What did I do before this?

How Shea Butter is made is the Northern Region of Ghana 

Video by Hamamat Mantia  

(Blast from the past on that last one… Hamamat winning her Miss Malaika crown in 2006!)

In addition to her job as a model, Hamamat is an entrepreneur and activist. She’s the founder of Africa Eats Now, an organization committed to reducing malnutrition throughout Africa.

She also just recently launched a series of children’s books, Zuzu & Sasa, which tells the story of two Ghanaian sisters whose adventure throughout Africa discovering magic, gaining self-confidence, and learning about African culture and history.

I believe she’s now moved back to Ghana after being away for a while. In the videos, she’s visiting her family in Tamale in the Northern Region of Ghana. (Shea butter is a suuuuper important product for many communities in that region.)

She’s also a mum and has two little ones of her own. :3

In conclusion, Hamamat is a stunning and very accomplished Ghanaian woman!

For more about Hamamat’s visit to Tamale, you can check out her instagram here or this article. For more of the Accra photoshoot (the one with Hamamat in front of the Ghanaian flag motorway pillar) check out this one.

and this AMAZING costume

and these gorgeous/badass female bodyguards…

… one of which were gloriously foreshadowed by the wonderful model/actress Florence Kasumba in civil war

But we are also getting Lupita Nyong’o as a love interest

but then make fun of girls for having “daddy issues”

i hate to burst your pretentious little bubble, but linguistic prejudice is inextricably tied to racism, sexism, classism, xenophobia, and ableism.

no, i am not saying that people of color, women, poor people, disabled people, etc, “can’t learn proper english.” what i’m saying is that how we define “proper english” is itself rooted in bigotry. aave is not bad english, it’s a marginalized dialect which is just as useful, complex, and efficient as the english you’re taught in school. “like” as a filler word, valley girl speech, and uptalk don’t indicate vapidity, they’re common verbal patterns that serve a purpose. etc.

because the point of language is to communicate, and there are many ways to go about that. different communities have different needs; different people have different habits. so if you think of certain usages as fundamentally “wrong” or “bad,” if you think there’s a “pure” form of english to which everyone should aspire, then i challenge you to justify that view. i challenge you to explain why “like” makes people sound “stupid,” while “um” doesn’t raise the same alarms. explain the problem with the habitual be. don’t appeal to popular opinion, don’t insist that it just sounds wrong. give a detailed explanation.

point being that the concept of “proper english” is culturally constructed, and carries cultural biases with it. those usages you consider wrong? they aren’t. they’re just different, and common to certain marginalized groups.

not to mention that many people who speak marginalized dialects are adept at code-switching, i.e. flipping between non-standard dialects and “standard english,” which makes them more literate than most of the people complaining about this post.

not to mention that most of the people complaining about this post do not speak/write english nearly as “perfectly” as they’d like to believe and would therefore benefit by taking my side.

not to mention that the claim i’m making in the OP is flat-out not that interesting. this is sociolinguistics 101. this is the first chapter of your intro to linguistics textbook. the only reason it sounds so outlandish is that we’ve been inundated with the idea that how people speak and write is a reflection of their worth. and that’s a joyless, elitist idea you need to abandon if you care about social justice or, frankly, the beauty of language.

and yes, this issue matters. if we perceive people as lesser on the basis of language, we treat them as lesser. and yes, it can have real ramifications–in employment (tossing resumes with “black-sounding names”), in the legal system (prejudice against rachel jeantel’s language in the trayvon martin trial), in education (marginalizing students due to prejudice against dialectical differences, language-related disabilities, etc), and…well, a lot.

no, this doesn’t mean that there’s never a reason to follow the conventions of “standard english.” different genres, situations, etc, have different conventions and that’s fine. what it does mean, however, is that this standard english you claim to love so much has limited usefulness, and that, while it may be better in certain situations, it is not inherently better overall. it also means that non-standard dialects can communicate complex ideas just as effectively as the english you were taught in school. and it means that, while it’s fine to have personal preferences regarding language (i have plenty myself), 1) it’s worth interrogating the source of your preferences, and 2) it’s never okay to judge people on the basis of their language use.

this is sociolinguistics 101. this is the first chapter of your intro to linguistics textbook. 

and

Rihanna was shoooook!