Black is Beautiful

As mentioned in the last blog, the big cultural movement called 'Black is Beautiful' was an exciting one. Just to feed to your curiosity, here is an introduction straight from the wikipedia.

Black is beautiful is a cultural movement that began in the United States of America in the 1960s by African Americans. It later spread to much of the black world, most prominently in the writings of the Black Consciousness Movement of Steve Biko in South Africa. It aims to dispel the notion in many world cultures that black people's natural features such as skin color, facial features and hair are inherently ugly.

John Sweat Rock was the first to coin the phrase "black is beautiful" during a speech in 1858. The movement also encouraged men and women to stop straightening their hair and attempting to lighten or bleach their skin. The prevailing idea in American culture, perpetuated by the media, was that black features are less attractive or desirable than white features. The idea that blackness was ugly was highly damaging to the psyche of African Americans, manifesting itself as internalized racism. This idea even existed in black communities and led to practices such as paper bag parties.
Paper bag parties were 20th century African-American social events at which only individuals with complexions at least as light as the color of a brown paper bag were admitted. The term also refers to larger issues of class and caste within the African-American community.

Among other achievements, the "black is beautiful" movement was largely responsible for the popularity of the Afro hairstyle.

Even now the movement has not fully taken hold. According to figures compiled by the Essence market research team, African Americans spend 25 percent more of their disposable income on personal care products than the general population. Natural hair styles are still considered "somewhat rebellious" or "unkempt" in parts of the United States.

The central purpose of the movement was "to make African Americans totally and irreversibly proud of their racial and cultural heritage." During this movement, there were a few other topics addressed besides that of having black pride. Art became increasingly important because of a newly appreciated relationship between art and politics. Political struggles bring about art that can later be used to explain things.

Kwame Brathwaite, president of the National Council of Artists (NCA) New York chapter stated,

We came together to deal with the arts, to tie them to what was going on in Africa. We had the idea; you can’t divorce art from the struggle. As a result, artists were no longer artists, but the organizers of a movement. We replaced the word "negro" with "African". Another topic or perspective is that of "black nationalism". This principle introduces the idea of blacks having a totally separate society from whites.

Politics around Identity and Groups is quite interesting to learn. Anita wrote about a book called "Tribes : We need you to lead us". Will write about it sometime later.