F
I remember the first time I saw a little Black girl in a toy commercial. I ran to get my mother. "Look mom look!"
It was a My Little Pony commercial and there was a very light-skinned little black girl with perfectly permed straight hair (why couldn't my hair do that) playing with the toys I loved. On TV!
Consider the mixed feelings this would cause for any sensible parent. Yes. You want your child to feel like they are a part of the world. But what will the world take from them?
But it was that feeling of an outside force coming in and imposing an image of who you were that people rebelled against.
Some people. Others embraced it. Culture is complex.
In the 70s and 80s Black Americans had amassed enough economic power that advertisers stopped ignoring us. No mater what color your skin the money's still green.
This mostly meant a proliferation of ads, especially billboards featuring a version of "Black Culture" filtered through an avaricious and distorted lens. In particular ads for cheap alcohol. Several Black pastors became famous and even got arrested for panting these billboards over.
Yup. I'm feeling very excited about it this year.
To understand Kwanzaa you need to think about what it would be like to be a Black parent raising kids in the US in the 60s and 70s. Your kids go nuts for Christmas and want gifts. Gimme gimme gimme! Then everyone gets drunk on New Years. How are these holidays as commercially pushed onto your family teaching any kind of good values?
I think that is a big part of the appeal.
(Of course there is another side to Christmas that isn't all Coca Cola Santa Claus and Black Friday fist fights.)
Oh hard agree. Investing in pirates, making it a viable "business model" is cartoonishly evil to me.
Might makes right dressed up in contracts and military jargon. It's anti-social.
12. Kwanzaa is always mutating.
13. Holidays have always mutated and adapted.
I think Kwanzaa is important. As a child I took all of that talk about self-determination and thinking carefully about how you can support the communities you are a part of very seriously and it has shaped the way that I face adversity and who I am.
11. The week from Christmas to New Years is a perfect "time of reflection" this is one of the most compelling aspects of the holiday. You are invited to spend a week reflecting on the year in seven ways:
Umoja: Community unity eg agreeing on what the work is.
Kujichagulia: Self-determination to do the work
Ujima: Doing your share of the work.
Ujamaa: Material local investment.
Nia: A shared vision of a better future.
Kuumba: Creativity, your differences and new ideas are valued.
Imani: Faith
Well, you are still going to be stuck with red and green with Kwanzaa. Red Green and Black are the "colors."
7. Dr. Maulana Karenga wrote extensively about Kwanzaa but personally I feel saying he "invented Kwanzaa" misses some of the significance of the holiday.
8. It grows out of a long tradition of Black Americans seeking a connection to the homelands we cannot name.
9. It is a holiday about self improvement and personal growth and VERY anti-commercial.
10. It's a time to ask if you are doing enough to support your community.
I grew up celebrating Kwanzaa. So this is just my perspective.
Kwanzaa Facts
1. Kwanzaa is a made up holiday.
2. So is every other holiday.
3. Anyone can celebrate Kwanzaa.
4. It was created by Black, (mostly American and Christian*) people in the 1970s to celebrate Black history and the influence of African culture in the African diaspora and to assert the presence of Black people in US culture.
5. Most Black Americans don't celebrate Kwanzaa.
6. It is not a holiday tied to any particular religion.
The latest fashion in piracy is having an air craft carrier now.
"What makes large classes sometimes work and sometimes not?"
Shared values and previous time investment.
But my post was *not* about class size. It was about how many students I have at a time. That is, how many students I'm responsible for over the course of one semester or year.
It's not about how may people are in the room. It's about how many people I need to know and give feedback to. There is an upper limit and often it's exceeded.
Me bestowing another radical "hot take" (aparently):
Pirates are bad and there shouldn't be pirates.
Why do people keeping thinking pirates are cool??? They are sea muggers!
Please remember that some of the oldest "investment opportunities" in the history of finance were essentially investing in pirates who'd go steal things from people at sea.
It's always been a little like this.
This is all working so well. I love it.
In my defense those little colorful candles are the exact ones I've seen at every Hanukkah celebration.
RE: https://journa.host/@w7voa/115755787278023048
The electric brain ya'll were training to drive the cars ate up all energy and now the cars have no network and can't charge?
* I realize this outage isn't directly related to data centers... but we are almost there.
That is a sportscar. Or maybe a gaming keyboard.