Where to turn...

There's an incredibly interesting series running on HBO that I think you all should check out called "The Black List". It explores Black folks from all sorts of backgrounds in our popular culture of literature, entertainment, sports, politics, and art and how they identify with the black experience. What was particularly interesting to me was Part 1 opened with Slash, the guitarist from Guns n Roses. Much to my surprise, I didn't even know he was black, as he adds in his excerpt most people don't. The goal of the series is to "resuscitate" a negative term of "black list" which is usually associated with ostracizing a group of people and transforming it into a list of people who have transcended the parameters of expected failure.


Almost everyone was extremely poignant but the person who spoke most to me was Toni Morrison. She was able to put into a phrase what I have been trying to do for SO long. She said, "When you have no access to the political life or the governmental life or the institutional life of your world you do reinvent or invent a reliance on religion, magic, something else." For decades, not just black folks, but I think a faction of America in general, sometimes holds onto to religion almost as a scapegoat when they fail to seek outside themselves, their realm or their knowledge base. It is the manifestation of ignorance and it gets passed down generation to generation. Perhaps a crippling factor to our institutions and our kind as a whole. Religion itself, when you break it down is in fact a man made institution (die hard Christians hear me out). The bible for example, has been rewritten countless times by men, mere mortals. When it comes to religion its a battle between faith and how much you swallow essentially. But for a mass of our nation, it's almost crippling in that this "reliance" becomes the end all be all. Religion is the answer instead of education which is so limiting for so many. And not to say that our educational system is an equal playing field but we are striving to make it so (Obama Obama Obama!).

Here is her excerpt explaining "The Bluest Eye"...


All in all I urge you to check this project out...def worth the veg...