theBLACKproject

It’s the most wonderful time of the year! In 2013, theBLACKproject began a tradition of supporting black owned businesses on “Black Friday” in an attempt to display the buying power of the African American community. “Black Friday” is simply a commercial holiday when consumers are expected to camp out, wait in line and clamor over one another for the sake of discounted prices. Not only does this cause black dollars to leave our community immediately, it hurts small businesses and local economies. On Friday November, 28 we ask that you support as many black owned businesses as possible. If there are not many in your local community shop online! We will be featuring outstanding black owned businesses on this page all month, so you’ll have plenty of options. As tempting as it may be, skip the commercial “Black Friday” and encourage your friends and family to try BLACK [business] FRIDAY!

Amazingly powerful.

I come here tonight and plead with you. Be proud of yourself and believe that you’re somebody. I said to a group last night, “Nobody else can do this for us.” No document can do this for us. No Lincolnian proclamation can do this for us; no Kennedysonian or Johnsonian civil rights bill can do this for us. If the negro is to be free he must move down into the inner resources of his own soul and sign, with a pen an ink of self-asserted manhood, his own Emancipation Proclamation. Don’t let anybody take your manhood. Be proud of our heritage; as somebody said earlier tonight, we don’t have anything to be ashamed of.

Somebody told a lie one day. They couched it in language.They made everything black, ugly and evil. Look in your dictionary and see the synonyms of the word “black.” It’s always something degrading and low and sinister. Look at the word, “white.” It’s always something pure, high. Well I want to get the language right tonight.

I want to get it so right that everybody here will cry out, “Yes I’m Black and I’m proud of it. I’m Black and beautiful.”

Lyle Owerko: The Samburu Tribe

Lacquered Longcase Clock by Richard Roughsedge

Black Self Identity: How Much is Blackness Defined by Whiteness?

The class was tasked with creating a self-portrait collage; the assignment seemed straight forward enough. After sketching our faces, the art teacher directed us toward the pile of magazines she’d provided. I brought a few back to my table and noticed immediately this wasn’t going to be as easy as I’d thought.

I was raised in a predominantly white city…there may have been one other Black kid in my class that year. And it goes without saying, my teacher was white. In fact, tall, beautiful, blonde, and blue-eyed, she resembled the models printed on the glossy pages. Redbook, Marie Claire, Elle, Home & Garden, Glamour…our teacher provided no Ebony or Essence…no publications that might feature a more diverse assortment of images. I’m sure this was an innocent oversight on her part, not an intentional microaggression. Providing a varied selection of pictures probably didn’t even cross her mind…an advantage of privilege is the allowance to avoid cluttering one’s mental space with such trivial notions as inclusivity. My classmates quickly began tearing peach faces and beige bodies from the books…nearly every page had people who looked like them.

Read the rest on Black Culture

The only time people have a problem when other people speak the truth, is people who are living a lie.

I made it very clear, to each is own but the truth is what it is. If a woman makes a “choice” or “decision” to wear weaves and wigs, that’s her prerogative but for me, I got tired of living that lie. I felt what kind of example was I setting for my own child and the youths I talk to about embracing their own hair. So, I made a choice to lead by example.

I stuck to my word that if I ever had a daughter, I would teach her to love her own hair. In doing so, I would learn proper healthy ways to manage, maintain, treat and condition her way where she would not need to wear any fake hair because her hair would be all she needed. I did that for my child but didn’t do it for myself at the time until now.

The saddest thing when I started wearing my own natural hair was, the amount of people that kept asking me if my hair was my own hair. All of them were women and they all were black. The good thing that came out of it was, it inspired others to embrace their own hair. Some people chop off their perms, stopped wearing wigs like I did and other people stopped wearing weaves also.

That was a blessing and I thank God for that. One woman, was wearing wigs and weaves for 25 years. Her own husband did not know what her own hair looked like. Not even her own children ever saw her own hair except her beautician who would sew or glue these fake hair on top of her hair. Her journey was emotional and it made her see how ashamed she was of her own hair. But now she’s free from that pain.

I think anytime a person does any kind of soul searching and discovers ways of helping themselves get better, improve and become the best they can. That person should find a way to inspire others as well, if it would serve others well and benefit them also.

As a woman who makes it a “lifestyle” of wearing wigs and weaves, ask yourself why are you doing it? Look at your own hair and ask yourself why would you choose somebody’s else hair over your own God given hair? Ask yourself if you love your own hair. These answers to these questions can only be answered from within.

Like I said, I just want to see little black girls love their own hair. I know it starts with us. And we are the only ones who can stop the sick cycle of psychological conditioning when it comes to hair and black women. Black women will question another about the realness of their hair but will not doubt another race’s own hair. It’s sad that black women think that they shouldn’t have hair but it’s okay to wear somebody else’s hair on top of their head.

July 1915- African- American Graduates of Top US Universities.

The Crisis: A Record of the Darker Races Vol. 10, No. 3: Education Number Du Bois, W. E. Burghardt (editor) New York: National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, 

Know Your History:

1. Abram Petrovich Ganibal

2. Ignatius Sancho

3. Alexandandre Dumas

4. Chevalier de Saint George

In 2010 evidence was found in Africa that Human use of antibiotics began not 80 years ago, but nearly 2,000 years ago along the banks of the Nile River. Chemical analysis of the bones of ancient Sudanese mummies who lived nearly 2000 years ago shows they were ingesting the antibiotic tetracycline on a regular basis, likely from a special brew of beer. The find is the strongest evidence yet that antibiotics were previously discovered by humans before Alexander Fleming discovered penicillin in 1928

This evidence was gathered from large amounts of tetracycline (Antibiotics) embedded in the bones of ancient African mummies. Tested from the ancient Sudanese population, which lived in the Nubian kingdom (present day Sudan) between 250 A.D. and 550 A.D.

Image 1. Ancient Nubian drawings at a royal burial ground not far from Jebel Barkal. (Carolyn Cole / LAT)

The evidence was first reported and published in Science in 1980 , It was met with alot of skepticism (Bassett et al 1980). In the new study in 2010, bone samples were dissolved and tetracycline was extracted from them, clearly showing that the antibiotic was deposited into and embedded within the bone, not a result of contamination from the environment.

The analyses showed that ancient Nubians were consuming large doses of tetracycline — more than is commonly prescribed today as a daily dose for controlling infections from bad acne. The team, including chemist Mark Nelson of Paratek Pharmaceuticals, reported their results in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology.

Dr Nelson states “When we reported that in 1981, it was met with a lot of skepticism,” said anthropologist George Armelagos of Emory University, who made the original discovery and is co-author of this new study. “If you were unwrapping a mummy and suddenly it had Ray-Ban sunglasses on it, that’s what it was like with us.”

  Image 2. The moon rises over the Meroe Pyramids, the third Nubian capital and royal burial ground of the Nubian Kingdom.

Tetracycline latches on to calcium and gets deposited in bones, which is how it can be detected it in fossils. The ultraviolet light technique said little about how much tetracycline there was in the bone, and it was hard to convince others it wasn’t simply a produced of microbial contamination of the bones, or a one-time beer event. Nelson was able to solve this problem by dissolving the bones in highly corrosive hydrogen flouride. He was able to clearly identify the amount and identity of the tetracycline in the bones. It was in all the bones, including those of a four-year-old child. It is thought that the Nubians made the tetracycline in their beer. There is evidence they knew how to make it. Tetracycline is produced by a soil bacteria called streptomyces, which is how it was discovered by modern society in the 1940s. Streptomyces thrives in warm, arid regions such as that of ancient Nubia. There was so much Tetracycline found in their bones that it is near impossible that the tetracycline-laced beer was a fluke event.

The Nubians likely noticed the antibiotics cured them of bacterial infection. It may have had negative effects as well: If taken in too large quantities the antibiotic can also cause iron deficiency because it latches on to the iron in the body. The analyses showed that ancient Nubians were consuming large doses of tetracycline — more than is commonly prescribed today, consumption was consistent, and drinking started early. Analyses of the bones showed that babies got some tetracycline through their mother’s milk fermented grains may have been used as a weaning food.

Image 3. Everyone drank the antibiotic-laced beer often, starting as early as age two.

The discovery of antibiotics in the 20th century changed the course of human development, however knowledge of such chemical entities existed in civilisations of prehistory. Egypt and Nubia are just two of these civilisations. How many other things may we have missed. This evidence serves as another striking example of the achievements of pre-colonial Africa.

References:

Bassett EJ, Keith MS, Armelagos GJ, Martin DL, Villanueva A. 1980. Tetracycline-labeled human bone from ancient Sudanese Nubia (A.D. 350). Science 209:1532–1534.

Mark L. Nelson, Andrew Dinardo,Jeffery Hochberg,3 and George J. Armelagos 2010. Brief Communication: Mass Spectroscopic Characterization of Tetracycline in the Skeletal Remains of an Ancient Population From Sudanese Nubia 350–550 CE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF PHYSICAL ANTHROPOLOGY 143:151–154

Weblinks

http://news.discovery.com/archaeology/antibiotic-beer-nubia.html

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/09/antibiotic-beer/

(via @cjjesq) The “Unequal Opportunity of Race” is a powerful video, which visually underscores the horrors of structural racism.

All graphics and animation by Erica Pinto.