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Something that really struck me about this reading was the author's assertion that the term “black” does not just refer to skin color but is an ideology that refers to many distinguishing features of those that descend from the African diaspora, most visibly referring to hair texture. The idea that the word “black” is a linguistic tool to hide or simplify the plethora of things that would describe one's Africanness points to the simplicity in which our society characterizes the lived experiences and even humanity of black people. At the same time, it seems like the term Black is able to unify black people all over the world, as the author states that reading about Black women’s shared experiences with hair struggles or reading Frantz Fanon allowed her to feel a sense of familiarity and validation of her own experiences. Blackness does not just become about physical signifiers, but becomes an umbrella for the shared global memory and present memory making that Black people hold. With this in mind, Dabiri often speaks of Yoruba okiri, and how Yoruba people visualize the past as a dynamic noun that should be used and adapted to fit present situations. In this sense, the past becomes a part of the present and should be looked upon positively in order to engage with it. My question is, if “Black” is a limiting term, then characterizing ourselves as being “Black” is also limiting to our futures that we create with these antiquated associations. If we are following indigenous African ways of thought and actively engage with the past to improve our present, should we do away with associating people from the African diaspora and Africa as Black and look to histories before western colonialism to define our people historically, or should we use limiting terms like these and make them apart of our future identities? (Histories before western colonialism refers to Dabiri’s claims that practices involving hair or other forms of knowledge being passed down throughout African history point to a well of unexplored anthropological knowledge about Africa).

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Dialogue between Grace Dillon and Nalo Hopkinson

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Dialogue between Grace Dillon and Nalo Hopkinson

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Other Futures is a multidisciplinary festival and exhibition that presents speculative visions of the future. It is also an online and offline platform for makers and thinkers of other futures.

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Questionnaire Required For Final Project

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Questionnaire Required For Final Project

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https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdAasXB69dJOBgBSzNf2dZQ7gPFfmU7lV-6CxOUmSUT8WmgUQ/viewform

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I liked the introduction to the story because it reiterated that in Taino culture, the concept of science fiction basically exists or at least ties in well with contemporary Taino story telling because of their idea about the four worlds existing side by side. The visualization of future technologies occurs through Taino story telling, and their future imagined technologies are related to their scientific/technological traditions, just like a western sf story would. Getting to the actual narrative, it was interesting that in this contact story the indigenous being was made to look so different compared to people, and as the story progressed seemed to have a lot of similarities. It was even expressed that their old world may have looked and operated similar to the halfway tree. In contrast, Skawennati’s visual representation of a futuristic people still looked human, even if they had certain eccentric characteristics. What was the purpose of making this creature so difficult for the characters to look at, and what commentary is the author making when the father in the narrative can’t help but be offended by the the beings looks.

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1. How might Lessons for Survival connect with other texts from this course, such as Conscience Point or Ruha Benjamin’s Race After Technology?

2. Why does Raboteau place “the Apocalypse” in quotation marks? How does this framing influence how we understand her engagement with technology, futurity, and motherhood?\

3. In what ways does Raboteau interrogate the concept of “hope”? How does she balance despair and love, and what does this suggest about writing as a form of survival within Black and Indigenous ecologies?

4. Raboteau suggests that racial injustice, climate change, and pandemic life are deeply intertwined. How does she use personal narrative, travel, and reportage to illustrate these connections?

5. What role do bird murals play in the narrative? How do they function as ecological symbols and as a form of witnessing?

6. How does Raboteau intertwine the act of caring for her children with caring for the environment? What does this reveal about the relationship between race, technology, and survivability in a climate-charged world?

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1. Name

2. Pronouns

3. Hometown

4. Text you are interested in on the syllabus

5. Something fun you did over the summer

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bx41ehf1aoM

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https://hunter.cuny.edu/people/tao-leigh-goffe/

1. Professor Goffe

2. she / her

3. London + NY (Queens / Manhattan)

4. Dark Princess

5. Wrote a book on climate crisis in the Caribbean and Afro-Asian ecologies called DARK LABORATORY.

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Required - September 13- Presentation Sign-Up 

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Required - September 13- Presentation Sign-Up 

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http://www.powermobydick.com/Moby001.html

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Dark Laboratory by Tao Leigh Goffe, PhD.

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Dark Laboratory by Tao Leigh Goffe, PhD.

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https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/725301/dark-laboratory-by-tao-leigh-goffe/

Chapters 3 and 4.

Also available as audiobook.

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In lieu of attending one class, you will journal in our Lab Notebook Google Doc file about your experience on the waterways of NYC.

Which stops did you travel between?

What are your observations in taking the ferry?

What has it taught you about naval infrastructure?

What can you imagine regarding the past and Native infrastructure?

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1. Tanisha Rahman

2. she/her

3. Queens

4. I went to Bangladesh

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1. Kimberly Swan

2. She/Her

3. Brooklyn, NY

4. Dancehall Reader

5. Going to Grenada Day and seeing some friends from high school there

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Guide to the reading. Optional

1. How does Toni Morrison define the dark? What is the Africanist presence?

2. Name 10 of the New York Islands.

3. How does Baraka define the "technology of the West?" What sort of futurist speculative invention can you imagine making for the final project?

4. In the article by Nyla Iqbal Muhhamad, she ends on the quotation, "“We are part of a river of grief. And we are never alone.” Expand on what this means.

5. Based on Chapter One of Dr. Goffe's book, answer the questions - 1) what is the river you were born closest to? 2) what is the name of the river you drink your water from every day?

Discussion questions will be posted on Padlet and Brightspace. They are not required, but recommend as a guide for your reading.

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Week 2 - Some Notes of How To Ask A Good Questions About Theory

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Week 2 - Some Notes of How To Ask A Good Questions About Theory

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Sign-Up to Heylo for Class Chat + Photo Sharing

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Sign-Up to Heylo for Class Chat + Photo Sharing

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Inshata-Theumba Excerpt from her 1880 essay "The Indian Question'

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1. Miranda Sarjveladze

2. She/Her

3. Batumi/ New York

4. Tony Morrison " Playing in the Dark" +Dark Laboratory

by Tao Leigh Goffe

5. Went to Frankfurt in July and attended Kendrick Lamar's GNX concert.

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Hi friends,

1. Kashfia (feel free to call me Kash for short, your preference!)

2. she/her

3. Bronx, NY

4. Race after Tech + Dark Laboratory

5. This summer I was incredibly lucky to be able to attend University of Ghana for a Gender and Tech course

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1. Sonia Xiang

2. they/he

3. Michigan (metro-detroit area)

4. Race after Technology

5. Visited family in China

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1. Marinella

2. she/her

3. Bronx

4. Saretta Morgan, Alt-Nature, 2023

5. visiting friends in Italy

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1. Diondree Baldwin (a.k.a. Seven Svatomir)

2. she/her

3. Miami, FL & Harlem, NY

4. bell hooks Appalachian Elegy

5. I started a new series of oil pastel work

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Question Regarding "People of Colour Experience Climate Grief More Deeply Than White People"

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Question Regarding "People of Colour Experience Climate Grief More Deeply Than White People"

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"Hope is “such a white concept,” Heglar said. “You’re supposed to have the courage first, then you have the action, then you have the hope. But white people put hope at the front. Their insistence on hope for all of these years has led to exactly where? Nowhere.”

Working in the climate movement while trying to process climate grief can be difficult for people of colour, whose voices are so often silenced and ignored."

Nylah Burton's article begins with this concept of climate grief, and to address it the author made the stylistic choice to gather the opinions and words of people of color in the climate justice space. However, they seem to avoid depth by not expanding on other people's thoughts or doing further research. A lot of bold claims are made by the author that are not substantiated beyond each person's words. For example, the author includes Heglar's statement "hope is such a white concept" because it is impactful, but instead of expanding a little more on why this might be, they quickly connect it to the current outcome/fact that minority voices are often silenced and ignored (and then moves on to the next quote). To me, this is a very obvious surface conclusion that can be drawn and is evidence that the author tried to include many "impactful" statements to sound important without deeply analyzing why one would say a certain thing or the cultural and historical context or implications of such statements. If this question is discussed in class I would love to provide more examples of discrepancies I found. I appreciate the author's idea that voicing collective trauma is important to creating change, but I struggle to see where this article would fit in in regards to the action versus inaction portion of her argument. This article comes across to me as a random collage made by a person who expects the audience to deeply understand and listen to the climate crisis from the perspective of indigenous/poc people while not knowing much beyond the general study of climate change themselves. Based on this, I wanted to ask what are the benefits and drawbacks of an article that simply strings together a diverse group of people's opinions? Were the authors intentions just to single out the privileged reader or was there an actionable outcome implied, specifically related to the understanding of climate grief?

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1. Gretchen Wulfmeyer

2. She/her

3. New Paltz, NY

4. I am interested in Nylah Iqbal Muhammad, People of Color Experience Climate Grief More Deeply than White People, Vice News, May 14, 2020.

5. I went to Costa Rica and learned about medicinal plants!

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1. Analiz Giron

2. She/her

3. Corona, Queens

4. Desiree Bailey, What Noise Against the Cane

5. I went to Far Rockaway at least 3 times a week.

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Seeking context in Amri Baraka's Technology and Ethos.

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Seeking context in Amri Baraka's Technology and Ethos.

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From what I read here, Baraka appeals to the black community to encourage learning from and surpassing western tech while relying on moral/spiritual superiority to tap into knowledge that will solve all the problems white people have failed to solve in their own communities. Baraka is clearly learning himself(he begins by citing Norbert Weiner) after all, and isn't shy about expressing himself on his own terms(he changes words from their typical English spelling at times). He ends leaving the spirit and morality of, as well as the machines to be conceived as an open question. While also demonstrating the lackthereof in white/Western machines that have killed and enslaved living beings. I would love to know how much his own fearlessness of expression and beliefs reflect what he thinks this human striving should look like. On his own terms, how does he succeed or fail to reflect this in his practice?

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Technology & Ethos
Vol. 2 Book of Life
by Imamu Amiri Baraka (LeRoi Jones)
from Raise Rage Rays Raze: Essays Since 1965
© 1969, 1970, 1971 by LeRoi Jones

ISBN: 0-394-71706-6. This essay first appeared in Amistad2, published by Random House, Inc.

Machines (as Norbert Weiner said) are an extension of their inventor-creators. That is not simple once you think. Machines, the entire technology of the West, is just that, the technology of the West.

Nothing has to look or function the way it does. The West man's freedom, unscientifically got at the expense of the rest of the world's people, has allowed him to xpand his mind–spread his sensibility wherever it cdgo, & so shaped the world, & its powerful artifact-engines.

Political power is also the power to create–not only what you will–but to be freed to go where ever you can go–(mentally physically as well). Black creation–creation powered by the Black ethos brings very special results,

Think of yourself, Black creator, freed of european restraint which first means the restraint of self determined mind development. Think what would be the results of the unfettered blood inventor-creator with the resources of a nation behind him. To imagine–to think–to construct–to energize!!!

How do you communicate with the great masses of Black people? How do you use the earth to feed masses of people? How do you cure illness? How do you prevent illness? What are the Black purposes of space travel?

It staggers the mind. To be free go let the mind do what it will as constructive progress force, availed of the total knowledge resource energy of a nation.

These white scientists on lifetime fellowships, or pondering problems at Princeton's Institute For Advanced Study.

So that a telephone is one culture's solution to the problem of sending words through space. It is political power that has allowed this technology to emerge, & seem the sole direction for the result desired.

A typewriter?–why shd it only make use of the tips of the fingers as contact points of flowing multi directional creativity. If I invented a word placing machine, an "expression-scriber," if you will, then I would have a kind of instrument into which I could step & sit or sprawl or hang & use not only my fingers to make words express feelings but elbows, feet, head, behind, and all the sounds I wanted, screams, grunts, taps, itches, I'd have magnetically recorded, at the same time, & translated into word–or perhaps even the final xpressed thought/feeling wd not be merely word or sheet, but itself, the xpression, three dimensional–able to be touched, or tasted or felt, or entered, or heard or carried like a speaking singing constantly communicating charm. A typewriter is corny!!

The so called fine artist realizes, those of us who have freed ourselves, that our creations need not emulate the white man's, but it is time the engineers, architects, chemists, electronics craftsmen, ie film too, radio, sound, &c., that learning western technology must not be the end of our understanding of the particular discipline we're involved in. Most of that west shaped information is like mud and sand when you're panning for gold!

The actual beginnings of our expression are post Western (just as they certainly are pre-western). It is only necessary that we arm ourselves with complete self knowledge the whole technology (which is after all just expression of who ever) will change to reflect the essence of a freed people. Freed of an oppressor, but also as Touré has reminded we must be "free from the oppressor's spirit," as well. It is this spirit as emotional construct that can manifest as expression as art or technology or any form.

But what is our spirit, what will it project? What machines will it produce? What will they achieve? What will be their morality? Check the different morality of the Chinese birthday celebration firecracker & the white boy's bomb. Machines have the morality of their inventors.

See everything fresh and "without form"–then make forms that will express us truthfully and totally and by this certainly free us eventually.

The new technology must be spiritually oriented because it must aspire to raise man's spirituality and expand man's consciousness. It must begin by being "humanistic" though the white boy has yet to achieve this. Witness a technology that kills both plants & animals, poisons the air & degenerates or enslaves man.

The technology itself must represent human striving. It must represent at each point the temporary perfection of the evolutional man. And be obsolete only because nothing is ever perfect, the only constant is change.

Amiri Baraka
Amistad 2, 1970

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Technology & Ethos Vol. 2 Book of Life by Imamu Amiri Baraka (LeRoi Jones) from Raise Rage Rays Raze: Essays Since 1965 © 1969, 1970, 1971 by LeRoi Jones ISBN: 0-394-71706-6. This essay first appeared in Amistad2, published by Random House, Inc. Machines (as Norbert Weiner said) are an extension of their inventor-creators.

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1. Matilda(Mati)

2. She/they/my name

3. New Hampshah

4. Twisted: The Tangled History of Black Hair Culture by Emma Dabiri

5. Journeyed through Appalachia

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Exterminate all the brutes

Part1:

Brutes mean Animal Status

Europeans called Africans Beast because they were rude & beastly.

Gene Kelly & Stanley Donen 1949 (on the town) who we are today & what we become. What side of the truth

Exterminate means from the Latina external is  death & vanish for life

Sven Lindqvist wrote the book Exterminate all the Brutes and January 1825 he was attacked

German photographer name Martin V. Miller gave the name America the the whole continent

Giovanni da Verrazzano has a bridge named after him in New York and was the first European explorer to sail through and discover New York Harbor in 1524

Part2:

Mexican General Antonio Lopez been in more battles than Napoleon and George Washington combined

1492  Christopher Columbus was born into a merchant family and join other European navigators completing for Gold and other commodities

The word “Negro” (Black) refers to color of Latin Niger Valueless, stubborn, wicked & Black slaves

86 treaties in the United States for Indian tribes

Part3:

Chinese people discover gun powder and casted the first canon in the 13th century

Europeans was masters at canon and killed long before the weapons of their opponents could reach them killing them from a distance

Charles Darwin founder of evolutionary biology, 1859 he published a book called origin of the species and that all species adapt to their environment through natural selection

In the 19th century, Germans demonstrate in South Africa master an art that Americans, British and other Europeans the art of Extermination of other people in fierary countries

Part4:

Navy seal team members carried out the assassination of Osama Bin Laden may 2 2011

Code name Geronimo intelligence officials reason with the boss was a mystery to the Black Opps mission and is a master at colonialism the army to kill anything that moves marching across the continent

He is a great freedom fighter by the Apache and some native Indians

Slave bodies was use as a commodities and was more profitable than lands, banks, railroads, factories and gold products

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1. Mihret Smith

2. she/her

3. Nyack, NY

4. Twisted: The Tangled History of Black Hair

5. Curated an art exhibit in my apt.

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Marinella Ferrari-Bridgers Toni Morrison Presentation.pptx

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if you download the free app you can hear ellen reid's music and some student poems!

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1. Adedayo Perkovich

2. she/her

3. NY (brooklyn/harlem)

4. field notes from the empathetic universe

5. cowboy carter & GNX tour

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The Second United Lenape / Lunáapeew Nations Pow Wow

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The Second United Lenape / Lunáapeew Nations Pow Wow

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https://www.prospectpark.org/event/the-second-united-lenape-lunaapeew-nations-pow-wow/

Hope to see some of you there tomorrow!

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The Second United Lenape / Lunáapeew Nations Pow Wow - Prospect Park Alliance

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Join Prospect Park Alliance, the nonprofit that sustains the Prospect Park in partnership with the city, Éenda-Lŭnaapeewáhkiing Collective, which brings

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1. Jaz Skloss-Harrison

2. She/They

3. Austin, Texas

4. Dark Laboratory

5. Visited my family in Scottland

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Optional - Discussion Questions to Guide your Weekly Reading

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Optional - Discussion Questions to Guide your Weekly Reading

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1.        Where does the phrase “Exterminate All the Brutes” come from? Which books does Raoul Peck directly reference?

2.        What are the origins of the Seminole Tribe? How have their surrounding ecologies been a source of refuge that continues to shape their future as a maroon tribe in conversation with the BIA, Florida, and US governments?

3.        Grace Dillon writes of multiple and nonlinear timelines. Describe how a sense of Anishinaabe apocalypse informs her vision of sci-fi and speculative fiction.

4.        Compare and contrast the worldbuilding methods of Beth LaPensee and Skawanetti.

5.        What are the six moves to innocence that Tuck and Yang list? How are they in conversation with Frantz Fanon and the context of colonization in his native Martinique and chosen Algeria?

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Week 2- Amiri Baraka /Technology & Ethos

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Week 2- Amiri Baraka /Technology & Ethos

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Baraka argues that "The new technology must be spiritually oriented because it must aspire to raise man's spirituality and expand man's consciousness. It must begin by being 'humanistic.'

QUESTION:

1. How does Baraka's vision of futuristic technology, driven by spirituality and a humanistic morality, differ from the morality of Western technology, and what does he propose that Black artists and technologists do to avoid the emulation of Western technology that can 'degenerate and enslave people'

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Skawennati - Questioning methods of reimagining the past 

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Skawennati - Questioning methods of reimagining the past 

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“What concepts, memories, and things from the past can we discard, and what do we want to bring with us to the future” - text from the artists description of Four Kings Revisited.

I would just like to mention that my question highlight’s this quote from the “Four Kings, Revisited” art piece but has to do with a large portion of Skawennati’s artwork and mission as an artist. Skawennati’s work uses the virtual world to create a new reality where Native Americans (specifically the Iroquois) can reclaim past cultural knowledge and traditions that were systematically wiped from the northern American consciousness. A reason I was drawn to writing about Skawennati’s work is because she is interested in future making, and in this course we are trying to understand what the future can look like outside of an imperialist perspective. She creates many worlds and alternate realities for people to reimagine our future despite lived or erased traumatic histories, as well as physical proof (through live displays) that creativity creates real doors between the virtual reality and ours. One such way she has done this is by reimagining traditional Iroquois stories in the context of another peaceful motherplanet from which we all came from, “skyworld”. Skawennati often plays with the past because reimagining the future using only the past we know might be limiting. However, her works denote a tangible transformation to story telling in our real lives. Just like clothing from the virtual world can be brought to life, the histories she retells can also come to life as new knowledge for an audience. My question starts with how much of the past can we make up (reimagine) to fuel our imagined futures before it starts to become counterintuitive to progress? How does she prove that reimagining the past is not replicating the act of forgetfulness for future generations?

A shorter question in that same vein I had was: We all know that people in power cherry-pick truths to suit the best narratives for them, and while Skawennati reclaims this practice in good faith, we might still regard falsifying the past as an unethical act that always creates division of some sort. Does Skawennati project that the endless possibility of a virtual world alllows us all pockets in which to reimagine our lives and coexist at the same time?

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Decolonization is not a Metaphor - Eve Tuck and Wayne Yang

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Decolonization is not a Metaphor - Eve Tuck and Wayne Yang

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Eve Tuck and Wayne Yang explore how the term “decolonization” has been adopted broadly by social justice theories and frameworks, in ways which ultimately water down and distract from the core tenant of decolonization: the absolute and total restoration of land to Indigenous peoples and the protection and preservation of Indigenous Sovereignty and ways of life. This broad adoption of the term through phrases like “decolonize our minds”, “decolonize our schools”, or “decolonizing framework” serve to resettle the term, and open space for what Tuck and Yang name as “settler moves to innocence”: Settler nativism, Fantasizing adoption, Colonial equivocation, Conscientization, At risk-ing / Asterisk-ing Indigenous peoples, Re-occupation and urban homesteading. Tuck and Yang explain that these “moves to innocence” turn the actions of decolonization into ideas, a symbolic metaphor which they assert “problematically attempt(s) to reconcile settler guilt and complicity, and rescue settler futurity” without having to sacrifice privilege or much of anything at all. They explain that by definition, “Decolonization offers a different perspective to human and civil rights based approaches to justice, an unsettling one, rather than a complementary one. Decolonization is not an ‘and’. It is an ‘elsewhere’”.

As Tuck and Yang suggested it might be, this reading was uncomfortable, challenging, extremely illuminating and powerful. Honestly, my questions feel initially limited by an uncomfortable but undeniable anxiety surrounding the ideas of settler futurity. I hope to come to a better understanding of the necessities for real solidarity through their discussion.

What place is there, if any, for questions or conversation about the reality of dismantling of settler futurity, as the article clearly defines that “decolonization is not accountable to settlers or settler futurity”? Is it even possible to ask this question before all land has been restored to Indigenous people? As Tuck and Yang say "The answers are not fully in view and can’t be as long as decolonization remains punctuated by metaphor. The answers will not emerge from friendly understanding, and indeed require a dangerous understanding of uncommonality that un-coalesces coalition politics - moves that may feel very unfriendly. But we will find out the answers as we get there."

How do we navigate conversations about this question in the general public, as the fundamentally unsettling nature of decolonization will bring it up?

What does this definition of decolonization mean for conversations surrounding reparations for enslavement within the context of US settler colonialism?

In the spaces where decolonization has “a measure of incommensurability” with other social justice frameworks, what do the “meaningful potential alliances” look like?

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"Exterminate All the Brutes" by Raoul Peck.

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"Exterminate All the Brutes" by Raoul Peck.

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Sven Lindqvist's "Exterminate all the Brutes" (1997) is mentioned in the book "Heart of Darkness," written by Polish writer Joseph Conrad.

The film showcases the historical journey of European colonizers who built Western Civilization. It showcases all the horrific acts that humanity is capable of committing, carried out by white Anglo-Saxon/European settlers, conquerors, monarchs, tyrants, who exploited the world's most valuable resources for corporate greed, power, and superiority that we call white supremacy, who colonized the world's majority territories externally and internally. Everything that we consume today, the materilatic world we live in, is built on the backs of exploited free or cheap labor, genocide of indigenous people who lands were invaded and stolen, natives who forced to leave thier lands,  families torn apart, human rights that have been taken awy and later moved into coroporate capitalistic slave machine that continues exercizing its power in 21st century. This film showcases the truth, historical fragments of reality that many countries like Germany had to face during the Hitler regime, Cango under Leopold, the second ruler, and European colonizers who colonized many African countries and made their way to the United States.

Everything we studied in school in the 1980s and 1990s was lies and manipulation. What would be different if they had not suppressed the knowledge? What if we could rewrite history again? What if we lived in a different Civilization where there are no white saviors and missionaries? What would the future look like without genocide in Rwanda, Turkey, and the Holocaust? What if Native Americans had maintained their lands, power, and wealth, and created a different future? What if we had never run the race? How would the world look like without an imperial hierarchy that lusted over power, greed, and superiority and called the rest of the world savages, killers, and  Brutes? What if we had one interpretation of the bible without manipulating scriptures and literature telling the tales of white missionaries who were about to save the aborigins, rather than oppressing and torturing them? Slaving women and children for free labor in gold mines, rubber plantations, cotton fields, penitentiaries, Mexican borders, Indian reservations, and catholic churches built on top of shallow graves of slaughtered indigenous people. What if white settlers had never stepped into the foreign land and tried to eliminate and 'exterminate the Brutes'

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1. Nathaniel Johnson

2. he/ him

3. New York City (Brooklyn)

4. "Twisted: The Tangled History of Black Hair Culture" by Emma Dabiri.

5. Traveled to South Africa.

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In the essay Decolonization is Not a Metaphor the authors explain that decolonization is not just a “nice idea” or a symbol but something real that has to do with land and life. They say it means giving land back to Indigenous people not just making schools more diverse or adding new voices in books. A lot of times people in the United States use the word “decolonize” to mean something softer like “decolonize your mind” or “decolonize the classroom” but the authors remind us that this is not enough because it does not actually change the system or return anything.

What stood out to me is how they talk about “moves to innocence” where settlers and even non Indigenous people of color use the word decolonization in ways that make them feel good but let them avoid the hard truth that real decolonization would take giving something up like land or power. This part made me think about how often social justice movements focus on feelings representation or small reforms but not on the root structures that keep inequality in place.

So my question is: What would it look like for us as students teachers or activists to take decolonization seriously in our own work not just as a metaphor but in ways that really respect the authors’ point about land and life? Do you think it is even possible inside schools and universities which are already part of settler institutions or does it have to happen somewhere else? And if decolonization requires giving things up what might that mean for people who want justice but are also part of the settler system themselves?

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“Exterminate All the Brutes” (Raoul Peck)

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“Exterminate All the Brutes” (Raoul Peck)

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The phrase “Exterminate All the Brutes” comes from Joseph Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness” (1899). This is also the book that is most dominantly referenced throughout Raoul’s docuseries. Scenes from the book are recreated, themes from it are referenced, as are emotions and conditions.

This docuseries, raised a series of questions for me and reignited some curiosities I had of my own about generational/racialized trauma, specifically ones related to colonization. It answered a lot of historical questions I had, having received a very pre-packaged, euro-centric, and propagandized history curriculum with cavernous pits of missing stories and perspectives, and I found myself replaying and hanging on a lot of Raoul’s words.

I also took a lot of detailed notes about the truths and historical threads that Raoul chose to hone in on. But his filmmaking style sparked a lot of reflection for me. The use of personal stories, home videos, his own directed scenes, historical evidence, interviews, and more to depict such an enormously haunting history, was unique but also importantly helped connect the personal to the political. In the past, when consuming historical films and even curriculums, their content can feel much more removed, distant, and animated. I felt forced to confront the truth of our history in all of its ugliness with the structure of this film.

The docuseries opens with a highlighting of the truth that “fear is timeless.” This is the tactic that the west historically and perpetually weaponizes to retain its inauthentic and stolen power. We saw a glimpse of this truth in a nightmare that an unnamed white male character experienced at the conclusion of the 4th episode. He played multiple roles throughout the film (American solider massacring indigenous people, slave master on a rubber plantation in Congo, etc) who seems to travel with the viewer through time. In this scene, he is driving a motorcycle through a landscape, and suddenly crashes. He is then noticed by a group of Black people, which causes him to become consumed with fear, running away into the trees and bushes near him. He frantically stabs and paws at the ground searching for something he buried. He finds it, and its a stash of firearms and explosives, none of which seem to work after seemingly being there for a long time which causes him to panic. The people he ran into on the road catch up with him, and begin to attack him. He defeats them, but as he kills the last person, about 50 more begin to appear from the trees, encircling him, with his breath being the only thing we hear.

I was curious if this character was meant to represent that “knowing” that Raoul ruminates on throughout the end of the fourth episode. And if that were true, that this scene was Raoul’s satisfying prediction/hope that the destruction and theft of life that has been committed by the west cannot be out-runned, that they (those who colonize) are in-fact outnumbered, and their time in power is expiring. This scene, and many scenes with this unnamed character felt like a haunting that they were experiencing. It also felt very intertwined with the messaging of the Charlottesville nazi riots, “you will not replace us”, this desperate clutching to whiteness and privilege. I noticed the repetition of scenes where the character was bathing, one, the blood out of an American flag in a stream, another, a Congolese woman bathing him, with the creaking of bodies swaying from the trees playing in the background, and the final scene where he frantically enters the stream to bathe himself after massacring a Seminole tribe. I see these scenes to represent the urge to be cleansed, absolved of, or to forget the atrocities they committed.

A question I want to pose is: Where can true decolonization work begin when our nation has such an unwavering desire to forget? Even for those who have the urge to remember, and do the work to begin to decolonize the land, their minds, and their lives—academia, our government, and our programming chooses to silence dissenting anti-colonial voices, and this repression is only expanding. All of this goes to say, I have a similar question as Kashfia: What does it look like for us to begin actual decolonial work? Must we begin on the individual scale and graduate to the communal scale?

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Decolonization is Not a Metaphor,"

Eve Tuck & Wayne Yang argue that metaphorical uses of the term strip it of its true meaning and centers on the repatriation of Indigenous land and life. They contend that applying decolonization metaphorically allows settlers to avoid addressing their complicity in settler colonialism and evade the core demand of returning stolen land and resources. the process in which societies everywhere reject their colonizers and pursue independence by leading to the establishment of self-ruling nation states. decolonization spread across the world & countries like India, Pakistan, and Malaysia where they gained their independence. However, they reject colonial legacies, embrace indigenous cultures, and navigate political, ethnic, and economic divisions. The purpose of this decolonization is to overturn the colonial structures & realize Indigenous liberation.

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Decolonization Is Not a Metaphor by Tuck and Yang looks at how the term decolonization is often misused. This essay is meant to raise awareness so that the meaning of the term fulfills its purpose and isn't turned into a metaphor, which risks erasing Indigenous peoples, the very opposite of what decolonization stands for. Tuck and Yang argue that in academia and social justice spaces, the term has been taken up in a shallow and trendy way, replacing earlier appoaches to critical work and anti-settler perspectives:

“One trend we have noticed, with growing apprehension, is the ease with which the language of decolonization has been superficially adopted into education and other social sciences, supplanting prior ways of talking about social justice, critical methodologies, or approaches which decenter settler perspectives.” (Tuck and Yang, p. 2)

Tuck and Yan outline several “moves to innocence” that allw people t claim alignment with decolonization without engaging in real change. These include settler nativism, fantasizing adoption, colonial equivocation, conscientization, at-risking, and practices like re-occupation and urban homesteading. By pointing it out, Tuck and Yang push us to think more critically about how we use the term and how o pursue decolonization without reinforcing the very sytems it resists.

Frantz Fanon makes a similar point about the disruptive and historical nature of decolonization:

“Decolonization, which sets out to change the order of the world, is, obviously, a program of complete disorder… Decolonization, as we know, is a historical process: that is to say it cannot be understood, it cannot become intelligible nor clear to itself except in the exact measure that we can discern the movements which give it historical form and content.”
—Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, 1963, p. 36

How can we approach a process we cannot fully understand from a settler perspective, while also recognizing the ways we might be complicit in the very systems decolonization seeks to dismantle?

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Morrison describes the Africanist presence as something unique to the United States, much like whiteness. It is a construct designed, like whiteness itself, to give white people a false sense of superiority even within the literary world. She explains that the Africanist presence “was constructed in the United States, and the imaginative uses this fabricated presence…. As a disabling virus within literary discourse, Africanism has become, in Eurocentric tradition that American education favors, both a way of talking about and a way of policing matters of class, sexual license, and repression, formations and exercises of power, and meditations on ethics and accountability” (Morrison, pp. 6–7).

What strikes me most is Morrison’s decision to call this out so directly.  It really makes me think about the obstacles she must have faced as a Black woman scholar in a overwhelmingly white institutions, and how much courage it takes to not only survive those spaces but also challenge the very frameworks they rely on.

Thank you Toni Morrison!

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“The data-driven path we are currently on – paved with the heartwarmingrhetoric of openness, sharing and connectivity – actually undermines civicvalues and circumvents checks and balances.” -page 146

This idea that technology is touted as a means for positive development but is currently used for surveillance and discriminatory practices made me think back to the “Technology & Ethos” reading we did as it explained how western technology is a reflection of western consciousness and creative abilities. Ruha Benjamin continuously delineates ways in which technology aids in profiteering from racial inequality to reflect on how the the motivations and practices of white people during the Jim Crow era have transformed into something much less conspicuous. Since the end of slavery, white people in power have devised tactics to keep Black people at a disadvantage despite ongoing civil reform— and the Jim Crow era is a great example of this. According to Benjamin, post-racial sentiments around technology allow Black people to seem like they have a better quality of life despite not actually addressing systemic issues that inform technology. Similarly, the Jim Crow era privileged class believed their laws to be a progressive alternative to slavery, despite not addressing the dehumanization that allowed both systems to be put into place. Even though we think technology to be neutral and detached, the biases and discrimination of tech Benjamin exposes proves that our technology is an extension of the western consciousness. To me this means that technology is very human (as Skawennati has stated, it even relies on natural resources like we do). My question is how does the detachment prescribed to modern technology work to create a reality in which we believe technological innovation (the way we practice it today) equates to societal innovation? What role does the historical dehumanization of people play in this dynami?

Additionally, if technology is an extension of ourselves, can technology create real racial progress or do our existing racialized institutions and hegemonic societal values have to change first?

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In the article “Technology and Ethos: Vol. 2 Book of Life” by Imamu Amiri Baraka, Baraka is critiquing the Western technological culture saying it is deeply rooted in power structures. Some of those power structures are colonialism, inequality, and political control, while Baraka felt as if Western technology should have been rooted in humanism, spirituality, culture, and consciousness. In the article “Technology and Ethos: Vol. 2 Book of Life” Baraka states, “Political power is also the power to create–not only what you will–but to be freed to go wherever you can go”. Baraka believes that Western technology is engulfed in colonialism and white supremacist agendas, and for Black people to really be free they need to create their own technologies and systems that reflect their own values. In the article Baraka states, “Black creator, freed of European restraint which first means the restraint of self determined mind development. Think what would be the results of the unfettered blood inventor-creator with the resources of a nation behind him. To imagine–to think–to construct–to energize!!!”. My speculative invention for the final project would be an app that picks up on music backgrounds and identifies its culture origins. I believe every genre of music today is derived from somewhere, and I would like for my app to identify its origin. In addition my app will offer history on the origin of music and culture.

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In “Race After Technology”, Ruha Benjamin slams the narrative that technology is somehow “unbiased” or uninfluenced by human power structures. She argues rather that at its core, AI, social media, and the internet at large is crafted with bias built in, through both intentional bad actors or through unconscious learned racism. She defines racism itself as a technology, one that is “a mercurial practice, shape-shifting, adept at disguising itself in progressive-like rhetoric” and cautions us in accepting what she calls the “New Jim Code”. This she explains as the racism wrought into the very scaffolding of our digital spaces today, which may escape detection superficially, if one were to simply accept the often progressive and benevolent messaging of the techworld. The very real consequences of these racist structures continue to entrench inequity, even when they are used in an attempt to improve "diversity".

My question centers around the rise of AI technology in warfare and policing. What was originally proposed as a technology that would decrease human casualties has quickly proven itself to be horrifically racist and violent, whether it's used in drone strikes or by ICE to target civilians. What innovative solutions could there be for people to protect themselves from this type of surveillance, such as clothing or face paint that confuses facial recognition technology?

Additionally, it is clear that technology companies are mining us for our data, perfecting ads and content for us individually which continue to uphold racist power structures. With technology designed to be highly addictive, some suggesting a similar power to crack-cocaine, can there be a shift in how the general public consumes social media and interacts with AI?

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Ruha Benjamin connects the racial coding of names to the “digital caste systems” in technology, much like Alexander connects mass incarceration to Jim Crow laws in the South. How can examining something as personal as a name help us better recognize the hidden ways structural racism is repackaged in systems like technology or criminal justice?

Benjamin opens Race After Technology with a personal reflection on the difficult decision of naming her son. She wanted to give him a Muslim name but recognized the implications of doing so in a post-9/11 world. Through this, she argues that names are racially coded and that a name can shape a person’s fate.

Benjamin highlights how culture is often only celebrated when it aligns with whiteness, while anything outside of that framework is dismissed as “cultureless.” She pushes readers and her students to consider the question: What is a normal name, and what is not? This question helps to reveal how what is deemed “normal” perpetuates racial invisibility.

To understand a name, Benjamin suggests, is to understand how culture intersects with race, class, and social values. Those with greater privilege and social status have more freedom to choose names, whether traditional or not, without fear of repercussion. Benjamin situates this racial coding of names as a foundation for how racial coding operates in technology, producing what she calls “digital caste systems” that target the most vulnerable.

Her framework of the “New Jim Code” captures how technology has been weaponized against Black people, paralleling Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow. Alexander’s title was itself a deliberate play on Jim Crow laws in the South, showing how mass incarceration functions as a modern form of racial control. Similarly, Benjamin shows how technology, while appearing neutral, repackages and sustains structural racism. Both works expose how systemic oppression adapts across time, hiding in plain sight under new guises.

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In Technology & Ethos: Vol 2 Book of Life, Bakara acknowledges that machines are an extension of their inventors/creators, and consequently a technology of the West in the way we know it. This framework opens up the ability to liberate the technology we are in relation to. Bakara specifically calls upon the black ethos as an alternative framework for creating technology that is able to liberate technology (in every field) from its colonial agenda. Within the essay, he dreams of a liberated form of a typewriter, which he refers to as an “expression-scriber,” that allows him to express not with the colonial language and rigidity of only his fingertips but rather with his elbows, feet, head, through screams, touches, taps, itches, and even three dimensionally (tasted, felt, entered, etc.).

In thinking about the possibilities of the liberated forms of technology he calls for and his emphasis on the importance of this new technology being spiritually-oriented, how may this framework adopted by “engineers, architects, chemists, electronics craftsmen, ie film too, radio, sound, &c” alter the way we understand each of these practices/professions and the way they relate?

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Rura Benjamin argues that the traditional perception of technology, which is generally neutral, objective, and fair, is only beneficial to those who do not experience racial and class discrimination daily, unlike minority groups, as White people refer to Others. Systematic racism is instilled in Jim Code, as Ruse argues. It has transformed itself from Jim Crow to Jim Code in the face of technology produced by tech companies that establish million-dollar contracts with ICE, the system of Immigration, which tracks and monitors immigrants in detention centers and before being detained by surveillance and monitor bracelets after being released. Ruce contends that modern technology's algorithms operate through numbers and statistics rather than human perception. Jim Code is technological form of Jim Craw E segregation and exerciese the reformed tools of disrimination based on race, gender, and class, which is the extension of systematic racism inherited from the Jim Crow era, where minority groups were displayed and segregated, racially profiled, and deprived from having access to all resources such as medical assistance, expensive treatment, health coverages and also access to jobs, bank loans, credit loans, morgage, and all other privileges that White people can access because of race and class hairarchy. The author argues that data collected through specific software has already generated and screened people by ethnic groups, class, talent, health issues, zip codes, creating technological redlining and EBT.

( welfare) consumer data that is accessible through computer systems that coordinate with Institutions that are targeting the population for discriminatory purposes to isolate, deport, eliminate, and exterminate by using " harmless" AI technology..

Question: Who decides what establishes racist behavior or outcomes in AI systems? And if it is to continue to serve white supremacy

How can it be reformed so that AI can make decisions in areas historically impacted by racial injustice (policing, housing, employment)?

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One point the video brought up was that New York has always been a "cosmopolitan" city, experiencing interactions between many cultures and religions facilitated through Dutch trading. We see that the African Burial Ground monument itself houses an amalgamation of various cultures on the African and American continents. Although the monument is meant to humanize the lives of slaves lost, there is an undeniable African identity created that separates itself from the rest of the city. Before the monument there was the Palisades wooden wall that separated burial grounds from the slave owners and upper class. Currently there is a fortress of federal buildings that cocoon itself around the monument. Even the map on the ground of the monument is a Western cartographic depiction, highlighting the distance between the white world and the black world, and depicting the unity within their respective continents. Yet, African identity within the African continent is very distinct, and the monument is only a small section of the actual burial grounds. While the burial grounds create a safe space to acknowledge New York's participation in the triangle trade, like many federal spaces that represent history, it seems clean, corporate, and compartmentalized. It's nice that it's there, but to me there is something false and detached about it. Even if it's what we wish for, I don't see a New York where all minority cultures are unified and Pan-Africanism is strong. To be hyperbolic, even if the struggles of all Black people in the city can be connected by a singular thread, this monument would still be a false representation of that. My question is, how could the burial grounds be redone or expanded upon to reflect a more accurate reality of the people alive at the time? How can a memorial move beyond a petrified moment in time and become about the reproduction of inequality and resistance that continues today?

(I ask because the monument is not just a historical reference point in time but is meant to teach a lesson about the past and is imbued with all sorts of symbolism. I don't think we can get ourselves to deeply care about uncovering the past without tying it to our current realities).

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The works of Alex Callender, Night Grass and American Lawn, tell stories of colonialism, capitalism, and empire through the ground we walk on. In Unsettling Palimpsest (Night Grass), grasses like cane, indigo, and Bermuda show how plants became vehicles of colonization, tied to forced migration and plantation economies.

All the Bones of Our Inheritance (American Lawn)… shifts our view to the lawn where ships, and textiles surface alongside shadows of figures. Both works force us to think about what has been cultivated besides the grass for profit and violence. Callender’s series reminds us that the landscapes of the Atlantic World still carry the weight of slavery, colonialism, and capital.

The African Burial Ground here in New York feels like part of this same conversation. It reminds us that beneath ordinary landscapes are hidden histories of slavery and survival. Like Callender’s work, it asks us to see what has been buried, to honor what remains, and to recognize how these pasts still shape the ground we stand on today.

Callender’s work along with monuments like the African Burial Ground challenge us to change the way that we remember/think about the past. What does it mean for us to walk, live, and build on landscapes that carry buried histories of slavery and colonialism?

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The film showcases how rejected human bodies from White cemeteries were piled in a few thousand acres of territory, next to a federal building, undiscovered for hundreds of years, until another new project came along and the city started digging in the 90s. The African Burial Ground is a national monument, sacred place, memorial, and resting place for 15,000 enslaved men, women, and children who were forcibly transported to New York in the 17th and 18th centuries for forced labor and to build the future economy of the city. After a long resistance to the project and protests from the African American diaspora, George H. Bush signed the law to stop the project. The African American diaspora rebelled and fought for proper burial and a sacred place to maintain the connection with the ancestors and pray in memory those who built the future of this country. After long research and archaeological discovery of the bones, skulls, and the condition of the remains, researchers were able to identify individual struggles and trauma bodies had experienced during the lab. It also showed under what ecological and environmental conditions African American bodies were living and what type of food and environment they were exposed to, and how significant the conditions were for those who were born here and enslaved African Americans who were brought to New York as adults. Forty percent of the remains were identified as infants. Those who were exposed to a much harsher environment, a lack of nutrition, and devastating health conditions.

Question: How does generational trauma reflect on today's mental and physical traumas, and what roles of body politics does it play in the class and race hierarchy of the African American diaspora?

Moreover, what ecological exposure and environmental factors can we incorporate in today's working environments, and do body politics arise when we talk about having access to a clean environment, clean food, and clean water, and whose bodies are still undiscovered and rejected in cemeteries?

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This video walked us through a burial site for enslaved people in early New York, and focused on how its architecture was designed to usher the spirits of these people into the next life, to help educate the visitors on the history of the site itself, and to invoke images and feelings of the past. It is a sacred site that has been largely desecrated by developers building on the cemetery with complete disregard for the people buried there. When you approach the monument you enter into a tomb reminiscent of a ship's hull, referencing the middle passage that enslaved Africans suffered while being taken to the colonies. You exit into a clearing with a map of the globe engraved on the floor, again referencing the routes that slave ships took to different colonial empires. This area also has information about who is buried where in the site, and we can see that this information is very sparse. Black lives were completely devalued here and the stories of who is in this cemetery is lost through this violence, but the monument tries to humanise those buried there again with what little information remains. You then follow a spiraling staircase around the edge with symbols engraved in the walls that connect the many different cultures and traditions connected to those enslaved in the US. Finally you exit again by the large tomb and there is a map engraved in the store that shows the original size and scope of the cemetery.

My question is what can be done to honor those whose graves are still being desecrated by the buildings of Manhattan today? Is it possible to restore dignity to these sites? What laws should be instated to protect the further violations and decreations of graves? Could we use a combination of historical records, modern technology, and community knowledge/history  to survey land before it is developed and ensure that we are not violating sacred sites by building there?

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African Burial Ground and Alligator Alcatraz

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African Burial Ground and Alligator Alcatraz

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The video tour of the African Burial Ground showed us the memorial's multifaceted attempt to honor and remember those that were exploited and killed in the creation of this nation state. The map highlighting the triangular trade is of particular interest to me, as I think about the forced migration patterns of those displaced by colonial 'soft' power...coming here to escape sanctions, or indirect exploitation, only to be sent to prisons beyond this state's own borders... or disappeared altogether. The map both highlights the systemic nature of the slave trade, while also inheriting its obfuscation of countless communities traders and raiders striped from the African continent.

Also, when the tour guides showed us excavation diagram, the outlined sarcophagi almost floating in the whitespace and the abstract identities given to those found reminded of Alligator Alcatraz. Specifically the hundreds of people that were unaccounted for when the prison was ordered to close(order has since been overturned pending the completion of the lawsuit). Were they buried there for the convenience of the wardens? Were they sent to another prison abroad that is to be their grave?

If the world survives long enough, and the vines manage to devour these prisons, will a similar burial memorial, with a similar map be placed there to honor those that were lost to fuel the engine of empire? Will it be up to the indigenous communities where these prisons were built to steward these shrines? And are they fated to be just that? Shrines to compartmentalize our acknowledgement of injustices into the past, away from any present reckoning?

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Ben Wieder and Shirsho Dasgupta Updated September 16, 2025 12:52 PM

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Hundreds of Alligator Alcatraz detainees drop off the grid after leaving site

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As of the end of August, the whereabouts of two-thirds of more than 1,800 men detained at Alligator Alcatraz during the month of July could not be determined by the Miami Herald.

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This week’s readings really made me think about how ordinary places can hide extraordinary histories. I was shocked to learn that thousands of enslaved men, women, and children were buried at the African Burial Ground, right next to a federal building, and that their graves were almost completely forgotten for hundreds of years. The fact that 40% of the remains were infants really broke my heart. It shows how harsh the conditions were for enslaved people, even for babies who never had a chance.

I was also surprised that George Bush actually signed the law to protect the site after public protests and advocacy from the African-American community. Honestly, I don’t usually think highly of U.S. presidents, so it felt kind of unexpected and powerful that activism could make him act to preserve this sacred place. I like how the architecture honors the people buried there (it feels thoughtful and respectful, showing that the space was designed to recognize and honor their lives)

Although I wasn’t able to physically join my class at the museum, it made me think of my trip to Ghana and seeing Cape Coast Castle, where the dungeons showed the brutal conditions enslaved people endured. Both experiences made me reflect on survival, memory, and the ways we have to fight to keep history alive.

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Alex Callender’s collections, Night Grass (2024) and American Lawn (2024) depict haunting recollections of the american settler-colonial memory. Their selection of striking and apparitional subjects, vivid colors, and erie compositions force us to reckon with the history our nation tries so desperately to wash away and forget. It reminded me of how our schools typically try to date or separate us from recent freedom struggles by curating our museums to be funeral halls of living culture/history/issues, our manipulating and propagandizing our lessons, and our history books to have black and white images (if any) of very recent and shameful history. These paintings read as a direct contradiction of this education we have been fed, and bring the settler colonial origin to the forefront.

Using presently tangible, everyday, yet historically consistent witnesses as subjects like the land, plant life, and blue tarp (symbolizing industrial development and capitalistic expansion) to place this history in our present context ties the metaphorical threads between our past and present, but also ties the viewer into the depicted context as well with these recognizable subjects.

A question that arose for me was: how can this sensation created by these exhibits be replicated in and carried on into our lives? On an individual level, we can educate ourselves to be able to cement this thread and inextricable reminder of our past in our consciences. But on a collective level, how can we execute this?

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In Alex Callender’s series Night Grass and American Lawn, they explore how ecologies carry traces of violent and colonial histories through their presence/absence. Specifically, they look at different types of grasses (cane, love grass, indigo grass, kentucky blue, bermuda, etc.) and waterways, exploring how their changes, migrations, and presence/absense is deeply intertwined with the colonial landscape and the history of violence that shaped it into what it is today. Specifically, the series American Lawn plays with the idea of the stereotypical “american lawn,” which is often characterized by its monocultural and sterilized nature. It explores the violent undertones of this colonial ecology that has been used as a tool of settlement and erasure, allowing the grass to visualize the violent history it carries and to hold the people, ecologies, and knowledge that has been lost in the process.

Question: Both collections combine imagery of native and industrialized grasses, water/waterways, and other ecological imagery with imagery that remembers the colonial history of the Atlantic world (both in the violence and the tenderness that has been lost). In thinking about Callender’s purpose, how does their choice in composition play a role in how the themes within their work are interpreted? How do the choices in materials and processes (cyanotype, synthetic indigo, image transfers) that differ from standard oil painting techniques impact this?

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Douglas and Alice - High Value Natural Resources

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Douglas and Alice - High Value Natural Resources

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“Lack of an effective state presence is often an important precondition for widespread illegal exploitation (Blom et al., 2012).”

This article talks about how the violence related to wildlife trafficking is a symtptom of greater systemic violence. It strongly implies that in order for wildlife trafficking to stop, the government has to solve certain issues that cause political or economic instability. Since we read Dark Matters by Simone Browne alongside this article, I think it’s important to note how surveillance is contradictorily portrayed as a means to protect nature. This article advocates for greater government oversight over wildlife communities to protect them from poachers, yet greater government oversight has led to more violence in the form of “wildlife wars”. The article states wildlife programs should be better organized to promote regional economies, yet local communities feel their needs are being overshadowed by wildlife protection. The article reveals that the wild has transformed from the nature around us to a contentious place.

Elinor Ostrom proved that the “tragedy of the commons” or “resource curse” is a product of western development and not a natural law of resource management. Yet, many wildlife protection models that are currently being funded and promoted globally are formulated and assessed based on various violent western ideologies (i.e. promoting conservation as a means of creating hunting grounds, basing allocation of funding based on cost-benefit analysis). Clearly, increased government surveillance to protect wildlife has not worked, and has the negative effect of making communities experience unfair restrictions for “the greater good” which is still not clearly defined in terms of wildlife.

Since the countries listed in the article are mostly victims of European imperialism, we can use Browne’s framework to assume that the surveillance they experience have been structured out of inequality and the oppression of a second class. My question is how can we envision a future where wildlife poaching and other forms of violence that come from systemic issues can be solved without the use of increased government surveillance? Is there incongruity between stewarding communities (and nature) and the modern conceptualization of nations/countries?

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Simone Browne's Dark Matters       On the Surveillance of Blackness- introduction 

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Simone Browne's Dark Matters       On the Surveillance of Blackness- introduction 

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Simone Browne uses the intersectional paradigms of contemporary surveillance studies and the history of transatlantic slavery to reveal how race informs contemporary surveillance practices through sociogeny. In the introduction of Dark Matters: On the Surveillance of Backness, she talks about Fanon's declassified files on how the CIA and the FBI targeted, monitored Black intellectuals, activists, artists, poets, the members of the Black Panther, rewriting the narratives, building and fabricating cases and exaggerating stories of declaring those who activiley spoke about anticoliniliasm, oppression and police brutelity as public enemies or traders of the country. Angela Davis, who lived in exile, was declared the most wanted, a communist like Fanon, who was called a philosophical disciple of Karl Marx, and black radicals like Assata Shakur, the FBI's most wanted. These Western hegemonic narratives controlled and managed the race that informs contemporary surveillance practices through the experiences of Blackness under the White Gaze. Historical figures like Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, Billy Holiday, James Brown, and Marcus Garvey, among many others, were targeted and monitored. Browne in Dark Matters intro highlights the specific historical experiments, such as Brooks' slave ship plan, the Panopticon, and enslaved person passes, highlighting the methods of control over enslaved individuals. She uses Transatlantic slavery as a serving predecessor to modern surveillance technologies, highlighting how bodies are monitored and controlled under today's surveillance technology. She looks to archives, slave narratives, and creative expressions for examples of resistance and critique against oppressive systems. These narratives provide insights into the social dynamics of slavery, freedom practices, and the abuse of power through everyday violence against enslaved people.

Question: How does Browne locate the conditions of Blackness as a key site through which surveillance is practiced, narrated, and resisted in the United States, and how does it intersect with the experience of the Third World Blackness?

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Sahara - Assata Shakur, Fugitive Black Liberation Activist Wanted By U.S. For Decades, Dies In Cuba At 77  Full story in comments section 👇🏽 | Facebook

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Assata Shakur, Fugitive Black Liberation Activist Wanted By U.S. For Decades, Dies In Cuba At 77

Full story in comments section 👇🏽

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Roxanne Scott in this article discusses the need for Black birder’s celebrations and gatherings. The first one of its kind in the Rockaways, “Black Birder’s Week” is an annual weeklong celebration honoring Black naturalists who are passionate about enviornmental justice and bird conservation. These events act as a way to build community care, and to expand access to green spaces specifically to communities of color. Exploring the outdoors, birding, and accessing national parks are activities that are repeatedly made hostile to communities of color, whether that shows up in environmental hostilities created by histories of legalized racist policies keeping Black people out of/segregated in parks, eugenicist and white supremacist values held by conservationist societies/the movement’s origin, and white racist aggressors in parks who have called police on Black birders. These events over the years have sparked and fostered a sense of confidence, safety, and increased exposure to the natural resources of the Rockaways, for its locals. With increased connection to the areas natural resources, its creatures, and other Black birders and naturalists, the meditative knowledge these experiences provide are an empowering medicine that is being tapped into. Hearing this healing lesson being articulated, that nature can teach you through these meditative points of connection, made me think about our time whale watching. Although I couldn’t make it to the bird watching day, being able to whale watch sparked a curiosity within me that sharpened my attention to the loud calls to attention that spirit/universe/nature makes to me on a daily basis—ones that I often tune out with phone usage, being in buildings, largely un-green spaces, or subways. Practicing mindfulness in general, but specifically in the presence of nature can be an incredibly soul-feeding and empowering experience. This leads me to consider the violent impact of the spiritual warfare of disappearing, divesting from, and starving communities of color of natural resources and public/natural spaces of meditation, and rest. What also comes to mind is the bans that were placed on indigenous people, by america, restricting them from practicing their culture that across different tribes, is typically in synchronicity with and sustainable with the environment.

All of this goes to say, this article raised a question in my mind that I will perhaps answer over time by noticing more: how else does this spiritual and ecological warfare show up in NYC ecologies? And do any of you have examples of how this hostility shows up in your neighborhoods?

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After reading Simone Browne’s Dark Matters and gaining a deeper understanding of the history behind Black surveillance studies, I began to think about the works of scholars such as Michel Foucault on panopticism, W.E.B. Du Bois on double consciousness, and Frantz Fanon in The Wretched of the Earth. It seems as though, by design, outdoor spaces and nature have historically been framed as sites of labor rather than leisure when it comes to Black bodies. This framework helps to explain the complicated relationships that Black people today have with nature and how we have been socialized to experience the outdoors through a racialized lens of control, suspicion, and surveillance.

Black people are often seen through the white gaze as suspicious or criminal if they are not laboring on the land, a perception that echoes the legacies of slavery and plantation economies. It’s a painful irony, considering that Black people have a profound ancestral connection to nature long before being trafficked to the Americas. What does it mean for Black people to experience freedom and leisure in spaces that were historically used to police and contain them, and is reconnecting with the land a way of remembering who we were before surveillance defined who we could be?  When I think about fields like ornithology and the rise of Black and Brown birdwatchers, I find it beautiful that communities are reclaiming and reimagining our relationship to the natural world taking up space, finding peace, and reconnecting with Mother Earth on our own terms.

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When analyzing any setting, Raboteau creates a collage of different time periods, different experiences in the setting and a wide variety of commentary. One overarching example of this is how she creates a map of New York City through art, visits to the doctors, conversations shes had, etc. I may be biased because I recognize a lot of the locations she talks about, but from a geographical perspective this book is very effective because every physical location is examined in relation to movement, historical connotation, personal experience, and many other techniques one might use to construct a geography. On the other hand, the overload of information may be exhausting. My question is, what is the benefit of layering art, text, experiences, etc. in the geography of the city? What is something she presented that can only be revealed by this method of worldbuilding/storytelling?

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Lessons of Survival by Emily Rabotauu addresses various issues we face as a society in this environment, and she navigates the story through different lenses. It intersects with global concerns such as climate change, survival, future generations, and what happens after we are gone as parents, shaping the type of world we will leave behind. As she photographs murals throughout NYC, she makes connections each time she sees the mural. She compares caged birds to oppression, ravages, discrimination, and migration. Some birds are not to be gaged, and many do not see the borders; they fly away and free themselves. However, those trapped in certain parts of the city cannot escape, just like during the pandemic, when we were trapped in fear, thinking about what might happen tomorrow. How does that affect children, parents, the environment, health, and mental or physical well-being? Birds have such a fascinating aspect as we read more about them throughout the literature, geography, and history. We constantly draw parallels between behaviors and connections between humans and nature and species, similar to how Crows, Blue Jays, and Owls behave, and how they become artifacts that define historical and sociological aspects of human society through art, fashion, music that becomes mediatized, and a healing process to us as humans who must stay connected to nature to survive.

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The painting “American Lawn, Night Grass” painted by Alex Callender conveys multiple themes, symbolism, and representation. Alex Callender is an American artist who utilizes different methods such as drawing, painting, and installation to create artwork that traces back to the connections between race, gender, and capitalism. The painting “American Lawn, Night Grass” is layered with grass and a background image filled with different themes and symbolism. Beneath the layered grass is a background of what it seems to be a lawn, steamships, a bare landscape, and pedestrians on foot and on horses. In my opinion, Callender wanted to showcase the initial land ecology before colonialism, capitalism, racism, and the decapitation of the environment. The lawn sets the stage for what is seen and what is hidden. In the painting “American Lawn, Night Grass”  you visibly see the lawn and its greenery, however what is hidden is the labor that upkeep the environment, the colonial trade that's upon the land, the exploitation of slaves, and the growing economy which every individual will not benefit from.

The painting “American Lawn, Night Grass” painted by Alex Callender makes me wonder, where would this country be without the land the Western world stole? Just about all of the United States issues go back to land, the economy, race, gender, inequality, and much more.

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Lessons for Survival: Mothering Against “The Apocalypse” by Emily Raboteau connects with Ruha Benjamin’s Race After Technology through shared themes of motherhood, surveillance, and the illusion of neutrality. Both women are parenting through overlapping crises in a post-Obama era, thinking about how racism still shapes nearly every part of daily life. Benjamin shows how technology, which we often think of as objective or neutral, actually reproduces the same old racial hierarchies in new digital forms. Raboteau takes a similar approach but focuses on the environment showing how the climate crisis and urban life are also shaped by structural racism. Both authors challenge the idea that our surroundings, whether digital or physical, are neutral or fair. Benjamin breaks this down through tech and algorithms, while Raboteau does it through a built environment and how people move through city spaces. Together, they show that for Black mothers, even ordinary acts of care or protection become political and small forms of survival and resistance in systems that are anything but neutral.

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The phrase “Exterminate all Brutes” derives from the novella written by Joseph Conrad titled  “Heart of Darkness”. The short novel “Heart of the Darkness” was published in 1899 and then was later collected in 1902. The short novel follows a European sailor who worked as a riverboat captain for a Belgian trading company, which operated in the Congo Free State during the late 19th Century. While Marlow worked and traveled further into the African interior and the Congo, he witnessed unfairness, exploitation, and brutality caused by the European colonizers towards the African people. The term “Exterminate the Brutes” was utilized by a character in the story who utilized this term in a report to bring attention to the European imperialism and colonization taking place in the Congo. The four part documentary  miniseries “Exterminate the Brutes” composed by Raoul Peck filmmaker examines how racial hierarchy and colonial extraction shaped the world. Peck utilized his own narration, dramatic reenactment, animation, and archival footage to challenge history and how it was told.

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In the opening chapter of “Midnight Robber,” we meet Tan-Tan, a strong woman from the cruel prison-like planet of New Half-Way Tree. The chapter begins with a powerful proclamation of self-identity, where the speaker claims to
have “stolen the torturer’s tongue,” suggesting a resistance against oppression and the reclamation of one's voice and agency. Tan-Tan’s character transitions to a resilient and capable figure, yet one who possesses a softness, showcasing the duality. The planet of New Half-Way Tree is revealed as a contrast to the more civilized Toussaint, highlighting themes of duality and the shadows of civilization, where the misfits and outcasts — the Others — find their place.
Narrative indicates that Tan-Tan is reclaiming her voice amid oppression, namely by suggesting that she has 'Stolen the Torturer’s Tongue, which represents a powerful act of opposition, resistance, suggesting that in environments where external forces seek to silence individuals, reclaiming one's narrative is essential for empowerment. Hopkinson invites readers to contemplate the idea that Self-identity can be a rebellious form of resistance.
However, it's important to recognize that the author's interpretation of identity through Tan-Tan may not universally apply, as different experiences of oppression and
reclamation apply. I love this narrative because it declares protest against Western epistemology, the hegemonic narrative under White supremacy, the colonial regime, and terrain. It creates a parallel universe where Maroon epistemology is in direct conflict with the Torturer, the oppressor. It’s guarded by a secret tongue, Black autonomy, ecological and adaptive practices, science, and technology that are unreachable and don't rely on Western knowledge or its logic.

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Something that struck me in Grace Dillon's introduction: "Hopkinson creates landscape and bush on an sf future world and/or parallel world (in keeping with Taino thinking about our four worlds aligned side-by-side). Called New Half-Way Tree, the setting replicates features not only of the Caribbean (Hopkinson’s home in her youth) but also of northern Aboriginal Canada (near her current residence in Toronto) and the Australian Aborigine bush. Mirroring this multitude of geographical sources, Hopkinson also innovates linguistically by combining Jamaican, Trinidadian, and Guianan languages. These techniques gave the effect of placing the reader in worlds that split apart the colonizer-versus-colonized binary that occurs in much sf"

without having read the entirety of the book, this backdrop just sticks with me and has been making wonder to what extent indigeneity is inherently pluralistic, or ways it can be defined outside of the colonizer-colonized dichotomy.

At first it seemed like the languages and locations were just meant to parallel the Caribbean with inherited European languages mixed in, and yes it seems like the Caribbean lore deeply resonated with readers with all the corresponding relations that come with bringing real world cultures together. Yet New Half-Way Tree makes me think lots about the Bronx over the past 50 years, which by necessity has had to separated ideas of indigeneity from colonialism(even if it can't do so with gentrification). A place where people are displaced to and stay several generations until finding a new home elsewhere. So now I need to ask what are the ways that indigeneity is a misleading concept when in addressing displacement and oppression after centuries of forced migration? I ask because of the ways I've seen it co-opted by businesses building their brands here while brining in displacing developers.

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I really enjoyed this reading. Something that stood out to me was the line, “Walking along she almost forgot she was an exile on New Half-Way Tree with a curse on she had from the doings them.” as it reminded me of how joy can feel for people of color and other oppressed groups. Sometimes joy or peace feels like a small act of rebellion. For a second you just exist and just be before reality comes rushing back. That sense of temporary freedom really connected with me and made me think about how revolutionary it can be to hold onto joy even in the middle of struggle.

I also liked how my classmate Miranda noted that Hopkinson invites readers to think about self-identity as a rebellious form of resistance.Hopkinson shows identity not as a passive fact but as an active choice. Making and holding your sense of self in spite of oppression is its own kind of revolt and she makes that feel urgent and possible.

The chapter starts in a way that feels like a violent deliberate reclaiming of identity. The lines “I stole the torturer’s tongue. This tongue is yours too if you can take it” hit hard as they flip the script on power. Instead of being a passive victim, the character takes the tool that hurt her and turns it into a weapon and a gift. Language becomes both a tool of revenge and a way to heal.

Another moment that stood out to me was the conversation between Sadie and Tonton when the little animal shows up. Sadie asks “You are not afraid it is going to bite you?” and Tonton replies “No it is just the big ones you have to look out for.” On the surface it is a simple exchange but I think it works as a double meaning. She is not just talking about animals as “the big ones” might be colonizers, bounty hunters or simply those who hold control and hurt others. Hopkinson often mixes literal and symbolic danger and here that tension feels sharp. The small creatures are not the ones to fear. It is the ones who dominate and exploit that really bite. I liked how subtle that moment was because it seems like simple dialogue but underneath it is a critique of hierarchy and oppression.

Another line that really stood out to me is when Tan Tan is talking about the calf. She describes it as “hard to believe that something that looks so able to hunt and kill for its supper was a folivore harmful only if you frightened it or threatened it.” This felt almost like a metaphor for Tan Tan herself. On the surface she is gentle caring and protective like when she helps Sadie and feels pleased when she notices Sadie worried about her. But there is also the earlier moment with the tongue where she clearly shows she can fight fiercely when threatened.

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Imani Perry introduces the collection of stories by claiming that "clinical" work or work from recognized academic institutions that attempt to define the causal relationships between blackness and oppression are not able to fully encompass the Black experience. In the past, I have learned that when we are talking about environmental injustice, measuring pessimistic statistics such as how many Black communities live next to sources of pollution undermines or undervalues resistance efforts. Just as as Perry talks about the apparent strangeness of fugitives from slave ship shipwrecks, there are a lot of similar gaps when it comes to the experiences of Black people delineated across academic fields. Yet, instead of letting the stories speak for themselves, Perry chooses to write a short introduction encompassing the history and significance in a very academic manner. Additionally, this work is a collection of stories from all over the Black diaspora, which is a lot of history to be expected to learn in order to better understand the blues. My question is, what are the benefits of including a short, formal explanation in front of every piece of work? Does it pull you away from creative reading in a way thats disruptive or beneficial?

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In Black in Blues, Imani Perry shares an anthology of works exploring the deep connections between the color blue and Black identity in the modern age. She uses poems, folktales, and personal stories to follow the path of blue in history and trace the emergence of Blackness as an identity through the violence of colonialism and the trans-atlantic slave trade. The book purposefully centers oral histories and emotional interpretations over hyper analytical analysis, which Perry argues often misses nuance and personal connections to identity. From sky to ocean to beads to indigo to the very word itself,  Perry connects the vast web of experiences which connect Black culture to the color blue, and the power of color in understanding our world. My question is; oral histories and personal experiences are often discounted in clinical western science. What ways could we begin to re-integrate these important tools into wider scientific practice?

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Imani Perry uses Black in Blues to weave several disparate pieces exploring all ways the color blue has or can be seen through blackness. rather than being just an academically objective account, she is attempting to surface a wider variety of voices. In some cases(e.g The Boys in Blue) she offers a somber, matter historical narration, and in others(e.g citizens) she opens with an anecdote and keeps her personal perspective in the foreground throughout the piece. Her personal perspective flows up and down like waves, yet even in the more academic sounding pieces she is unable to contain what seems to be collective rage, grief and other emotions as she contextualizes the meaning of events such as Patrice Lumumba's overthrow and murder. As an academic she is carrying an implicit expectation to speak with some dispassionate persona conveying objectivity. One that I, as someone that is not academic and raised under white supremacy, has inherited an expectation to enforce and interrogate(i.e being raised with the assumption that academics have tame, narrow, conversations about their specialties with one another. This expectation would nudge me to ask why she isn't using a consistent voice for herself and anyone she is speaking for/through). This feels necessary to acknowledge as a reader but is also a conversation that I don't know how to be a part of without undermining the richness of all these voices Perry seeks to channel here. She is finding depth through breadth as she approaches the blues through cop uniforms, indigo farming, cobalt mining for computer technology, and many other things...(yes, including the blues).

I obvious can't read Perry's mind and only have her text to work with, but what I am wondering is...what is the most effective way for me to discuss the implicit expectations on Perry as an academic without distracting from or undermining her actual voice. Better still, how can I cut through such hostile expectations when attention itself is part of our economy?

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Imani Perry, in her book Black in Blues: The Story of My People through Color, explains the deep meaning of the color blue to the history, culture, and creativity of African American people. Perry follows blue, which was seen as a symbol of hope and despair, at the same time, with the sky and the sea, through the denim of civil rights marchers, showing how a simple color can be a memory, grief, and protest. The book emphasizes the abuse in the cultivation of indigo in Europe and the Caribbean, which is associated with luxury and art, with the work of enslaved individuals. During the Haitian Revolution, blue is transformed into the blue blood of enslavement, and blue becomes a sign of liberty and Haitian African spiritualism, as in Hoodoo Blue and Haint Blue, which carry on the memory and protection of ancestors. Perry also prefigures literacy and material culture, as the blue-glazed pottery and blue-black ink become a means of rebellion and cultural preservation. She analyzes the application of the Egyptian blue by George Washington Carver to give natural materials artistic and spiritual expression. The story goes into music: the blue note in blues and jazz is used as a means of articulating historical memory, and the service of Black Union soldiers in the Civil War evidences that blue is a means of liberation and surveillance. Perry is also finally capped with modern artists such as Kendrick Lamar, in which blue is used as a symbol of change, freedom, and transcendence. Finally, Black in Blues introduces color as a repository of Black life, connecting the past, art, and spirituality to shine light on the current struggle and imagination of Black people.

1. How does Perry address the intersection of race, gender, and class as she paints the narrative in blue?

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The book “Black in Blues: How a Color Tells the Story of my People” written by Imani Perry takes a deep dive into the connection between Blackness in the United States, history, art, survival, spiritually, and the significance of the color blue. The color blue is significant because it is a powerful symbol that traces the experience and the history of Black people. According to the book “Black in Blues: How a Color Tells the Story of my People”, the color blue is directly linked to the transatlantic slave trade and the production of indigo dye. History shows that people of West Africa utilized the indigo dye for clothing, and furthermore the indigo dye played a role in enslaved Africans working on indigo fields. In addition, the enslaved Africans would look at the blue waters of the seas and oceans as well the blue skies for some hope of freedom or questioning what is to come in their future while they are shackled and bound. The color blue plays a role in Black culture as well, including spiritual practices, folklore and rituals. The author Perry makes a connection with the color blue in art, music, and literature, highlighting the Blues music genre which Black people created to express their experience with pain and pleasure. One connection that stood out the most to me was the connection between Black women and the color blue. Black women from the South utilized the color blue as a symbol of power as they wore their blue dresses inspired by pivotal Black women during the Civil Rights era like Corretta Scott King and Fannie Lou Hamer. Growing up a Black boy, I recognized the term “black-blue”, however I did not know this term derives from racial classification pinned on us by Whites. The question that came to mind after reading the book  “Black in Blues: How a Color Tells the Story of my People” written by Imani Perry would be, how are Black people able to turn every negative to a positive?

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Journalist Roxanne L. Scott highlights a group of Black birders who gather in Queens, N.Y. in the Rockaways to of course bird watch. These Bird watchers gather every year during Black Birders week held in the last week of May as a community, as a national initiative to reclaim, uplift, and reclaim Black nature enthusiasts and birders. The article highlights how Black Birders have historically been unrepresented in the world of Bird watching and dealing with significant issues such as racial profiling, due to Black birders are not as visible as White Voters. The article “Black Birders Flock to the Rockaway” written by Journalist Roxanne L. Scott states “Furthermore, the so-called “racial reckoning” that happened after George Floyd was killed (the same weekend that police were called on Christan Cooper), laid bare again this country’s history of excluding people of color from the outdoors.” Scott's coverage of the Black Birders event draws attention to the group, and helps make other Black Birders visible, while building a Black Birder community. This article reminded me of Black bird watcher Christian Cooper, who was bird watching in Central Park and racial profiled by a dog walker for simply asking her to leash her dog. The White dog walker then called 911 and falsely claimed that an “African American” man was harassing her. My question is this, how is racist activity such as racial profiling not deemed as a mental illness concern? What kind of person would be offensive to a Bird watcher? Just because they’re Black?

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When I first picked up Black and Blues by Imani Perry, I thought the book would be about exactly what the title says, Black people and the blues. At first, I imagined it might focus on blues music and the way it came from Black culture. But then I also thought of “black and blue” as bruises, which made me think of the pain and violence of transatlantic slavery. I pictured the blue sea and blue sky surrounding enslaved Africans as they were taken across the ocean. But once I started reading, I realized Perry’s idea of blue goes way beyond what I expected. She also has a personal connection to it, starting with the chipped blue paint on her grandmother’s porch and ending with how blue appears again during the funerals of two of her family members. Throughout the book, blue becomes something that carries memory, grief, and love. She connects it to history, art, spirituality, and politics, like people wearing blue during the Haitian Revolution or blue representing Democrats during the Civil Rights era. Some of the parts that stood out to me most were the chapters on Liberia, the Haitian Revolution, and the origins of Carnaval. I especially liked how she talked about Vodou and how it was part of the fight for freedom in Haiti. It reminded me of when Nathaniel visited our class and we talked about how there’s almost no media that shows the Haitian Revolution. One of the few shows I’ve seen that touches on these themes is American Gods, which shows deities like Anubis or Osiris, the Jekyll, Shiva, and the goddess of water who tells enslaved people to rest and renew themselves in the river. It made me think about how stories, beliefs, and colors carry memory and survival. My question is, why do we rarely see these deep spiritual sides of Black history represented in mainstream culture when they clearly shape so much of Black identity and resistance? Does it have to do with how Western culture looks down on African spiritual systems like Vodou while idealizing European frameworks? And if that’s the case, do we need more independent or exclusive spaces to tell these stories on our own terms?

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Imani Perry claims that “Academic descriptions of Blackness fail to explain how at the heart of being Black is a testimony about the universal power of existence” (Perry, p.5). With this claim, Perry’s aims to reframe how Black scholars approach and depict Black life. The author is questioning the methods used by scholars, and that has given her insight into the way she analyzes black life through an academic lens, but also maintains the authenticity and richness of the Black experience. This is important in the scope of black studies as it relates to scholarship when thinking about the methodologies that are used to tell black stories, it is also important when we think about who the authors of those stories are. Perry integrates scholarship and cultural memory to tell the stories of the Black experience throughout the African Diaspora through an analysis of the Black connection with the color blue.

Perry opens with how she became intrigued with the color blue, recalling the moment she noticed the color blue peeking through old and worn wallpaper in the ceiling of her grandmother’s house. Perry recalls all the different shades of blue her grandmothers’ house was adorned with, thinking about why she never bothered to ask her grandmother why she chose the color. Through these recollections she begins to question what meaning the color blue held for her grandmother and Black people. Perry’s memories of her grandmother led me to reflect on my own grandmother.  My grandmother too, surrounded herself with blue, for her it was a color that carried spiritual depth and serenity. For me, I thought of my own connection to the color blue, remembering when I first learned about Picassos ‘blue period, and how it inspired me as a painter to explore working with blues as a way to convey the sadness I felt as a teenager.

Now, in hindsight knowing that Picasso also went through and African period, and reading parts of this book, I question the connection between the two periods. I question why Thinking about Picasso’s blue period alongside Iman Perry’s writings highlights how European artist abstracted Black expression into artistic form while detaching it from its origins. Picasso made the choice to paint white people blue during his blue period, rather than combining blue black people with his African period.  On the other hand, the works of Alex Callender in his “American Lawn” and “Night Grass” collections, I recall all of the different hues of blue in several works to depict experiences of Black Americans being transported here through the Trans-Atlantic. Keeping artist like Callender and many others in mind, along with Perry’s methodology to fully explain the heart of blackness, I would agree that Blackness is something that is lived, remembered, and best told by those who carry its hue.

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Black in Blues

how the color blue is a symbol of both melancholy and hope throughout Black history and culture. It also explains how it explores the history of the color blue and Blackness and starting with the transatlantic slave trade, and connecting it to the blues music genre, the sky, water, and various forms of art. However, The book uses these connections to show how Black identity has been shaped by tragedy and resilience. The author Imani Perry deliberately chose not to include traditional scholarly elements like footnotes or an index to encourage the book to be read as a work of art or a novel, but is a significant departure from her previous academic works. she has aimed to create a cohesive, rhythmic narrative where different pieces of research come together like riffs in a jazz piece. Artistic inspiration is structured to resemble a collage or a jazz composition, Unconventional format is The absence of an index and footnotes is a deliberate choice to make the book feel more like a narrative story and less like a traditional academic text and Multi-sensory experience is intended for the book to provide a multi-sensory engagement, drawing on history, art, and personal experience to explore the theme of the color blue.

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how the color blue is a symbol of both melancholy and hope throughout Black history and culture. It also explains how it explores the history of the color blue and Blackness and starting with the transatlantic slave trade, and connecting it to the blues music genre, the sky, water, and various forms of art. However, The book uses these connections to show how Black identity has been shaped by tragedy and resilience. The author Imani Perry deliberately chose not to include traditional scholarly elements like footnotes or an index to encourage the book to be read as a work of art or a novel, but is a significant departure from her previous academic works. she has aimed to create a cohesive, rhythmic narrative where different pieces of research come together like riffs in a jazz piece. Artistic inspiration is structured to resemble a collage or a jazz composition, Unconventional format is The absence of an index and footnotes is a deliberate choice to make the book feel more like a narrative story and less like a traditional academic text and Multi-sensory experience is intended for the book to provide a multi-sensory engagement, drawing on history, art, and personal experience to explore the theme of the color blue.

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In Emergent Strategy, Adrienne Maree Brown talks about imagining futures and building connections which center “inch wide and mile thick” relationships, as a way to build resilience towards and fundamentally change the oppressive structures of our modern world. In her book, Brown likens human connection to that of apex predators, who are often vulnerable to change and lack the ability to adapt, versus the connections that other plants and animals like fungi share. These creatures who find community through a nexus of overlapping and interwoven relationships are able to withstand much more and represent natural examples of the concepts of “emergent strategies”. Brown also breaks down the lineage of this practice, starting with the works of Octavia Butler and how it has become incorporated in non-hierarchical power structures and social justice movements/organizing. She also connects it to Indigenous ways of knowing and connecting with the land, and the natural rhythms of the earth - even to the formation of the waves themselves. Her focus centers on love as a guiding principle for these strategies, and to release the ideas of perfection or failure. I really love this concept, and in contrast to the rigid, western ideas of “strategy” and winning, this understanding is clearly defined as rooted in liberation rather than personal gain. It is collective versus individualistic. My question focuses on Brown’s emphasis on imagination. In order to create these futures she says we must imagine them, however oftentimes our imaginations, depending on your proximity to privilege, are full of problematic bias, can perpetuate violence, and can ultimately be untrustworthy. What collection of emergent strategies might be evolving to unlearn internalized racist, sexist, homophobic, ableist or capitalist programming? Are there mirrors for any of these in the natural world? Can social media’s power as a decentralized information sharing platform be used as an emergent strategy, or does the dominance of tech dictators like Elon Musk and Bezos compromise its power? Are there emergent strategies which combat this?

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The work of Octavia Butler inspires Brown to create Emergent Strategy, a blueprint and leadership model for strong future alliances, a driving force with brilliant innovators of all genders, races, and classes who contribute with ideas, collective participation, and engagement, creating global change in a world that is constantly shifting. The book highlights how people and the world transform together. Instead of fighting change, it encourages us to get involved, build community, observe, learn from what’s happening around us, and blend science with imagination.

Emergent Strategy offers a grounded yet imaginative framework for shaping desired futures and for recognizing the transformative potential of working together.

Emergent strategy is based on a few principles and elements
that inform both understanding and application of the method.
These principles include:

a)Small is Good, Small is All. Big systems work in much the same way as their smaller parts.
b) Change is Constant: Accept that things are constantly changing and be ready to adapt.

c) Right Work Timing: There is enough time for meaningful conversations and
for the work that matters.

Lessons from Failure: See experiences as chances to learn, not as failures.

Trust the People: When we trust others, it helps build trust and lets us move forward steadily.
Connections Over Mass: Prioritize essential connections to build resilience through relationships.
Presence Over Preparation: Reduced preparation can enhance presence and responsiveness.
Brown uses natural systems as metaphors
to illustrate emergent strategy principles, such as dandelions, as a metaphor for resilience, resistance, and regeneration. Brown says that dandelions undergo a rapid transformation, with golden blooms turning into delicate white globes. Each seed is equipped with a structure that enables wind dispersal.
This clever adaptation lets seeds travel far and wide on the breeze. Every part of the plant holds healing potential. Often regarded as weeds and removed from the ground, dandelions demonstrate significant persistence. Their deep taproots remain intact, facilitating regrowth.
These characteristics exemplify resilience, resistance, regeneration, and decentralization.

Brown emphasizes the importance of embracing change by recognizing the inherent opportunities in constant transformation rather than resisting it.
This approach requires the ability to plan and set expectations when faced with new challenges, and understanding that each change offers valuable lessons for personal growth. Emergent strategy practices encourage us to mirror the rhythms of nature, nurturing lasting change in social justice and community building. This approach challenges learned behaviors of competition and scarcity,
and instead encourages collaboration, growth, and respect for
the interconnectedness of all life.
Questions: By analyzing Brown’s suggested principles and elements, can we, as humanity, accept change without conforming to rigid rules and regulations that undermine our everyday existence, considering the existing power structure? What other elements and principles would you consider to speculate on the future power reconstruction, or would you envision any power at all?

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I enjoyed reading this book from start to finish as I enjoy material that makes me think differently about the world. It reminded me of Jack Halberstein's idea of low theory, where transformation happens through small, creative, and even messy ways of thinking. At first, I found adrienne maree brown’s explanations a little hard to grasp because she defines “emergent strategy” in so many ways yet it still seemed obscure but as I kept reading, I realized she’s talking about concepts I already think about a lot (such as the connection with nature, cycles, and divinity in nature)—and it was really cool to see them articulated into words. I thought about how even though she’s giving us really important information about how to organize effectively if you believe in welfare and want to lead with love, I feel as though her work will probably be dismissed by certain scholars for not being “objective” enough. It also seems like she knows this herself, especially from what she says in the introduction about what this book is not.

Another thing that stood out to me is when she goes into things like the concept of destiny and imagination. She doesn’t talk about them in a mystical way, but as active, living forces that shape how we organize, dream, and move through the world. It makes you think about how much imagination plays a role in creating the futures we actually want to live in.

This was also my first time learning about concepts such as biomimicry and permaculture, and all the examples she gave—birds, caterpillars, oak trees, dandelions, cells, and even the Fibonacci sequence was super fun to go through. It reminded me of how everything in nature already knows how to self-organize and sustain balance. I love finding patterns like that on my own time too, and it also made me think of that experiment in Japan where scientists used slime mold to design a transportation network because it naturally found the most efficient routes. (link attached on top)

Reading her ideas about organizing also made me think about what’s happening now in terms of a lot of people's perception about the new mayor of New York. It feels like we live in a time where if someone genuinely believes in the welfare of all people, they’re seen as suspicious or unrealistic. It’s almost as if caring about everyone means you must have some hidden agenda, or that you’re naïve for believing in community and collective well-being. In a capitalist society built on competition and profit, caring for people as a principle gets treated like weakness. I think that’s part of what brown wants us to question i.e why we see greed as practical but compassion as radical.

One question from the author that I really liked was: How do we create and proliferate a compelling vision of economies and ecologies that center humans and the natural world over the accumulation of material?

And the question I came up with : What would leadership look like if we treated love and imagination as essential forms of intelligence, the same way we value logic or control?

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I forgot how calming brown's voice is as I listened to this book. They speak with a deep humility and curiosity about how we can learn from the natural world, and are able to channel Octavia Butler's powerful Parable of the Sower to center us in relation to this world as we explore its complex systems.

Reading papers on emergence a decade ago inspired my interest in complex systems, and having been butting heads with the tech world I have seen how pervasive its fascination is with those same systems.

We've talked about how artificial intelligence is used in past classes, and how some of the models commonly used overstate their representation of genuine biological processes(e.g neural networks). So my question is, what are the ways that biomimicry is susceptible to misuse, specifically overstating a relationship with the natural world to justify harm?

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The chapter tools for emergent strategy facilitation is a 50-page compilation of "effective" organizing and decision-making strategies Brown has collected and observed. I liked the way Brown defined "effective" as a term that should be used when all participants voices are listented to, creativity is at the forefront, and work is delegated in the most agreeable and realistic way. In my own work and school life I've felt victim to "time-wasting" meetings where the end goal and personal tasks were unclear. However, before this straightforward final chapter, Brown writes a creative series of chapters leading up to it, such as one where she writes "spells and practices" that help overcome suppression towards emergent strategy organization. The book is a collage of scholars, quotes, art, questionnaires and personal and academic conversations. My question is, how does her transformation of capitalist terms like "effective" display itself through the structure of this book? Based on her content, is the writing of the book itself a product of emergent strategy, or does it come from a different lineage of Black epistemology?

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“People of Colour Experience Climate Grief More Deeply Than White People” 

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“People of Colour Experience Climate Grief More Deeply Than White People” 

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In Nyla Iqbal Muhhamad’s article, her ending on the quotation “We are part of a river of grief. And we are never alone.” references the generationally inherited ache from centuries of painful history and the present ecological violence that is inflicted against communities of color, magnified by structural racism. For many communities, the destruction of the environment is directly rooted in the beginning of their own oppression and extermination, and in the case of indigenous identities their relationship with the land is directly linked to their identity as well creating this ripple effect of grief. The author argues that without white supremacy, colonization, the trans-atlantic slave trade and the genocide of indigenous people globally, our world would look very different, and this collective sense of grief could be a lot smaller. Each of these traumatic frameworks of oppression are intertwined with one another to achieve and uphold the white supremacist and racial capitalist world order, and thus the grief is felt like different river currents with deltas into the same ocean of grief. The imagery that is created by this closing line is very powerful and really stuck with me. It's a similar reminder of the nature-centered lessons I have been learning from the book I am reading right now called Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer. A question I would like to pose is what other lessons from nature come to mind when we are trying to name oppression, or describe liberation struggles?

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Having read Michelle Alexander’s “The New Jim Crow” before this text, the inspiration that Ruha Benjamin took from her comparative framework definitely reads through. In this book, she refers to “the employment of new technologies that reflect and reproduce existing inequities but that are promoted and perceived as more objective or progressive than the discriminatory systems of a previous era,” as "The New Jim Code.” Making historical comparisons of systems of oppression whether that be the segregation system of Jim Crow or in this case specifically, Racial Technologies or “digital caste systems", can help contextualize, connect and complicate these issues of social justice that are so often sanitized or studied in isolation. She demonstrates to us that these oppressive technologies become neutralized and normalized, the more they are decontextualized from their origins, and opens the book with the technology of naming children. This issue of blindness to and assigning objectivity to the power, history, and privilege (or lack thereof), in a name is very comparable to Alexander’s argument of the danger of color-blindness. It made me consider my own name. It is merely coincidental that my first and last name reflects a fraction of my ethnic origin of Germany, my ancestry having occupied America for hundreds of years and at this point in my bloodline, I have no cultural connection to my ethnic background. My parents found my name on a license plate in a German bar when they had no clue what else to name me. The name “Gretchen" coincidentally has roots in the name of my grandmother’s, “Margie.” A lot of my name is coincidental, but in that coincidental meaning, lies a blandness, unmarkedness, and a privilege.

Even though we often consider technologies engrained around us like our names, and even the western patriarchal technology of a last name, to be “matter of fact,” ordinary, necessary, or neutral; it does not erase the oppressive nature of them.

This section of Benjamin’s book makes me wonder if we can effectively reinvent our naming system to be more reflective of liberatory networks. After all, all names were made up at some point. This has already begun to take form, as there have commonly been movements of oppressed people renaming themselves (Black people, queer people, femmes) in an effort to reclaim their name from the system of oppression it takes root in. Should we collectively begin to build on top of these racist and patriarchal histories embedded in our names by selecting our own first/last names?

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In her work Appalachian Elegy, Bell Hooks offers us a collection of poems which she says “extend the process of lamentation”. In these poems she laments the pain and violence that Black and Indigenous people, and the land, have been subjected to and the hands of white people and settlers. Hooks also plays with time frequently in these poems, always drawing the reader back to the present, reminding us that Indigenous conceptions of time are not linear and they have much to teach us about wholeness, healing, and justice. Themes of mud, earth, and clay appear regularly, as beings which cover and destroy, hold life and regeneration, or carry memories and dreams. Her poems are full of remembering, loss, and grief at the violence of settler-colonialism, and of love for the earth and the life it shares with all living creatures. In her introduction Hooks says “when poetry stirs in my imagination it is almost always from an indirect place, where language is abstract, where the mood and energy is evocative of submerged emotional intelligence and experience”. My question is:

Is the use of poetry as a way to process grief inherently anti-colonial, particularly in a colonial society obsessed with data and qualifications and pathologizing? Can the practice of processing emotions and experiences through poetry be an emergent strategy for unlearning colonial thought?

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Appalachian Elegy is a collection of poems that describe Bell Hook's connection to her childhood home in the hills of Kentucky, a centuries old historical site of marronage for Black and indigenous people. For Hooks, this is a place of resistance towards society as a whole, as her elders practiced self-determinism through growing food, community, and ways of living that rejected American law or standards for civilization. What stood out to me most from the introduction was that black experiences in the south, especially those in which they lived in harmony with the natural world, are ignored. This was interesting because although the Appalachian black people are a subculture, to me black life in the south shaped southern ecology more than it does in the north because of how loud slavery, segregation, and oppression they were. I was reminded of Black studies on Magnolia trees, and how this tree that is a huge cultural symbol of the white south despite Blues music like "strange fruit" and studies from prominent black figures like Ida B. Wells showing how Magnolia trees were often a site for lynching for their optimal branch structure and thus transformed by a lynching geography to be just as "black" of a symbol as it may be a "white" one (not to mention that black soitherners also tended to magnolia trees and existed among them). I included this tangeant because Hooks describes her poems as lamentations, and often times when we dig into Black connections with nature we see that black people shaped large swaths of American nature, and there is a lot of pain in those geographies (like lynching and magnolia trees). Poetry becomes a space to unlock these ignored memories from our social concience, yet she goes beyond just using personal and historical experiences and depicts an almost transcendental relationship between black appalachians and the land. My question is, if these poems are framed as a lamentation to remember lost ecological histories by the author, why is it that many poems mention a revival of ecology or the ability of nature to keep going after destruction? What is the importance of this facet of the environment on her goal of shedding light on Black appalachian geography?

I noticed that a lot of poems become positive when mentions of nature come up, and in my mind specifcally speak to the natural/ecological succession of forests over time. Below are examples i found:

• Poem 4: a dirge of lamentation / for earth to live again / earth that is all at once a grave / a resting place a bed of new beginnings.

• Poem 7: This wilderness within / urging me onward / be here /make a lath

• Poem 8: a cardinal framed in the glass / red light / calaling away despair / eternal promise / everything changes and ends

• Poem 21: store dreams / of a world without humans / a wet world everlasting

• Poem 29: alone untouched / sheer good fortune / guides one bear away / a gift of time / with no boundaries

• Poem 31: in everyday the blessing of weather / offering change / a constant passing / of life into death / and back again

• Poem 35: winds of fate /... / carry us toward / ... / past present future / change comes

• Poem 45: ghosts return to these hills / ... / ghosts gather here / make promises / of resurrection and return

• Poem 48: earth laments / cries out loud / that justice may come / that it is never too late

• Poem 50: lost in a world of green / all have been promised / wedded to morning / that will soon come

• Poem 58: earth spirit / recelain soil soul seed / all the living green / help us surrender / that we may live again

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The strongest connection I found with Appalachian Elegy lies in the section where the author reflects on the freedom of childhood spent in the hills and the liberation that comes from being close to nature and the land, living wild, far from civilization. The further one moves from it, the more one gains self-organization, self-identity, and the sense that one creates the law when living in the wild; the fewest rules apply, and social norms and constraints hold little relevance in this part of the world, reminiscent of the Maroons and their self-governing systems. In this setting, everyone lives in harmony, engaging in fishing, hunting, and farming while emphasizing the importance of Black agrarian lives in the Kentucky hills and drawing parallels to the significance and critical role of George Washington Carver and many Black agrarians who were deeply connected to land and nature. Hooks acknowledges a sense of unity in which blood transcends race—a space where it can envision a future free from racial constraints. This vision seeks to erase the legacies of slavery, colonization, and white supremacy to create a world capable of restoring itself to its native roots, healing, and recovering from exploitation and oppression. Hooks advocates for a better future in which this vision is attainable: "I must live by, be provided and continue to provide me with the tools I need to survive whole in a postmodern world." The term ecofeminism particularly caught my attention, as Hooks distinguishes between gender feminism and land feminism, in which the latter takes the initiative to rehabilitate and heal lands that have suffered exploitation.

Although Hooks does not claim an identity as Appalachian, she expresses a solidarity and sense of belonging rooted in ancestors—Black, Native American, and white—all "people of one blood" who made their home in isolated landscapes, where they could invent themselves and taste freedom.'

In chapter 3, where we see the tension between freedom and captivity, Hooks introduces a 'black bear' navigating the landscape, symbolizing innocence and the fleeting nature of liberty. It alludes to a historical context of violence against nature, reflecting on the legacy of colonization and the inevitable return of hunters, suggesting a tragic cycle of

captivity and loss.

The chapter explores the tension between humanity's urge to control nature and the intrinsic freedom of animals, effectively highlighting the damaging effects of industrialization on natural landscapes. While hooks offers an interesting argument for the importance of wildness, it is essential to acknowledge that this viewpoint, though impactful, may overlook the intricacies of human-animal relationships and the vital role of stewardship in an evolving world.

How does Hooks argue for a more inclusive approach to environmentalism that acknowledges the intersecting impacts of race, class, and gender in Introduction: on reflection and lamentation?

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I can hardly summarize Rashid Johnson's solo exhibition better than he can, but the exhibition consists of over 90 pieces acting as an intermediary reflection of his own life - and lineage, who he has taken guidance from, what he is working towards as he reflections on contradictions be they within himself, the environment around him, and as he shares, so he can embody care in these relationships.

His film, On Sanguine reflections on his intermediary position as both a father and son, alongside his own father and son. Additionally, several of his works use poems by others he has drawn from, such as Toni Morrison and Gwendolyn Brooks.

Yet he is aware of the limitations of his own experiences of these lineages even as he calls upon materials he would use throughout his life, and how they point to a history he doesn't truly have access to, explaining this through his use of shea butter. He resolves and owns this contradiction through his earnestness in its use as a material in his work now, as well as his own curiosity. Through this curiosity he is constantly bearing witness and actively participating in this lineage of his, and the exhibition is meant to allow us to bear witness as well.

The exhibition itself is meant to be shared via public events, and a piano is integrated directly into Sanguine itself so it can be used for live events. He wants ongoing conversations and encourages active participation with his work.

For me ideas of democratization and sharing have often felt overblown and almost coercive in the age of surveillance capitalism. Yet for the most part he is only exposing himself and everyone he draws from. So my question is: what are the opportunities he hopes to share with witnesses, what comes with those high expectations that come with bearing witness? What does sharing and democratization look like for him?

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Rashid Johnson: A Poem for Deep Thinkers | The Guggenheim Museums and Foundation

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Explore Rashid Johnson’s major solo exhibition featuring nearly 90 works and dynamic performances in the museum’s rotunda.

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I really enjoyed reading Appalachian Elegy, especially the first few introductory pages. They gave me a strong foundation for how I should think about the poems that come after. bell hooks mixes poetry, memory, and land in a way that’s emotional and political at the same time. One thing that stood out to me from the beginning is how she talks about growing up with a kind of freedom. On page 2 she writes that she “experienced as a child anarchy, with the belief in the power of the individual to be self-determining.” (If anyone is interested in learning more about “self determination,” feel free to check out Gary Okihiro’s Subjects.)

Some themes that stood out to me in her poems are:

water

a deep relationship with nature (soil, rocks, hills)

animals like chickens and black birds

strong colors and vivid images

lamentation and crying out to mother nature

seasons, day and night

roots, culture, ancestors

colonialism and genocide

the constant presence of life and death

One other theme that really stood out to me was her use of ritual language and the way she treats certain places as spiritually meaningful. hooks often turns the land itself into a kind of sacred space. For example, in poem 31 she talks about “returning to sacred places” (pg. 41). In poem 39 she describes “ritual spaces” and writes about “altars in these hills, organic monuments” (pg. 49). Then in poem 49, she uses the word “anointing” when she describes starting the day with water. These moments made me notice how often she blends everyday nature with ideas of care, memory, and something almost ceremonial.

1. hooks writes that “the segregated world of my Kentucky childhood was the place where I lived beyond race.” How can a childhood be segregated but still feel like a space where someone lives “beyond race”?

2. What do you think she wants us to understand about returning to “sacred places” and creating “ritual spaces” in nature? How can those ideas shape healing or memory?

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I was struggling to find the right approach using my critical thinking surrounding this brilliant book 'Twisted, especially given that I am White with "Becky" hair. It is crucial to recognize the profound and painful experiences that Black women, in particular, have endured from slavery to the present day, where hair remains a politically and socially constructed and is respectfully taboo. The page 185 to me is where all comes down to as a creshendo where it dismantles white narrative and where past connects to the future and present is reconstructed or idelaly removed from history all together which would be preferrable but since we cant avoid whre it all strated, here is some historical reminders for those who live in delusion and ignorance; White hegemony is a familiar narrative since Christiannity enters the picture, when imperialism, colonialism, racism and capitalism creates the system of the altimuate superiority and opresssion targetting specifically indginious women, qeens, leaders, powerful mothers leadig the tribes adn families. Catholic churches, nuns, fake white feminists, who often lack the perspective needed to engage with these issues from an outsider's viewpoint, pretending to be saviors and civilizers in an already victimized world, to remove and degrade ancient history and culture that existed thousands of years B.C.

Recently, I came across an interview with Megan Kelly, who controversially implied that Black women "complain" about the time required for hair maintenance. She audaciously referenced Michelle Obama, accusing her of excluding White women from the conversation. Kelly's assertion that "spending money and time to take care of a woman's hair is not a Black thing; it's a woman thing" is a perfect example of how the media continues to promote a narrative steeped in White imperialism. How about not talking about it and instead emphasizing stereotypes and agendas? This narrative of superiority versus inferiority, and White hair versus Black hair, has been thrown around lightly by fake feminists, which undermines the historical and political history of the oppression that Black women have faced and endured for generations. Still, Bob Marley, Du Bois, and I would add Queen Nanny and Michelle Obama, who refused to see themselves through the eyes of colonizers. Marly's "The Redemption Song" is the "invitation" to "turn this shit down" and "reject that which rejected you." you do not need to further parpatuate psychotic colonial fantasies about who we are but here we are still reproducing the same norms""( Emma) The most important two sentences taht stuck with me and hopefully 300 years from now we get to live on this planet with unity and solidarity that reads: "We have freedom to design a reality of our own making one that recognizes our humanity and reflects our highest needs"

( Dabiri) We are once we have been waiting for"

Question: Does this book intersect with race, identity, and cultural appropriation across different societies? And if so, how can we connect other cultures, genders, and body politics to untangle the issues on a global spectrum?

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Twisted: The Tangled History of Black Hair Culture

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Twisted: The Tangled History of Black Hair Culture

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Emma Dabiri’s book Twisted: The Tangled History of Black Hair Culture is a love letter to Black hair that explores its deep connection to Black cultural identity as well as the way it is used as a racial sorting tool by the White gaze. Dabiri talks about her personal experiences with the racism that is coded into society’s perception and reactions to Black hair. She argues that the term ‘colorism’ falls short in explaining how proximity to whiteness and anti-Black racism play out in society because it does not include the way that hair texture participates in these dynamics. She also speaks about the spiritual power haircare holds in Yoruba culture and the ways that this, among other cultures and traditions, has influenced haircare in the African diaspora - specifically how these practices are passed down generationally and how they have been influenced by enslavement and colonization. Dabiri shares basic education for those unfamiliar with caring for Black hair, while explaining the extensive historical context of this incredibly personal and important aspect of Black identity.

My question is this; Dabiri talks about the connection with the past and the present through hair within Yoruba beliefs. With this in mind, what role does hair play in afrofuturist imaginings for the future?

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I was very excited to read Dabiri's book because of the history of Black hair's use in sharing messages.

Towards the end of her book, she talks about the way that hair braiding practices assume and impart knowledge of fractals, how to calculate distances, and then weaves this into a contrast between Africa's rich but oft forgotten history of mathematics with that of the West while also tracing parts of the later back to the former historically. She then describes her own relationship to mathematics through her hair as well as the tragedy of many whose talents went unrecognized. She also goes over mathematical concepts that were once neglected but now very relevant to computer programming, such as infinity.

It seems to me as if whiteness imposes legibility of practices, and yet, even as we look at the act of braiding as applied and embodied mathematics, the braids themselves were a meaningful means of secret keeping from plantation owners in the era of chattel slavery. Although she spoke on map making through hair directly, I am interested in to what extent Black epistemologies depend on illegibility toward whiteness, and how much these practices and their somatic inheritance has evolved around secret keeping for protection.

For Dabiri I wonder what it means to uncover this knowledge and express it beyond the body, in such a way that a reader like myself can try to understand this.

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I really enjoyed reading Twisted. The 2016 case at Pretoria High School in South Africa stood out to me as Emma Dabiri described how surprising it was for her to see natural hair policed in a place where Blackness is the majority. It reminded me of my own first shock learning about apartheid, and realizing how long white control over South Africa continued into the 1990s. I grew up knowing about racism in the United States, but I did not know about how colonization shaped South Africa so deeply as well. Reading this made me think about how colonization spread far beyond where we usually place it and how it continues to affect communities across the world, especially those that should have been safe in their own land, at least post colonization.

This incident also reminded me of something I have heard my professor, Dr. Oza, say many times, which is that education everywhere is about compliance. It raises the question of why hair should matter in the first place. Why would schools, places that claim to focus on learning, feel comfortable policing Black girls’ hair unless the goal is to shape them into a dominant standard. It shows how these institutions do more than teach content. They teach what is considered normal, acceptable, and valuable, and in this case the default ideology is one rooted in whiteness and hegemonic power.

Another thing I would like to mention is the part where Dabiri talks about Alice Walker coining the term colorism in 1983. I did not expect it to be that recent, and it made me think about other terminology I have learned in WGS and how new many of these concepts actually are. For example, the word gender only entered widespread academic use in the 1970s, and before then the word sex was used to describe both biological difference and social category. Sex could also refer to sexual activity, and sexuality was used to describe what we would now separate as sexual orientation. Over time, people created new language to name identity, experience, and the difference between body and desire. I find it exciting to learn how language shifts like this in gender studies and Indigenous studies, because it helps me understand how knowledge is always expanding.

Question : What would the world look like if Blackness did not have to negotiate for permission to exist?

I’d also like to say I added this picture because this was fascinating to learn about (also because it goes hand in hand with Mati’s point and what Marinella says in her post in the beginning  - I didn’t know exactly how to describe and understand this before Emma Dabiri’s breakdown because I definitely noticed that people of all races can have curls but after a certain curl pattern, that hair type is only unique to black people. Fascinating! Feeling kind of dumb writing this cause it seems like something I should know but yes