Elmcitytree

By Tariq Touré

“Verily the soul becomes accustomed to what you accustom it to. That is to say: what you at first burden the soul with becomes nature to it in the end.” 

- Abū Ḥāmid Muḥammad ibn Muḥammad al-Ghazālī

           In the age of the hashtag eulogy, Black Millennials have a hard time finding the space to heal.  And I don’t blame them. We’ve been able to survive off of piecemeal coping and soul food therapy for centuries. A Georgia morning full of chattel labor came despite a slave girl’s encounter with a white rapist whether she liked it or not. She, as others did all across the “birthing nation”, stitched her pride together and continued to work, thus shrouding her in a narrative of mythical strength that pervades today. This tradition trampolined through our history.

           Never heal, never reflect, only push on. The texture of black suffering and black triumph is changing dramatically still. Billie Holliday’s fruit doesn’t dangle from southern trees anymore,  but rather, cuffed in the back of police cars, with well-grafted fables of suicide.  Perhaps, if it moves you, one can put a new “bullet lynching” on repeat with a few search terms. As our civilization “progresses” much like those before us, documentation improves, communication sprints, information explodes, caste blossoms, and subjugation repetitiously becomes the soup of the day . Technology mutates these advances and places their powers in our palms. But Black youth must careful with the triple-headed demon of direct trauma, intergenerational trauma, and vicarious trauma. All three are dizzying barriers to mental stability. And if you’ve lived long enough in America, especially now, you could experience a sinister mix of all three in one day.

           There’s nothing more powerful and inspiring than the rising consciousness of my cohort. We’ve merged the energy of porch folklore, bodega tales, and black-fisted war stories to begin our own revolution. Every day, solidarity strengthens. Every hour, the youth are seeing their struggle as a latitudinal one. For the most part, we’ve come to this vignette in history because of trauma. Trauma being the contemporary overflow of videoed assaults, executions, white supremacist rhetoric, and the unraveling of America’s dark twisted past. It leaves scars. Few can honestly say they can escape it. Every hyperlink to an abusive act by the state corners even the most naive of black people into digesting this reality. But the trauma exists whether we choose to accept it or not. It maneuvers its way into our everyday life. I say this now to encourage everyone invested in fighting the battle for Black and Brown bodies to be regarded as human, because like in any war, the survivors will not only wear stories on their skin but tattooed in the valleys of their minds. Psychologist and author Joy DeGruy Leary writes in her book Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome: America’s Legacy of Enduring and Healing, “The nature of this work is such that each group first must see to their own healing, because no group can do another’s work”

             Consider ourselves in a 500 year deficit for therapy. With that in mind it is important to be conscious about what we consume, or, more germane, what happens after intake. A mistake of the embattled is to never take pause. Before Black Millennials go steamrolling into the new year - which will undoubtedly mean a new cadre of injustices and more sophisticated repression - let them take a step back from the theater. Let some of the success fester and the pain dissipate. This may mean sitting in silence for hours on end, a re-dedication to spirituality, or the warm human company of loved ones, all useful mediums for self-reconciliation. And we must not foolishly assume that we truly know what healing looks like. Our road to recovery stretches far past what our generation will see.

            5 years ago, a child in Sanford Florida was stalked and executed. His murder, and the nationally-televised acquittal of his murderer, opened Black American youth’s Pandora’s Box. It bound them to the fateful question, “Where are we now?” Since then, the masses of Black America have marched, protested, founded institutions, lobbied, shouted, sat in, walked out, and re-invigorated the callings of the Civil Rights era. The labor deserves dedication, spirit, sweat, grit and resilience. However, the laborers of the movement will no doubt need to take time for healing, soul, body if necessary, and absolutely our minds.

“Pain is important: how we evade it, how we succumb to it, how we deal with it, how we transcend it.”

Superhero-themed 30th birthday party for Ciara. 

Beyoncé as Storm, Ciara as Catwoman, Lala as a Wonder Woman/Captain America , Serena Williams as, possibly, Jubilee, and Kelly Rowland as … ? Black Canary? - Via kellyrowland

Edit: miwadake said: “Do NOT forget Mama Tina as Harley Quinn!!”

The short version is here, in Whit Taylor’s “The Fabric of Appropriation.” The long version:

Killer Mike, a rapper I grew up listening to and who Marvel recently paid homage to with the Run the Jewels variant covers, once said, “Closest I’ve ever come to seeing or feeling God is listening to rap music. Rap music is my religion.”

I can relate. A few years ago, I found myself in Tokyo for work. I don’t speak Japanese, but that didn’t stop me and my friends from running wild over the city for a few days. One of my favorite experiences—a cherished experience—was when I ended up in Shibuya looking at shops. I found a streetwear spot that was down some stairs and around the corner. It didn’t look like a streetwear shop from the outside, but the signage and windows had a vibe, so I stepped in.

Inside were a couple customers and two shop workers. I was the only black guy in the room, and it was small, so I shopped quickly and went to check out. The clerks didn’t speak English, but they definitely spoke hip-hop. They saw my shirt, a riff on Nas’s “Illmatic” cover, and we bonded over one of the greatest rap albums of all time, kicking favorite lines back and forth. I paid and left, richer for the experience. We connected because we’re part of the same culture.

I say this not to brag, but to emphasize this: I’m squarely in the target audience for the rap covers you’re homaging, and I know first-hand how incredible rap music actually is.

Rap is worldwide, but rap is black, too. There’s white in there, and where would rap music be without our latin brothers and sisters, but in terms of perception, coding, impact, and legacy: it’s a black art form. Undeniable, like saying “Midnight Marauders is the best A Tribe Called Quest album.” (That’s a rap joke, too.)

One issue with Marvel publishing hip-hop-themed covers in the wake of not hiring black creators is that…a dialogue goes two ways. Axel Alonso said Marvel has been in a long dialogue with rap music, but that isn’t true. It’s a long monologue, from rap to Marvel, with Marvel never really giving back like it should or could. Break the Chain was decades ago, you know? (I did appreciate the Aesop Rock shout-outs in Zeb Wells & Skottie Young’s fantastic New Warriors from way back, however!)

One has to do with the other because of optics. If you don’t employ black creators, and then you purport to celebrate a black art form for profit (and props on hiring a few ferociously talented black artists for the gig!), people are going to ask why that aspect of black culture is worth celebrating but black creatives aren’t worth hiring. I know how many black writers Marvel has hired and allowed to script more than two consecutive issues of a Marvel comic. Do you? Do you know how many black women have gotten to write for Marvel?

Or, more directly: Storm is the highest profile black character in comics. Which is great! But…she’s mostly been written by white men, and a very small fraternity of black men, throughout the decades. Imagine what a black woman could bring to the character. Shouldn’t a black lady get a chance at bat? I grew up on Alison Sealy-Smith, and I’ve got a soft spot for Halle, but there’s a gap there.

Back to optics: you can’t celebrate and profit off something without also including the group that you’re profiting off the back of. Marvel has made a lot of money off brown faces. A portion of X-Men’s juice is from the struggle for civil rights, and we all know what the phrase “black Spider-Man” has done for the perception of your company. (He’s Puerto Rican too, tho.) So to see Marvel continue to profit off something very dear to black people without actually giving black people a seat at the table…I was going to say it “stings,” but in actuality it sucks. It makes Marvel look clueless and it makes black people wonder why they bother with your comics.

Whit Taylor’s “The Fabric of Appropriation” went up this week. It’s a measured look at cultural appropriation, both why it happens and how. Her last point (which I’m going to spoil, forgive me) is that “maybe it’s not so much about who has control over a design, but whether the people it originates from feel in control of their identities.”

With these hip-hop covers? You’re in our house. (“Whose house?”) These albums changed lives, provided the soundtrack to our youth, or maybe just sounded really nice with the bass cranked and the treble at half on the EQ. To claim you’re paying homage (for profit, with no-doubt rare variant covers to be sold at a mark-up to an audience that often does not include the people these albums were created by) while simultaneously not being willing to hire the people who could bring those concepts to your comics in an authentic fashion…the optics are bad, man.

Jay-Z once said, “I came back and it’s plain, y'all niggas ain’t rappin the same. Fuck the flow, y'all jackin our slang. I seen the same shit happen to Kane.” He was talking about biters, aka shark biters, aka culture vultures, aka cultural appropriators.

If you’re going to homage hip-hop, do it in the best way possible: keep it real and put some people of color behind the pages in addition to on them.

“Protons Electrons Always Cause Explosions.” Thus spake the RZA, whose favorite Marvel superhero is the Silver Surfer.

Jaime Hernandez

WE ARE ALL AFROFUTURISTS: A REMINDER

by Kareem Reid (westindians)

“Afrofuturism” might sound like an impenetrable theoretical art term but simply put, it involves the act of re-imagination, reclamation of black identity – a rejection and subversion of debilitating stereotypes, an expression of the infinite ways of interpreting the past, present & future, demonstrating the cosmopolitan reality of the black experience.  

Visually, this usually takes the form of adopting influences from a distant, mythologized African past and ideas of the future (for example, references to outer space or extraterrestrial life) to create something distinctly modern or futuristic. “Afrofuturism” is a way of understanding and creating art that is ultimately about challenging pre-existing modes of perception.

Some great articles / blogs on Afrofuturism:

The Aesthetics of Afro-futurism

afrofuturisticlingo