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The Worlds of Ntozake ShangeAND DIGITAL STORYTELLING

What’s in a Name ?

by Dayna Beatty 2 Comments

This course has facilitated my understanding of myself, not just as a student or a feminist, but as a combination of all my identity markers in connection to my studies. As a Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies major, the first thing I think about whenever I consider myself in relationship to anything—be that academic or personal, is my feminism. As a result of my personal values and the ways that I have been trained to think as a student of my chosen discipline, my way of thinking revolves around questions of sex and gender. However, despite being a member of the feminism movement, I am also a heavy critic of feminism and its practices and policies. When I discuss my feminism, I feel that it is important to note that I come from an intersectional and transnational perspective. A lack of these two notions are my two biggest issues with the mainstream feminist movement that limit it’s potential for success. To me, intersectional feminism is about the consideration and incorporation of individual identity markers that work together to produce a more informed and inclusive type of feminist practice. Among these include race, gender, socio-economic background, ability status, family makeup, carrier status, etc., each of which functions as a different facet to inform a feminist ideology. Transnational, for me, means incorporating and adapting feminism to fit into the context of a particular physical or geographical location. Our class conversations have, in the past, noted the difference and challenges of acknowledging borders as a marker of physical difference and a way of facilitating the recognition of social and cultural different. Simultaneously, there is a need to disregard borders to unite women across the world under a similar plight. Too much of an emphasis on border risks creating a physical, state-centric model for understanding transnational feminism, but not enough of a border risks essentializing the experiences of women and reducing them to a single narrative. For me, transnational feminism simply implies an understanding of the social and cultural differences that produce variant lived experiences among women around the world. These differences can then be used to formulate new kinds of feminism to fit the particular needs of women located in particular locations and cultures. To me, my feminism an intersectional and transnational feminism, informed by my personal identity.

My personal identity is hinged on my family background and my race. My father is white and has lived in American his whole life. My mother is Japanese and her entire family still resides in Japan. She is the only member of her family to immigrate to another country and one of the few in her family that speak English. As a result, to my mom and the rest of my Japanese family, I am a first-generation, English-speaking, American citizen. On the other side, my father’s family is all deceased, which means growing up and to this day, my largest familial ties are those to my Japanese family. Therefor, my understanding of my family and our background is dominated by my Japanese side, which has largely informed my position in this world. I was younger, it was easier to incorporate my Japanese heritage into my everyday life because it was my experience at home, living with my mom as my primary care-taker, and all my friends at school knew about my family. However in college, I’ve noticed I have to make a much larger effort to continue to identify with my Japanese side, especially as a white-passing individual. At university, the conscious effort I make to celebrate my heritage and incorporate my identity into the world’s understanding of me is a key part of my college experience. This course has allowed me to understand the ways that my personal identity informs my daily lived experience, and the way that I can harness my understanding of myself to further enrich my academic studies. There is a trend in university studies to stray away from using the personal to inform academia, but this course allowed me to realize that my identity is critical to my understanding of the world, and therefor my chosen field of study, and is something to celebrate.

The terms I mentioned that inform my identity and my feminism are all ones that I believe are critical to discussing the work of radical women who fought for feminist issues in the 1970s and 80s. Transnational and intersectional are both terms that were not widely used at the time of this work, but as a scholar looking back on the work of these women, I think it is important to dig through the dominant white, second-wave feminism to understand and share the work of women who embraced ideas of transnational and intersectional feminism before these terms were common place. Similarly, being bi-racial, particularly Japanese, makes me keenly interested in the work of the women of this time who came out of an incredibly hostile environment of Japanese internment, which (on paper) concluded just 25 years prior.

My mother’s experience being denied by customs when she first attempted to immigrate to the United States over 25 years ago on baseless claims that she was “suspicious,” and her struggle to obtain citizenship over the past four years serves as a constant reminder of the work that Japanese and bi-racial activists during the 1970s and 1980s, an idea that my final project will explore. My final project will incorporate details about the Japanese feminist movement in the 1970s, which is called ūman ribu. This movement is critical to understand the work of Japanese feminists at the time, and helps to inform the experiences of Japanese women living in both Japan and the United States at the time. The unique element of Japanese feminism is rooted in the countries historical (and contemporary) deeply patriarchal society. This is where it is important to understand difference through a transnational perspective. Japanese society differs greatly from US society in that ideas of patriarchy, male-dominance, and gender roles are so deeply engrained in society, it is difficult to even notice it among daily life there. Not that in the United States this is not the case, but having spent time in both nations, I firmly believe Japan is a society founded and supported by an incredibly patriarchal system, so much more than is the case in the US. Therefore, in order to understand ūman ribu as a woman whose exposure to feminism has been western-centric, it is key to first understand the underlying difference between our society and that in Japan. Understanding these two terms, intersectional and transnational, will be critical in analyzing the work of Japanese feminist activists in the 1970s and 80s in my final project.

Vibration Cooking

by Breana Beaudreault 1 Comment

Although I always say that these readings really resonate with me, I don’t even know how to emphasize the ways that this reading stuck with me. As a baby, my mom brought me up smelling the different spices we had around the house. Now, ironically enough, my mom isn’t usually the one doing the cooking in the family, it’s always been my dad (with me by his side as soon as I could safely and effectively use a knife). But both of my parents have always emphasized the importance of cooking, and of cooking well; it’s a staple of self-sufficiency, of health, and it cares for you, body, mind, and spirit. Sometimes when I was little and even to this day, my parents will cook something and jokingly ask me what they put in it, and I can almost always pick out every spice, every seasoning, and tell them to add a little more salt. Before I knew how to cook from those fancy recipes online, my father taught me vibration cooking. I remember, when I was no more than 14, making a soup; beef, carrots, the usual, and flinging open the spice drawer, smelling my favorites and throwing in what felt right. My parents remember that soup to this day it was so good. Yesterday, I made one of the few things that my mom cooks, because when she cooks, it’s always West Indian food because she knows how to cook her childhood meals best. She makes curried goat when I come home, and last year taught me how to make my favorite okra and rice. This break, I came home and made my mom’s classic okra and rice but with my spin on it, adding tomatoes and onions, chicken broth and thyme, among other things. There was something special about her face when I gave it to her. “You made it different. What did you put?” First skeptical, I was toying with a classic after all, her face beamed with pride as she reached for seconds. Watching her eat the second plate quietly was somehow one of the most profound moments of pride for me. She handed down something to me, something that she grew up with, something very small, and I honored it and made it my own. She didn’t have to say she liked it, or even smile (which is a rare occurrence for her and her family), just the quiet enjoyment of the second plate told me I did something right. When I sent her a picture of the curried goat recipe in Verta Mae’s book, she asked me if I had tried it out.  I joked with her that I didn’t have the money for goat or the big old crockpot, but knowing she trusted me with the more complex family favorite at all meant a lot. When I cook now, I cook everything, things I’ve learned from friends, online, maybe even late night stress baking. But when I cook my mom’s recipes, I remember all of the memories that came with her food, like Verta Mae does. It helps me disconnect and get into the flow of something, to feed and nourish myself, and in a much smaller way, I feel that I’m honoring my parents and the people who raised them, too. Recipes can feel like home. When I warm up my okra and rice I made last night writing this, I feel like my mom is there too, and she’d want me to do my best–only after I’ve had something to eat at mandatory family dinner.

TBD on Feminist Affiliation

by Perry O'Parsons 3 Comments

Before taking this class, my understanding of feminism was vague and mostly based on a white conception of feminism. Now as I am expanding my understanding of feminism, and different kinds of feminisms, and learning to look critically at the kind of feminism I was first introduced to, I find myself at the beginning of my development as feminist.

For now I am hesitant to identify myself specifically. As I am not a woman of color, I can recognize myself as an ally of WOC Feminist, Womanist, Asian/American feminist,  Latinx feminist etc but do not specifically identify with those groups. However, I certainly wouldn’t identify with the racist, exclusive, feminist groups that held (and still often hold) control of the public discourse over feminism. For now, this leads me to identify myself, not with a specific group, but with a role. For now I would identify as an ally to all my fellow feminists and a student of the various types of feminism. Each type of feminism is a practice of ideals, morals, beliefs etc. I must learn about and form my own practices before I appraise them and relegate myself to one or multiple groups.

 

I added this because I think this quote perfectly articulates the type of ideals I want to support, no matter what group I align myself with.

 

things i wish i could tell my mom

by Onyekachi Iwu 1 Comment

Things I Wish I Could Tell My Mom

I am returning to Of Woman Born: Reflections on Motherhood as Experience and Institution by Adrienne Rich because I think it was one of the most impactful for me this semester. I am currently doing a project that explores the relationship between black women and their mothers. A lot of the complex emotions and pains Rich details mirrors a lot of the conversations I’ve been having with black women about the relationships they have with their mothers.

 

The line “I too shall marry, have children, but not like her” and resenting our mothers for teaching us “compromise and self hatred” resonated with me so much.  It reminded me of “Things I Wish I Could Tell My Mother” by Daysha Edewi, a video where Edewi sets up a hypothetical scenario where she is able to confront her mother about the conflicting messages she sent to her as a little black girl. Her mother told her all the time that she loved her and adored her, while simultaneously constantly shaming and criticizing her body. She speaks a lot about feeling hypersexualized in her mothers eyes, although her and her mother shared the same body type. Within patriarchy, mothers try to teach their daughters to defend themselves against men– wear longer skirts, less make-up, gain less weight. However, by trying to protect their daughters from the pain and fear they experience, they end up traumatizing them and perpetuating the system.

 

I hated my mother for not fighting this system, for passing down insecurities and these performances of what love and care should be, and how that love and care does not exist for myself, but with men. Because of how our mother’s violence feels, we naively assume our awareness of this violence means we can break the cycle. I remember spending moments where I would assure I would never be so cruel to my child, call her names, and police her body in the ways my mother has done to me. And to some extent, I believe this is true. But I have so much more sympathy for my mother as an adult. No one taught her any different.

 

Rich also discusses how the patriarchy inherently feels threatened by the relationship between a mother and daughter, a relationship that exists outside of giving energy and care towards a man but directs that energy into another woman. There is this idea that the love and care women inhabit should be reserved and received by men alone, it’s function is to raise and parent men, even into the man’s adulthood. She mentions how her mother gave up being a pianist in order to further her husband’s dreams, similar to the ways mothers give up their dreams in order to give space to the dreams of their children.

 

Mothers and daughters rarely speak to each other, and have no standard for how to build a relationship in the home despite both experiencing this immense pain. How do we begin to heal if we don’t even know how to speak to one another?

 

What’s in a Name: Feminist Identifications

by Jennell Strong 1 Comment

Until very recently, I had been invested in naming and defining every aspect of my identity I had access to. I’d say I was a Black, first gen, cis- women loving woman. Now, besides declaring proudly the content of my natal chart, I could care less about listing off a bunch of markers that say little about my humanity. Likewise, I’m less inclined to wear any political identities on my sleeves. However, I will say my political and social beliefs are anti-racist, anti-misogyny, anti-xenophobia, abolitionist, queer, and womanist. I care about the lives of the most marginalized, the most forgotten, and the most at risk for being oppressed. As a black woman, my feminism will always center black women, it will always be diasporic first. It is also transnational. The things I want for myself (safety, access to life-saving resources, mobility, choice) I want for others everywhere. I am critical of white supremacy. I am critical of heteronormativity. I am critical of ideologies whose origins are inherently anti-me and whose effects shape my sense of self. My feminism is invested in dismantling every system or institution that robs humanity of all its love and joy.

I would describe the activities of the women from the 1970s-80s as radical in theory and on the page. I don’t know if the women whose works we have read have participated in any grassroots organization. I feel their activism lies in their thought provoking, cultural shifting critical analysis and prose. Their work are also undoubtedly feminist in nature. Despite Wallace denouncing any association of Black Macho and the Myth of the Superwoman with feminism, her writing is black feminist at its rawest. Lastly, at the core of these women’s beliefs and politics is the goal of liberation, for women, for folks of color, for everyone.

Black People are Myths

by Jennell Strong 1 Comment

For all the uproar and criticism Black Macho and the Myth of the Superwoman garnered after its release, I don’t find it to be as inflammatory as I was lead to believe. Reading Michele Wallace’s account on the relationships between black women and men in the 1970s, I wonder how her words have been inside my mouth for as long as I was old enough to say and really feel that “A nigga man ain’t shit” (15). Honestly! How is it that her words feel so eerily familiar as if my mother co-wrote it. I recall very clearly my mother saying in one of them disapproving black women voices how black men flock to white women because they see them as symbols of success, of moving on up the social ladder. Even still, I can retrieve without much effort from my adolescent memories, a friend of my father explaining to me that in the U.S. black men and white men were polar opposites in terms of power; that they were the opponents in the great American struggle. Everybody else, white and black women, were in the middle of it all. Although young and without the words and courage to counter him, I was disgruntled by his statements, feeling that his hypothesis was blatantly ignorant. Women can’t just be passive pawns in the battle of male power.

Wallace’s book is centered around the myths of the Black Macho and the Superwoman. Within a eurocentric society whose gender binary consists of man and woman, black people, by virtue of being descendants of an enslaved people, don’t ascribe to those “normal” gender categories irrespective of their aspirations to do so. It seems that the opposite of dehumanization is overestimation and in the case of black folks we can either be subhumans, close to the monkeys, or the hyper– a black man whose masculinity is defined by his virility and aggression or a black woman whose femininity is also defined by an exaggerated sexuality.

Wallace writes the black woman is “really more of a woman in that she is the embodiment of Mother Earth, the quintessential mother with infinite sexual, life-giving, and nurturing reserve…she is a superwoman” (107). What are the implications of such a myth? Black women being so strong that 1) they can withstand the sexual violence of the slave master 2) serve as guinea pig for early gynecological procedures 3) be ignored by doctors when experiencing pain during pregnancy and risk fatality and 4) endure the bullshit that black men put them through on a daily basis. These are but of few examples of how black women’s real and imagined strength and longevity has been used to justify their abuse. To the last example, think of all the black women celebrities whose personal love lives have made public scandal. What’s the message of Beyonce’s Lemonade? Yeah she’s been heartbroken and cheated on, but in the end she stood by her man through the pain and everyone’s like wow Beyonce’s so strong. What good has this myth of the superwoman brought black women?

Thinking of the superwoman brought to mind my generation’s #BlackGirlMagic movement. The phrase and concept strives to celebrate black girls and women. Odes to melanin and curl patterns make up much of the rhetoric. It affirms our powers. But of course, every seemingly beneficial thing can be criticized. In a 2016 Elle magazine, Harvard professor Linda Chavers wrote a piece disapproving the BGM movement, claiming it was an iteration of the very myth Wallace explains. Chavers assures herself that she has heard “black girl magic” somewhere before:

“The “strong, black woman” archetype, which also includes the mourning black woman who suffers in silence, is the idea that we can survive it all,that we can withstand it. That we are, in fact, superhuman. Black girl magic sounds to me like just another way of saying the same thing, and it is smothering and stunting. It is, above all, constricting rather than freeing.” Black girl magic suggests we are, again, something other than human.”

Although, I see how chanting black girl magic can sneakily affirm the old as (colonial) times idea of a black superwoman, but I think it’s much a stretch to equate it to what Wallace is describing.

You can read the rest here: https://www.elle.com/life-love/a33180/why-i-dont-love-blackgirlmagic/

I find fascinating Wallace’s insistence that black people are mythologized in American society and that black people internalize these myths, believing them to be true of each other. I want to share a scene from the 1974 Afrofuturist film Space Is the Place which stars jazz giant Sun Ra. This is the era from which Wallace writes so it is especially relevant to see her subjects personified. Sun Ra is telling the young black folks that they aren’t real. We are a myth.

Watching this film years ago, this scene and his monologue stuck with me. I had never thought of myself as a myth. Now reading Black Macho I agree more and more that black people are myths. Not to say we aren’t human beings because of course. But Black People™ or African Americans or Negros or slaves are just socially constructed, as is anyone categorized into race, gender, sexual orientation, or class. We aren’t who we are. We are what we/they say we are. To say I am black is to attach to myself a list of concepts, connotations, qualities, narratives and histories that may or may or not be true to anything of who I am as a human. My blackness is perceived and conceived differently in the minds of every person I encounter, making me not who I am but who they say I am. The superwoman is nothing but others’ projection internalized and reappropriated. That is why it is imperative for black folks to be the ones with the power to define ourselves.

Clash of Civilizations

by Breana Beaudreault 0 Comments

As the year continues, I continue to find the places where my classes speak to each other and introduce many layers and dimensions to the same topics without realizing their intersections. My human rights seminar is one that came to mind when I was thinking about Third World and Transnational feminisms after my presentation. The class, called Human Rights, Religion, and Social Justice begins to tease out the ways that two of the biggest organizational forces help or hurt the other’s cause. In one of my readings, and in-class discussion, the usefulness and drawbacks of global pluralism (in this case as pertains to religion) came up. Here, I found that pluralism ran into many of the same tensions as transnational feminists have with Third World feminists. From an article by Rosemary Hicks titled “Saving Darfur”, she notes in her final remarks, “pluralism is often articulated as an ethic essential to democratic practice and an appropriate framework for resolving national and international conflicts. Though good in many respects, pluralism is a technique for making supposedly irreducible differences coexist, and therein lays its naturalizing power…resonant appeals to static animosities elided the fluidity of religious and racial identities and the political circumstances under which differences become salient.” Just as the writers of This Bridge Called My Back had to reckon with the democratizing of the text at the expense of black women and their labor, and transnational and Third World women have to reckon with the need to destroy larger systems of power in conjunction with location/nation-specific problems, religions have run into the same tension. As the clash of civilizations theory I studied a while back posits there will always be an innate struggle of one nation and culture over the other that it comes in contact with in postcolonial society, it becomes increasingly clear that this tension has been made explicitly clear for quite some time. The authors of This Bridge were able to reckon with it in the end because it achieved its goal despite its non-linear path, but I continue to question how we reckon with these tensions when the outcomes are negative, or neutral? How do we respect particularities while also finding common ground? Even in the ad that we watched in class claiming “freedom is basic” brought to the foreground questions of how individuals define freedom and what it even means for that freedom to be basic. I doubt this is a question that is easily resolved as it has been grappled with for years, but I am interested to see how this generation creates a different world from the victories and progression of smaller communities they are a part of.

Bocas: A Daughter’s Geography and Third World Feminism

by Makaria Yami 0 Comments

When I was reading Reclaiming Third World Feminism: or Why Transnational Feminism Needs Third World Feminism by Ranjoo Seodu Herr, I could not help but think of Bocas: A Daughter’s Geography by Ntozake Shange. Herr’s assertion that Transnational Feminism has gained more popularity than Third World Feminism is true, as I had not heard of Third World Feminism until I joined this class.

 

Herr says that there are similarities between Transnational Feminism and Third World feminism, but what separates them is that Transnational feminists “consider nation-states and nationalism as detrimental to feminist causes, whereas Third World feminists are relatively neutral to, and at times even approving of, nation-states and nationalism” (Herr 2). Third World Feminism rejects white global feminism, which is the idea that women across the globe suffer from universal patriarchy.

 

Shange’s work in Bocas: A Daughter’s Geography reminds me of third world feminism, as it rejects the idea of a narrow understanding of gender oppression and it acknowledges nation-states. Shange writes:

 

“but i have a daughter/ la habana

i have a son/ guyana

our twins

santiago & brixton/ cannot speak

the same language

yet we fight the same old men”

 

In this quote, Shange mentions Cuba (la habana), Guyana, Chile (Santiago), and England (Brixton). In the entirety of the poem, she not only talk about South America and Europe but also Africa. Shange’s poem has a global context and she writes about nation-states, which is different from how Transnational feminists would write because they would have a global context without mentioning nation states. When Shange writes “yet we fight the same fight,” she is referring to imperialism, an important tool used to analyze the oppression of third world women.

 

One reason that Third World feminists don’t reject nation-states and nationalism in their analysis of their oppression is that nationalism has been an important tool to reject imperialism. Shange seems to work in this context because her poem is about imperialism (“the same old men”) and nation states/nationalism. Another reason Third World feminists don’t outright reject nation-states and nationalism is that relinquishing “the national political arena to patriarchal feminists [who identify as nationalists] . . . would be tantamount to authorizing them to continue with impunity and the subjugation of women’” (Herr 8). Male Third World nationalists have ascribed masculinity to nationalism, and by not associating with nationalism, Third World feminists don’t get to voice their objection to the association of masculinity with nationalism. Shange’s poem rejects the idea of nationalism as a masculine conception, as she says “but i have a daughter” and “i have a son.”

Shange’s poem pairs well with Herr’s essay because the definitions that Herr provides for Third World feminism are reflected in Shange’s poem.

In her essay, Herr cites Third World feminist Chandra Mohanty. I included a picture of a book Mohanty wrote because I thought the cover was beautiful. The dove and sun that the woman in the middle is holding stood out to me. It reminded me of the last line in Shange’s poem, “we are feeding our children the sun.”

Archives & Remembering Shange

by Makaria Yami 1 Comment

I wanted to take some time to honor Ntozake Shange and her memory by discussing my experience with the Shange archives. Prior to exploring her archives, I didn’t have a concrete understanding of what the purpose and history of archiving was. Not only did the Shange archive give me that understanding, but it also brought me closer to Shange and her work.

 

My favorite thing in the archive is her journals. As someone who frequently journals, I understand how personal and vulnerable it is to share what you journaled about with another person. That’s why I was surprised to learn that Barnard had some of her journals.

 

I am thankful to Shange for allowing us into her personal thoughts and feelings. In her journal, on March 1, 2000, Shange writes, “Even though I took my medicine and paid my bills, I still feel really shaky & anxious. Talked to mama . . .”

 

This page stood out to me because I sometimes deal with the same emotions that Shange dealt with. It’s even more frustrating when I do everything that I am supposed to, everything from cleaning my room to fulfilling my extracurricular and academic activities, and still feel anxious. It’s hard to talk about these feelings, but because Shange so openly shared her feelings with us, it makes me feel more comfortable opening up.

 

In the same entry, Shange writes, “I think I did the syllabus wrong, not putting enough material for each session. But I’ll see tomorrow. I didn’t work on the novel today, either.”

 

It’s clear to see that she is dealing with doubt, anxiety, and an inability to work. When I looked at when her work was published, nothing was published the year she wrote this journal entry. The work she published after this journal entry was in 2003, three years after the entry. The works are titled Ellington Was Not a Street and Daddy Says.

 

Another thing that I found interesting was that she changed from a black pen to a blue pen in the middle of her entry. I thought this was interesting because she changed the pen in the middle of a sentence and it doesn’t look like the black pen was running out of ink when she switched it. The more entries I read, the more I want to understand where she wrote what she wrote, what time of day she wrote it, and every other detail.

 

The more I explore Shange’s archives, the more I want to read her work. I feel closer to Shange and her work more than any other author. Even though I am deeply saddened that she passed away, it makes me happy to know her memory will live on through the archives.   

Photos of Shange’s journal entries.

Black Capitalism

by Brianna Sturkey 0 Comments

In “The Digital Afterlives of This Bridge Called My Back,” the author subtly addresses the complex relationship between academic labor of women of color and unpaid online labor. Arguably this book has been more popular in online communities than in retail, thus introducing the intricacies of economics in regards to women of color. Recognizing that “‘traditional’ classrooms have not always been a welcoming or socially dynamic place for women of color”, the formation of digital classrooms provide “an ‘idealized’ unversity, one the obscures the labor and identity inequalities that have long existed” (259). Although these social networks provide a space for women of color to connect and form their own educational norms, the scholarly labor of the authors goes unpaid. This introduces another form of inequality because of the expectation that this labor by women of color does not deserve monetary compensation, but instead should settle for recognition only. Recognition and compensation are only mutually exclusive categories in the world of people of color and this is terrible choice to have to make. The intention of this book was to be “used as a required text in most women’s studies courses” and the authors did not only “mean just ‘special’ courses on Third World Women or Racism” (260). By reducing this popularity of this book to only online communities serves as a larger disservice for the feminist movement and goes directly against the wishes of the authors of this book. Furthermore, the authors deserve a monetary reward for their scholarly labor and anything otherwise functions as a form of racial exploitation.

This conversation about the how recognition serves as payment for the labor of people of color, reminds me how “Black twitter” is the cornerstone of every major marketing or PR ad. The formation of “Black Twitter” is an informal digital community that formed naturally as a Black people found each other on this social media app and due to their shared life experiences created comedic gold out of their everyday sufferings and traumas. Black twitter is responsible for the major dance, fashion, and slang trends that dominate the modern social scenes. One modern example of the exploitation of this community comes from the video game Fortnite which became highly popular due the characters preforming major dance trends created by Black artists, which then were popularized by Black twitter. However, this video game renames the dances, thus stripping the credibility of the Black artists who created the dances and how they became popular in the first place. This relates to This Bridge Called My Back and how although the book was distributed through online networks such as Tumblr and the authors were unpaid, media corporations such as Yahoo who owns and sells advertising space on Tumblr were indirectly benefiting (256). The truth of the matter is that Black people are innovators and at the forefront of every major trend and discovery, but the lack of compensation renders them invisible in a world that values capitalism over everything. Either America needs to revoke capitalism as the dominate economic system in order to equalize labor regardless of race, or they must begin paying Black and Brown people their worth.