basically some whites are screaming about Jaden Smith playing the titular "karate kid"

which is bloody HILARIOUS, considering the typical state of affairs, and to make matters worse:

via: racebending

Black belt jonesing: American martial arts culture's roots in the black community

Rumble in the Bronx
The fact is, African Americans were the first community to embrace martial arts in the U.S., and without that community's active support, Asian fighting disciplines would never have gained the foothold they now have in the American consciousness, as both a practice and a pop-culture influence.

"The story of martial arts in black communities is part of a much bigger narrative of African American interest in Asian culture," says Amy Obugo Ongiri, assistant professor of English at the University of Florida and author of the forthcoming book "Spectacular Blackness." "People want to read African Americans and Asians as being in conflict rather than engaged in creative exchange. But black interest in Asian culture has a long history, and what you see is that by the '60s and '70s, a bunch of factors led to the consolidation of that interest."
The return of soldiers from Korea and Vietnam; the growth of Asia as an export power; white flight from the inner cities, and the rise of black nationalism -- all of these phenomena set the stage for the unique cultural intersection that was the rise of martial arts cinema.
"As white people abandoned the cities, all these downtown theaters became spaces for people of color," says Ongiri. "Theater owners started screening stuff that was less marketable, mostly cheap imports -- and that meant martial arts movies."
And for generations of urban black youth who grew up in the 1960s and 1970s, grindhouse theaters screening kung fu double features had an irresistible gravitational pull.


"We'd go and watch films all day," remembers Warrington Hudlin, best known as the producer behind films such as "House Party" and "Boomerang" and the children's television series "Bebe's Kids." "The whole time we'd be going, 'Oh man, how'd they do that?' Because it happened so fast, you'd have to screen a film three or four times to get the technique. So we'd be like, 'Okay, man, you watch his feet, I'll watch his hands, and we'll compare notes in the lobby.' Me and my friends, we used to live in those theaters."

...


"We were the early adopters of martial arts in this country," says Hudlin. "That's why it was so irritating to me that a movie like 'The Forbidden Kingdom' was made, in which Jet Li and Jackie Chan teach their skills to a white kid from Boston."

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2009/10/28/apop102809.DTL#ixzz0VLlokvNh

 

The Black Heroes of the Martial Arts

Cue heads exploding all over the place.




of course, Africans had their own martial arts, as yeloson recced me this Fighting for Honor: The History of African Martial Arts in the Atlantic World

this looks interesting too The Hidden History of Capoeira: A Collision of Cultures in the Brazilian Battle Dance

Tyra Banks does Color face

Colourface Epidemic Infects ANTM

We don’t usually quote directly from tipsters, but I am too stunned to paraphrase right now. Cassandra reports:

Each girl was given two ethnicities: Tibetan/Egyptian, Greek/Mexican, Moroccan/Russian, Native American/East Indian, Botswanan/Polynesian, Malagasy/Japanese. Five girls are white, one is Asian, and a few are donned in black face and all in “ethnic” outfits (a combination of an aspect of each culture, evident in the photos), which Tyra explains, “Every outfit is not necessarily what people of that culture are wearing now, it might not even be a necessary exact of what they’ve worn in the past, it’s a fashion interpretation of it.” Nicole, assigned to look Malagasy/Japanese, remarks how she’s always wondered what she looked like as a different race and that she felt she looked “exotic.” The girls had to somehow embody what people of those ethnicities were like i.e. Tyra saying, “Think Egyptian, think [insert ethnicity], think of what those people were like, etc.”

INSERT SCREAMS OF HORROR AND FOAMING AT THE MOUTH NOW.MORE

Tyra Banks is known for doing shitty stuff, WTF is this exactly? The link links to a Jezebel writeup that is much more gentle, but frankly they give Tyra too much damned credit. The woman acts the fool all the fucking time and I am sick of the stupidity. There is no fucking excuse, and i don't care about here frigging motive, this is straight up fuckery, and girl needs to get her head out of her ass.

Why is Racialicious my fav blog?

In a post about the White (Wo)Man’s Burden: Madonna, Malawi, & Celebrity Activism [Original Cut] they link me to the retort to Rudyard Kipling pestilential poem

The White Man’s Burden

Take up the White Man’s burden–
Send forth the best ye breed–
Go bind your sons to exile
To serve your captives’ need;
To wait in heavy harness,
On fluttered folk and wild–
Your new-caught, sullen peoples,
Half-devil and half-child.

Take up the White Man’s burden–
In patience to abide,
To veil the threat of terror
And check the show of pride;
By open speech and simple,
An hundred times made plain
To seek another’s profit,
And work another’s gain.

Take up the White Man’s burden–
The savage wars of peace–
Fill full the mouth of Famine
And bid the sickness cease;
And when your goal is nearest
The end for others sought,
Watch sloth and heathen Folly
Bring all your hopes to nought.

Scholars have long debated if White Man’s Burden is a love letter to imperialism or a satirical take-down – Kipling was an avid imperialist but was also a satirist, and his intentions with the piece aren’t fully understood. However, the poem and the term have been propelled to the heights of infamy due to the application of the core concept around the globe.
Personally, I prefer Henry Labouchère’s acid-tongued retort, The Brown Man’s Burden:

Pile on the brown man’s burden
To gratify your greed;
Go, clear away the “niggers”
Who progress would impede;
Be very stern, for truly
‘Tis useless to be mild
With new-caught, sullen peoples,
Half devil and half child.

Pile on the brown man’s burden;
And, if ye rouse his hate,
Meet his old-fashioned reasons
With Maxims up to date.
With shells and dumdum bullets
A hundred times made plain
The brown man’s loss must ever
Imply the white man’s gain.

Pile on the brown man’s burden,
compel him to be free;
Let all your manifestoes
Reek with philanthropy.
And if with heathen folly
He dares your will dispute,
Then, in the name of freedom,
Don’t hesitate to shoot.

Pile on the brown man's burden,
And if his cry be sore,
That surely need not irk you--
Ye've driven slaves before.
Seize on his ports and pastures,
The fields his people tread;
Go make from them your living,
And mark them with his dead.

Pile on the brown man's burden,
And through the world proclaim
That ye are Freedom's agent--
There's no more paying game!
And, should your own past history
Straight in your teeth be thrown,
Retort that independence
Is good for whites alone.

Fascinating how both of these poems were written in 1899, but still resonate to this day. (By the way, these are excerpts – the full poems are available by following the links.)The rest of teh article is damn good too

Shiny shiny Pretties!!!!! AKA: Dear mom, get off my HAIR.

le coil

Rakia, publicist & fashion editor, at IFB’s Dress Up Soiree in Chinatown. To witness more of this hair magic, check out her recent Philly 360 feature on the best of the city’s fashion scene.

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9. 
   
   
   Do you have an afro?
   
   
    
   
   
   
   I am officially in heaven!
    

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