james

Exams are over. For now. So I finally had an afternoon to nap, read for pleasure, and watch videos like these. Now, back to my book! (Zadie Smith's Changing My Mind, if you care.)

"You're the nigger baby. It isn't me."

halo

My friend Liz, who I've been friends with since we both wore Air Force 1s (which was a looong time ago, but not long enough), made this beautiful headband thing. She's making me one too. Get in line. She might kill me for blogging about this, but whatever, I already posted it on my Twitter so it's on, baby.

swimming in gold

Lakshmi Menon in Dazed & Confused, April 2009.

rape culture

That's how sex is presented to boys - it's not intimacy; it’s not the loving, egalitarian [part] that we get something out of, it’s something we do to the other. We raise women to survive in a rape culture, because we raise women to know these things. We do nothing to talk to men about not raping. But we do talk to women about how to protect themselves, which is further why we place the blame on women when something happens. ‘Well didn’t you know not to do that? Didn’t you know not to wear that dress? Or didn’t you know not to walk down that street at that hour of the night?’

— feminist Don McPherson, on rape culture and educating boys to not rape

Source: A Goose Drank Wine.

sun city

I came across this video thanks to Mark Anthony Neal, who posted it on his blog the other day. The 'Artists United Against Apartheid' project, while now, seems dated and cheesy, made a significant impact as a piece of agitprop in the eighties. The "Sun City" video made me think of more recent artist collaborations for a "cause" like the Haiti "We are the World" song or the somewhat better "Wavin' Flag" song. No doubt, these songs lack the overt politicization and condemnation  that "Sun City" had. People like to front about how much money was raised for earthquake earlier this year, but sadly, the majority of donations or aid or whatever you want to call it doesn't even reach Haiti (or other "developing" countries). They go to paying salaries, travel fees and other administrative expenses. (For more on foreign aid relief, see Paul Farmer's five HUGE "Lessons from Haiti's Disaster."

1989

Patrick Kelly, Iman, Grace Jones and Naomi Campbell by Roxanne Lowit, taken the glorious year I was born, 1989.