Ghana Poetry Project

While doing some research on poetry, I found this cool organization called Ghana Poetry Project.  Basically, this group wants to promote Ghana's poetry to other places around the world.
I only have read work on Africa when it was for school, but I always really enjoyed it.  African writing in general is often ignored by the elite literary critics, just because it isn't Western and sometimes more recent and because of general racism. 

Racism: Still Not Dead

Sometimes other people do a much better job parsing out why something is wrong.  Native Appropriations has this great post called Why Can't I Wear a Hipster Headdress? that works out exactly why this is wrong.  I've actually never seen anyone do this in real life, and I'm sort of relieved, because I'm sure it would make me very angry. 
That isn't to say I don't occasionally see people do idiotic things similar to thing.  A couple Halloweens ago an acquittance (I'm reluctant to say friends because we were never close and honestly I can't remember a conversation involving her and it honestly took me three minutes to focus in on her first name) used blackface to play an African American celebrity.  Because we were around mostly white people, I'm not even sure if anyone noticed, but when I heard about it, I thought "Jesus, and people think racism is dead."

Freud and Race

I've been spending the evening trying doing some reading.  One of things I was working on was an article called Freud's Negro, which takes Freud to task on the issue of race. 
One of the first things the author, Claudia Tate, mentions is that since psychoanalysis always seems to boil down to is sex regardless of race.  As I have only read some of Freud, I would have to take Tate's word on it, but I suspect this has been an advantage, since Franz Fanon applied Freud's sexual theories to race and race relations in his book Black Skin, White Masks.  (He has two chapters dedicated, for instance, on inter-racial relationships.  He stipulates that Black men favor White women as partners because they perceive it as a way to have something the White man usually has, thus themselves becoming white.  He also asserts that White men favor Black women as partners as a roundabout way of dominating Black men.  This theory is also, I believe, based on Foucault.  But I digress.) 

There is lots of troubling (but also enlightening) information about Freud.  Apparently Freud told racist jokes.  I can't help but roll my eyes here.  Tate goes on to break this joke down, depicting it as a remaking of the master/slave relationship. 

I am hoping that psychologists who do work with Freud's theories are aware of this, because psychologists don't exist to be masters in a master/slave dichotomy.  They exist to as a guide, like Virgil was to Dante, so that the patient, regardless of race, can have mastery over their life again. 

That said, I like this article a lot.  It gives a good backbone to an argument that I'm assuming as been expanded elsewhere.  Her work on Freud and race (White, Black and Jewish) and gender are interesting.  There's a scene early on in the novel The Book Thief where a young white German boy, Rudy, puts on blackface in an attempt to costume himself as his hero, Jessie Owens.  (The book, set in Nazi Germany, would be at around the same time Jessie Owens won at the Olympics, which were held in Nazi Germany.)  Rudy then runs to the nearest track and runs around, pretending to be Owens, having just won another race.  His father find him and immediately removes him, dragging him home and instructing him not to wear blackface again.  I think this part of the novel, and the actual events surrounding Owens's win, would be an interesting situation to analyze in the context of this theory, which juggles three races. 

Going Postal

I really like postcards.  I'm not totally sure why, but there's something nice about a well-designed one, like it's a little poster. 
I'm really into some vintage-inspired ones that I found online, like this one which I think it suppose to be for Switzerland.  I like the bright colors and the simple shapes.  I usually don't like writing on my postcard's front image, but I really like the writing on postcards that are clearly inspired by old school advertisements.  They remind me of those stickers people used to put on their luggage to indicate where they had been before. 
Also in vintage postcard world is this French postcard.  Again, it reminds me of those old advertisements, but this one also reminds me Alphonse Mucha's style of art.
And this great one of Michigan reminds me a little of the cover art for Greeting from Michigan by Sufjan Stevens.  I suspected that the cover of that album was not just meant to look like a vintage advertisement but was probably inspired by a specific one, and this looks kind of close.

(As a sidenote, I'm so sad to hear that Stevens won't be doing more state albums.  I was personally pulling for one of Oregon myself.  I suspect that someone down the line will start making state albums themselves, and I'm hoping it'll either be Kimya Dawson or Double Saginaw Familiarity.  Because, really, someone needs to.) 
Other vintage postcards that I like include ones of Milan, Australia, Cuba, this one castle I can't place, Mexico, a fleur de lis, St. Tropaz, Bulgaria, Flanders and Brazil.  Possibly this one from Egypt is vintage too, though maybe it's just me. 
I guess I am a geography nerd, because I even liked some of the flag ones out there, like this one from Senegal.  I'm always trying to quiz myself when I see flags, trying to get good at remembering every country's flag.  I'm embarrassed to say I didn't remember Senegal when I saw this one.  I really should, considering how much I love African history and really want to go to Senegal someday.  It's not quite as bad as not knowing the flag to Cambodia, but I'm still not pleased with myself. 
The only one I found that I really don't like is this one for New Zealand.  I suspect that woman is suppose to be a "Native."  I get the feeling they were like "Hey, we need something exotic and sexy, let's put a woman in a bear blanket and nothing else."  Er.  Racism is never hot, sorry. 
Of course, there's nothing quite like an intriguing picture to make a good postcard, like this one, which is from some place I've never heard of.  When it's a good picture, I kind of hate it when someone sticks words over it.  I feel like that's part of the point of the back; you can just turn it around if you want to know where the picture is taken from.
Most of the humorous postcards out there strike me as tacky and/or lame, but some of them genuinely make me smile.  See this postcard from Earth.  It's times like these I wish I had a friend who actually thought he was the Doctor, because then I could send him this, writing a message that sounded like I was a companion.  I suspect that would be the sort of thing a lot of my friends would think was funny.  (Maybe I could do that to Matt?  He made himself one of those gigantic scarves like the fourth Doctor has.)  
The biggest problem with looking at these is that they make me wish I was out traveling and actually seeing some of these things.  Then I would have the excuse to buy some postcards and send them home to my friends.