{"version": "1.0", "type": "rich", "title": "Black History Month (Orthodox): Introduction", "author_name": "kontextmaschine", "author_url": "https://kontextmaschine.com", "provider_name": "kontextmaschine", "provider_url": "https://kontextmaschine.com", "url": "https://kontextmaschine.com/post/97276276163/", "html": "

Went back to the Black Pride framing shop the other day to get this old double-hemisphere map print done up.

The place, like my house, is in essentially the black neighborhood of the state, so it makes sense there\u2019s a market for appealing to pride in your black heritage. God knows Portland\u2019s got plenty of opportunities to flatter your white heritage - Scandanavian, Scottish, Irish, German (click that one, \u2018dwracu). Hell, the retro-rustic chickens/mason jars/filament bulbs aesthetic we breathe like oxygen these days is basically the midwest-American variant. (And that\u2019s not even to mention the black/white heritage fusion places.) Even the Portland city flag (which you see more often than the American) is a Scandanavian cross, only kinked a bit and with an outdoorsy color scheme, which is pretty much Correct.

Looking around the shop there was all sorts of Egyptian-themed jewelery and busts of Nubian princesses and Zulu motifs and whatnot, which like the Swahili lingustics of Kwanzaa are a little eyebrowable as icons for proud black Americans given that Afro-America mostly traces its lineage to slaves from Western Africa. But how different is that from proud white Australians around here posting pictures of Viking warriors and Roman ruins and Viennese architecture? As long as they don\u2019t crawl too far up their own fantasias or try to fabricate irredentist causus belli out of it, both have my blessing.

(Of course, this Pan-Africanism does have roots in a multinational and intermittently violent campaign towards regime change which\u2026 hrm.)

Aaaaaaanyway, this all reminded me that I\u2019ve had a few essays stewing for a while on black history in America that I had in my head to post for Black History Month, only for two years now I\u2019ve missed it. Probably because I don\u2019t have any schoolteachers reminding me by running lessons about peanut butter. So screw it, I\u2019m declaring Black History Month (Orthodox), lasting from now until whenever I finish up. I\u2019ll be tagging the stuff (plus some archives) as afamhist, riffing off the \u201camhist\u201d tag I shamelessly stole from monetizeyourcat, PBUH. (Who will hopefully recover from her show trial and purge by the sad anime transmarxists before too long and eventually deliver that \u201cOregon as Peak Free Soil/Free Laborism\u201d piece I\u2019ve been looking forward to for damn near two years now.)

Anyway. First up: The Crack Era, or why gangsta rap is closer to haiku than funk.

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