The Anthroblogogist 

Many white people disagree that any white washing has been done to Kemet. When they see the brown skinned paintings, braids, afros on statues, etc, they either cannot see or will not admit a very obvious difference from the white skinned, straight haired artistic re-makes they create to represent Kemet in their own images. These same people claim that Blacks (as well as many whites) who are calling them out on this, are just "making things up", "over reacting", and so on.

In actuality far too many white people have a subconscious aversion to blacks to the extent that if they admire the culture of anything created by African peoples, they cannot credit the creators or admire them in their natural image. Instead they must convert their form into something that is more acceptable or beautiful in their opinions, which is typically a lighter, whiter version of the original. And or terms that historically were use to refer to a prestigious group or individual African/Black person, are then used to refer to much lighter, or white people. This is the phenomenon that many people call 'white-washing' and it can be seen from art, to movies, to music, etc in every aspect of culture. Using the Nubian inspired, white washed art is just one clear cut example of how this works, though, I cannot insure that all the artist were white. It is possible that some of them are black and other ethnicities, but even that would show that there is some subconscious "racial" dissonance between reality and personal mental concept. Luckily most of the images I found in the data collection were fairly accurate in one way or another, no matter who the artists were, but of course this doesn't say much for what has already been done to Kemet, and is being done to Nubia in small doses.

Nubia seems to be the key to unambigiously unlocking and demonstrating most of the untruths that have been taking place with out a doubt. We don't question whether the Nubians were and still are black as apposed to…

The Olympics isn't exactly a beacon of cultural relativity and understanding, nor are they all that ethical behind the scenes despite what the "we are the world" outward appearance might be. I am married to a Jamaican, who is actually a childhood friend of Usain Bolts, the grew up together in the same little neighborhood in St. Ann. I also had a summer internship with a good number of other Jamaicans and one of the most significant things I can tell you about them as a people is that they are very very proud--And I find it nothing short of inspiring.

When I see them with their flags raised high, I feel proud with them. They have come from great adversity yet still love their home, their identity, culture, etc. Even more so, when you come from adversity and perform the way the Jamaicans did this year at the Olympics you have every reason the be extremely proud and show it! That type of pride and patriotism should be admired, because it can be shared and it harms no one.

I think that the people who complained about Usain's behavior are the ones that are showing character weakness because they have an inability to share in his joy, simply because it was not them winning/or a country they like winning. When I see people win a race like Usain did, no matter where they are from I feel an extreme pride, and joy that transfers over from the winner to me. When Usain continued across the finish line long after he has passed it with his arms raised, when he held up his #1 guesture, when he beat his chest like a champion, when he broke it down with a Jamaican victory dance, I was smiling and laughing ear to ear. Maybe the committee can stop being so up tight and share in that excitement for once.

As far as cultural relativism goes, their complain was culturally insensitive. Being humble, down played and subdued, may be a fine and dandy reaction in your culture, or the culture of the people complaining on the committee but its unJamaican, and frankly its unnatural for anyone to…

Did you miss me?....If so I apologize I have been working on a number of various projects that kind of preoccupied me. Of course someone who has Anthropology at heart never stops observing or analyzing their surroundings. That being the case I have a lot of things to write up and post here. Please keep checking back to see the latest.

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Over the past few months I have been refocusing a lot on Sudan, and Ancient Nubia and a lot of humanistic topics surfaced while I was at it. Most of the topics all included grand dealings in hypocrisy fueled by racism. These double standards either go unnoticed, denied or covered up, by the offending groups. One of the non-academic articles that I stumbled upon was about the prospect of Will Smith producing a historically based movie called "The Last Pharaoh" which takes place during the 25th Dynasty of Nubian rule in Egypt and is primarily about the Nubians and Egyptians under Nubian control trying to fight off the Assyrians (Arab invasion). I am not sure how true to history this movie is going to end up, but hollywood has an awful track record so far and this is where the first major hypocrisy reared its racist head. When Trying to find out about the movie there was an abundance of critical articles damning the movie in every thinkable way, strawmen and ad hominums flew left and right. Suddenly it seemed that many white people were concerned about "historical accuracy"  although I didn't see such an uproar when any of the dozens of fictitious and racists Cleopatra - The Mummy to the The Mummy Returns, to what ever else they could think up were released to the public. White people that do not truly care about historical accuracy, but rather, are comfortable with the white Egypt image they grew up with have quietly stood by decade after decade, probably subconsciously pleased with fictitious white-washed images of egypt in movies and even historical documentaries because it re-affirmed something they already wanted so much to…

I won't lie, like many other Americans who are riding the tails of the information age, I am interested in home based businesses. Although I have yet to find one that I had enough confidence in after my extensive evaluation process in the duration of about 5 years, I still keep my eyes peeled for something I can give my personal green light to. The most recent prospect that I stumbled upon was something called cash gifting and programs like they Overnight Cash System. 

As I began to piece together a direct and to the point understanding of what this new home based trend was, I started to wonder about the bigger picture, and I will take you there as I explain what cash gifting is.

Essentially I believe that there were a number of people, similar to myself, who saw through the too good to be true "products", the membership requirements that made it necessary for you the supposed business owner have to buy a monthly quota of your own company's products, and the fact that when the trend died down, the only people that actually got rich were those at the top.

Cash gifting has solved some of those issues, since there is no product, and no monthly fees. Basically new comers have to give a large amount of money, anywhere from $100 to the seeming default amount of $3,500 as a no strings attached gift to a mentor. This mentor supposedly did the same thing for their mentor when they entered. New members continue to be recruited, yes recruited despite what some cash gifters claim you do actually have to recruit new members for it to be successful. The new members and the gifts that they contribute are distributed in ways not unlike any of the thousands of MLM businesses we've already seen.

I do see some major problems with Cash gifting. The most obvious one I hope would be the fact that there is hardly a way to ensure that the mentor you signed up under actually did any gifting him or herself. After all the only thing you need the mentor for is so that they can teach you how…

The fact that commercial companies who traditionally sell us poison are jumping on the 'green', organic, health conscious, environmental bandwagon was too predictable to register on our B.S. meters. I mean every time there is a pop-culture trend we see a burst of new products from old companies that are supposed to cater to the new demand. This is not new, remember the whole Atkin's Diet thing?. The point of this article is that I am hoping people are smart enough not to fall for gimmicks, these companies are throwing our way.

Everywhere you look you see natural, this and green that. 7-up (and many other soft-drink companies) are in their second round of gimmick hopping, at least to my knowledge. First they were jumping on general health awareness by adding "vitamins" to their drinks. I just want to ask, why would you drink poison with vitamins in it? Doesn't that just ring with purpose defeating? Most of the truly health aware people said no thanks to carbonated vitamins, and continued to evolve into the green, organic, vegan, etc population we are seeing today. Now we have 'natural' 7-up, and 'The Natural' from Pizza Hut (grossly over priced by the way). The company that tops them all, in my opinion, is Clorox with their new 'GreenWorks' line of products.

Perhaps all these supposedly 'green' changes aren't a bad thing, afterall green is green no matter what *$$$* the motivation, right. I am just worried that the lack of integrity of most of these companies is going to take away from people & businesses that have been 'green' from the start. Those are the companies that were built from the ground up for the purpose of providing safe, natural, and environmentally light footed products just because that is the right and healthy thing to do, not because their market research suggested that it would be a profitable move to jump on. My concern flows deeper in the fact that I am very well aware that these big companies often use the natural thing on their label in…

Whenever I see discussions or pages that talk about illegal immigration I often see the accompanying phrase, "I'm all for legal immigration, but totally against illegals" or something to that effect. Having a perspective from both sides of the spectrum I urge people to actually find out what legal immigration actually takes. I can almost guarantee that the people who fling this phase about, although possibly well meaning, don't actually know what legal immigration is. Don't worry though, in this page I am going to share that information with you.

Legal immigration is a term used for a process that is, in theory, supposed to allow eligible people to immigrate to the United States, in a socially safe, documented, orderly fashion. It is also supposed to protect the American citizen from the, supposed, freeloader on the tax dollar, and ensure that criminals who aren't here legally, do not end up filling our jails. In actuality, legal immigration is such a long, complicated, haphazard, and costly process that it is not feasible for most people who actually are entitled, for one reason or another, to legally immigrate.

Lets postulate for a moment, some of the things we hope a legal immigrant represents and then lets match that up with the legal immigration process. We hope that a legal immigrant speaks fluent english. This, in my opinion isn't too much to expect. I don't think we should necessarily require it in all cases, but as a norm it can validly be an expectation. The immigration process and the documents required are most often only in english. But is that really enough?

There are several basic conditions under which a person can legally immigrate to the United States. The major ones are employment sponsor, immediate relatives or family preference, marriage, investment, and lottery. Investment means that the person is filthy rich, donating or building a company in value between 500,000 and a million dollars with at least 10 employees, so we aren't even going to…

For the past week, pondering ideas pertaining to my response to Alibi article, along with other cultural research about various groups of African and African descendant people I developed a hypothesis dealing with these people's tendency to prefer small social networks rather than large government organized societies. Many people who are racists, weather they consider themselves to be or not usually amount small political or social groups of Black people to be a failure to unify, a failure to civilize, a tendency toward violence and a number of other assumptions about these people.

One of the groups of black people that I was focusing on this week other than various tribal Africans was diasporic black gangs, like the bloods and crips, but more focused on the gangs of Kingston Jamaica. My husband and I watched about and hour long documentary of a man named Kemp Ross doing some clearly anthropological work, although I'm pretty sure he was somehow related to the UK police force. What this very astute, corageous, and very open minded, empathetic, white man did was go into the roughest and toughest parts of Kingston despite the very real risk that he could be shot. At one point he even attempted to stay with the gang bangers he'd befriended, over night. It was only by their own recommendation that he leave for his own safety that he was escorted out. I do recommend that everyone reading this article watch the documentary as well, so I have embedded the video here as well.

One of the notable things that I noticed while he interviewed some of the gang members was that they were very logical, eloquent and intelligent amidst the chaos. It makes anyone who notices these quality character traits ponder the social complexity that creates such a chaotic atmosphere. I do recall a forum poster who gave a synopsis for these types of circumstances, it was something to the effect of, people who had fairly sound independent social networks are now thrown into a spiral of conflict…

In many entries I make mention of how diverse Africa is. Most people, of the Westernized world at least, have this singular stereotyped image of what an African is. Most times its not positive, pretty, or accurate for that matter. One of the major problems is the role that the media and our sorry excuses for education systems play in promoting distorted, racist, lop-sided images of African people. Often times the only images of African people that Americans see are those that fit stereotyped images of the primitive, naked tribes man. The images show no depth, when there is an abundance of things to be admired about the culture, rather images are more focused on nudity of cultural practices that might seem odd by American standards. The images highlight difference without promoting the realization of similarities and the appreciation of those differences. They are likely to focus on extreme poverty or violence, which are serious problems that should be publicized, just not without the alternative images to equalize perception and give a more well rounded, truthful view.

Because I, nor most of the rest of us can find the time and finances to travel the world I truly value photographs of people from all over. Thanks to the internet and public interest you can find hundreds of people who put together video slide shows of cultural images with one theme or another. Many of them are a good way for people to get a more truthful visual perspective that isn't provided in our propaganized media. Here is one of my favorites dedicated to the people of Eastern and South Eastern countries in Africa.

The sexual tourism thing is so big and is taking place in so many different parts of the world I wanted to compile a collection of videos on the different cases. I can't get them all but I hope to show you all how much of an epidemic it is. So while you turn on your tv and watch pointless things like Brittney take the later part of her extremely privileged life for granted you will know in your mind that bigger things are going on and hopefully keep your focus on things that matter.

NOTE: I have noticed a trend in opinions or reactions from on lookers or observers of sexual tourism when it involves adult black males and white women as the tourist. Many people take these cases lightly saying things like "well you know those guys enjoy it", as if sexual tourism in this form is some type of blessing for these men. ITS NOT. The underlying causes that create an economic climate conducive to sexual tourism is poverty. These countries exist under circumstances that make it slim to impossible for them to flourish based on agriculture, manufacture or import and export, etc like most 1st world countries. When all they have left is tourism they are circumstantially forced to make the best of it and supplying the demand of sex tourists is one of the ways they can make a decent living. Plus I take it that the people in question are imagining drop dead gorgeous white American and European goddesses, wrong again. They are typically overweight or old, even married at times. It has also come to my attention that black women who fit into the same descriptive categories behave similarly to white women while on "sexual tours" in the caribbean. Just understand that its not any kind of paradise job.

Video Play List Guide (click the navigation buttons to browse through the videos):

Cambodia - Child Sex Slavery (Part 1 & 2): ~13 mins

Sex Trafficking in Cambodia: ~15 mins

Vlog Entry About…

Many white people have historically been guilty of denying, hiding or not acknowledging having any black heritage when do and know it. This would have to have been for the one-drop rule to work. Its is also what lead to the "passing" for white phenomenon by people who might otherwise be hushed into the black pile based on the one-drop rule. The focus and blame has most often been on white people but I want to point out that black people are just as guilty if not more for buying into the one-drop rule by helping to enforce it as a reality. And also for socially exiling anyone who is considered "black" but acknowledges having a mixed heritage.

Blacks strongly discourage people who seem proud of all of their heritage. It is only acceptable to be "black". Only people with parents considered to be of two distinctly different groups are allowed to be called mixed or safely acknowledge other part of their heritage within American Black culture. People who have an obvious mixed appearance but are both considered black according to the one-drop rule and have equally "mixed looking" parents who were also acknowledged as just being black under the one-drop rule are most often effected by this phenomenon.

I witnessed this first hand in one African American Studies course I signed up for and quickly dropped. One student who identifies as being black but also acknowledges his other back ground asked a question about racial identity for people who have mixed histories. The black professor seemed very uncomfortable with his question and began an attack on the student suggesting that something was wrong for him for not "knowing" who he is. She ended by saying "I know who I am". I tried to defend him which was common since this was not the only occasion upon which this professor had convoluted perceptions of points students were making in her class. My efforts were in vein, to say the least, but the point is that this type of hostility among blacks when someone in the community…

The most recent conversation/debate that I had with anyone over racial issues was with a fellow youtuber I met with in the comments section of a video on the Jena 6. I have included a pretty inclusive video that explains both sides of what happened and how people are reacting to it, if you aren't aware of it or don't have all the facts. Then I have copied and pasted the conversations I had below. The first set of dialogues took place on the actual video comments and include a good bit of data on the racial climate of these types of forums. Some things to note about this case are the ways in which these people interact with one another specifically the difference in how STUMPgrinder57 conducts himself in the forum and then how the way he conducts himself changes when we have the one on one dialogue through personal messaging. This is significant because it demonstrates one of the fallacious characteristics that many racists whites demonstrate, in which they passionately deny that they are racists but there are times when they are and have been blatantly just that. It is significant also because it shows a possible connection between how people change according to their environment (i.e. a person is more likely to exhibit racist behavior when the actions are more easily justifiable, (interaction with someone who fits into a negative stereotype you have about another group) I will point out some of this in the actual dialogue as notes with this color text. Anything that I have said in the dialogue itself is highlighted by pink text. STUMPgrinder57's real name and demographic information was changed or omitted to protect his annonymity. Due to the nature of these dialogs there is an excessive amount of questionable language, therefore use your discression when viewing.

I wrote an article earlier today about institutional racism at a hotel in South Park, Charlotte. Hoping to be somewhat relieved by having gotten the injustices out in writing I realized that only justice for my people would suffice.

I looked into finding out what evidence would be needed for the people in the article to build a legal case against the employer. I began to look into where and to whom these types of violations could reported to and actually have them pursue the cases. I say actually pursue because I filed an unrelated claim with the North Carolina Attorney General's  office in Charlotte and had the whole thing brushed off when there was no response from the offending party. Which reminds me that I need to call them back on that... Anyway something that really upsets me is recalling how many white people I've heard saying things like "why don't they just get jobs", "if they just try hard and get educations they can be just as successful", "racism is pretty much gone, and they need to just let slavery go" so on and so forth, the examples could wrap the earth multiple times in 10 px font.

I don't know which bothers me more, the fact that many white people believe that those things are true, that we black people just don't try, we create our own problems that they have no hand in OR that many other white people just don't care, or actually are quite comfortable with these issues. It gets harder and harder for me to remain logical with things like this so heavily effecting my life and the lives of my people. It gets harder every day not to hate back. But what good would it do to be like them? None.

But do take this message away if you are white and you stumble across these words. There are thousands of educated, strong black people who DESERVE good jobs, promotions raises and are being prevented from moving up in life, still based only on skin color. Its a reality. If you are one of those good white people, who don't stand for that type of behavior, then…

I just want to share a bit of experiential advice for people who use or are planning to use ebay. Try to buy from the "little person" not the "big business" sellers of ebay. They have similar disfunctions as big corporations in the tangible world, suffer from. They often have terrible customer service with only automated responses. Unlike the smaller business owner that usually cares about their customers, big time sellers take their customers for granted because of the shear volume, and perhaps the number of people there are keeping the gears turning. They also lack the time to give each customer one on one attention if something goes awry.

This difference between an interaction between a big business in the real world and one on ebay is the feedback system. In the real world when you are mistreated by a big corporation you can just choose not to deal with them any more and warn others of your experience. They aren't going to leave you bad feedback in retaliation so that your relationship with other retailers are effected. Thats exactly the case on ebay (UPDATE: ebay has recently chosen to change the feedback system so that sellers can not leave negative feedback for customers while they have balanced this by cracking down on non-baying bidders, much of this article is still relevant). Here are a few examples that I came across personally in the last few weeks. I was buying a lot of things from different sellers over the holiday and thus I was exposed to more risk than usual.

Foxy Facets: I bought one item from them, and at check out they had automatically added optional insurance. I did not see the option to remove this and thus paid it without noticing that it was added. When I clicked the pay button I noticed the high total, but it was already too late. So I sent a message asking for them to remove the insurance and refund the difference. Of course they give some reason as to why they couldn't do this. They end up giving me a store credit code for the amount,…

Ok, so I was watching Dr. Phil and I saw this show about a girl who is like 11 years old or something and totally completely addicted to Second Life. I have my second life name and I have the app downloaded but have yet to get it going, too many other things in my First Life going on.

But anyway this girl is on there almost 24-7. She has a huge house, fancy car, nice money making set up, a boyfriend, every thing she doesnt have in her real life. Addiction is a problem right, but I have read a few articles on Second Life and how people are becoming millionaires from the whole thing, by the creation of virtual businesses.

My thing is that I bet you, if the girl was making millions her mom would have never called Dr. Phil, and even if she did I doubt that he would have invited her on the show. Money changes things, and if she is making money people no longer see it as an addiction. Being a work-a-holic is not a crime in this country, and enjoying your job is something highly sought after.

The other issue about this situation that I wanted to comment on was how freaked out her mom was when she came in to her room and caught her avatar making out with her virtual boy friend on her virtual bed in her virtual mansion. I wanted to figure out why her mom freaked out (not that she shouldn't have) but the situation entails a lot of different issues than the kissing the real boy on your real bed would. We allow our children to play games in which they, act out with virtual characters, things that aren't appropriate, safe, or feasible in the real world, and its ok. For example, high speed reckless driving which could endanger and often injures virtual pedestrians; the use of virtual firearms and other weapons to commit virtual murder; The selling of virtual drugs; the list goes on. I know that some of these examples only occur in T to M rated games but some of the less culturally offensive ones are common place in children's games. We commonly don't get all bent out of shape…

Just thought I'd put a small but significant warning out there about those small websites constructed just for the purpose of pushing some over priced e-book. I have come across a few e-books that have had good information in them. The problem was that it wasn't enough information for the price and that it repeats a lot of information that you can find doing internet research on your own. If you are going to spend money on literature of any kind it should probably be a REAL BOOK not an ebook. If you shop around you can find real books written on the topic you are interested on Amazon.com for a fraction of their retail prices. Snatch up some of those, you will be much happier than you would be if you spend 29.99 on a 15 page pdf file. And if those long, long, long pages of persuasive sales pitch just have your finger aching to click the "buy now" button here are a few clues to help you assess the probability of you regretting it once you've read it.

1. The page consists of a good amount of text on how terrible the seller's life used to be (before he/she figured out the "secret(s)" he/she is going to share with you in the pdf. Or better yet it talks about how terrible your life must be and lists a bunch of stuff that you'd probably enjoy, like more money, time with your family, etc.

2. There are graphics on the page of things like vacation shots, people who look like a family spending time together, fancy cars, mansions, yachts, and the kicker...rolls or stacks of money.  Real books that have real information to use these tactics to sell information, you can go to a library and check them out before you buy or read summaries and reviews of the book to determine if the CONTENT is what you are after. Don't by an image by real information. You might also see graphics of software boxes, books, and even CD-Roms that are supposed to give a graphical representation of the item. I have studied the sales tactics of these types of pages and these types of graphics are supposed…