how many vaccinations and pills they take?

Gynecology
J. Marion Sims is called "the Father of Gynecology" due to his experiments on enslaved women in Alabama who were often submitted as guinea pigs by their plantation owners who could not use them for sexual pleasure. He kept seven women as subjects for four years, but left a trail of death and permanently traumatized black women. 

Anarcha was one of the women Sims experimented upon. A detailed history of this monster is in Harriet Washington's book, Medical Apartheid.

Sims believed that Africans were numb to pain and operated on the women without anesthesia or antiseptic. The procedures usually happened this way. Black female slaves who were guinea pigs would hold one subject down as Sims performed hysterectomies, tubal ligation, and other procedures to examine various female disorders.

Sims also performed a host of operations on other slave populations. The following excerpt details his "practice" on enslaved infants.

Sims began to exercise his freedom to experiment on his captives. He took custody of slave infants and, with a shoemaker’s awl, tried to pry the bones of their skulls into proper alignment.

Skin Color
Founding Father and American physician, Dr. Benjamin Rush proposed that black skin or "the black color" was a inherited skin disease from ancestors who suffered from some form of leprosy. To him, this ailment could be cured through proper assimilation. He also agreed with his white contemporaries that the Negroid race were direct descendants of monkeys.

Vitiligo

Here is a quote from Rush:

Negroes were not by nature intellectually or morally inferior. Any apparent evidence to the contrary was only the perverted expression of slavery, which "is so foreign to the human mind, that the moral faculties, as well as those of the understanding are debased, and rendered torpid by it."

Steatopyogia

Khoi Khoi woman

In December of 1815, French anatomist, Henri Marie Ducrotay de Blainville conducted an autopsy on a woman who would be known as the Hottentot Venus in front of a group of salivating scientists, one of which was Georges Cuvier, the father of anatomy. Her genitalia and skinned body was kept on display in a Parisian museum until the mid-1900s, where they were eventually placed in storage.

Saartjie Baartman or Sarah Baartman served as the fascination of England and France due to her physicality, in particular, her buttocks. Cuvier would term this "physical disorder" as steatopygia in the Memoires du Museum d'Histoire Naturelle in 1817.

Steatopygia is described as the is a high degree of fat accumulation in and around the buttocks. The deposit of fat is not confined to the gluteal regions, but extends to the outside and front of the thighs, forming a thick layer reaching sometimes to the knee.

Steatopygia became one of the determining factors of European scientists to validate hypersexuality of African women; thus rationalizing the common sexual crime of rape and forced breeding. Interestingly, how today's article talks of black women being less attractive, yet not too long ago, it was envogue to rape a black woman by white men.

Baartman's story is one of sadness and great misery. Though all the details of her journey to England to be placed on display in circuses around England, and central squares in Paris, and high society parties, are still sketchy, it doesn't take a smart person to know that her death, just several years after her embarkation on Europe's shores was due to a life of hardship and gross exploitation.

Drapetomania
American physician, Samuel A. Cartwright termed this "mental disorder" for slaves who wanted to escape slavery. It was a sickness of the mind that caused enslaves blacks to run away. Symptoms of drapetomania included sullenness (depression) His work was published in the following publication.

A serious drapetomaniac, freedom fighter and escaped slave, Harriet Tubman.

Samuel A. Cartwright, "Report on the Diseases and Physical Peculiarities of the Negro Race", The New Orleans Medical and Surgical Journal 1851:691-715 (May)

The Eugenics Movement
This 19th Century scientific campaign based on superior and inferior genes was spawned in Europe. Heavily influence by Charles Darwin's theories on evolution, eugenicists purported that certain genes and social characteristics produced superior humans, while others created sub-par, almost animal-like creatures.

The standard (or superior being) was based on Aryan features/Nordic, thus those who "deviated" dramatically from pale skin, blue eyes, and blond or light-brown hair were categorized as low grades.

German scientist measures the physical dimensions of a Jewish Nazi camp prisoner during WWII.

Eugenics became the scientific foundation in Nazism, and its validation for extermination. Jews were subjected to various genetic tests and experiments by Nazi scientists who were attempting to understand DNA and genes.

In the United States, eugenicists pushed public policy on reproductive and citizenship rights, and marriage licensing. In fact, the concept of the perfect race was heavily developed in California before the rise of Hitler.

In the 1800s and early 1900s, whites who had moved to California were involved in massive massacres, and experimentation of the indigenous people. The project was to see how a "perfect human" could be bred out of "undesireables."

Fannie Lou Hamer

In the US, though, Connecticut was the first state to implement eugenics laws. Those who were deemed "unfit" to breed were sterilized, and could not marry each other, and certainly not one who belonged to a more superior race. Mentally and physically challenged people, poor people, and people of color and Eastern European immigrants were placed in the category of being "unfit". Women were subjected to non-consensual hysterectomies, and these populations were often used as scientific guinea pigs.

In Mississippi, there is a term for women who were given hysterectomies without consent. It is called a "Mississippi Appendectomy" because women were told they were getting the appendixes removed or a minor reproductive procedure, and ended up without a womb.

60,000 Americans were sterilized in the eugenics movement, the most famous African American is Civil Rights activist, Fannie Lou Hamer who never had children because she went to the doctor for a small "woman's" procedure and woke up with a partial hysterectomy.

Today, eugenics movement is seen in various initiatives, such as the 90s push of getting women addicted to crack to stop reproducing, and the recent, Republican Representative John LaBruzzo who would like the State of Louisiana to pay poor women $1000 to get their tubes tied.

The Worst Place for a Woman is in the Company of Powerful, Wealthy, White Men

Ever heard of Margie D. Schoedinger? Probably not.

I really wish I had a photo of Schoedinger, but it seems that there has been a total white out of her existence since the 2002 lawsuit against George W. Bush alleging that he (and members who claimed to be FBI agents) abducted, drugged, raped and carried out other bodily harm upon her and her husband numerous times.

The Sugar Land-based (Houston suburb) Shoedinger also said she dated Bush as a minor and alleged that she miscarried the child she carried for him during one of the incidents of abuse.

Click here for an interesting story by Jackson Thoreau who interviewed Schoedinger shortly before she died of a gunshot wound to the head.

Schoedinger was reported to have committed suicide on December 13, 2003, and the only paper to cover her death was modest, black local paper in London. WTF?

Though the New Nation gave the wrong date in her death, the information re-opens discourse around the privileges of wealthy, white powerful men. As in the case of Dominique Strauss-Kahn, French-head of the International Monetary Fund, who is being charged for raping a hotel maid in Manhattan.

According to reports, Strauss-Kahn had a reputation for being a "Lady's Man" which is another word for pussy hound. However, for Strauss-Kahn to be outted on this incident means that this is not a singular incident or extraordinary circumstances.

He more so than likely has raped before.

And like clockwork, a second woman has come forward with the same allegations.

The London Evening Standard of the UK reports the following:

Tristane Banon, a 31-year-old god-daughter of Strauss-Kahn's second wife Brigitte Guillemette, has come forward to claim he attacked her almost a decade ago.

Ms Banon will now tell French detectives about the alleged attempted rape, she claimed to have taken place at a Paris studio flat in 2002. Strauss-Kahn is alleged to have lured the then 21-year-old trainee journalist to the property under the promise of an interview, and then started to rip her clothes off.    Click here for more of the story.

Now I'm wondering exactly why the powers that be are making such a fuss of someone in which they knew his habits all too well.

Is it possibly what is going on in the former French colony, the Congo? This sudden concern of women being raped in the Congo when that region of the world is teeming in unspoilt land and natural resources, has one wondering exactly why these reports become salient in the news when there have been a flood of documentaries and special reports on this very same issue.

But let me not deviate too much, the issue I am exploring are the exemptions that men-in-real-power have been getting for eons. And I say this because I have seen it with my eyes and had to chin check a state representative years ago while working in Tallahassee when he felt me up after pulling me to a corner.

Sexual predators are not just in the Congo, that is small beans. They serve in very high places. Someone needs to tell Ashlye Judd that the real rape culture is in politics.

WOMAN WHO SUED BUSH IS FOUND DEAD

by Orantes Moore

New Nation

Monday 8th December 2003

A black woman who claimed to have been raped by US President George W Bush and was planning to take him to court has died of a gun shot wound to the head.

LAST FRIDAY (December 12), Margie Schoedinger, 38, was pronounced dead as a result of a 'gunshot wound to the head'. The death was officially registered as 'suicide' by the Harris County Examiner's Office.

As reported exclusively by New Nation in July, Schoedinger of Sugar Land, Texas, had filed a lawsuit against President Bush (a former Governor of Texas) in December 2002 accusing him of a series of 'individual sex crimes' against her and her husband.

In the amazing seven- page document, filed at Fort Bend County Court in Texas, Schoedinger claimed that Bush had abducted, drugged, raped and beat her.

She also suggested that she 'dated George W Bush as a minor', and the President may have been the father of a child she miscarried following the alleged rape.

Schoedinger said she had filed the lawsuit on December 3, 2002 and although court documents filed on the following day mention Bush and offer him 20 days to respond or appear in Fort Bend, it is still unclear whether the President was ever served with the suit.

Schoedinger was attempting to claim US$1 million in actual damages, plus US$49 million for punitive damages including emotional distress and loss of freedom.

Speaking earlier this year to American journalist Jackson Thoreau, Schoedinger said that the President had personally contacted her to say that he wanted her dead, but could trust no one to carry out the crime.

EcoSoul's Draft Picks for Osama Bin Laden

Recent news outlets have reported that in the journals of Bin Laden he wanted to recruit the oppressed people of the United States and focused on blacks and Latinos.

Well, I have great candidates for al-Qaeda that I just suggested to Fox News. You should see the comments over there. Fuuuunnnnnyyy what white ignorance can produce.

Seriously, these are great candidates because they attempt to hide behind their whiteness. Great at the masquerade, but EcoSoul is outting them and enlisting them.

Columba Bush, real name, Columba Gallo Garcia (George Bush's sister-in-law)

Charlie Sheen, real name, Carlos Estevez (This Latino is winning and loves to slap muthafuckas up on the regular. He will enlist for a lifetime supply of the drug known as Sheen)

La La Vasquez. Now she fits both categories. You can get a 2 for 1 special.

Vin Diesel (According to Fast and Furious movies this negro can reassemble a car in 5 minutes and pull a bitch in 2)

Clarence Thomas, real name, Coon. I know, I know we all thought he was white, but I've got to let you all know, he is a negro.

Eminem, real name, Marshall Jenkins Matthers. This negro is a great candidate because he is always so fucking mad. The angriest negro I've ever met.

My Remembrance

I never discovered the music of Marley, I naturally sojourned to it sometime in junior high school or high school. It will always be my church spirituals, my morning meditation, and my protest songs rolled with passion and sensuality.

When I discovered some of the darkness of Marley, like the multiple women and cocaine use, I was absolutely shocked. How could someone make music so beautiful, and have foul habits.

This was around the same time, I got a lot of information regarding Martin L. King, Jr. and his chain-smoking, rolling stone ways.

It was then I had to really reflect on the danger of the Jesus construction. It is when the masses rely on one person, in the form of male, to save them. Thus, this person must be heaven and holy, and when he is not, many of folk make excuses and turn the other cheek.

But when I'm skanking in the club and the deejay plays Marley hits back-to-back to let the people know the lights will come on soon, I understand that he was a messenger. A damn good medium that was unafraid to be a vessel of truth and healing.

Marley revived my love of resistance intertwined with melody and interwoven in my locks.

Marley also made me crtique our contradictions.

Marley provides a space for me to dump guilt and self-regulation that stifles my growth; because I know that I am a vessel of truth. And like Marley I am human.

I absolutely love this song Stevie Wonder made in response to Bob Marley's song, "Jammin'" and "Exodus"

The Greatest Myth Ever Told

Osama Bin Laden has represented a host of ideas from various angles. But one thing he remains in the US mind is a myth, a fictitious being that has operated with God-like qualities in a cave, just like Jesus.

Nobody actually saw him, but people hated, feared and/or revered what he epitomized.

And then there are all of these questions surrounding his death. The un-Muslim sea burial with his body chained to a plank like in the movie Van Helsing. The supposedly unreleased photos of a man who remains elusive for over a decade, and the lack of explanation as to why a former CIA operative becomes a US enemy who initially declared he did not blow up the World Trade towers when he was blamed. And certainly, he did not blow up buildings 7 and 8, that mysteriously fell well after the planes crashed.


This mythic creature, Bin Laden, must now be placed in the arena of Santa, Tooth Fairy, Chupacabra, Sasquatch, Elvis and Tupac. His representation will live on in some way, shape or form.

Let me shift this discussion on the continual Fulture of Fear in US. Obama once emphasized that fear was so permeated in normal, everyday American life needed to be free from that type of living. Ironically, the Culture of Fear is becoming more pervasive, post-Bin Laden death.

We thought we were watching our backs then, well now, we will be watching even more! Big Brother is alive and well, and truthfully, he possesses our psyches like a Santeria Orisa mounting a devotee during ceremony.

Big Brother has been framed as a omnipotent technological presence in the form of satellite, eye scans, and computer surveillance, but that is not the most significant and effective weapon of Big Brother. WE ARE!

We are our own Big Brother. We monitor each other and judge our movements.Then we regulate ourselves from a template that is supposed to be "Patriotic" under Administrations that provide schizophrenic intelligence about various operations.

As blogger Rippa pointed out , the Bush Administration stopped looking for Bin Laden before the search every began, yet US culture, by way of the media, was haunted by a hunt that never really existed.

Nevertheless, war coffers were filled, and we are broker than a muthafuckah.

And since when did questioning your government excuse you from citizenship?

Furthermore, when did using rights as a citizen to question a US Administration that has habitually lied since its inception, become unAmerican.

To me, to be unAmerican is to allow a power structure that undermines its citizens dictate to me the order of the day; especially in a culture where black folks were legally slaves, indigenous people were kicked off of their land and slaughtered, Japanese were forced into internment camps, political activist were black listed in the "Red Scare" and Donald Trump is considering running for president.

Interestingly, the understanding of Patriotism has mutated into a different monster since 1776. Once upon a time, US citizens exercised protest, agitation, intellectual battle, fistocuffs, and even Civil War based on their citizenship rights.Interestingly, the Tea Party can throw vile, racist rants, but the Black Panther Party's fight for a shift in a racist and classist structure was neutralized.

Today, if you critique government, you are cast in an iron pot full of fuddy-duddies. Right now I'm dangling on funny rope with racist tea baggers and self-deprecating black folks. And I don't want to have anything in common with them, and am about to Geronimo jump off this bitch to NeverLand with Peter Pan and Michael.

Though my mama hates it when I rip into the current administration, I have to remind her that I have always scrutinized governments. It is the American way. And as long as their are third and fourth world conditions in one of the richest countries in the world, as well as people who are interested in impeaching the Head-of-State because he is black, I will have a lot to say.

But I digressed, so let me get back to the Culture of Fear.


With the talks of imminent terrorist attacks to come, the US is now "preparing" American citizens for repercussions. With that will come a host of methods that will tear down the right to privacy, a fundamental American right that was placed in the Bill of Rights due to England's intrusive colonial tactics.

Some of the things you will expect to see are things that have been long in the making, but will be forced to stay.

Eye, hand, DNA databases for travel and money transactions; Dismantling of social security and social programs; Privatization of public institutions such as education, roads media, and major ports; Complete privatization of the prison industrial complex.

This new American "lifestyle" are one of many issues, but the biggest strife will be the widening division amongst the citizens. As some people become more "Patriotic" others are distancing themselves from a hegemonic, boxed existence.

Blog on, Eco.Soul

Ghaddaffi's Plan to Crush the Dollar

Another piece of the puzzle to the "real" reason why the US and European allies are bombing Libya. According to this report, Ghaddaffi had been garnering a collective of countries to create another currency based on gold.

Why is this problem for the US?

Well, the US currency has not been backed by gold since the Nixon administration.

What does that mean?

US currency is simply a piece of paper to wipe your ass. It has no value. As a result, Libya's plan to create a currency using gold would totally crumble the dollar and Euro.

Check out the price of gold after this video, then you will really begin to ponder exactly who is the dictatorship.

Your Hard Earned War Dollars Support Racist NATO Forces

Very rarely do I repost a story, but this story merits some attention. While people are justifying military force upon Libya, I know these supporters are not aware of the insidious racism and degrading treatment that is going on against black civilians.

Much like Blackwater military and UN Pakistani's raping women in Haiti and Iraq, black folk are treated like shit around the glob.

Nato units left 61 African migrants to die of hunger and thirst

Exclusive: Boat trying to reach Lampedusa was left to drift in Mediterranean for 16 days, despite alarm being raised

• Jack Shenker in Lampedusa
• guardian.co.uk, Sunday 8 May 2011 21.30 BST
• Article history

Refugees from Libya reach Lampedusa. A Nato ship failed to rescue a boat in trouble – leaving 63 people on board to die. Photograph: Francesco Malavolta/EPA

Dozens of African migrants were left to die in the Mediterranean after a number of European and Nato military units apparently ignored their cries for help, the Guardian has learned.

A boat carrying 72 passengers, including several women, young children and political refugees, ran into trouble in late March after leaving Tripoli for the Italian island of Lampedusa. Despite alarms being raised with the Italian coastguard and the boat making contact with a military helicopter and a Nato warship, no rescue effort was attempted.

All but 11 of those on board died from thirst and hunger after their vessel was left to drift in open waters for 16 days. "Every morning we would wake up and find more bodies, which we would leave for 24 hours and then throw overboard," said Abu Kurke, one of only nine survivors. "By the final days, we didn't know ourselves … everyone was either praying, or dying."

Click here to read the whole story.

When a Black Athlete Thinketh . . .

I love it when a brother shows he is not bound to any status quo contract. Now go and get the lawyer for the Dixie Chicks. And stay out of the strip clubs to keep your money up.

Biggups to Rashard Mendenhall for showing that he refuses to be a mis-educated negro, by simply stating his opinion.

Instead of being a 40 million dollar slave, he is priceless. He questioned the "Bin Laden is dead debauchery" that is currently unfolding as a botched political move. As a result, he lost his endorsement to Champion.

His quote:

“What kind of person celebrates death? It’s amazing how people can HATE a man they have never even heard speak. We’ve only heard one side…”

Of course, he was bitch-slapped by his organization, the black and yellow (honey bees in my opinion) and shut down by the league.

Mendenhall, bravo and EcoSoul says, "fuck'em". Just go ahead and buy some property in Detroit and pimp the land and row houses out. They need a black man who is uncompromising.

What happened to the Jim Brown's of the NFL?

When Chicken Heads Come to Roost

Another athlete decides to take action against his baby mother in the recent suit with Chris Bosh against Allison Mathis. The suit is attempting to prevent her from mentioning his name of RTV show "Basketball Wives."

I'm really confused.

A male entertainer (that does include professional athletes) woos a woman with money and expensive trinkets. As a result, he attracts mostly women who have written in their courtship clause that money and trinkets are part of the booty deal.

Then he has sex with her without a condom. Or eff it, maybe she dug the semen out of the rubber that wasn't flushed.

This money and trinket woman conceives and requires at least 18 years of money and trinkets for carrying his seed.

He then complains because he no longer wants to pay for ass he had already been paying for. After the child is born, he now only wants to pay for the child he made with her.

If that is the case, he should've purchased a surrogate mother and hired a lifelong nanny.

Now, with a show like "Basketball Wives" where a money and trinkets woman can make some money to purchase more trinkets, or at the very least, pay for plastic surgery for another sugar daddy, men like Bosh & Wade get salty.

I don't understand because it is the quintessential and common process of financing a Chicken Head. She will make money off of you any way she can because that was the basis of the relationship, it was a business contract.

Bosh, I suggest that you support her, money and trinkets is all she knows, and was all that you dangled in front of her.

BTW, she looks much better than the stripper/model/actress you married; but hey, whatever floats your boat.

I Need Love Today

Ahh, after all that celebration of murder, I think it is time to celebrate and immerse in love. Black love that is. And since it is getting warmer and May & June have the highest occurrences of marriage, I am going to celebrate unions that join ancestral lineages that go way back.

I snatched this video from Denmark Vessey, The Blackest Man on the Internet and absolutely love it.

Love & Blog on...

African Marriage Customs from Halaqah Films on Vimeo.

Also loved this Sudanese Bridal Dance

Bloody Hands on Your Watch: Obama Continues US Warmonger Culture

NATO airstrikes on the known residence of Moammar Gadafi resulted in the killing of his youngest son and three grandsons on Saturday, April 30. Gadafi and his wife who were also there visiting were not harmed.

The airstrikes are from the United States and European allies, and are one of many coordinated airstrikes in Tripoli and other "known" Gadafi sites for about a month.

This incident comes during a time Gadafi has expressed an interest in negotiating and the African Union has declared an immediate cease of the "no fly" zone policy due to concern of civilian casualties. However, Libyan rebels rejected the AU plan since it did not include the removal of Gadafi.

As well, the Russian government has called for an end to violence from all parties; but blood is pouring from the streets as Libyan military increases its aggressive attacks on protestors and anti-Gadafi population.

And now the Chinese government has criticized the US for using military aggression to expand its global positioning; especially after the revolutionary movements in Egypt and Tunisia.

There are a lot of political interests in this fight over Libyan land and oil. First, my conspiracy nose points to the obvious quid pro quo deal between US and the English/French government. The US is simply paying back a "debt" for England and France's "assistance" in the Iraq war.

As you can see good ole U.S of A, payback, my dear, is a muhfuckah.

China, the biggest trading partner with Africa (if you didn't know, Libya is in Northern Africa), has been asserting its position as a key trading partner with the continent for decades.

On the other hand, the United States has been aggressively attempting to monopolize mineral and energy resources.

Additionally, Russia has significant arms contracts with Libya.

And here we have Libya, a horrible botox pawn in a chess game that is clearly fixed. Gadafi is the not the issue. The fear of losing access to natural resources is the problem. Libya is a modern day Louisiana Territory that Napoleon Bonaparte planned to use in world dominance starting in the New World.

The US, England and French needed a new strategic location in a post-Jasmine revolution. Gadafi has been off the chain for years, and nobody did anything about it. Plus, there

Dammit Obama you have been complicit in a dirty cowboy move in a country where waahoo cowboys don't even like your ass.

There will be no gain as the worldwide sentiment of a bloody, bullying America expands.

Obama, take your long form birth certificate and shove it up your penis hole.

Questions to the Prez on the Death of Bin Laden

We sick an' tired of-a your ism-skism game -

Dyin' 'n' goin' to heaven in-a Jesus' name, lord.

We know when we understand:

Almighty god is a living man.

You can fool some people sometimes,

But you can't fool all the people all the time.

So now we see the light (what you gonna do?),

We gonna stand up for our rights! (yeah, yeah, yeah! )

Get Up, Stand Up Bob Marley & Peter Tosh

Questions to Obama on Osama
1. How could you not catch a man chilling in a mansion? I guess the 12 by 18 walls didn't give it away, hunh?

2. If you wanted to respect Muslim religion, why wasn't his body handled by his family?

3. Don't you think the celebration of Bin Laden's death is akin to a lynch party, instead of gracefully remaining silent? Did they take his penis for a souvenir because according to Kola Boof, he is packing.

4. So, there was an intricate mission and not one simple photo?

5. Will you treat Pakistan like you treated the Indian scouts, use'em them send then on the Trail of Tears watching other countries eat them alive for being complicit.

Buried @ Sea? Hmph

After years of being this elusive figure, the "killing" of Osama Bin Laden occurs in a shroud of mystery, then his body is dumped in the sea. Reports say he was killed in Abbotabad, a city between Gilgit and Ismabad, which is located in the northern part of the country, which is well over 1,000 km from the Arabian Sea.

Very fishy.

Who buried the body? Where is the ceremony? Where are the photos? Come on . . . my conspiracy nose is itching like I have pollen allergies. Just doesn't sit right is all I'm saying.

Then I look at the covers of the Daily News and shake my head. The "report" of this death without concrete data is irresponsible, but the way in which it was handled by this paper is beyond crude. It actually debases the American deaths that are connected to this search of Bin Laden, and in my opinion, pours fuel onto a oil field.

There is this idea that justice has been served. However, in war, there is no justice, just killing, and disrupted lives, and grief. The Bin Laden "killing" doesn't give a father who lost his daughter in Iraq a boner. It doesn't lessen the heartache of a sister who lost her brother at ground zero.

When you are dealing with a population of folk who will use children in diapers to blow up a couple of soldiers, the last thing you want to do is agitate people more. Oh, I thought I was speaking about the US military.

To be so smart, especially as a news source, some folk sure are stupid.

I have to conjure up King's quote, "War no more."

CNN Reports

(CNN) -- Osama bin Laden, the mastermind of the worst terrorist attacks on American soil, is dead -- almost 10 years after the attacks that killed about 3,000 people.

The founder and leader of al Qaeda was killed by U.S. forces Monday in a mansion in Abbottabad, about 50 kilometers (31 miles) north of the Pakistani capital of Islamabad, U.S. officials said.

Four others in the compound were also killed. One of them was bin Laden's adult son, and another was a woman being used as a shield by a male combatant, the officials said.

Bin Laden's body was later buried at sea, an official said. Many Muslims adhere to the belief that bodies should be buried within one day.

The official did not release additional details about the burial, but said it was handled in keeping with Muslim customs.

In an address to the nation Sunday night, U.S. President Barack Obama called bin Laden's death "the most significant achievement to date in our nation's effort to defeat al Qaeda." Washington is nine hours behind Pakistan.

 Click here for the whole story.