Gotham City Soul

A Zangbeto at rest. Zangbeto are the Vodou guardians of the night among the Ogu or Egun people of Benin, Togo and Nigeria. They are charged with maintaining law and order, and keeping communities safe and secure.   In order for us to even begin to dismantle the artificial construct called race, and the racism against people of color that it serves, we need to decolonize our minds. And that begins with our origin stories. I'll let Djimon Hounsou speak in In Search of Voodoo: Roots to Heaven on YouTube movies or Amazon Prime . This is for folks who feel they'd like to begin decolonizing their minds.    Trigger Warning: There are scenes of animal sacrifice in this film. Bear in mind our own treatment of animals in the American agricultural industrial complex and how we benefit from it. Bear in mind that kosher and halal meat is prayed over by holy men to make it pure. Bear in mind that animal sacrifice is also part of the monotheistic (Judaic, Christian, Isla...

          I have been gone a long time from here, but it is time for me to come back. History can be a tool and knowledge IS power. The pen can be mightier than the sword—look how afraid some folks are of journalists and the media and education. This young man from my dad’s part of Alabama, with whom I share a last name, was also castrated, but the New York Times editors left that out. And I guess they thought they’d lighten the mood with the wacky story of the pie thief. But the assau lt, some will say. In the deep dark, waiting outside for his girlfriend to finish working as a maid for a white family in Eufaula, Ivor Peterson mistook a middle-aged white woman coming out of the house in which his girlfriend worked, and greeted her. The woman was startled, screamed like Amy Cooper in Central Park, the white men of the town chased Ivor down, and the rest is America’s unfortunate, shameful history. In 1911, Ivor Peterson—who may or may not have...