Tag: The Black Book

11..., Lifestyle

11… Ways to Be a Better Antiracist

RaeAnna
The Black Book is one of the most moving and heartbreaking books I have ever read.

I am not the first person to come up with a list of ways to be a better antiracist, and I won’t be the last. You should look up others because I’m sure they are better. Obviously, this is a list of things you can do written by a white lady with a lot of white privilege who is on her own imperfect and perpetual journey to be a better antiracist. 

This post is titled “… Better Antiracist” because hopefully you’re already on your antiracist journey. If you are not, WELCOME! Now is the perfect time to start your journey. 

  1. READ. There are so many wonderful books, articles, stories, etc. written by Black writers, educators, activists, etc. who have made it their life’s work to educate. You will learn so much from them. Also buying and reading their books supports them and their work. It tells publishers and academia to be more inclusive, to publish more Black authors, to support the Black community. All you have to do is scroll through my book reviews to find some really great books. Or just google it. (Google is a great resource, use it.)
  2. EVALUATE YOURSELF. The hardest thing to do is admit fault or complicitness. We’re all racist. It’s ingrained in society. That doesn’t make it okay. When you have feelings or apprehension, ask yourself why. Evaluate what you do, your feelings, your thoughts, where you live, what you read, what you watch, everything. It takes time and effort. Being self-aware is hard, but it makes us better people. The more good people in the world fighting for equality and justice, the better the world will be. Be a part of the change, and that change starts within. 
  3. DIVERSIFY YOUR FEED. More than likely, you found me through social media. Social media is amazing. I love how it connects the world. It is also a way to maintain our safe bubbles. If you only follow people who look and think the way you look and think, you’re not challenging yourself to be better. How many BIPOC people do you follow? Seriously, go take a look. I had this realization a few years ago after reading a book (see point 1), and the first thing I did was go and follow writers, bloggers, actors, people of color. It’s important. And so easy. 
  4. DIVERSIFY YOUR LIFE. How many people of color are you friends with? This is harder to change because it takes more of a conscious effort, and a lot of times. It might even mean going pretty far out of our comfort zone. If you don’t have any friends of color, why? I grew up in a diverse city in Iowa – I know, it sounds like an oxymoron. I had access to immigrants, people of color, different religions, diverse cultures. I had access to be friends with people of all kinds, and I was. I have friends of all colors. I’m not friends with them because they have a different hue than me. I’m friends with them because I love them as humans, and I know I do because I didn’t let their skin color hold me back from getting to know them. 
  5. SUPPORT BLACK OWNED BUSINESSES. Take five minutes, google “black owned businesses in ____” and insert your area. You will find a ton of references. Whether it’s trying a new restaurant or shopping at a new boutique, when you support black owned businesses, you’re supporting the people. It’s harder for a Black person to get a bank loan to open that business. When we support them and they thrive, you’re telling banks to invest in those businesses. Money talks, so let yours.
  6. FUCKING LISTEN. This could alternatively be titled SHUT THE FUCK UP. If you’re white, shut your mouth. So often the floor is ceded to us because of our paleness. Our opinions and experiences are treated as more important than those held by less pale people, which is stupid. As a woman, I’ve had to fight to speak and be heard. It can be hard to not talk when given the opportunity because I’m silenced often. It is so important to let people tell their own story and share their own experience. We need to not take up space that should have never been ours to begin with. We have colonized so much of the world, we need to stop colonizing time. 
  7. DON’T APPROPRIATE. At this point in time, I shouldn’t have to say it, but I do. Don’t appropriate. It’s wrong. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, google “cultural appropriation.”
  8. SHARE. It’s really important to share the work, opinions, and experiences of BIPOC. And I mean this in a very works cited kind of way and not an opposite to #6 or #7 kind of way. If there is an artist you love, share! If there’s a writer you love, share! A blogger you’re low-key stalking their life, share! If you love it, other people will too. Everyone loves being loved, so share the love. 
  9. STOP STEREOTYPING BASED ON RACE. I hate this so much. Black people… are not anything. They are people. They are as diverse, multifaceted, interesting, and all the other things humans are as every other “race”. Stereotypes are stupid and should stop. Do not be that person who says things like, “Black people are bad tippers.” I heard that when I bartended. You know why Black people were tipping that person poorly? Because that person was serving them poorly based on a dumb-ass stereotype. That person didn’t deserve a good tip because they were serving like shit. If you start a sentence with “Black people…” it should end with “… are victims of systemic racism.” That is the option. 
  10. ASK TO BE CALLED OUT. I tell all my friends to, “call me out if I say something offensive, hurtful, inaccurate, uneducated, whatever.” No matter what or who they are. I want to be the best person I can be, and I can only be that person by being accountable. I want and hope all my friends will hold me responsible and call me out if I say some shit. I don’t want to be the person who hurts anyone, and I can’t know something until I know something. I surround myself with smart, amazing, vibrant people, and they have access to all sorts of information I have yet to access. When we open ourselves up to being responsible for hurting others or making them feel small or perpetuating horrible things, we allow ourselves to have innumerable teaching moments. When I open myself to the fact I can and will make mistakes, I’m less defensive, hurt, contradictory when I am called out. To create change, I have to be open to being the change, and I can’t be the change if I think I’m omniscient and all-kind. There is power in the vulnerability of allowing myself to be wrong. It is a kindness to others because I give them the space to feel their feelings knowing I will listen and accept responsibility in my role of shitty person. It enables open dialogue and deeper human connection. (You can also be the person to call out your friends and family in a kind but firmly don’t-be-a-racist-dick-noodle way.)
  11. DON’T BE THE PERSON WHO CONFINES THEIR DATING LIFE TO YOUR OWN RACE. This is very specific. It bothers me when people say they’re not attracted to Black men/women or any other race. Sexuality is weird, I get it. If you’re not attracted to Black men, you don’t have eyes (but if you don’t have eyes, color doesn’t exist to you in the same way it does to seeing people). If you’re not attracted to Black men, you’ve never seen: Taye Diggs, Idris Elba, Daniel Kaluuya, Barack Obama, Michael B. Jordan, Chadwick Boseman, Anthony Mackie, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Jessie (the Director of Security at my building in Chicago, and the only regret I have in life: not asking him out). If you’re not attracted to Black women, you’ve never seen Michelle Obama (they are an attractive couple), Iman, Kerry Washington, Halle Berry, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Beyoncé, Gabrielle Union, Kamala Harris, Tiffany Hadish, and more. I find them all unbelievably attractive. Science would also agree with me because they’re very symmetrical. I can honestly name more attractive people of color than I can name white people. Just date people, don’t limit yourself. 

Don’t limit yourself. That should be number one on the list. Being racist means limiting yourself. The world is not white. It would be so boring if it were. It is gloriously colorful. Soak up the world for everything it is, the good and the bad. Where there is bad, there is room for growth. Where there is good, there is room for better. Let’s be better citizens of the world and neighbors to our Black brothers and sisters (and BIPOC in general), who deserve to live in this beautifully colorful world with the same rights and peace as white men. I would say me, but the feminist in me says there is room to reach. 

bisous und обьятий,
RaeAnna

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Books, NonFiction

The Black Book

RaeAnna

Worth A Read Yes
Length 224
Quick Review A heartbreaking history of Africans’ struggle to gain humanity, recognition, rights, and the hope for equality in America from 1619 through the 1940s. 

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The Black Book is a devastating history lesson. | Dress | Sweater | Purse | Glasses | Shoes |

The Black Book is absolutely soul crushing and devastating. I read it through tears and fought back bouts of nausea. It is incredibly affecting. I have too many feelings and a lot of guilt during and after reading. I can’t get the words or the images out of my mind. 

Tony Morrison prefaces the book with an incredibly powerful piece. It took my breath away, and I was only on page one. 

History is white-washed more often than not. We have a tendency to romanticize and paint a much prettier picture than the realities people endured. This is particularly atrocious throughout American history and the treatment of the black community. The Black Book is dedicated to an honest history and depiction of life and society. Though it’s not a happy picture, it’s a picture deserving to be told and heard and taught. If history is not learned, it’s doomed to be repeated. We cannot repeat the history contained within these pages. 

The book contains first pictures, news articles, poems, songs, advertisements, excerpts, laws, myths, patents, facts, sports, legends, religion, and so much more. History is being told through the lens of the time period. There is no explanation. The editors give the reader the information and allow them to take away what they will. Although, it would be hard to read it without having a horrible view on history. The editors do not edit or politically correctisize (it’s a word now) the word usage. Racist words and expressions are kept to reflect the times and the hatred the black community faced. 

Death is better than slavery was a recurring theme throughout. There are stories of men and women fighting back, running away, supporting one another, and standing up for themselves and their community. For all the awfulness throughout The Black Book, there is more time spent highlighting the successes and brilliance of the black community than the nightmares imposed by the white people who dictated society. 

There is no part of society that has not been touched and improved by a black person. Throughout history they have fought for the basic right to exist and fought their way into every sphere of culture. Not only were they a part of these spheres, they excelled when everyone told them they couldn’t and weren’t allowed. The Black Book is a testament to black excellence in the face of oppression, violence, and subjugation. For the few who found success, changed culture, opened minds, and affected the law, there are thousands upon millions more who never received the chance. History is a horror, but it can teach us to learn from the mistakes already made. 

I have no doubt, you will be haunted by The Black Book if you take the time to read it, and I highly suggest you do. I finished it with tears in my eyes and hope in my heart. The world is changing. Not as fast as it should, but it is changing. Maybe someday, The Black Book will be a distant memory, but that day is not today. We can still feel the echoes of history loudly in our culture.  

Memorable Quotes
“Steal away, steal away, steal away home. I ain’t got long to stay here.”
“They failed to ask my name and called me negro.” Henry Dumas

bisous und обьятий,
RaeAnna

Buy on Amazon | Buy on Barnes & Noble | Buy on Book Depository
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Title: The Black Book
Editor: Middleton A. Harris, Morris Levitt, Roger Furman
Publisher: Random House
Copyright: 2019
ISBN: 9781400068487

In My Own Words, Lifestyle

Black History Month 2020

RaeAnna

Happy Black History Month!

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Holy crap. I can’t believe it’s February already. I feel like I haven’t done anything productive this year. Oh well, there are still 336 days left to turn this shit around. 

Back on topic: 
There are so many amazing heritage months during the year. Every year, I try and focus on one or two because I can’t focus on them all. Damnit! The very first year, I spent February celebrating black women for Black History Month. (Last year, I focused on Asian American Pacific Heritage Month and LGBTQIA+ Pride Month.) It was wonderful. On Instagram, I talked about a different amazing black woman every day, focusing on lesser known movers and shakers throughout history. I only read books penned by black women. These women are/were incredible. They have been the backbone of this country for centuries. Well, not just this country, but that’s a much longer story. They deserve far more recognition than they have ever gotten. For as much as I knew before that month, I learned so much more. It started amazing conversations, which I would have never had otherwise. I expanded my mind and my heart. I love being a nerdy blogger because my focus is on educating myself and pushing others to do the same. I read books about a variety of things from memoirs by comediennes to novels to nonfiction. You can’t know something until you know it, and there was so much I didn’t know. There is so much I don’t know. It’s why I keep reading: to educate myself, to be better, to do good in the world. 

I push a very intersectional feminist agenda. I didn’t have a huge following back then, but I knew from the beginning I wanted to use whatever my platform was to showcase incredible humans of diverse backgrounds and voices. Not to speak for them, but be a channel for which their voices could be heard or realized or found. It’s hard to know something you don’t know, which is why I try to showcase the divergent world in which we exist. It’s so easy to be caught in our own bubble, but outside our bubbles, a world seethes with an indescribable amount of individuality and intersection. We are all humans. Our existence is uniquely our own, but it also overlaps in so many fascinating ways. We are more alike than we are different. But it’s impossible to experience the unique overlapping of humanity trapped in our own spheres of being.  

That first year blogging and Instagramming was enlightening. Racism exists. It’s rampant. It’s horrible. It’s everywhere from our grandparents to the media to our own internal bias. For as much love and support as I received, I also encountered a great deal of dickweasels. I lost over 500 followers because I was highlighting black women. I heard “There are incredible white women too,” or “What about black men?” I wasn’t saying black women were better than anyone else. I was saying we, as humans, are all beautiful and fascinating, but let’s bear witness to an overlooked and left behind and oppressed group of people because they need and deserve love and acceptance and have the right to be seen. I may have lost 500 followers, who I didn’t want anyways if I’m being honest, but I gained over 1,000 new followers. I heard so many comments of support and awe. It’s not about the followers; it’s about what those numbers represent. Hatred exists in the world, but I have found kindness and compassion weighs heavier. People want a better world. People want to do better. People want to grow. People want to give and receive kindness.

This year for Black History Month, I’m not just focusing on women. I’m reading books by black authors. I won’t be highlighting a person every day because honestly, it was a lot of work and research, and my job has been keeping me very busy lately, and I don’t have the time. I truly wish I did. I hope to expand my mind and those of everyone who cares enough to follow along on this journey. I’m still completely baffled people care what I have to say, but if you’re listening – in this case, reading – I will be using my voice to raise awareness and advocate for change, peace, kindness, love, acceptance, tolerance, and a beautifully colorful world. Although, I try and do this all the time, so Black History Month really isn’t all that different than any other month. It’s just a more one directionally focused month.  

So far there are only seven books on the list, but I might try and sneak an eighth in there since there are eight book review days in February. If you haven’t noticed, I post every Tuesday and Thursday. Send me your recommendations if you have any!!! What I’m reading this month: 

The Black Book
Dapper Dan by Daniel R. Day
How to be an Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi
The Water Dancer by Ta-Nehisi Coates
Becoming by Michelle Obama
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
Charged by Emily Bazelon (It’s not by a black woman, but it does talk about an issue that affects the black community at much higher rates than white people.)

bisous und обьятий,
RaeAnna

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