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Bio-Sketch
Irene Monroe is a
religion columnist, public theologian, and
motivational speaker. As a motivational speaker
Monroe gave the 2000 inaugural invocation
“Cambridge 2000: A New Vision of Social Justice”
at Cambridge City Hall celebrating Cambridge’s
newly elected City Council. Participating along
with the City of Cambridge celebrating marriage
equality at City Hall, on May 16, 2004 Monroe
gave the invocation “On the Eve of the Freedom
to Marry.” Monroe have also keynoted at A WORLD
OF A DIFFERENCE Institute’s 5th Annual Congress
sponsored by the Anti-Defamation league in
Boston.
Irene Monroe Bio
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More than 100 African-American LGBTQ clergy,
religious activists and our allies came to hear sermons and
speeches on how to develop specific strategies to challenge the
systemic homophobia in black churches, from its pulpits to its
pews. Most notably, the Rev. Al Sharpton delivered the event's
keynote address.
"Martin Luther King said there are two
types of leadership. There are those who are thermometers, who
measure the temperature in the room, and those who are
thermostats, who change the temperature. I come to tell you to
be thermostats. Turn up the heat in the Black Church. Make these
people sweat," said Sharpton, a former Democratic
presidential candidate.
The Black Church wont reform
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With suppressed information deriving
from Gnostic gospels and apocryphal texts finally
emerging from out of the closet, ecclesiastical
authorities wrestle to keep the millennia-long lid on
tight about the historical Jesus.
However, the debate about Jesus'
sexuality takes him from his mother's womb to his tomb.
The Christian depiction of Jesus as that of a life-long
virgin who had no sexual desire and who never engaged in
sexual intercourse raises anyone's suspicion, because by
today's sexual standards, Jesus' homosocial environment
of 12 men suggests, according to the law of averages,
that at least one out of the bunch was gay.
And given the nature of compulsory
heterosexuality playing in Jewish marital laws during
Jesus' time, Jesus might have been forced to be on the
"down low."
Churchs code keeps Jesus on the down low
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To get African-American male ministers, in particular, to think
outside of their narrowly constructed boxes about race is an
arduous task. And much of the reason is because of the
persistent nature of racism in the lives of black people and the
little gains accomplished supposedly on behalf of racial
equality.
Many African Americans see that civil rights gains have come
faster for queer people. From the Stonewall Riots of 1969 to May
17, 2004, the LGBTQ movement has made some tremendous gains into
mainstream society, a reality that has not been afforded to
African Americans.
And while the freedom to marry has been an arduous struggle and
a right long overdue for LBGTQ people, the debate did not begin
with queer people.
The marriage debate here in the U.S. began when African-American
slaves were forbidden to marry, so they “jumped over the
broom” – an African-American tradition – in front of their
slave masters to consecrate their nuptials until the end of the
Civil War in 1865.
Black Ministers and Queer Community
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Table
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In July 2005, one of Washington, D.C.’s
prominent African-American ministers, the Rev. Willie F. Wilson,
pastor of Union Temple Baptist Church in Southeast Washington
who in 1999 opened his church for a forum on discrimination
against same-gender loving (SGL) people, set off a firestorm
with his now-notorious sermon denouncing gays and lesbians.
With graphic language, Wilson told an
approving audience punctuated with Amens, “Lesbianism is about
to take over our community. Women falling down on another woman,
strapping yourself up with something, it ain’t real. That
thing ain’t got no feeling in it. It ain’t natural. Anytime
somebody got to slap some grease on your behind and stick
something in you, it’s something wrong with that. Your butt
ain’t made for that. No wonder your behind is bleeding. You
can’t make no correction with a screw and another screw. The
Bible says God made them male and female.”
A queer year in the black community
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Racial epithets are such a mainstay
in the American lexicon that their broad-based appeal to
both blacks as well as whites have anesthetized us not
only to the damaging and destructive use of epithets,
but also to our ignorance of their historical origins.
My state's governor, Mitt Romney of
Massachusetts, apologized this week for using the racial
epithet “tar baby" at a Republican political gathering
in Iowa over the weekend while describing a collapse in
a Big Dig tunnel that killed a Boston woman on July 10.
He said the best thing he could do politically is to
"just get as far away from that tar baby" of a subject
as he could.
Tar baby is a pejorative term
referring to African-American children, especially
girls, and was used by whites during American slavery.
Today, the term has come to depict a sticky mess or
situation, referring to the 19th-century Uncle Remus
stories in which a doll made of tar was used to trap
Brer Rabbit.
When hate speech becomes accepted
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Sister Citizen: Shame, Stereotypes, and Black Women in
America
By Melissa V.
Harris-Perry
According to the
author, this society has historically exerted
considerable pressure on black females to fit into one
of a handful of stereotypes, primarily, the Mammy, the
Matriarch or the Jezebel. The selfless
Mammy’s behavior is marked by a slavish devotion to
white folks’ domestic concerns, often at the expense of
those of her own family’s needs. By contrast, the
relatively-hedonistic Jezebel is a sexually-insatiable
temptress. And the Matriarch is generally thought of as
an emasculating figure who denigrates black men, ala the
characters Sapphire and Aunt Esther on the television
shows Amos and Andy and Sanford and Son, respectively.
Professor Perry
points out how the propagation of these harmful myths
have served the mainstream culture well. For instance,
the Mammy suggests that it is almost second nature for
black females to feel a maternal instinct towards
Caucasian babies.
As for the source
of the Jezebel, black women had no control over their
own bodies during slavery given that they were being
auctioned off and bred to maximize profits. Nonetheless,
it was in the interest of plantation owners to propagate
the lie that sisters were sluts inclined to mate
indiscriminately.
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Sex at the Margins
Migration, Labour Markets and the Rescue Industry
By Laura María Agustín
This book explodes several myths: that selling sex is completely different from any other kind of work, that migrants who sell sex are passive victims and that the multitude of people out to save them are without self-interest. Laura Agustín makes a passionate case against these stereotypes, arguing that the label 'trafficked' does not accurately describe migrants' lives and that the 'rescue industry' serves to disempower them. Based on extensive research amongst both migrants who sell sex and social helpers, Sex at the Margins provides a radically different analysis. Frequently, says Agustin, migrants make rational choices to travel and work in the sex industry, and although they are treated like a marginalised group they form part of the dynamic global economy. Both powerful and controversial, this book is essential reading for all those who want to understand the increasingly important relationship between sex markets, migration and the desire for social justice. "Sex at the Margins rips apart distinctions between migrants, service work and sexual labour and reveals the utter complexity of the contemporary sex industry. This book is set to be a trailblazer in the study of sexuality."—Lisa Adkins, University of London |
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Millennial Momentum
How a New Generation Is Remaking America
By Morley Winograd and Mr. Michael D. Hais
About every eight decades, coincident with the most stressful and perilous events in U.S. history—the Revolutionary and Civil Wars and the Great Depression and World War II—a new, positive, accomplished, and group-oriented “civic generation” emerges to change the course of history and remake America. The Millennial Generation (born 1982–2003) is America’s newest civic generation. In their 2008 book, Millennial Makeover, Morley Winograd and Michael D. Hais made a prescient argument that the Millennial Generation would change American politics for good. Later that year, a huge surge of participation from young voters helped to launch Barack Obama into the White House. Now, in Millennial Momentum, Winograd and Hais investigate how the beliefs and practices of the Millennials are transforming other areas of American culture, from education to entertainment, from the workplace to the home, and from business to politics and government. The Millennials’ cooperative ethic and can-do spirit have only just begun to make their mark, and are likely to continue to reshape American values for decades to come. Drawing from an impressive array of demographic data, popular texts, and personal interviews, the authors show how the ethnically diverse, socially tolerant, and technologically fluent Millennials can help guide the United States to retain its leadership of the world community and the global marketplace.
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They also illustrate why this generation’s unique
blend of civic idealism and savvy pragmatism will
enable us to overcome the internal culture wars and
institutional malaise currently plaguing the
country. Millennial Momentum offers a message of
hope for a deeply divided nation.—Rutgers
University Press
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The White Masters of the
World
From
The World and Africa, 1965
By W. E. B. Du Bois
W. E. B. Du Bois’
Arraignment and Indictment of White Civilization
(Fletcher)
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Ancient African Nations
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If you like this page consider making a donation
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Negro Digest /
Black World
Browse all issues
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Enjoy!
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The Death of Emmett Till by Bob Dylan
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The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll
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Only a Pawn in Their Game
Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson Thanks America for
Slavery /
George Jackson /
Hurricane Carter
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The Journal of Negro History issues at Project Gutenberg
The
Haitian Declaration of Independence 1804
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January 1, 1804 -- The Founding of
Haiti
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ChickenBones Store
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update
28 November 2011
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