I’ve always heard people say dreads and I know locs are a thing too, but I thought the style was called dreadlocs and people just shortened it to dreads/locs

I never heard that dreads is a derogatory term, is it? If it is then I’ll stop saying it ofc and switch to locs

Or maybe it's more of an old school thing? I've seen mixed claims about whether or not it is safe to do.

Hey Folks.

I’m in a convo on another sub and a bunch of people are saying a 4 hour baby shower is entirely too long. I said mine was three hours and a few people said we should have extended it.

I’ve been to plenty of showers and they normally last 3-4 hours and I’m being told they should max at 2.

Now our showers are essentially parties in my village. Dancing, drinks, buffet, dessert, etc. is this just a black thing?

I went to one white baby shower and it wasn’t lit, but it was 3 hours long.

Which brings me to the important question: if I say “baby shower plate”, what’s on it?

As a child I devoured any book I could get my hands on. Now as an adult being intentional about consuming Black literature, it has occurred to me that I can't recall a single Black woman character stricken by any of these idioms.(”Moved to hysterics”, ”of poor nerves”, ”suffered a fit of the vapors”, ”scandal induced swoon”, ”a fit of flutterings”, in case the image doesn't load) Now I'm curious to know if others have, and if so, in what context?

My initial thoughts on this were along the lines of, that's really atypical behavior for Black women anyway so of course those descriptors wouldn't be found in their stories. Why are those behaviors uncharacteristic of Black women though? Recently, I was reading about "the politics of respectability" and I began to see the potential for alternate reasoning. Could it also be that Black authors were policed, subconsciously or not, by the politics of respectability even in their artforms?

Of course I couldn't help but be reminded of Sojourner Truth's "Ain't I a woman?" which sent my mind towards modern day debates about the femininity or lack thereof of Black women and well, that leads into an entirely different discussion! But back to my original point of this post, my mind leans towards my initial simplistic thoughts of those idioms just being uncharacteristic for us Black women, but I'd like to hear insight from others.

Hey I'm a 16 year old Nigerian girl. I have this friend group, and although they seemed nice at first, yet now they are constantly saying racist things. It's like they have no other race to joke about, BUT black people.

One of my friends talks about how you're going to lose rights if you're black, called me ugly straight to my face and said in her own words" I would never date you because you're black, " Unprovoked. She's literally straight, and also, I wasnt even talking to her, I was zoning out.

She also said,"I have a maid. Guess what her skin color is." And in class, if there's a black person like on the smartboard, she always points out their race, and said to me, "your mom probably beats you. "

Another one also constantly talks about their racist dad and how I would get called a slu so I shouldn't come to their house; the whole friend group brushed it off. And I'm like: ahy would you say that in a calm and unserious way in front of me? The friend group even talks about their hangouts there, and it makes me feel sad.

They also talk about n word passes, and constantly try and ''catch me out." For example, there were these 3 girls blocking the corridor, and one of my friends said, "these 3 black girls were blocking the way. " I replied here was no need to specify their race and they said, "would you find it racist if it was 3 white girls?" Come on... Obviously it's weird to specify race so I would find it weird both ways. (Of course, when I voiced this they shut up about the situation.)

To conclude, I really want to cut them off, and I feel insecure so much of the time. I hate this so much, that I had to stay home from school because of how bad my mental health is, and I don't study anymore, even though I have such important exams that I can't afford to fail.

My parents have advised me to also cut them off and tell the school(they have a zero tolerance policy on this kind of stuff)

but a really, really stupid part of me feelsscared as I'll be all alone in school, and I really hate confrontation.

I really had to get this off my chest. By the way, there have been way more racist things they've said to me, but I don't want to put them in. I've kind of blocked it out of my mind because thinking of it would bring back really bad memories.

Thank you for reading this, and if anything else happens, I will definitely update as soon as I can.

Think of organisations like the ADL. When anyone puts a single step out of line, the ADL has their foot on their necks. Why can’t black people mobilise and create black lobby that advocates for black people in the same way?

Right now, the black community is so fragmented, that nobody even cares about pandering towards black people, because the returns will be so marginal.

Long story short my homie brought me on a double date with his girl and her friend. when I stepped in the house, the friend said “take your hat off so I can see what you really look like”. I told her “take your weave out so I can do the same” All 4 of us spent the first 30 mins debating whether its the same thing.…..I wasn’t being rude just lately I been holding woman to the same standards they try and hold men too. Here it is you can judge what I look like while having a face full of makeup and I don’t know what I’m really looking at. I guess my question is what do you guys think. If you ask me to take a hat off to see my real hair, is it appropriate to ask the same of the woman?

I work and volunteer with a lot of old people. When I need to distract them or when I'm looking for something to talk about I ask if they've always lived in the city and whether the answer is yes or no I'll ask what it was like when they were younger.

With Black people I found myself avoiding that because well it sucked to be Black in those days. One woman was watching Good Times and told me it was the first show to have Black people on it and was happy to tell me what she remembered about that era. I learned a lot but I know for other people talking about that could bring up wounds.

Is it ok to ask older Black people about life during their younger years?

I just discovered recently, but it was after Juneteenth, so I was planning to do this for BHM. But, ethnicity is Nigerian and not Gullah Geeche. (My family says I’m African American but I don’t really know I need to ask them again.) I was wondering if I could still do this to honor my ancestors???

Why is this not being talked about ?

Officially Unemployed (~718,000)

This is the active number of Black women in the US who have filled out job applications within the last 4 weeks but have not yet found employment.

Total Displaced Labor Force:

If you combine those who are officially looking for work with those who have been discouraged and pushed out of the formal job market altogether, the total number of jobless Black women exceeds 1.3 million!!!!!!

What’s going on ?

RACISM.

I think we understand what I'm getting at but just in case: what would drive you to firing up your school or work place?

I have a genuine question.

Why is it that if someone who is black, male or female. If they say they don't like something that is associated with black people we automatically say they have inner racism or self hatred. I'm asking this because I have seen many black subreddit where people argue about not liking something.

This is a genuine question.

I'm so ashy, my knees and elbows are like, gray, and I don't know what to do.

I have sensory issues, so it's hard for me to use lotion, but even when I put on a bunch of lotion on my knees and leave it, it doesn't help.

What do you guys do to make sure you stay moisturized and not ashy? I'm literally so ashy I can draw on my skin with my nails, it's bad.

I’m white and recently attended a Black church for the first time. My husband, who’s nonreligious, was invited by one of his coworkers. He actually expressed interest in returning and even brought up wanting to get baptized after we left the service.

I grew up Lutheran, so the service was quite different from what I’m accustomed to. My childhood church was also very racially diverse, so one thing that stood out to me was that we were the only non-Black people in attendance. There weren’t any other racial groups or even mixed-race families.

I understand historically Black churches have served as more than places of worship, and have also been important cultural and community spaces, offering Black Americans opportunities to express their identities without the same discrimination or being a minority that you might experience elsewhere.

The church we attended even had flags from several African countries displayed in the fellowship hall and mentioned their upcoming annual cultural week. From what I understood, it was somewhat similar to VBS, with children and families spending time learning Bible stories alongside cultural traditions and histories from different African countries.

Seeing that made me think more about the significance of these churches beyond religion alone.
I’m curious how Black churchgoers feel about white individuals or families not just visiting, but potentially becoming regular members of predominantly Black congregations.

Is that generally something you welcome or do you sometimes feel a desire to preserve these churches as predominantly Black cultural and community spaces?

I wanted my husband to be Rick grimes for Halloween and my son be Carl and I wanted to go as Michonne. I was telling a friend about it and she said “isn’t she black” and I said yea but I’m just wearing the outfit and some fake swords nothing else. But she’s saying it’s not okay and I should just be Lori since I’m white but Lori is just kinda boring. Michonne is my favorite character from the walking dead and I have so much respect for her and really want to be her as Halloween. I don’t feel it’s inappropriate but maybe I’m wrong. Would love if anyone could shed some light on this for me, thank you.

ive been wearing braids ever since i have been growing hair, i used to swim up until 13 and ive always had my hair in braids. How do i find a hairstyle that suits me like makes me feel confident. Also how do I feel more confident about wearing my afro, last time when i took a bus to get my hair done in the next town over you would have thought i had 3 heads omd, everyone just stares even this black guy was in his car laughing at me i think not even concentrating on the road looking at my afro, even on the bus I had other black people staring at me as if i had gone mad. What do i do im trying to improve my looks and i do believe if i ask other black people it would help, cause i live in a predominantly white area

i do want to try like maybe a weave one day but due to UK winter that would be a job or i want to try other styles. What can I do?

apologies these are a lot of questions

I have to ask them a question. I want to appeal me being muted. Bc I commented negativity towards my own black features. I was projecting mainly.

Hi, I'm William, a 20yo Italian guy with cuban origins (i'm whiter than milk tho) that has been grown up with black culture.

I always found it fascinating, starting off with music that at only 13yo became my biggest passion, listening and falling in love with a lot of black artists (Hov, Mos Def, The Roots, Death Grips, Marvin Gaye, Stevie Wonder, Atcq, just to name some of my favorites at the time) also, Spike Lee is in my top 3 fav directors ever.

With me becoming better with my understanding of english, I started diggin in the lyrics around my 15th year of life, so It was only a matter of time that the social themes hit me, and they hit hard. They hit so much that even if I got a pseudo-fascist father, i turned out a commie, but that's another story.

Anyways, the social themes brought me to fall in love even more with the culture, not only for the arts or the aesthetics, but cause I had like a empathic connection with the story of black people and the shit they been through, so, I ended up with acknowledge the figure of Malcolm X, and he became a sort of an idol to me.

Now, y'all know better than me that Malcolm wasn't exactly a pacifist or a believer of white and black people being together dancing around all happy and careless, especially in the first period of his activism, so, even if i wanted it as first tattoo, I waited and got tatted Saturation writing instead (s/o to Brockhampton) just to think about it carefully.

I came to the realization that to me is a massive form of respect and admiration for a man that had the need of changing the conditions of his brothers and sisters, a man that made his hate towards the oppressors a light for people that was tired of being treated worse than dogs. Plus, i'm graduating in philosophy, another passion of mine, and I think Malcolm's thinking is one of the most fascinating and compelling to study and explore.

But I want your opinion. My massive respect for this culture makes me wanna avoid any kind of hypocrisy, desrespect and cultural appropriation.