The Goddess Professor Speaks

I saw an article and then watched the trailer for the upcoming film Netflix's  Concrete Cowboy , starring Lorraine Toussaint, Idris Elba, Cliff “Method Man” Smith, and Caleb McLaughlin (the sole Black kid in Netflix's  Stranger Things ). The article from The Root opens with a simple question: "When did you first learn that Black cowboys exist?" In the article, a few of the film's actors offer a few answers:  Bob Marley's " Buffalo Soldiers " (about the all Black calvary regimen of U.S. Soldiers ).  The film Posse (directed by and starring Mario Van Peebles, also related to Buffalo Soldiers ) The film Buck and the Preacher (starring the amazing and incomparable Sidney Poitier and Harry Belafonte) . The article also mentions the person who was my earliest memory of Black cowboys: Bass Reeves . My dad told me about Bass Reeves when I was younger. Dad loves western stuff AND actual history, and my parents always made an effort to fill in the gap of th...

A friend posted this article on FB yesterday: " First Trailer for HBO's Lovecraft Country Blends Jim Crow Horrors with Supernatural Monsters ." I instantly watched the trailer, got excited, then instantly paused. I was hella excited to see Jurnee Smollett-Bell, Courtney B. Vance, and Michael K. Williams in a new show in which Jordan Peele and JJ Abrams are the producers. I had to look up Misha Green. She's badass too! She was the creator and writer for Underground and writer for some eps of one of fave shows: SOA . My excitement was on reserve after I watched the trailer because the show (taken from a book of the same name) puts black people in the Jim Crow South in peril from both racists (actual evil monsters) AND fantastical beasts (literary monsters). My first thoughts: "Damn! Wasn't racism, hatred, discrimination, terror, violence, and unpunished, state-sanctioned murder at the hands of racist people and systems monstrous enough? We gotta add movie mon...

Virginian politics has been imploding for about a week now due to blackface AND sexual assault allegations. Gov. Ralph Northam initially said "Sorry. That was wrong." Then , "nope, wasn't me." And lastly , "hell no, I won't go." Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax has denied allegations of sexual assault made by two women, and has asked for a full investigation. AG Mark Herring pre -confessed to wearing blackface when he saw how hot the water was getting for Northam. So far, no one has resigned. The citizens are split on whether some, all, or none of them should resign. And all the damn chickens are in the yard roosting their asses off. Although controversial as hell at the time (and still is for some), Malcolm X's statement after JFK's assassination about chickens coming home to roost has plenty of relevancy here. His statement seemed callous at the time, but in a world where the U.S. supported and sanctioned violence, murders, coups, etc. ...

Today and tomorrow mark a week since the Lebanon and Paris attacks , respectively. Syrian refugees have been fleeing their homeland for the better part of four years now though many people just recently started paying attention to the Syrian Refugee Crisis , and now that they are  paying attention, the idiot ideas are flying. One of the most atrocious ideas to be proposed is that we round up the Syrians and put them away in internment camps like we did Japanese-Americans during WII. The letter essentially suggests that President Franklin D. Roosevelt had it right when we did that.  I suppose this mayor of Roanoke, VA doesn't quite understand that pretty much everyone views that decision to lock up American citizens who happened to look  like the same people who attacked Pearl Harbor as a reprehensible and overall bad idea. (Granted, the idea was supported at the time, but hindsight is 20/20.) I guess he missed that day in History class. I guess the mayor and othe...