Tis' The Season To Be Reading Youth Empowerment Symposium
Join TheBlackManCan and The State of Black Conneticut Alliance for the ‘Tis the Season to be Reading Youth Empowerment Symposium. Speakers Include Eddie Connor Jr., Trenton Marsh, and Brandan Frame of the Black Man Can.
This is the pre-evening event for the Our Building Blocks of Educational Excellence Campaign which has its focus, to narrow Connecticut’s and America’s knowledge, skill and opportunity gap, and to build a parent, family, community engagement, and empowerment/mobilization effort within vulnerable communities. It is our target goal to be instrumental in implementing and sustaining best practice education, social justice and economic reforms. Where: Harding High School, Bridgeport, CT
*If you would like an event listed in your city submit your event at blackpositiveimage(at)gmail.com. We will do our best to get your event listed in our Black Positive Weekly Event Bulletin. Please submit all events one week prior to your event to ensure that we have time to submit and promote your event. We support events that are positive in nature for the Black Community, but keep in mind this is not a free advertising site for you event.
9th Anniversary: International Black Man Film Festival
Join me this Saturday in celebration of the International Black Man Film Festival. Through spoken work, speeches and movies, you can explore the trials and triumphs of Black men worldwide. Be apart of the dialogue, come out and support this wonderful event!!!
Where: Auburn Avenue Research Library, 101 Auburn Avenue NE Atlanta GA 30303-2503
For more information please contact the Festival Director, Yemi Toure at 404-432-2194 or via e-mail at info@blackmanfilmfest.net
*If you would like an event listed in your city submit your event at blackpositiveimage(at)gmail.com. We will do our best to get your event listed in our Black Positive Weekly Event Bulletin. Please submit all events one week prior to your event to ensure that we have time to submit and promote your event. We support events that are positive in nature for the Black Community, but keep in mind this is not a free advertising site for you event.
You Don't Know My Story is a campaign geared towards recognizing self prosperity through reflection and appreciation that everyone has a life story worth telling.
Black Positive Image has partnered with an 8th grade after school program in Atlanta, Georgia that serves as a vessel in continuing this campaign. We plan to create a booklet of submissions for the young ladies involved in the character development program and also post them to a blog site created for the campaign.
Help us bring this campaign to life! All we ask is that you take the time to share your story so that young ladies and people around can learn, reflect, and grow.
Submission Details: v Female Submissions Only v Stories should e mailed to: knowmystory@gmail.com v Length: 1-2 pages single spaced v Submissions can be Anonymous v We encourage you to invite your network to help keep this campaign alive. v Understand by submitting a story you give us permission to use it for the printed booklet. However, we will still make selections based on the quantity received. Please specify if you would like to remove your submission from being posted on a blog. Dates:
v Deadline : 4/12/10 v Notified of use for Booklet: 4/23/10 v Booklet made by :5/4/10
Thank you in advance for helping bring this campaign alive and helping young ladies experience triumph through your lens.
The main goal of Black Positive Image is to bring awareness to the positive aspects of the Black community. Oftentimes we are so saturated and bogged down with negative images, language, and reinforcement in the Black community, many of us become sightless and oblivious of the idea that positive elements of Black people do exist. Positive Black people are not the exception to the rule in our community. There are more Black men and woman in influential places than Obama and Oprah; they are not the voice of Black people.
At any given time, I can turn on the radio, television, read a newspaper, or engage in casual conversation amongst my peers and hear stereotypical latent convictions about the Black community. Some of these stereotypes are dressed in laughter; some are surrounded by sarcasm masked with a laugh out loud or just kidding behind them. Many Black people have taken these stereotypes and have embedded them in the culture of being a Black American. Being late and uneducated is now synonymous with being Black, to the point where having an education and being on time refers to "acting/being White" (an opposing force of being Black).
We have coaches from schools all over the country, even in high school, combing Black neighborhoods for the next Michael Jordan, because Black people can run and jump, really well. People are shocked and amazed when a Black person does not like to indulge in fried chicken, covered in hot sauce, washed down by Kool-Aid with watermelon for dessert. Black woman are portrayed as if they have bobble heads, attitudes, and an addiction to snapping fingers and sucking their teeth. Black men are viewed as good for nothing dogs, literally, with an end destination of jail as their play pen.
There have been systems set up to continue to permeate stereotypes as fact, not fiction. Our school systems are failing our children, with all the knowledge we have yet to understand that some children learn in varying ways. Some children need to be engaged beyond taking notes on a chalk board, yet are children, especially Black boys, are labeled as deviant to education and placed in slow education classes. As the education system continues to not enforce education, alternative teaching, or support for our youth, slowly our children are disappearing from the classrooms.
These stereotypes are not just written by "society" or "the man", many Blacks have begun to stereotype each other, pointing fingers and labeling each other as less than or greater than. This divide can be witnessed in the separate societies we have created within ourselves, Light-skinned vs. Dark-skinned, Native Africans vs. African Americans, Bourgeoisie vs. Ghetto, and Good Hair vs. Bad Hair. All of these divisions are fueled with stereotypes. We have more stereotypes regarding the Black race than any other race and unlike frugal Jewish people (a stereotype of Jews) our stereotypes are killing us.
The stereotypes in the Black community are the leading cause of death in the community. These stereotypes have plagued our culture, future generations, our relationships, and have begun to diminish our individuals from the inside-out. The media is very adamant and set on presenting numbers to support the stereotypes in reference to the Black community. Numbers and statistics are the Black communities’ worst enemy. Numbers are attacking us disproportionately (i.e. obesity, teen pregnancies, HIV/AIDS, incarceration, etc.) in all aspects and right behind the numbers lie stereotypes that continue to feed the fire of these statistics.
Surely through this blog post I am not going to be able to change the stereotypes of Blacks in America. My expression of this topic in the Black community is to bring awareness to an issue that many people think is apart of Black culture. Through awareness comes knowledge and when you know better you do better. I had to take some time out to evaluate myself and where I stand in regards to perpetuating and fighting stereotypes. I realize the jokes aren't funny and it's time to check myself and check my peers in regards to how we talk about Blacks in America. I refuse to take aid in killing my own people, there are enough things killing us already.
I don't know how I forget to tell you how beautiful you are everyday, when your beauty is constantly staring me in my face, my mouth should fluidly spill your praises of beauty. For all the times I neglected to tell you how beautiful you are, I apologize. I don't know what I would do without your smile, your lips, your eyes, the varying shades of your ebony skin, my world would be incomplete without your soft skin to touch. You are beyond amazing in so many ways, sometimes I slip between the cracks of your smile and wonder how; through all you have been through your radiance still shines. You are the essence of what is great in my world.
I don't know how I let the media get a hold of my beautiful Black Queen and degrade her in ways that made her begin to feel that it was alright. I am sorry you have endured such manipulation of your self worth. I am the one who was supposed to protect you from the hurt and the pain, yet fed into these images, my mind became warped also, I apologize. I don't know if you will ever be able to forgive me, for I have left you many times bearing our children alone or leaving you to defend against the world, I am sorry. I could blame it on a lot of things, but I know it was wrong and I am here to offer my most sincere apology to you.
Your name is stitched in my backbone, for your strength is something I never had on my own. You straighten me up, you straighten me out, you bring the best out of me for all the right reasons and I love you for that. Sometimes my ego may interfere with my ability to admit my emotions and sing you your praises, but I would resurrect Lenny Williams, just so he could sing to you as you rose every morning, Cause I Love You! I love you beyond the anger that has been instilled in my heart and if you listen carefully I am trying to speak the language in which you need to hear. This translation of love has been difficult, but I work at it everyday. And yes, you are right, the universal actions of love don't need to be spoken, let me get that for you.
I am sure there have been many times when I have come close to destroying you, but I know you still have a heart. Can I hold your heart? I promise not to hurt it again, I just want to hold the weight of the world and see how it feels. I want to repair a few broken pieces I know I may have caused. I figure if I kiss your heart you would feel my love faster and truly feel how sorry I am, for ever hurting you. I don't know how many other ways I can tell you I am sorry, but rest assure, I will not give up trying. I am not sure how many languages I can say I love you, but rest assure, I am not done learning.
Your gentleness caressed me in the womb and even when I am not around you, I can feel your love, momma thank you. You loved me before I knew what love was, girlfriend thank you. You believed in me past all my faults and shortcomings, grandma thank you. You changed the definition of a boy to a man years after I reached adulthood, wife thank you. You have birthed my children, mother to my child thank you. You put up with me when everyone wanted to give up on me, sister thank you. Your support changed my life, auntie thank you. Your distance and loving favor keeps me guided, cousin thank you. It is is every capacity that I need you! It is in every capacity that I love you!
We may not say it everyday, but we need you. We need you here with us all the time, shining your light as bright as we can. We need your smile, your heart, your skin adorned in the lightest shades to the darkest. We need your locs, we need your braids, we need your low cut fades. We need your talk and we need that confidence we see in your walk. We need you.
We can not spell the word strength without you, for you are the strongest thing that we know. You are our rock. The center of our existence, for without you we have nothing. Your loyalty is something we have never seen, very unfamiliar to us, but we need you to teach us those things. You may not always say the right things and may not always do the right things either, but it's alright everyone makes mistakes.
We would like to apologize for all the times we did not say we loved you. Called you stupid and encouraged you to drop out of school, yet still upholding you to be a man of the house and enforcing "By Any Means Necessary" into your heart. Making you feel uncomfortable to the point where the streets became your home. Making it acceptable for you to walk out on your own children. Allowing prison to be your rite of passage and college to be another goal in which you could never obtain.
We apologize for making our sons hate you if you weren't or couldn't be there. We are sorry for not raising you because your father wasn't there, only loving you to a certain point, because we didn't want to love into not being a man. We apologize for our standards of what a man should be, we apologize for degrading you for choices you have made.
We would like to apologize for belittling you at every chance we got because we needed someone to blame our problems on. We apologize for ever using the N-word to refer to your faults and encouraging our woman that you will never be shit. We apologize for believing in what others say about you to the point where we have given up on you ourselves!!! We are SORRY!!! We have upheld you to high standards, not to see you fail, but because we know your potential. You are King-like, royalty in our eyes and although we may not be able to express it, we just want to see you shine.
If we could take away any of the pain that you have been caused we would. Run our fingers through your hair, kiss you on the forehead, look you in the eyes and let you know how sorry we are. Embrace you with all our love, hold you tight and whisper in your ear that you are our guiding light. Without you, we would not be half of who we are today. Massage your back to support you. Kiss you on your feet because we worship the ground you walk on. Caress you all over your body, make love to ever piece of your soul, eradicating all the pain and hurt. If we could; we would.
No amount of tears, or number of apologies can replace the hurt in which you endured, but we are here now to tell you, we need you, more than ever now. In anyway you can be there for us we need you. We need you guiding us, we need you by our side. We need you to be the reflection of the sun in our sky.
We need you dad, we need you brother, we need you uncle, we need you son, we need you father to our children, we need you husband, we need you grandfather, we need you cousin, we need you boyfriend, we need you best friend, we need you in any capacity that you can be there for us.
We want you home resting your head on our bosom cause it is your knowledge that we need to speak to our hearts. Your potential is unearthing and we are uplifting you in every way. We apologize for all the negative images, portrayals and thoughts that ever made you feel like we didn't want or need you. We have been yelling and fighting so long we forgot to LISTEN, but we are ready to hear your story NOW!!!
Black Positive Image (BPI) is birthed out of the mind of Brittney Greene, a student/writer whose interest continues to remain in the Black community. BPI aims to remove, restructure, and reaffirm minds that have been saturated with negative images of Black society by providing an interactive visual board of positive elements that do exist in the Black community.
Throughout her childhood and as she progressed through school, Brittney always had an interest in the true history of Blacks in America, her ancestry and the African heritage in which she derived from. By exploring other means and outlets such as reading books and magazines, as well as supporting black owned businesses, she expanded her knowledge beyond the portrayals that she viewed through mass media outlets and what she learned in school regarding the Black community.
As she journeyed into college and the bustling work place, her interest in the Black community has never swayed and has only increased to encompass more ways to make an impact in the community. Studying to become a Relationship/Sex Psychologist her emphasis will be on marriages and families in relation to the Black community, her independent writings will mainly focus on this aspect as well. With more than just an appreciation for culture and history, as the years went on Brittney became disheartened by the images, commentary, and seemingly consistent bad news regarding the Black community that prevails in the media, news, gossip sites, etc. In turn, Brittney decided to launch a website that counteracted these negative images by highlighting positive images that can also be found in the Black community.
Brittney is a firm believer in the principle, that the energy we exert with our actions, minds, and thought process often determines how we live our life, the opportunities awarded to us, and our reactions towards others. Having and broadcasting a positive attitude, prospective, lifestyle, and mentality should only breed more positivity. It is hope that this broadcast and the highlighting of a black positive image will not only inform and educate others on history/culture, but also begin to slowly improve subjective thinking regarding the Black image in America .
