The 9 Most Racist Disney Characters

In this very informative article Ben Joseph reveals Disneys not so inclusive history click here

INCOGNEGRO

"I pitched the story of a mystery based around a Walter White type brother who pretends to be caucasian to investigate black lynchings in the American deep south. They went for it, and bought the movie rights as well. The gifted Warren Pleece is illustrating, and it will hit next year. My cousin Ben Karp and I used to talk about going “incognegro” growing up, or passing, and I always joked that Incognegro would be my breakthrough bestseller (some people think I look like a caucasian, but I am a biracial African American). The graphic form let me tell the tale in an interesting way without doing a stupid commercially driven novel."

Written by Mat Johnson; Art by Warren Pleece; Cover by Stephen John Philips

Writer Mat Johnson (HELLBLAZER: PAPA MIDNITE), winner of the prestigious Hurston-Wright Legacy Award for fiction, constructs a fearless graphic novel that is both a page-turning mystery and a disturbing exploration of race and self-image in America, masterfully illustrated with rich period detail by Wareen Pleece (THE INVISIBLES, HELLBLAZER).

In the early 20th Century, when lynchings were commonplace throughout the American South, a few courageous reporters from the North risked their lives to expose these atrocities. They were African-American men who, due to their light skin color, could "pass" among the white folks. They called this dangerous assignment going "incognegro."

Zane Pinchback, a reporter for the New York-based New Holland Herald barely escapes with his life after his latest "incognegro" story goes bad. But when he returns to the sanctuary of Harlem, he's sent to investigate the arrest of his own brother, charged with the brutal murder of a white woman in Mississippi.

With a lynch mob already swarming, Zane must stay "incognegro" long enough to uncover the truth behind the murder in order to save his brother — and himself. He finds that the answers are buried beneath layers of shifting identities, forbidden passions and secrets that run far deeper than skin color.

Click here for Mat Johnson's interview

Power Words Dreamer

Africanhiphop.com

Africanhiphop.com serves the goal of unifying everybody who's inspired by hip hop and by the cultures of Africa and of African origins. The info at Africanhiphop.com is provided mostly by the artists themselves, and edited by the Africanhiphop.com web team in Amsterdam, Holland. Africanhiphop.com is a project of the African Hip Hop Foundation, a non-profit organization registered in the Netherlands which is run by a group of young volunteers from different countries and backgrounds. The foundation board consists of pioneers in African hip hop from South Africa, Uganda and Holland. Our editorial team is made up of young media professionals from Nigeria, South Africa, Senegal, Cape Verde and Angola, while we work with freelancers from all over the continent.

Click here to see the artist

A Weekend with Venus

Here's enuff Venus to see you through the next 2 days

November 25th Click Here

November 24th Click Here

November 14th Click Here

November 9th Click Here

Venus myspace

Cedric the Conscious Entertainer

Considered one of the funniest comics in America, Actor/Comedian Cedric ‘The Entertainer’ is best known as one of the headlining stars of the hit feature film, The Original Kings of Comedy, directed by Spike Lee. Here h appears on Def Poetry and gives the Conscious crowd something to think about


Click here for his foundation

Ho Che Anderson

Born in London in 1969, Ho Che Anderson was named after the Vietnamese and Cuban revolutionaries Ho Chi Minh and Che Guevara. He's a jack of all trades, master of none type, having worked as a commercial illustrator, writer of fiction, radio producer, and newspaper reporter. And like many before him he has designs on going to Hollywood and becoming a waiter before making it big in the movies.
Anderson is primarily known for inflicting the world with the comics books, King, I Want To Be Your Dog, Wise Son, and Scream Queen.

Check out his interview here

The Tooth Fair

The multicultural family has never been portrayed so well

Multicultural vs. Unicultural

It is well known that people don't always ‘speak their minds’, and it is suspected that people don’t always ‘know their minds’. Understanding such divergences is important to scientific psychology. This web site presents a method that demonstrates the conscious-unconscious divergences much more convincingly than has been possible with previous methods. This new method is called the Implicit Association Test, or IAT for short.

We will ask you (optionally) to report your attitudes toward or beliefs about these topics, and provide some general information about yourself. These demonstrations should be more valuable if you have also tried to describe your self-understanding of the characteristic that the IAT is designed to measure. Also, a variety of factors may influence your IAT performance. The score is provided for entertainment purposes only.

Click Here to begin

Programming Your Happiness

From dreamersanddoers.com

By taking steps every day to build and maintain our happiness, we are better equipped to operate at our optimum. There are actually ways to help mentally ‘program’ our happiness

MEDITATE: Start your day strong. Take a few moments each morning for prayer and meditation. Studies show that meditation may even change how our brain works by increasing activity in a part of our brain associated with positive feelings. Focus on peaceful and uplifting thoughts. Imagine your day going well. Review your goals and dreams. For maximum benefit, meditate several times each day. Even if you can’t get away from work or family, close your eyes and relax your mind.

APPRECIATE:
Think thank you. Being grateful reminds us of the many things we have to be happy about. For example, if your job’s driving you crazy, appreciate the fact that you have a job. Many people don’t. Spending less time complaining and more time counting our blessings helps us look at the upside of life. We can even be thankful for the problems we don’t have.

CELEBRATE:
Self-praise is important. Cheer yourself on. Acknowledge your achievements each day, however small they might seem at the time. Marking our accomplishments is encouraging and reminds us we are on a path of progress. Recite affirmations like, “You go girl (boy)” or “Life is wonderful,” to program positive thoughts. The secret

Comics in the Class Room

Comics in the class room is created by Scott Tingley, an early years teacher in the New Brunswick (Canada) public school system

His site includes k-4 level plans -lesson plans for teacher BUT most can be easily adapted for older students:

- Language Arts -

Developing good word choices - I developed it for use with Write Traits and uses a comic strip as an important part of the plan.

-Using Comic Strips to Teach the Use of Quotation Marks

-Using the “Silent” comic Owly to inspire creative writing

-Pre-reading - Using the “Silent” comic Owly to teach using picture cues to create meaning in reading

Harry Belafonte

Harry Belafonte is an International Treasure, speaking out against racism in-justice and for non-violence as a tool of engagement from the U.S. to South Africa and South America. He was in Oakland, for the 1st Annual National Gathering for Justice an event inspired by the 5 year little girl who was arrested by 5 police officers for misbehavior in class and designed to keep our youth out of jail and out of trouble by providing ideas, opportunities and organizational solutions, city and countrywide! an event that was attended by Walter Mosley, Sean Penn, Danny Glover, Mike Farrell, congresswoman Barbara Lee and many others
He spoke to mostly young organizers giving an inspiring speech on how the youth and the artist can truly change things.
Below are clips of the legendary social activist speaking out against Bush, and Hollywood

Africans 4 Africa

I have spent part of this year focusing on Africa, because it is critical that African Americans youth understand that their future may lie in many of the emerging opportunities that will be available in Africa. First we must educate ourselves beyond what the media presents us, war and Aids. The continent must be seen in its entirety, its poverty, riches, progress and opportunities. The three speakers below believe African must fix Africa and that foreign aide hampers not assist progress.

Andrew Mwenda: Let's take a new look at African aid

Eleni Gabre-Madhin: Building a commodities market in Ethiopia

Patrick Awuah: Educating a new generation of African leaders

The Return of Obama

The Speech that brought the house down

Watch and be inspired

Darfur Right Now

Click here for the Darfur Now Curriculum Guide

Darfur Now My space link

Venus Goes Def

Click Here 2 Hear

or

2 Hear Click Here

How creativity is being strangled by the law

Larry Lessigpins down the key shortcomings of our dusty, pre-digital intellectual property laws, and reveals how bad laws beget bad code. and how they crimanalize our children

HOW TO GET COMFORTABLE WITH MAKING MISTAKES ON YOUR WAY TO SUCCESS

By Amanda Arcilla

Most of us can agree that when there is something that we want to accomplish that means a lot to us personally, we have yet to develop a thick skin in accepting we will make mistakes and avoid making a decision at all. Unfortunately going this route in the long stops us from realizing our dreams and happiness and maybe contributing something great to society.

We're afraid to take action because we fear the embarrassment if we fail, I say "jump in" knowing the water will be cold, your body will adjust to the temperature the longer you stay in then at least you've given yourself the chance to see how far you can swim.

We stifle any movement in any direction and creativity stagnates when we are in a place of fear. We have to start thinking mistakes equates progression to success. What's the point of perfect execution if you can't land the fall? The desired outcome and product is what we're after and if you still can't get over the perfection complex consider the idea that mistakes are a gateway to discovery, the very thing you were trying to avoid has now given you a gift and at times as history is evident of this has given us greater things than what we were aiming for, can you see where not making enough mistakes is so underrated?

We cannot deny our natural tendencies as human beings and a culture to evolve past our current circumstances, to become better, more efficient and to play life full out. If we are to fulfill our natural instincts we have to get over our personal restrictions which is an illusion we take way too seriously.

So if you have an idea, a dream, something you want to do, experience and create, dare yourself to get off the fence and initiate the mistakes so you can get to your dreams and success quicker.

Amanda Arcilla is an Attraction Coach. You can read her unique story or get in touch with her at http://Intentionalvibe.com

THE DIVERSITY OF ETHNIC GROUPS IN AFRICA

Tribes of Africa A-Z a gorgeous site

Click here

Venus Goes Old Skool (& I Mean Old)

Click here to Hear

Venus myspace