Edited by Azizi Powell
This pancocojams post showcases a video of and lyrics for a Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc. strolling song which includes a reference to the Black consciousness movement.
Information about historically Black Greek letter organization "steppin"[g] and "strolling" is also included in the Addendum to this post.
The content of this post is presented for historical and folkloric purposes.
All copyrights remain with their owners.
Thanks to the composer/s of this song and thanks to all those who are featured in this video. Thanks also to the publisher of this video on YouTube.
-snip-
If you know this chant or a similar chant please share that information in the comment section below.
Also, I'm interested in identifying other Black Greek letter organization (BGLO) songs or chants that include Black consciousness movement lyrics and/or gestures. For the historical record, if you know of any examples, please add them along with lyrics and demographic information (organization, year the song/chant was performed and where-city/state) in the comment section below. Thanks!
****
SHOWCASE VIDEO: Morgan State University Graduation 2014 - Delta Sigma Theta
Michael Parker, Published on Jul 28, 2014
-snip-
The strolling song "No Doubt About It We’re Deltas" can be found at 4:00-5:32 in this video.
-snip-
Also, click 1:19 to 3:46 of this video for an example of "Wadin In The Water For DST", an adapted Spiritual sung as a strolling song. My attempt of transcribing that song can be found in this pancocojams post: http://pancocojams.blogspot.com/2018/05/historically-black-fraternities.html Historically Black Fraternities & Sororities Steppin And Strolling Songs & Chants Whose Tunes And Lyrics Come From African American Spirituals
****
LYRICS- NO DOUBT ABOUT IT WE'RE DELTAS *
No doubt about it- we’re deltas
Sorors
No doubt about it- we’re deltas
Sorors
We got class
[hums do do do dodo - [gestures signifying proper and demure female etiquette] place their right hand on their left elbow, hold their the finger next to their thumb from their right hand in the air and then place that same finger to the side of their chin
We got soul
[hums] do do do dodo[group does the same rhythmic side to side dance step]
We’re so black
[hums] do do do dodo [group raises their left arm in Black power hand salute and bobs it in time to the rhythm]
and we’re mellow from our head to our soles
[hums] do do do dodo [group lower raised arm palm up down near the end of your body]
No doubt about it- we’re deltas
Sorors
{Wooo!)
No doubt about it- we’re deltas
Sorors
{Wooo!)
[repeat entire song]
-snip-
*This is my attempted transcription of this song from this video. Additions and corrections are welcome.
****
ADDENDUM: INFORMATION ABOUT HISTORICALLY BLACK GREEK LETTER ORGANIZATIONS STEPPIN AND STROLLING
Excerpt #1:
Pancocojams Editor's Note: Most of this excerpt is found in this 2013 pancocojams post entitled "An Overview Of Black Greek Letter Organization Steppin & Step Cheers" http://pancocojams.blogspot.com/2013/05/an-overview-of-black-greek-letter.html
"Steppin (Stepping) is a syncopated, choreographed performance art that occurs at competitive "step shows" and other venues. The performance art of steppin originated among historically Black (African American) university based Greek lettered fraternities & sororities.
[...]
I've seen the 1940s given as the date that historically Black Greek lettered organizations began steppin'. I'm willing to accept that 1940s date as long as it's understood that the beginning of what steppin has become didn't look like steppin now.
in her book Soul Stepping Elizabeth Fine quotes a 1924 Howard University student newspaper The Hilltop article entitled "Hell-Week" in which members of Omega Psi Phi and Kappa Alpha Psi fraternites are described as pledges "dancing about the campus..." (p.15).
However that dancing or that marching on campus that is also documented didn't look the same as the Black Greek letted organizations' steppin' styles that developed in the 1980s and 1990s. Elizabeth Fine also wrote that "The shift from the old-style circular stepping of the 1940s and 1950s to the increasingly complex synchronized movement style of the 1980s and 1990s attests to the new role stepping has in asserting black cultural identity" (p. 6).
Since at least the 1990s among historically Black Greek lettered organizations (BGLO), the performance art of strolls (party walks) has been added to most step routines, particularly at the end of those routines. "Strolls" (party walks) are done in a vertical line to recorded music, usually from the R&B/Hip-Hop genres or group songs, often adapted from Spirituals or R&B songs. The terms "strolls" or "party walks" refer to the strutting, dancing walk that the organizations' members informally do at dances/parties. While steppin is almost always a competitive performance, fraternities against fraternities, and sororities against sororities, "strolls" can be either competitive within those gender groupings, or non-competitive."...
-snip-
Notice that BGLO originated "strolling" [and steppin] is a group activity. Another name for "strolling" is "party walks" as these strolls were seemingly spontaneously performed at parties (dance gatherings), usually to certain recorded R&B/Hip Hop music. Non-competitive BGLO strolls are also performed at any number of social events such as picnics and wedding receptions. "Stroll offs" are competitive events in which stroll teams from historically Black Greek letter fraternities compete against each other and stroll teams from historically Black Greek letter sororities compete against each other.
****
Excerpt #2:
Pancocojams Editor's note: In this 2015 pancocojams post http://pancocojams.blogspot.com/2015/04/african-american-examples-of-walk_11.html "African American Examples Of Walk Arounds - Cakewalks And Other Non-Religious Examples", I maintain that historically Black Greek letter fraternity and sorority strolling should be considered as a contemporary example of a non-religious Black American "walk around" (circular dance movement) performance art tradition. Other historical and contemporary examples of walk arounds are "the cakewalk", "Chicago stepping" (dance), and "Detroit stepping" (ball room) dance. The "ring shout" is a historical example of a Black American religious walk around.
**
Excerpt #3:
[This is a comment that I added to another video of sorority strolling]
"Strolling" (also known as "stroll offs" and "party walks") are non-competitive and competitive group struts and dancing performances to recorded music. Strolling shares the same history and early sources as historically Black Greek letter[ed] fraternity and sorority stepping and is now performed by Latino Greek lettered organizations, multi-cultural Greek lettered organizations, and others. Like sorority and fraternity "stepping", "strolling" has undergone and is still undergoing considerable performance changes. Click http://www.greekster.tv/page/greek-strolling-history-and for another definition of "strolling" and comments about the history of strolling (stroll offs, party walks). Also click the "African American fraternity and sorority steppin and strolling tab below for more pancocojams posts that about strolling and more pancocojams post that feature examples of historic ally Black Greek lettered organization stroll offs.
****
Thanks for visiting pancocojams.
Visitor comments are welcome.
Showing posts with label Black consciousness movement. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Black consciousness movement. Show all posts
Friday, May 18, 2018
Saturday, November 18, 2017
Excerpts From Three Online Articles About "Négritude"
Edited by Azizi Powell
This pancocojams post presents excerpts from three online articles about the "Négritude".
The content of this post is presented for historical, socio-cultural, and educational purposes.
I quote excerpts of articles to point out those articles to this blog's readers. I encourage you to read these entire articles.
All copyrights remain with their owners.
Thanks to all those who are quoted in this post.
****
EXCERPTS ABOUT NEGRITUDE
These excerpts are given in no particular order and are numbered for referencing purposes only.
Excerpt #1:
From http://exhibitions.nypl.org/africanaage/essay-negritude.html "Négritude"
[written by] Bertrade Ngo-Ngijol Banoum –Lehman College
"Négritude is a cultural movement launched in 1930s Paris by French-speaking black graduate students from France's colonies in Africa and the Caribbean territories. These black intellectuals converged around issues of race identity and black internationalist initiatives to combat French imperialism. They found solidarity in their common ideal of affirming pride in their shared black identity and African heritage, and reclaiming African self-determination, self–reliance, and self–respect. The Négritude movement signaled an awakening of race consciousness for blacks in Africa and the African Diaspora. This new race consciousness, rooted in a (re)discovery of the authentic self, sparked a collective condemnation of Western domination, anti-black racism, enslavement, and colonization of black people. It sought to dispel denigrating myths and stereotypes linked to black people, by acknowledging their culture, history, and achievements, as well as reclaiming their contributions to the world and restoring their rightful place within the global community.
The Roots of Négritude
The movement is deeply rooted in Pan-African congresses, exhibitions, organizations, and publications produced to challenge the theory of race hierarchy and black inferiority developed by philosophers such as Friedrich Hegel and Joseph de Gobineau. Diverse thinkers influenced this rehabilitation process, including anthropologists Leo Frobenius and Maurice Delafosse, who wrote on Africa; colonial administrator René Maran, who penned the seminal ethnographic novel Batouala: Véritable roman négre, an eyewitness account of abuses and injustices within the French colonial system; André Breton, the father of Surrealism; French romantics Arthur Rimbaud and Charles Baudelaire; Haitian Jean-Price Mars, who developed the concept of Indigenism; Haitian anthropologist Anténor Firmin and Cuban Nicolás Guillén, who promoted Negrismo.
Of major significance are the Harlem Renaissance intellectuals who fled to France to escape racism and segregation in the United States. Prominent among them were Langston Hughes, James Weldon Johnson, Richard Wright, and Claude McKay. McKay, who bemoaned divisions of blacks, was acclaimed by Senegalese poet and politician Léopold Sédar Senghor as the spiritual founder of Négritude values. Senghor argued that "far from seeing in one's blackness inferiority, one accepts it; one lays claim to it with pride; one cultivates it lovingly." Pan-Africanist leader Marcus Garvey similarly implored his peers: "Negroes, teach your children that they are direct descendants of the greatest and proudest race who ever peopled the earth."...
****
Excerpt #2:
From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N%C3%A9gritude
"Négritude is a framework of critique and literary theory, developed mainly by francophone intellectuals, writers, and politicians of the African diaspora during the 1930s. Its initiators included Martinican poet Aimé Césaire, Léopold Sédar Senghor (the first President of Senegal), and Léon Damas of French Guiana. Négritude intellectuals disavowed colonialism, and argued for the importance of a Pan-African racial identity among people of African descent worldwide.
[...]
Etymology
The term négritude is a construction which appropriates the derogatory word niger, used to refer to people (in French) as nègre, so largely used exclusively in a racist context. The movement's use of the word négritude is a way of re-imagining the word as an emic form of empowerment. The term was first used in its present sense by Césaire, in the third issue of L'Étudiant noir, a magazine which he had started in Paris with fellow students Léopold Senghor and Léon Damas, as well as Gilbert Gratiant, Leonard Sainville, Louis T. Achille, Aristide Maugée, and Paulette Nardal. L'Étudiant noir also includes Césaire's first published work, Conscience Raciale et Révolution Sociale with the heading "Les Idées" and the rubric "Négreries", which is notable for its disavowal of assimilation as a valid strategy for resistance and for its use of the word nègre as a positive term. The problem with assimilation was that one assimilated into a culture that considered African culture to be barbaric and unworthy of being seen as "civilized". The assimilation into this culture would have been seen as an implicit acceptance of this view. Nègre previously had been used mainly in a pejorative sense. Césaire deliberately incorporated this derogatory word into the name of his philosophy.
Influences
In 1885, Haitian anthropologist Anténor Firmin published an early work De l'Égalité des Races Humaines (On the Equality of Human Races), which was published as a rebuttal to French writer Count Arthur de Gobineau's Essai sur l'inegalite des Races Humaines (An Essay on the Inequality of the Human Races). Firmin influenced Jean Price-Mars, the initiator of Haitian ethnology and developer of the concept of Indigenism, and 20th-century American anthropologist Melville Herskovits.[1] Black intellectuals have historically been proud of Haiti due to its slave revolution commanded by Toussaint L'Ouverture during the 1790s. Césaire spoke, thus, of Haiti as being "where négritude stood up for the first time".
Other diverse thinkers include Charles Baudelaire, André Breton, René Maran, and Arthur Rimbaud.[2]
The Harlem Renaissance, a literary style developed in Harlem in Manhattan during the 1920s and 1930s, influenced the Negritude philosophy.[3] The Harlem Renaissance's writers, including Langston Hughes and Richard Wright, addressed the themes of "noireism" and race relations.
Development during the 20th century
During the 1920s and 1930s, a group of young black students and scholars, primarily from France's colonies and territories, assembled in Paris. There they were introduced to some writers of the Harlem Renaissance by Paulette Nardal and her sister Jane. The Nardal sisters contributed to the Negritude discussions by their writings and by being the proprietors of the Clamart Salon, a tea-shop venue of the French-Black intelligentsia where Negritude philosophy was often discussed. Paulette Nardal and the Haitian Dr. Leo Sajou initiated La revue du Monde Noir (1931–32), a literary journal published in English and French, which attempted to appeal to African and Caribbean intellectuals in Paris. This Harlem association was shared by the parallel development of negrismo in the Spanish-speaking Caribbean region.
[...]
Césaire was a poet, playwright, and politician from Martinique. He studied in Paris, where he discovered the black community and "rediscovered Africa". He saw la Négritude as the fact of being black, acceptance of this fact, and appreciation of the history and culture, and of black people. It is important to note that for Césaire, this emphasis on the acceptance of the fact of "blackness" was the means by which the "decolonization of the mind" could be achieved. According to him, western imperialism was responsible for the inferiority complex of blacks. He sought to recognize the collective colonial experience of Blacks—the slave trade and plantation system. Césaire's ideology was especially important during the early years of la Négritude.”
[...]
Reception
In 1948, Jean-Paul Sartre analyzed the négritude philosophy in an essay called "Orphée Noir" ("Black Orpheus")[5] that served as the introduction to a volume of francophone poetry named Anthologie de la nouvelle poésie nègre et malgache, compiled by Léopold Senghor. In this essay, Sartre characterizes négritude as the opposite of colonial racism in a Hegelian dialectic and with it he helped to introduce Négritude issues to French intellectuals. In his opinion, négritude was an "anti-racist racism" (racisme antiracist), a strategy with a final goal of racial unity.
Négritude was criticized by some black writers during the 1960s as insufficiently militant. Keorapetse Kgositsile said that the term Négritude was based too much on blackness according to a caucasian aesthetic, and was unable to define a new kind of perception of African-ness that would free black people and black art from caucasian conceptualizations altogether.
The Nigerian dramatist, poet, and novelist Wole Soyinka opposed Négritude. He believed that by deliberately and outspokenly being proud of their ethnicity, black people were automatically on the defensive: "Un tigre ne proclame pas sa tigritude, il saute sur sa proie" (French: A tiger doesn't proclaim its tigerness; it jumps on its prey).
After a long period of silence there has been a renaissance of Negritude developed by scholars such as Souleymane Bachir Diagne (Columbia), Donna Jones (Berkeley),[6] and Cheikh Thiam (Ohio State) who all continue the work of Abiola Irele. Cheikh Thiam's book is the only book-length study of Negritude as philosophy. It develops Diagne's reading of Negritude as a philosophy of art, and Jones' presentation of Negritude as a lebensphilosophie.
-snip-
From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lebensphilosophie
"Lebensphilosophie ("philosophy of life" or life-philosophy in German) is a philosophical school of thought which emphasises the meaning, value and purpose of life as the foremost focus of philosophy.[1]"
****
Excerpt #3:
From http://www.blackpast.org/gah/negritude-movement
Contributor:
Micklin, Anna T.
The Evergreen State College
"The literary movement, Negritude, was born out of the Paris intellectual environment of 1930s and 1940s. It is a product of black writers joining together through the French language to assert their cultural identity.
Aimé Césaire was the first to coin the word in his epic poem, Cahier d’un retour au pays natal, declaring “my negritude is not a stone, its deafness hurled against the clamor of the day” but instead, his negritude “takes root in the ardent flesh of the soil.” Together with Césaire, Léon Damas and Léopold Sédar Senghor created poetry that would make a definition for Negritude. The best-known Negritude works from these poets were Damas’ Pigments, Senghor’s Hosties noire and Chants d’ombre, and Césaire’s Cahier. These poets were brought together in the creation of the journal, L’Etudiant noire.
L’Etudiant noire responded to similar black journals in Paris at the time. Césaire and Senghor thought the West-Indian journal, Légitime defense, was too assimilationist and they found the Nardal sisters’ journal, Revue du monde noir, too bourgeois to truly represent the French-speaking black experience. Despite being a separate tract from these journals, L’Etudiant noire would not have been possible if the Nardal sisters and Légitime défense hadn’t created an environment in Paris for black intellectualism.
[...]
Negritude responded to the alienated position of blacks in history. The movement asserted an identity for black people around the world that was their own. For Césaire and Damas, from Martinique and French Guiana, the rupture from Africa through the Atlantic Slave Trade was a great part of their cultural understanding. Their work told of the frustration and loss of their motherland. For Senegalese Senghor, his works focused more on African traditionalism. In ways the assertion of each poet diverges from each other, but the combination of different perspectives is also what fueled and fed Negritude.
From a political standpoint, Negritude was an important aspect to the rejection of colonialism. Emerging at the cusp of African independence movements, Negritude made an impact on how the colonized viewed themselves. It also sparked and fed off of subsequent literary movements that were responding to global politics....
There is no clear end date to the movement, and some literary critics say that it still continues today, in any artistic expression asserting black identity."
****
Thanks for visiting pancocojams.
Visitor comments are welcome.
This pancocojams post presents excerpts from three online articles about the "Négritude".
The content of this post is presented for historical, socio-cultural, and educational purposes.
I quote excerpts of articles to point out those articles to this blog's readers. I encourage you to read these entire articles.
All copyrights remain with their owners.
Thanks to all those who are quoted in this post.
****
EXCERPTS ABOUT NEGRITUDE
These excerpts are given in no particular order and are numbered for referencing purposes only.
Excerpt #1:
From http://exhibitions.nypl.org/africanaage/essay-negritude.html "Négritude"
[written by] Bertrade Ngo-Ngijol Banoum –Lehman College
"Négritude is a cultural movement launched in 1930s Paris by French-speaking black graduate students from France's colonies in Africa and the Caribbean territories. These black intellectuals converged around issues of race identity and black internationalist initiatives to combat French imperialism. They found solidarity in their common ideal of affirming pride in their shared black identity and African heritage, and reclaiming African self-determination, self–reliance, and self–respect. The Négritude movement signaled an awakening of race consciousness for blacks in Africa and the African Diaspora. This new race consciousness, rooted in a (re)discovery of the authentic self, sparked a collective condemnation of Western domination, anti-black racism, enslavement, and colonization of black people. It sought to dispel denigrating myths and stereotypes linked to black people, by acknowledging their culture, history, and achievements, as well as reclaiming their contributions to the world and restoring their rightful place within the global community.
The Roots of Négritude
The movement is deeply rooted in Pan-African congresses, exhibitions, organizations, and publications produced to challenge the theory of race hierarchy and black inferiority developed by philosophers such as Friedrich Hegel and Joseph de Gobineau. Diverse thinkers influenced this rehabilitation process, including anthropologists Leo Frobenius and Maurice Delafosse, who wrote on Africa; colonial administrator René Maran, who penned the seminal ethnographic novel Batouala: Véritable roman négre, an eyewitness account of abuses and injustices within the French colonial system; André Breton, the father of Surrealism; French romantics Arthur Rimbaud and Charles Baudelaire; Haitian Jean-Price Mars, who developed the concept of Indigenism; Haitian anthropologist Anténor Firmin and Cuban Nicolás Guillén, who promoted Negrismo.
Of major significance are the Harlem Renaissance intellectuals who fled to France to escape racism and segregation in the United States. Prominent among them were Langston Hughes, James Weldon Johnson, Richard Wright, and Claude McKay. McKay, who bemoaned divisions of blacks, was acclaimed by Senegalese poet and politician Léopold Sédar Senghor as the spiritual founder of Négritude values. Senghor argued that "far from seeing in one's blackness inferiority, one accepts it; one lays claim to it with pride; one cultivates it lovingly." Pan-Africanist leader Marcus Garvey similarly implored his peers: "Negroes, teach your children that they are direct descendants of the greatest and proudest race who ever peopled the earth."...
****
Excerpt #2:
From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N%C3%A9gritude
"Négritude is a framework of critique and literary theory, developed mainly by francophone intellectuals, writers, and politicians of the African diaspora during the 1930s. Its initiators included Martinican poet Aimé Césaire, Léopold Sédar Senghor (the first President of Senegal), and Léon Damas of French Guiana. Négritude intellectuals disavowed colonialism, and argued for the importance of a Pan-African racial identity among people of African descent worldwide.
[...]
Etymology
The term négritude is a construction which appropriates the derogatory word niger, used to refer to people (in French) as nègre, so largely used exclusively in a racist context. The movement's use of the word négritude is a way of re-imagining the word as an emic form of empowerment. The term was first used in its present sense by Césaire, in the third issue of L'Étudiant noir, a magazine which he had started in Paris with fellow students Léopold Senghor and Léon Damas, as well as Gilbert Gratiant, Leonard Sainville, Louis T. Achille, Aristide Maugée, and Paulette Nardal. L'Étudiant noir also includes Césaire's first published work, Conscience Raciale et Révolution Sociale with the heading "Les Idées" and the rubric "Négreries", which is notable for its disavowal of assimilation as a valid strategy for resistance and for its use of the word nègre as a positive term. The problem with assimilation was that one assimilated into a culture that considered African culture to be barbaric and unworthy of being seen as "civilized". The assimilation into this culture would have been seen as an implicit acceptance of this view. Nègre previously had been used mainly in a pejorative sense. Césaire deliberately incorporated this derogatory word into the name of his philosophy.
Influences
In 1885, Haitian anthropologist Anténor Firmin published an early work De l'Égalité des Races Humaines (On the Equality of Human Races), which was published as a rebuttal to French writer Count Arthur de Gobineau's Essai sur l'inegalite des Races Humaines (An Essay on the Inequality of the Human Races). Firmin influenced Jean Price-Mars, the initiator of Haitian ethnology and developer of the concept of Indigenism, and 20th-century American anthropologist Melville Herskovits.[1] Black intellectuals have historically been proud of Haiti due to its slave revolution commanded by Toussaint L'Ouverture during the 1790s. Césaire spoke, thus, of Haiti as being "where négritude stood up for the first time".
Other diverse thinkers include Charles Baudelaire, André Breton, René Maran, and Arthur Rimbaud.[2]
The Harlem Renaissance, a literary style developed in Harlem in Manhattan during the 1920s and 1930s, influenced the Negritude philosophy.[3] The Harlem Renaissance's writers, including Langston Hughes and Richard Wright, addressed the themes of "noireism" and race relations.
Development during the 20th century
During the 1920s and 1930s, a group of young black students and scholars, primarily from France's colonies and territories, assembled in Paris. There they were introduced to some writers of the Harlem Renaissance by Paulette Nardal and her sister Jane. The Nardal sisters contributed to the Negritude discussions by their writings and by being the proprietors of the Clamart Salon, a tea-shop venue of the French-Black intelligentsia where Negritude philosophy was often discussed. Paulette Nardal and the Haitian Dr. Leo Sajou initiated La revue du Monde Noir (1931–32), a literary journal published in English and French, which attempted to appeal to African and Caribbean intellectuals in Paris. This Harlem association was shared by the parallel development of negrismo in the Spanish-speaking Caribbean region.
[...]
Césaire was a poet, playwright, and politician from Martinique. He studied in Paris, where he discovered the black community and "rediscovered Africa". He saw la Négritude as the fact of being black, acceptance of this fact, and appreciation of the history and culture, and of black people. It is important to note that for Césaire, this emphasis on the acceptance of the fact of "blackness" was the means by which the "decolonization of the mind" could be achieved. According to him, western imperialism was responsible for the inferiority complex of blacks. He sought to recognize the collective colonial experience of Blacks—the slave trade and plantation system. Césaire's ideology was especially important during the early years of la Négritude.”
[...]
Reception
In 1948, Jean-Paul Sartre analyzed the négritude philosophy in an essay called "Orphée Noir" ("Black Orpheus")[5] that served as the introduction to a volume of francophone poetry named Anthologie de la nouvelle poésie nègre et malgache, compiled by Léopold Senghor. In this essay, Sartre characterizes négritude as the opposite of colonial racism in a Hegelian dialectic and with it he helped to introduce Négritude issues to French intellectuals. In his opinion, négritude was an "anti-racist racism" (racisme antiracist), a strategy with a final goal of racial unity.
Négritude was criticized by some black writers during the 1960s as insufficiently militant. Keorapetse Kgositsile said that the term Négritude was based too much on blackness according to a caucasian aesthetic, and was unable to define a new kind of perception of African-ness that would free black people and black art from caucasian conceptualizations altogether.
The Nigerian dramatist, poet, and novelist Wole Soyinka opposed Négritude. He believed that by deliberately and outspokenly being proud of their ethnicity, black people were automatically on the defensive: "Un tigre ne proclame pas sa tigritude, il saute sur sa proie" (French: A tiger doesn't proclaim its tigerness; it jumps on its prey).
After a long period of silence there has been a renaissance of Negritude developed by scholars such as Souleymane Bachir Diagne (Columbia), Donna Jones (Berkeley),[6] and Cheikh Thiam (Ohio State) who all continue the work of Abiola Irele. Cheikh Thiam's book is the only book-length study of Negritude as philosophy. It develops Diagne's reading of Negritude as a philosophy of art, and Jones' presentation of Negritude as a lebensphilosophie.
-snip-
From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lebensphilosophie
"Lebensphilosophie ("philosophy of life" or life-philosophy in German) is a philosophical school of thought which emphasises the meaning, value and purpose of life as the foremost focus of philosophy.[1]"
****
Excerpt #3:
From http://www.blackpast.org/gah/negritude-movement
Contributor:
Micklin, Anna T.
The Evergreen State College
"The literary movement, Negritude, was born out of the Paris intellectual environment of 1930s and 1940s. It is a product of black writers joining together through the French language to assert their cultural identity.
Aimé Césaire was the first to coin the word in his epic poem, Cahier d’un retour au pays natal, declaring “my negritude is not a stone, its deafness hurled against the clamor of the day” but instead, his negritude “takes root in the ardent flesh of the soil.” Together with Césaire, Léon Damas and Léopold Sédar Senghor created poetry that would make a definition for Negritude. The best-known Negritude works from these poets were Damas’ Pigments, Senghor’s Hosties noire and Chants d’ombre, and Césaire’s Cahier. These poets were brought together in the creation of the journal, L’Etudiant noire.
L’Etudiant noire responded to similar black journals in Paris at the time. Césaire and Senghor thought the West-Indian journal, Légitime defense, was too assimilationist and they found the Nardal sisters’ journal, Revue du monde noir, too bourgeois to truly represent the French-speaking black experience. Despite being a separate tract from these journals, L’Etudiant noire would not have been possible if the Nardal sisters and Légitime défense hadn’t created an environment in Paris for black intellectualism.
[...]
Negritude responded to the alienated position of blacks in history. The movement asserted an identity for black people around the world that was their own. For Césaire and Damas, from Martinique and French Guiana, the rupture from Africa through the Atlantic Slave Trade was a great part of their cultural understanding. Their work told of the frustration and loss of their motherland. For Senegalese Senghor, his works focused more on African traditionalism. In ways the assertion of each poet diverges from each other, but the combination of different perspectives is also what fueled and fed Negritude.
From a political standpoint, Negritude was an important aspect to the rejection of colonialism. Emerging at the cusp of African independence movements, Negritude made an impact on how the colonized viewed themselves. It also sparked and fed off of subsequent literary movements that were responding to global politics....
There is no clear end date to the movement, and some literary critics say that it still continues today, in any artistic expression asserting black identity."
****
Thanks for visiting pancocojams.
Visitor comments are welcome.
Friday, February 10, 2017
The Black Consciousness Movement, Spike Lee's Movie "School Daze", & The Vernacular Meaning Of "Stay Woke"
Edited by Azizi Powell
Latest revision: 7/3/2017]
This pancocojams post provides information and comments about the African American afrocentric use of the English word "woke" (also given as "Stay woke!)".
The content of this post is presented for etymological, historical, and cultural purposes.
All copyrights remain with their owners.
Thanks to all those who are quoted in this post.
-snip-
This post serves as a companion to the pancocojams post "The Egyptian Word "Hotep" & Its Various Contemporary African American Meanings" http://pancocojams.blogspot.com/2017/02/the-egyptian-word-hotep-its-various.html
****
PANCOCOJAMS EDITOR'S COMMENTS
I confess that I wasn't aware of the contemporary afrocentric use of the word "woke" until I happened that word's use in the Douglass- Tubman 2020 twitter page https://twitter.com/FDouglass2020 er he. That twitter account -which purports to be the campaign site for the self-resurrected 19th century African American historical figures Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman- has as its campaign theme "#MakeAmericaWokeAgain". I recognized that slogan's play on Trump's theme "Make America Great Again". But at first I thought that the word "woke" in that slogan was incorrect English which was purposely used to infer that the very articulate 19th century Black American Frederick Douglass spoke that way.
My apologies to whoever is responsible for that twitter page.
After doing some on-line research about the contemporary use of the word "woke" I now recognize that the Douglass-Tubman 2020 twitter page's "campaign slogan" is one example among a number of other examples of how witty and "down" (as in "hip") that twitter account's principle writer is.
Click for http://pancocojams.blogspot.com/2017/02/the-self-resurrection-of-frederick.html "The Self-Resurrection Of Frederick Douglass (Examples From The Douglass - Tubman 2020 Twitter Page" That is Part #3 of a three part pancocojams series about Frederick Douglass.
****
[added May 2, 2018]
The saying "stay woke" means "stay conscious about and vigilant regarding socio-political realities/issues". That meaning has its source in the African American consciousness movement and has expanded to the political ("Resist!") movement in the United States on twitter and (probably) elsewhere.
Here's one link to the use of "stay woke" in that context: http://www.mediaite.com/online/deray-launches-resistance-manual-an-open-source-site-designed-to-take-on-trump/ "DeRay and Stay Woke Activists Launch Resistance Manual, an Open-Source Site Designed To Take on Trump" by Lindsey Ellefson, January 17th, 2017
*DeRay is activist DeRay McKesson, DeRay McKesson is African American.
Here's another example of that usage from the Resist! movement from a blogger who (from his avatar photograph) doesn't appear to be Black:
[regarding Trump's presidency ending in imprisonment, and/or resignation, or impeachment]
-Puesto Loco @PuestoLoco May 12 [2017]
"It could have happened. Obama and GWBush have been working together to save us from our nightmare. Stay woke."
****
A DEFINITION OF "BEING WOKE"
"According to https://storify.com/mojoIOL/woke-twitter, the contemporary African American Vernacular English meaning of the word "woke" is "being in a state of awareness: "Being Woke means being aware.. Knowing whats going on in the community" specifically relating to racism and social injustice....
Woke .... describ[es] someone who is enlightened and has a greater understanding of social injustices."
-snip-
The vernacular meanings of "being woke" and "staying woke" are closer in meaning to the present tense of the word "awake" than it is to the past tense of that word. The opposite of "being woke" is to be "asleep" to (and unconscious of) the realities of neo-colonialism, institutional racism, and injustice, particularly as they refer to Black people (or as these refer to all People of Color).
-snip
Click http://science.jrank.org/pages/7530/Black-Consciousness.html
for an article about the Black Consciousness Movement
****
MY RECOLLECTIONS OF THE BLACK CONSCIOUSNESS MOVEMENT (1967-1969)
In the late 1960s I was involved in the Black cultural nationalist movement in the United States (Committee For Unified Newark (CFUN)* which for most of the time I was a member was headed by Imamu Amiri Baraka (formerly known as LeRoi Jones). Members of that organization considered ourselves (and some other, but not all people who called themselves "Black nationalists") to be "conscious". And we also believed that it was our duty to encourage other Black folks to also become "conscious" (in the same way that we were). Once a week our organization would invite Black community members to attend a program that featured performances by the Simba Wachungas (Young Lion "African" boot dancers), a group that was composed of male only members of our organization who were in their teens or were young adults. That program also featured poetry readings and speakers who blasted the "establishment" and encouraged Black folks to unite to better themselves and their community. Similar to the exhortations that are heard during some Black church services, when Imamu or other speakers said something about institutional racism members of our organization would shout "Pull the covers off!", "Tell it!", "Yeah!" etc. "The covers" symbolized the obfuscations and institutional apparatus that hid the truth about this nation and the truth about who we really were: i.e. another common saying that we chanted is "We are an African people".
It occurs to me that our late 1960s' concept of being "conscious" is similar if not the same as the late 20th century or 21st century concept of being "woke" and needing to "stay woke".
I believe that the term "conscious" in the context of the Black consciousness movement/Black power movement and Spike Lee's "Wake Up!" scene have greatly influenced the coinage of the contemporary afrocentric terms "woke" and "stay woke". While reading articles about and examples of "staying woke" in this afrocentric context, I immediately thought of the "Wake Up!" scene from Spike Lee's 1988 movie, School Daze. That said, the lead character's yell that other students "Wake Up!" may have had more to do with them becoming aware of and ridding themselves of self-hatred and colorism than it did for them to be aware of institutional racism and other forms of social injustice. Then again, being aware of self-hatred and colorism is probably also what "being woke" and "staying woke" means nowadays in its afrocentric context and beyond (i.e. America and other nations need to wake up as to what has been going on and what is still going on regarding institutional racism.)
-snip-
*For the record, I'll add that -unlike some other Black nationalist organizations at that time- The Committee For Unified Newark was a non-violent, cultural nationalist organization that didn't advocate violence and didn't advocate that Black people separate ourselves from non-Black people in separate states or by immigrating to Africa.
****
INFORMATION ABOUT THE MOVIE "SCHOOL DAZE"
From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/School_Daze
"School Daze is a 1988 American musical comedy drama film, written and directed by Spike Lee, and starring Larry Fishburne, Giancarlo Esposito, and Tisha Campbell-Martin. Based in part on Spike Lee's experiences at Atlanta's Morehouse College, Spelman College, Morris Brown College and Clark Atlanta University, it is a story about fraternity and sorority members clashing with other students at a historically black college during homecoming weekend. It also touches upon issues of colorism and hair texture bias within the African-American community. The second feature film by Spike Lee, School Daze was released on February 12, 1988 by Columbia Pictures.
Synopsis
Vaughn "Dap" Dunlap (Fishburne) is a politically conscious black American student at Mission College, a leading historically black college whose motto is "Uplift the Race."[2] The college administration is portrayed as inept.
Dunlap leads anti-apartheid demonstrations encouraging students and school administrators to divest from South Africa. When his buddies go into town, they find the local boys are not impressed with their activities, but think of them as privileged college boys. Open conflict breaks out between the groups.[2]
Dunlap feuds with Julian Eaves (Esposito) aka Dean Big Brother Almighty of Gamma Phi Gamma Fraternity, Incorporated. This group is characterized as "wannabees," as in "wannabe better than me." The fraternity brothers are preparing for a big college football weekend and Homecoming parties. Meanwhile, Dap's younger cousin, Darrell (Lee), aka "Half-Pint," is a Gamma pledge.
The Gamma women's auxiliary, the Gamma Rays, who are sleek and light-skinned, confront non-Greek black co-eds, particularly over skin color and the nature of their hair…
Reception
The film received positive reviews for its exploration of issues within the black community. Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times noted, "There is no doubt in my mind that 'School Daze,' in its own way, is one of the most honest and revealing movies I've ever seen about modern middle-class black life in America."[3] He also noted its frank exploration of issues of discrimination within the black community related to skin tone and nature of hair. He said it was significant as a film with a "completely black orientation. All of the characters, good and bad, are black, and all of the character's references are to each other."[3]...
****
SHOWCASE VIDEO: School Daze - WAKE UP!!!!!!!!!!
6FT1BRUH, Uploaded on Jul 6, 2008
PLEASE........WAKE UP.
Dap's point in this movie was "to encourage the student body to wake up and take notice to what was going on around them. Things was getting out of control and it needed to stop.”…
-snip-
Selected comments from this video's discussion thread:
These comments are numbered for referencing purposes only.
2008
1. Veronica Williams
"Whenever I hear the song that's playing in the background, I start to cry. Especially when that horn part comes through. But the message itself and the idea that this scene stands for is so important. Go vote people...wake up....please.."
**
Reply
2. Nina Stephens
"thank you for saying that,No one could've said it better. Wake Up America,You need to vote,your voice needs to be heard"
**
Reply
3. FT1BRUH
"It's called "Wake Up Suite" by The Natural Spiritual Orchestra"
**
Reply
4. Nina Stephens
"people really need to "check that alarm clock and wake up",To whats really going on in america."
****
2013
5. Stacy Seecharan
"too true, as Malcolm X said 'the greatest mistake of the movement has been trying to organize a sleeping people around specific goals. You have to WAKE THE PEOPLE up first, then you'll get action' . This goes for all folks, in british show about northerners catching hell 'Boys from the blackstuff', the working class liverpudlians refuse to wake up and booze is the sleeping pill"
**
6. Ramon LeBlanc Harts
"WAKE - UP from self-hatred, greed, racism, etc.! Can I get a thumbs up?"
****
2014
7. Maddygurl12304996
"The music ties in so well with the scene, I'm crying. The world needs to wake up and realize that we as people need to do better to make the world better."
**
8. Mike Instructor
"WoW... this is why Spike Lee is an artist of relevance. This clip is timeless... After watching Selma and just the current events in America... We need a Lauren Fishbourne call to Wake us up. That caption on this clip says it all...."PLEASE........WAKE UP.
Dap's point in this movie was "to encourage the student body to wake up and take notice to what was going on around them. Things was getting out of control and it needed to stop.
The calm and conclusive "WAKE UP" to the audience means "wake up from all the bulls&&t* we bring on ourselves and that we perpetuate in our community and neighborhoods and in, most of all, society."
But that sh&t was crazy the way he just woke up everybody out their sleep."
-snip-
*This word was fully spelled out in this comment.
****
2015
9. Andre Patterson
"One of Spike Lee's best scenes in any of his movies! I was 8yrs old when I saw this at the movies. I didn't fully understand the message, "Wake Up" then, but man do I have an appreciation for it now. I miss black movies and black TV shows with this type of message......."
**
10. Alexis Golden, 2015
"what are they waking up from?"
**
Reply
11. Joe L
"+Alexis Golden From their stupidity and ignorance."
****
2016
12./ Honey Chiles
"BLACK PEOPLE!.......ITS 2016!..................WAKE UP!"
****
2017
13. jojoko64
"Be awoke enough not to allow yourself to repeat history. Division is the fall before destruction, pull folks on all sides together. You are your hope, do not continuously allow yourself to be deceived. Peace!"
-snip-
Notice that the commenter wrote "be awoke" instead of "be woke". I wonder if the phrase "be awoke" was used first and then shortened to the word "woke".
****
ARTICLE EXCERPT ABOUT THE AFROCENTRIC MEANING OF THE WORD "WOKE" AND THE PHRASE "STAY WOKE"
From http://www.trulytafakari.com/how-to-stay-woke-without-making-everyone-hate-you/ "How to Stay Woke Without Making Everyone Hate You" By Dara, Jan 26, 2017
"So you’ve finally made it to the other side of #woke. Welcome! Don’t you wish you had a guide, somewhat like Neo had in The Matrix, to gently rouse you from your slumber? A Trinity to make staying woke less terrible? You’re woke…now what? Or, you’ve been woke, but no one took the time to explain how to be “conscious” without alienating everyone else. I’m late, but I’m writing this short guide to help all “woke” people be better humans.
Why are so many “woke” people so obnoxious?
I think most people wake up to the truth via clanging emergency siren. Woke people are some of the most annoying folks to be around. Cranky, impossible to satisfy, snappy, just like me when Bean wakes me up two minutes before my alarm rings. That must be why, when they encounter other people who still seem sleepy, they smugly smack them the rest of the way into being woke. So now everybody is irritated. I’ve come to realize that knowing the truth about oppression is not fun. It’s actually rather burdensome.
Being woke isn’t necessarily about recruiting others to join your cause, but in a lot of cases, it is. We always need more people to stand for justice. But we often make horrible ambassadors. The most common trait of being woke is unfortunately not compassion…it’s condescension. It’s almost as if learning how awful the world can be slowly makes us equally insufferable. Woke describes your awareness. It’s not a character trait. You can still be an a**hole no one likes, despite your stellar understanding of neo-colonialism.”…
And if you aren’t giving yourself respite from politics, social justice, and oppressive histories, then you should. It’s good for your mental health, and for everyone else’s around you, too. Go get some joy so we can enjoy the freedom we fight for.
4. If your freedom hinges on another group’s oppression, you aren’t all the way woke.
I understand why people get offended at the pejorative use of the word “hotep.*” However, I also understand how that word earned its negative connotation. Hotep as a diss would not exist if so many woke people did not routinely step over other groups in their quest for liberation. You can’t claim woke and exclude women’s rights. Black LGBTQ people have shown up for every major modern (American) freedom movement without having that same courtesy extended to them by other “woke” people.
5. You can’t “save” everybody. But your politics should.
The world is becoming more woke by the minute. But you also have to realize that not everyone will come to the same understanding as you. (Even that sounds condescending, sheesh!) Every debate isn’t worth it. Learn when to avoid a futile, unproductive shouting match. Everyone will not come to your conclusions, no matter how much you present your evidence. That’s frustrating as hell. I know. Even if they don’t agree with your stance, even if you can’t stand them, the liberation you fight for has to be for them, too. Just disengage them rhetorically."...
-snip-
Click the link given above for the pancocojams post about the word "hotep".
****
Update: 7/3/2017
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/jeopardy-had-a-stay-woke-category_us_5958e984e4b05c37bb7eed52
"A category on “Jeopardy!” Friday night woke audience members right up, but for not quite the reason you’d expect.
The popular quiz show unveiled a category called “Stay Woke,” prompting celebratory Tweets from some viewers because the term is used by groups like Black Lives Matter to encourage people to stay aware of social and political issues....
But as it so happened, the category didn’t feature questions on current events or injustices. The term, which the Oxford English Dictionary last month noted is derived from African-American vernacular, was instead about sleep and staying awake, in the literal sense. The questions’ answers included melatonin, caffeine, and the stimulant product NoDoz.
Obviously, Twitter had a lot to stay on the matter, with some viewers suggesting that the category was “disappointing” and suffered a “major miss.”...
[including this tweet]
Cover to Credits @Cover2Credits
#Jeopardy is like, "Let's do a category called 'Stay Woke' and then only ask the three white, male contestants about sleep habits."
7:07 PM - 30 Jun 2017"
****
Thanks for visiting pancocojams.
Visitor comments are welcome.
Latest revision: 7/3/2017]
This pancocojams post provides information and comments about the African American afrocentric use of the English word "woke" (also given as "Stay woke!)".
The content of this post is presented for etymological, historical, and cultural purposes.
All copyrights remain with their owners.
Thanks to all those who are quoted in this post.
-snip-
This post serves as a companion to the pancocojams post "The Egyptian Word "Hotep" & Its Various Contemporary African American Meanings" http://pancocojams.blogspot.com/2017/02/the-egyptian-word-hotep-its-various.html
****
PANCOCOJAMS EDITOR'S COMMENTS
I confess that I wasn't aware of the contemporary afrocentric use of the word "woke" until I happened that word's use in the Douglass- Tubman 2020 twitter page https://twitter.com/FDouglass2020 er he. That twitter account -which purports to be the campaign site for the self-resurrected 19th century African American historical figures Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman- has as its campaign theme "#MakeAmericaWokeAgain". I recognized that slogan's play on Trump's theme "Make America Great Again". But at first I thought that the word "woke" in that slogan was incorrect English which was purposely used to infer that the very articulate 19th century Black American Frederick Douglass spoke that way.
My apologies to whoever is responsible for that twitter page.
After doing some on-line research about the contemporary use of the word "woke" I now recognize that the Douglass-Tubman 2020 twitter page's "campaign slogan" is one example among a number of other examples of how witty and "down" (as in "hip") that twitter account's principle writer is.
Click for http://pancocojams.blogspot.com/2017/02/the-self-resurrection-of-frederick.html "The Self-Resurrection Of Frederick Douglass (Examples From The Douglass - Tubman 2020 Twitter Page" That is Part #3 of a three part pancocojams series about Frederick Douglass.
****
[added May 2, 2018]
The saying "stay woke" means "stay conscious about and vigilant regarding socio-political realities/issues". That meaning has its source in the African American consciousness movement and has expanded to the political ("Resist!") movement in the United States on twitter and (probably) elsewhere.
Here's one link to the use of "stay woke" in that context: http://www.mediaite.com/online/deray-launches-resistance-manual-an-open-source-site-designed-to-take-on-trump/ "DeRay and Stay Woke Activists Launch Resistance Manual, an Open-Source Site Designed To Take on Trump" by Lindsey Ellefson, January 17th, 2017
*DeRay is activist DeRay McKesson, DeRay McKesson is African American.
Here's another example of that usage from the Resist! movement from a blogger who (from his avatar photograph) doesn't appear to be Black:
[regarding Trump's presidency ending in imprisonment, and/or resignation, or impeachment]
-Puesto Loco @PuestoLoco May 12 [2017]
"It could have happened. Obama and GWBush have been working together to save us from our nightmare. Stay woke."
****
A DEFINITION OF "BEING WOKE"
"According to https://storify.com/mojoIOL/woke-twitter, the contemporary African American Vernacular English meaning of the word "woke" is "being in a state of awareness: "Being Woke means being aware.. Knowing whats going on in the community" specifically relating to racism and social injustice....
Woke .... describ[es] someone who is enlightened and has a greater understanding of social injustices."
-snip-
The vernacular meanings of "being woke" and "staying woke" are closer in meaning to the present tense of the word "awake" than it is to the past tense of that word. The opposite of "being woke" is to be "asleep" to (and unconscious of) the realities of neo-colonialism, institutional racism, and injustice, particularly as they refer to Black people (or as these refer to all People of Color).
-snip
Click http://science.jrank.org/pages/7530/Black-Consciousness.html
for an article about the Black Consciousness Movement
****
MY RECOLLECTIONS OF THE BLACK CONSCIOUSNESS MOVEMENT (1967-1969)
In the late 1960s I was involved in the Black cultural nationalist movement in the United States (Committee For Unified Newark (CFUN)* which for most of the time I was a member was headed by Imamu Amiri Baraka (formerly known as LeRoi Jones). Members of that organization considered ourselves (and some other, but not all people who called themselves "Black nationalists") to be "conscious". And we also believed that it was our duty to encourage other Black folks to also become "conscious" (in the same way that we were). Once a week our organization would invite Black community members to attend a program that featured performances by the Simba Wachungas (Young Lion "African" boot dancers), a group that was composed of male only members of our organization who were in their teens or were young adults. That program also featured poetry readings and speakers who blasted the "establishment" and encouraged Black folks to unite to better themselves and their community. Similar to the exhortations that are heard during some Black church services, when Imamu or other speakers said something about institutional racism members of our organization would shout "Pull the covers off!", "Tell it!", "Yeah!" etc. "The covers" symbolized the obfuscations and institutional apparatus that hid the truth about this nation and the truth about who we really were: i.e. another common saying that we chanted is "We are an African people".
It occurs to me that our late 1960s' concept of being "conscious" is similar if not the same as the late 20th century or 21st century concept of being "woke" and needing to "stay woke".
I believe that the term "conscious" in the context of the Black consciousness movement/Black power movement and Spike Lee's "Wake Up!" scene have greatly influenced the coinage of the contemporary afrocentric terms "woke" and "stay woke". While reading articles about and examples of "staying woke" in this afrocentric context, I immediately thought of the "Wake Up!" scene from Spike Lee's 1988 movie, School Daze. That said, the lead character's yell that other students "Wake Up!" may have had more to do with them becoming aware of and ridding themselves of self-hatred and colorism than it did for them to be aware of institutional racism and other forms of social injustice. Then again, being aware of self-hatred and colorism is probably also what "being woke" and "staying woke" means nowadays in its afrocentric context and beyond (i.e. America and other nations need to wake up as to what has been going on and what is still going on regarding institutional racism.)
-snip-
*For the record, I'll add that -unlike some other Black nationalist organizations at that time- The Committee For Unified Newark was a non-violent, cultural nationalist organization that didn't advocate violence and didn't advocate that Black people separate ourselves from non-Black people in separate states or by immigrating to Africa.
****
INFORMATION ABOUT THE MOVIE "SCHOOL DAZE"
From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/School_Daze
"School Daze is a 1988 American musical comedy drama film, written and directed by Spike Lee, and starring Larry Fishburne, Giancarlo Esposito, and Tisha Campbell-Martin. Based in part on Spike Lee's experiences at Atlanta's Morehouse College, Spelman College, Morris Brown College and Clark Atlanta University, it is a story about fraternity and sorority members clashing with other students at a historically black college during homecoming weekend. It also touches upon issues of colorism and hair texture bias within the African-American community. The second feature film by Spike Lee, School Daze was released on February 12, 1988 by Columbia Pictures.
Synopsis
Vaughn "Dap" Dunlap (Fishburne) is a politically conscious black American student at Mission College, a leading historically black college whose motto is "Uplift the Race."[2] The college administration is portrayed as inept.
Dunlap leads anti-apartheid demonstrations encouraging students and school administrators to divest from South Africa. When his buddies go into town, they find the local boys are not impressed with their activities, but think of them as privileged college boys. Open conflict breaks out between the groups.[2]
Dunlap feuds with Julian Eaves (Esposito) aka Dean Big Brother Almighty of Gamma Phi Gamma Fraternity, Incorporated. This group is characterized as "wannabees," as in "wannabe better than me." The fraternity brothers are preparing for a big college football weekend and Homecoming parties. Meanwhile, Dap's younger cousin, Darrell (Lee), aka "Half-Pint," is a Gamma pledge.
The Gamma women's auxiliary, the Gamma Rays, who are sleek and light-skinned, confront non-Greek black co-eds, particularly over skin color and the nature of their hair…
Reception
The film received positive reviews for its exploration of issues within the black community. Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times noted, "There is no doubt in my mind that 'School Daze,' in its own way, is one of the most honest and revealing movies I've ever seen about modern middle-class black life in America."[3] He also noted its frank exploration of issues of discrimination within the black community related to skin tone and nature of hair. He said it was significant as a film with a "completely black orientation. All of the characters, good and bad, are black, and all of the character's references are to each other."[3]...
****
SHOWCASE VIDEO: School Daze - WAKE UP!!!!!!!!!!
6FT1BRUH, Uploaded on Jul 6, 2008
PLEASE........WAKE UP.
Dap's point in this movie was "to encourage the student body to wake up and take notice to what was going on around them. Things was getting out of control and it needed to stop.”…
-snip-
Selected comments from this video's discussion thread:
These comments are numbered for referencing purposes only.
2008
1. Veronica Williams
"Whenever I hear the song that's playing in the background, I start to cry. Especially when that horn part comes through. But the message itself and the idea that this scene stands for is so important. Go vote people...wake up....please.."
**
Reply
2. Nina Stephens
"thank you for saying that,No one could've said it better. Wake Up America,You need to vote,your voice needs to be heard"
**
Reply
3. FT1BRUH
"It's called "Wake Up Suite" by The Natural Spiritual Orchestra"
**
Reply
4. Nina Stephens
"people really need to "check that alarm clock and wake up",To whats really going on in america."
****
2013
5. Stacy Seecharan
"too true, as Malcolm X said 'the greatest mistake of the movement has been trying to organize a sleeping people around specific goals. You have to WAKE THE PEOPLE up first, then you'll get action' . This goes for all folks, in british show about northerners catching hell 'Boys from the blackstuff', the working class liverpudlians refuse to wake up and booze is the sleeping pill"
**
6. Ramon LeBlanc Harts
"WAKE - UP from self-hatred, greed, racism, etc.! Can I get a thumbs up?"
****
2014
7. Maddygurl12304996
"The music ties in so well with the scene, I'm crying. The world needs to wake up and realize that we as people need to do better to make the world better."
**
8. Mike Instructor
"WoW... this is why Spike Lee is an artist of relevance. This clip is timeless... After watching Selma and just the current events in America... We need a Lauren Fishbourne call to Wake us up. That caption on this clip says it all...."PLEASE........WAKE UP.
Dap's point in this movie was "to encourage the student body to wake up and take notice to what was going on around them. Things was getting out of control and it needed to stop.
The calm and conclusive "WAKE UP" to the audience means "wake up from all the bulls&&t* we bring on ourselves and that we perpetuate in our community and neighborhoods and in, most of all, society."
But that sh&t was crazy the way he just woke up everybody out their sleep."
-snip-
*This word was fully spelled out in this comment.
****
2015
9. Andre Patterson
"One of Spike Lee's best scenes in any of his movies! I was 8yrs old when I saw this at the movies. I didn't fully understand the message, "Wake Up" then, but man do I have an appreciation for it now. I miss black movies and black TV shows with this type of message......."
**
10. Alexis Golden, 2015
"what are they waking up from?"
**
Reply
11. Joe L
"+Alexis Golden From their stupidity and ignorance."
****
2016
12./ Honey Chiles
"BLACK PEOPLE!.......ITS 2016!..................WAKE UP!"
****
2017
13. jojoko64
"Be awoke enough not to allow yourself to repeat history. Division is the fall before destruction, pull folks on all sides together. You are your hope, do not continuously allow yourself to be deceived. Peace!"
-snip-
Notice that the commenter wrote "be awoke" instead of "be woke". I wonder if the phrase "be awoke" was used first and then shortened to the word "woke".
****
ARTICLE EXCERPT ABOUT THE AFROCENTRIC MEANING OF THE WORD "WOKE" AND THE PHRASE "STAY WOKE"
From http://www.trulytafakari.com/how-to-stay-woke-without-making-everyone-hate-you/ "How to Stay Woke Without Making Everyone Hate You" By Dara, Jan 26, 2017
"So you’ve finally made it to the other side of #woke. Welcome! Don’t you wish you had a guide, somewhat like Neo had in The Matrix, to gently rouse you from your slumber? A Trinity to make staying woke less terrible? You’re woke…now what? Or, you’ve been woke, but no one took the time to explain how to be “conscious” without alienating everyone else. I’m late, but I’m writing this short guide to help all “woke” people be better humans.
Why are so many “woke” people so obnoxious?
I think most people wake up to the truth via clanging emergency siren. Woke people are some of the most annoying folks to be around. Cranky, impossible to satisfy, snappy, just like me when Bean wakes me up two minutes before my alarm rings. That must be why, when they encounter other people who still seem sleepy, they smugly smack them the rest of the way into being woke. So now everybody is irritated. I’ve come to realize that knowing the truth about oppression is not fun. It’s actually rather burdensome.
Being woke isn’t necessarily about recruiting others to join your cause, but in a lot of cases, it is. We always need more people to stand for justice. But we often make horrible ambassadors. The most common trait of being woke is unfortunately not compassion…it’s condescension. It’s almost as if learning how awful the world can be slowly makes us equally insufferable. Woke describes your awareness. It’s not a character trait. You can still be an a**hole no one likes, despite your stellar understanding of neo-colonialism.”…
And if you aren’t giving yourself respite from politics, social justice, and oppressive histories, then you should. It’s good for your mental health, and for everyone else’s around you, too. Go get some joy so we can enjoy the freedom we fight for.
4. If your freedom hinges on another group’s oppression, you aren’t all the way woke.
I understand why people get offended at the pejorative use of the word “hotep.*” However, I also understand how that word earned its negative connotation. Hotep as a diss would not exist if so many woke people did not routinely step over other groups in their quest for liberation. You can’t claim woke and exclude women’s rights. Black LGBTQ people have shown up for every major modern (American) freedom movement without having that same courtesy extended to them by other “woke” people.
5. You can’t “save” everybody. But your politics should.
The world is becoming more woke by the minute. But you also have to realize that not everyone will come to the same understanding as you. (Even that sounds condescending, sheesh!) Every debate isn’t worth it. Learn when to avoid a futile, unproductive shouting match. Everyone will not come to your conclusions, no matter how much you present your evidence. That’s frustrating as hell. I know. Even if they don’t agree with your stance, even if you can’t stand them, the liberation you fight for has to be for them, too. Just disengage them rhetorically."...
-snip-
Click the link given above for the pancocojams post about the word "hotep".
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Update: 7/3/2017
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/jeopardy-had-a-stay-woke-category_us_5958e984e4b05c37bb7eed52
"A category on “Jeopardy!” Friday night woke audience members right up, but for not quite the reason you’d expect.
The popular quiz show unveiled a category called “Stay Woke,” prompting celebratory Tweets from some viewers because the term is used by groups like Black Lives Matter to encourage people to stay aware of social and political issues....
But as it so happened, the category didn’t feature questions on current events or injustices. The term, which the Oxford English Dictionary last month noted is derived from African-American vernacular, was instead about sleep and staying awake, in the literal sense. The questions’ answers included melatonin, caffeine, and the stimulant product NoDoz.
Obviously, Twitter had a lot to stay on the matter, with some viewers suggesting that the category was “disappointing” and suffered a “major miss.”...
[including this tweet]
Cover to Credits @Cover2Credits
#Jeopardy is like, "Let's do a category called 'Stay Woke' and then only ask the three white, male contestants about sleep habits."
7:07 PM - 30 Jun 2017"
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