A Letter To My Same Gender Loving Ancestors By Louis "Azucar Negro" Farmer

                                      

A Letter To My Same Gender Loving Ancestors

by Louis "Azucar Negro" Farmer

(A Guest Nubian Knight's Perspective)

I don’t know you, but I feel your presence.

You, my ancestors, the ones who loved the SAME gender.

You, my ancestors, who often were the ones that possessed the ability to communicate with the dead or offer spiritual harmony to family, tribes, villages, the physical and spiritual world. Yet, able to love the same gender with no questions or frowns.

You were respected, revered, considered sacred, admired, sought after, and most of all LOVED by our people.

You were called many spiritual names by others since the beginning of time, before slavery, during slavery and after slavery: sooth sayer, gate keeper, priest, priestesses, sangoma, elder, mambo, iya, babalao, houngan, mambo, santero, ialorixá, babalorixá.

I feel your magic, power, supernatural abilities, love for nature and animals in me.

Thank You!

You, like your other tribe members, were captured by the so called “God Fearing Europeans” and by our very own misguided, greedy and foolish hearted brothers and sisters.

You also had wives, husbands, boyfriends, a mother, a father, siblings, aunts, grandmothers, grandfathers and clans. How did you keep their memories as you were torn away from them, never to see them again?
 

You, my ancestors, loved the same gender before the identities to ‘explain’ who and what we are were given to us. Yes, there was a time before we felt the need to identify as
‘Gay’
‘Queer’
‘Homosexual’
‘Bisexual’
‘Transgender’

Some of these words  make many cringe, while others celebrate being associated with them.

Some have found solace with the various sexual identities, while others have fallen further into an emotional hell because of them.

You must be shaking your heads while seeing many of us follow more of an often constricted, culturally insensitive and manipulated sexual identity  while  wandering aimlessly, spiritless and empty seeking approval and acceptance from others who give less than a damn about us, your children.

You, my ancestors were in the bowels of the slave castles, asking yourself, like the others around you “why?”

Both men and women regardless of sexual orientation were raped at the hands of savages who saw themselves as saviors spreading the word of Christ or Allah.

Many of you fought, more died and countless survived the Middle Passage.

How did you do it? How did you deal with a once alive but now dead body chained to you on the ship headed to the new world, as it rotted and gave a toxic odor in front, behind, above and below you? How did you deal with seeing your brothers and sisters die one by one on a ship bound for the new world? How could you stomach the scraps and moldy food given to you for nourishment while smelling feces, urine, puss, blood, vomit and peeling flesh?
 
How did you my ancestors, handle strange hands touching your body, every crevice being  pulled, tugged, pinched, sometimes burned?

How did you keep faith, or did you lose it?

No, you didn’t lose faith because the Orishas and Loas came with you during this horrible, heinous, and soul wrenching trip. Many African Gods and Goddesses wept with you. And many more spirits sank to the bottom of the ocean with the dead Africans thrown off of the ships, as well as those that chose death over slavery, and jumped to the depths of the ocean to be in the arms of Olokun, Yemaya, Mami Wati, Agwe, La Sirine and many more.

My same gender loving ancestors what was it like to be pulled up from the hull of the ship to a new land? I can only imagine what it was like to see a sea of White smiling faces surrounded by angry, sad, sullen and strong Black faces.

How did you handle being forced to worship a God that looked nothing like you? When the Catholic priests threw ‘holy water’ on you as you marched in a line chained to one another and branded, were you confused? What went through your mind as your  natural beliefs had to stop or be hidden behind Catholic saints?

Were you angry or did you laugh at the idiot slave masters who had no clue that you were indeed establishing another way to preserve OUR Gods and Goddesses?

I have read many slave narratives that many of you left. Often the meanings about same sex relationships were discussed in secret and hushed tones. When you talked of slavery you probably already felt that discussing being a slave was enough, let alone discussing loving the same gender to a Christian White person recording your experiences.

I know that many same gender loving men were forced to fuck, suck and feed their male masters.  Oh the anger I feel for ALL of my people.

I know many of you lived openly in a same gender relationship, living together as a couple. Oh yes, it was documented. Yet, many don’t want to believe it.

How horrendous was it for my female same gender loving sisters alongside with their straight sisters to be treated as cattle, forced to “breed” with and/or marry men.  I know that many of you were raped mentally, sexually and physically just like your non same gender loving people at the hands of overseers, masters, mistresses, owners, slave traders and slave catchers.

But I also know many fought, maimed and sometimes killed those that dared to touch you!

What was it like my same gender loving ancestors if you were deemed effeminate or soft by your master and made to be a house slave? You had to have been upset, hurt and angry. But this is not to say that some of you weren’t field slaves too.

How did you, my more masculine male and female same gender loving ancestors, handle often being a field slave because you were deemed to be a stronger ‘buck’ or ‘wench’, when often your ‘lover’ was in the big house, or even working next to you picking cotton?

Are you upset that so many so called Afro centric speakers and writers today dismiss your existence during slavery, minimize your presence or claim that White people ‘made’ you gay? I can only imagine what it was like for you to hold your head up high as you long to be next to the one you love, while being forced to ‘make babies’ with a stranger and not losing your mind when the children are sold away, abused or even killed.

You were clever my same gender loving ancestors when many of you used the bible to free your people. You were called preacher, prophet, minister and other names. Dispensing advice, solace and encouragement to your flock.

Yet, still a slave.

When you ran away with your boyfriend or girlfriend, holding hands in the dark, avoiding the slave catchers with their barking dogs, how did you know to wrap hot peppers on the bottom of your feet and on your clothes to throw off your scent from the dogs pursuing you?

How did you know how to make the Voodoo bags called gris gris to protect the runaways including yourself from being caught?

How did many of you feel participating in slave rebellions and dying for freedom?
 
My same gender loving ancestors, I have vivid dreams about being a slave. I have visions of being at a camp fire and instructing others what to do as we plot our escape. I have also had dreams of being a slave and sold away as a teenager screaming and begging to stay. I have had dreams of running away for freedom with a blue black muscular man, who loves me with all of his heart, both ready to die for our love and our freedom.

Are you trying to send me a message?

Is it to not……….forget?

I shall not.

I shall not.

Accept "Except" - A Play By Karimah Directed by George Faison Starring Ceez Liive & Tyree Young @ Faison Firehouse Theatre (Harlem, NYC)

 

Official Website: www.faisonfirehouse.org

TONY AWARD WINNER GEORGE FAISON CELEBRATES GAY PRIDE IN HARLEM WITH NEW PLAY ACCEPT "EXCEPT" LGBT NY BEGINNING JUNE 21, 2012 THRU JULY 22ND Accept "Except" LGBT NY, written by Karimah, has a cast led by spoken word artist/poet Cynthia Keteku, known as Ceez Liive and Tyree Young. Lighting Design by Thurston Reyes and Costume Design by Project Runway and Tony Award nominee (The Gershwin's Porgy and Bess) Esosa. Accept "Except" LGBT NY is about the struggle for justice in America from slavery to modern day Gay Rights. It tells the story of two gay twenty year olds running from the Law, a male from the 18th Century and a female from the 21st century.

    Faison Firehouse Theatre
6 Hancock Place (off of 124th Street)

Between St.Nicholas and Morningside Avenues
Harlem, New York City 10027
Phone: 212-665-7698
E-mail: mail[at]faisonfirehouse.org
Website: www.faisonfirehouse.org

GOOGLE MAPS

Tickets: $20.00

Thursday July 5, 2012, check listing

Friday July 6, 2012, check listing

Saturday July 7, 2012, check listing

Sunday July 8, 2012, check listing

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Tuesday July 10, 2012, check listing

Wednesday July 11, 2012, check listing

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Saturday July 14, 2012, check listing

Sunday July 15, 2012, check listing

Monday July 16, 2012, check listing

Running Until July 22nd, 2012 

Race-Talk: What If There Is No Recovery?

www.race-talk.org

What if there is no recovery?
Featured — By Eric Stiens on January 26, 2010 at 7:34 am

“Anyone who believes exponential growth can go on forever in a finite world is either a madman or an economist” — Kenneth Boulding

“The money changers have fled from their high seats in the temple of our civilization. We may now restore that temple to the ancient truths. The measure of the restoration lies in the extent to which we apply social values more noble than mere monetary profit.” — FDR

For years, economists and others have tried to avoid the question of what a just and fair distribution of wealth would look like by holding tight to the tacit assumption of unlimited exponential growth of both the US economy and the global economy. This is not only the worldview of trickle-down economics or of the American Right. It is also the worldview of poverty alleviation strategies (from the individual to international development) that rely on theories of change that move people up the existing economic ladder – as if, with the right combination of asset-building, credit, and education, all people can eventually become middle-class, or, with a little fiscal austerity and the right public policies, all countries can eventually consume as much per capita as the United States.

Even those strenuously arguing that we must change how we are cutting the pie slices rarely question the need for (or the ability of) the overall pie to grow. Yet the protracted global economic downturn must give us pause to at least ask, “What happens if the pie cannot grow? What happens if the pie must shrink?” What would justice and equity look like in a global economy that must go through a long and deep contraction? What if that contraction, in fact, is permanent?

Most of the debate around the recovery has been about what it will look like – V shaped or W-shaped, quick or slow, jobless or not. We have had discussions (but not enough) about what we must do to make sure that the various stimulus plans lessen racial disparities rather than exacerbate them. However, the presence of something called “recovery” has not been questioned. Instead, it has been taken for granted that this downtown is the result of the unwinding of a speculative bubble centered in real-estate and that it would eventually hit bottom and turn around.

Yet, in the great scheme of things, this is a small speculative bubble. The past hundred (or 300, depending on how you look at it) years have seen massive exponential growth in population, in resource use, in wealth – driven by our access to what has been nearly-free energy. We found a way to turns billions of years of fossil-fuels into a seemingly unlimited piggy bank and made up stories about unending progress, the triumph of technology, manifest destiny, etc to justify our use of it. The ruling class, acting as ruling classes do, found a way to siphon tremendous amounts of this wealth up to the top of the pyramid.

To put it bluntly, there is a chance (how large that chance is is left up to the judgment of the reader), that there will be no return to business as usual, no return to an economy driven by unsustainable amounts of debt and resource use, no way to return to the economic growth that we have come to view as essential. That between global climate change and the peaking of various resource extraction rates (oil the key one), we are globally stuck between a rock and a hard place. That there will be no recovery, at least if recovery is a synonym for a return to the ways things were two years ago.

Our reluctance to accept industrial collapse as a possibility comes from not only a shortsightedness that thinks the last 40 years can be repeated over and over without a Great Depression, but that the last 300-500 years can be replayed over and over – that industrial civilization and Western style capitalism and democracy is the pinnacle of human achievement and things are, with some lulls, always on their way up. It is, quite simply, a type of denial.

The incredible affluence of the American Empire and the process of Industrialization has always required systematic denial just as surely as it has required oil and the specialization of labor.

A denial of the slavery and genocide that it was built upon. A denial of limits to growth and ecological boundaries. A denial of the extreme wealth concentration it made possible, and the denial that we live in a society that much more closely resembles a plutocracy than a meritocracy.

A denial of the connection between wealthy white suburbs and concentrated Black poverty present in the inner-core of most cities.

A denial of the exploitation that has always gone hand in hand with expansion – coal miners dead of black lung, strikers shot by police, children working 15 hours a day in sweatshops, indigenous peoples the world over wiped out so we could have access to their resources.

A denial of the control apparatuses of the State – the military industrial complex and the prison industrial complex, with their disproportionate effects on communities (and nations) of color.

And lastly, denial of the incredible psychic and emotional toll that living so far out of balance with the earth and out of relationship with each other has created – the hollow emptiness of 21st Century affluence.

However, even if we are now in the decline phase of the industrial process, this does not give as an excuse not to talk about justice and equity. I am not proposing handwringing or absolving anyone of responsibilities (“Well, if things are that bad, there’s nothing we can do.”) If anything, it makes it more essential, and it may just make it possible to root this discussion in worldview that is less consumed by denial and desire and more in touch with the truths of being part of multiple communities – human and non-human.

I believe that, for those of us with privilege, much of our unwillingness to talk deeply and seriously about what a just and equitable world would look like comes from a deep seated fear that things are going to be taken from us. When it becomes clear that those things are disappearing whether we like it or not, it provides space to move beyond that fear into the world of possibilities behind it. As the myths and stories that have propped up the 20th century begin to crumble, we will have the opportunity to write new stories, to create new myths – to literally create new selves.

Over the next few months I hope to talk about what systems thinking and systems science methodologies have to offer racial justice activists and social scientists examining racial disparities. However, I would be remiss as a systems thinker if I did not use my first blog post to draw attention to the elephant in the room – limits to growth and the inevitable failure of any socioeconomic system that relies on unlimited growth to sustain itself.

N.B. While I was writing this post, this headline came over my feed reader. BBC – Economic Growth Cannot Continue
Written by: Eric Stiens on January 26, 2010.

A Past, Denied: The Invisible History of Slavery in Canada, A New Documentary Film

Official Website: apastdenied.ca

History is not the past, it is how we recount the past. A Past, Denied: The Invisible History of Slavery in Canada is a feature-length documentary by independent filmmaker Mike Barber. The film, which is currently in production, explores how a false sense of history—both taught in the classroom and repeated throughout our national historical narrative—impinges on the present. It examines how 200 years of institutional slavery during Canada’s formation has been kept out of Canadian classrooms, textbooks and social consciousness.

The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade effectively started in 1444 when Portuguese pirates, operating under the auspices of Prince Henrique, kidnapped 235 Africans from a village near the mouth of the Senegal River and brought them back to Portugal where they were sold as slaves. From that point forward, over 15,000,000 Africans would be forcibly removed from their homeland and sold into slavery in Europe and the Americas; over 30,000,000 others would die in slave wars, work camps, or during transit aboard slave ships until the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade ended in the 1860s.

Today in North America, the use of African slave labour is seen as a uniquely American institution. Canada is reputed as being the promised land to the North to where slaves could escape and live as free men and women. The Underground Railroad is our claim to fame, and we toot that horn proudly. Our history textbooks—and much less, our national historical narrative—rarely, if ever mention the two centuries of institutionalized slavery and its role in the founding of Canada.

The version of history taught in Canadian schools tends to serve the interests of nationalist pride rather than education. Figures such as René Bourassa, Colin McNabb, Joseph Papineau and Peter Russell have been made into historical icons, honoured in our texts and on our landscape. All were slave owners and some were rabid advocates of slavery, though today one would never know it. Among the multitude of authoritative biographies on such founding figures, these facts have a tendency to escape any mention, either because the authors chose not to include these facts or because they simply were not aware. Whether this act of censorship is intentional or not the error is compounded, the cycle of ignorance is perpetuated.
History Matters

The subtle underlying message this selective and filtered history conveys is one of white superiority. When students are taught that it is only white people who tend to do anything of historical importance it effectively instills them with a “white people belong on top, people of colour belong on the bottom” outlook on the world. Fed the same false sense of history, white students feel good about their heritage at the expense of non-white students who feel alienated to the point that they begin to tune out. According to figures from the Toronto District School Board, by age 16 more than half of black male teens are at risk of dropping out. In Montréal, the dropout rate among black youth is an estimated 48 per cent. The history curriculum is not solely responsible for these alarming statistics, but it is culpable.

There is a direct cause-and-effect relationship with our collective past and our collective present, as well as our collective future. To fully understand the context of current conflicts and events, we need to know the relevant past and its causal relationship. In his book Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong, historian and sociologist James Loewen explains “slavery’s twin legacies” to the present as “the social and economic inferiority it conferred upon blacks and the cultural racism it instilled in whites.” Both of which, he adds, “continue to haunt our society.” Removing this substantial part of our nation’s development from our historical narrative is not just an academic or moral problem. It has deprived and continues to deprive generations of the ability to identify “the dynamic interplay between slavery as a socioeconomic system and racism as an idea system.”

The film will show the connections between the practice of slavery in the past with racial disparity, tensions, and racism in the present. It will illustrate why telling history in a neutral, accurate and more complete manner is vital to understanding the causal relationship between past, present and future. The overarching point being more than just “history matters,” but rather honest history matters.

The Middle Passage: White Ships | Black CargoArt by Tom Feelings Introduction by Dr. John Henrik Clarke80 Pages

I received my copy of the book in the mail today and Tom Feelings' ART is nothing short of incredible, yet viscerally disturbing at the same time; a dichotomy. I had to share some of the images though. Y'all should out up the book whether it be Hue Man's Bookstore in Harlem, NYC or Amazon.com - Worth every penny!


Look on...

ALL ARTWORK FROM THE MIDDLE PASSAGE
© TOM FEELINGS

The Paths To Which Africans Were Brought To The Americas

Click The Picture To Enlarge

CLICK HERE FOR MORE PICTURES FROM
THE MIDDLE PASSAGE BOOK
AT THE JUNETEENTH WEBSITE HERE

I downloaded the following pictures a couple of years ago. They are floating around on the 'Net on various message boards, blogs and such. Various sources (apparently copying each other like I'm doing here) say:

The four photographs below were taken in 1868 of African aboard a Dutch ship HMS Daphne, intercepted and taken from Arab slaving dhow in the Indian Ocean; source not yet known

Children of Our Ancestors of the Middle Passage 1
Royal Naval Ship 1868

Children of Our Ancestors of the Middle Passage 2
Royal Naval Ship 1868

Children of Our Ancestors of the Middle Passage 3
Royal Naval Ship 1868

Children of Our Ancestors of the Middle Passage 4

Royal Naval Ship 1868

"Besouro" (Beetle) (2009) An Afro-Brazilian Film Set in 1920s BahiaAbout Legendary Brazilian Capoeira Fighter Besouro Mangangá

Official Website: besouroofilme.com.br/

One Version of the Besouro Poster

Hey AFRICAN FAM,

A friend of mine dropped this film to me via email which looks like a little jewel with a big heart about the African Diaspora and I wanted to share this with y'all! I'm hoping Besouro (Beetle) comes to the States. Because I live in New York City the chances of us New Yorkers seeing it is much greater. I really want to see this film. One of the videos below is the theatrical trailer and the other video is a sneak peek of more footage from the film and a behind-the-scenes look of the choreography. As a budding filmmaker the fight choreography sequences with the camera movements were particularly gratifying to watch!! Whhuuuuhhhhhooo! LOL!

ROD (aka BIG ROD)

Synopsis/Background Info:

One of the biggest productions in the history of Brazilian cinema, Besouro (Beetle) is a film about the life of legendary Brazilian Capoeira fighter Besouro Mangangá from Bahia in search of his mission.

Besouro is confirmed for a theatrical release in Brazil in October 2009 with international launches to follow. Directed by João Daniel Tikhomiroff, Besouro is an action movie set in 1920s Bahia, the story of a legendary Capoeira fighter who uses the power of Candomble (an Afro-Brazilian religion) to fight the harsh conditions which, even post-abolition, the African population endured in Brazil. With action director Huan-Chiu Ku (Kill Bill; The Matrix; Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon) the film promises spectacular stunt sequences and a soundtrack featuring Gilberto Gil, Naná Vasconcelos, Rica Amabis, Tejo and Naçao Zumbi’s Pupillo.

Besouro (Beetle) - Theatrical Trailer (2:26)

Besouro (Beetle)
Film Footage And A Behind-The-Scenes Look (4:02)

UPDATE (Saturday, July 2nd, 2011):

I just found out this week that Besouro is now released on DVD through an independent company called Ikano Filem Sdn. I got my copy from Amazon.com



Now I should point out that the Besouro DVD has been in and out of stock and that there are different versions of the film. I have the Besouro [2010, Brazil] [Official Slipcase Edition] which Amazon had 5 in stock at the time that I ordered. I went back a day later, and saw that only 1 was in stock. Since then it's hit or miss if Amazon has it. If you SEE IT, BUY IT!

There' also the Besouro [Import] (2010) version. I don't know and can't verify if the later version has the special features or not, or if the quality of the disc transfer is the same as the slipcase version that I have. Keep checking Amazon, or check your own DVD merchant resources.

The running time of the film is 94 minutes. The special features of the disc consists of Making of, Art Direction, Direction of Photography, Behind-the-Scenes, Action Choreography and Sound Editing.

Because I've been busy with editing some dance theater pictures and attending the International African Arts Festival, I haven't had a chance to watch the film except for the first minute, and the quality of the transfer looks good. I'm chomping at the bit to watch the whole film, and will report back on the film's quality and the special feature extras.


UPDATE (Sunday, July 10th, 2011):

Finally got a chance to sit down and watch the whole film and it's DOPE! The film print transfer is really nice and zero problems with the disc. NOW GO OUT AND GET IT!...


UPDATE (Wednesday, July 13th, 2011):

Short story...

After waiting over 2 YEARS for someone to exhibition the film in New York City, I finally got to see a film screening exhibition of a 35mm print of the film at the Museum of the Moving Image in Astoria, Queens, NYC 3 months ago on Sunday, April 17th, 2011. The theater was medium sized and was packed. It was so packed that they had to call the museum crew in to physically bring in addition seats and place them at the back of the theater to accommodate people Including me! LOL!).

The crowd cheered and roared and moaned at different points in the film. I really felt like a little kid seeing this film. Even though this film ould be considered a low budget movie by Hollywood standards, it's HEART, I THINK, is bigger than some of these $150-200 million dollar block/boom-bust-busters. A came away with a feeling I will rarely get to experience in my entire lifetime as a movie-goer of African descent. Why do I say that? Well, because I saw a group of people with skin complexions on screen that looked liked me, the protagonist/hero who reflected my aspirations/fears/mistakes/truths like me, and a film devoid of eurocentrity and so full of African affirmations that I just won't see from a major Hollywood film. I was so charged and pumped up after leaving the theater. It's hard to ever remember feeling like that from a personal Africnetric perspective.

Besouro is such an Africentric affirming film on soooooooooo many level. Depending on your perspective one may like the action/martial arts aspect of it incorporating the art of Capoeira, or perhaps root for the independence of a struggling Afro-Brazilian people from slavery in 1920s Bahia with the hope and leadership of the Besouro character (which is based on a real person and Capeiora fighter called Besouro Mangangá), or you may relate to the infusion of the African Orishas such as Exu, Ogum, Ossain and, Oxun, or you may vibe with the religious undertones of Candomblé and the overall mysticism of the film. Take your pick as I love the layering of all these elements in this film... And the extras of the DVD was awesome. Only got through one of them so far, and it was amazing!!

For me one of the best films in a long while... just different and un-American and non-formulaic in it's story-telling approach. NOW GO OUT AND GET IT ON DVD! AND, IF YOU CAN SEE A FILM SCREENING SOMEONE, (WHETHER YOU HAVE THE DVD OR NOT), IT'S WORTH SEEING ON THE BIG SCREEN FOR MAXIMUM IMPACT!!!

Besouro and African Orisha Exu




Besouro Fighting Quero-Quero




African Orisha Oxun (Oshun / Ochun)




Orisha Exu and Besouro




Noca de Antônia, The Racist Overlord




Besouro




African Orisha Exu





Besouro and Dinorá