“Brown Girls”

(image found here)

The title of this post is a reference to a comment by Santogold where she says in an online interview, of her and M.I.A, “She’s cool, she’s my friend. We’ve worked with some of the same people and both are brown girls who aren’t just doing and R‘n’B or rap, but have similar influences. What I find so illuminating about this comment is the fact that Santogold is maybe one of the first black artists I have heard, besides James Spooner, who is openly talking about the fact that black people do not just make “black” music. By grouping herself with M.I.A in saying that they are “brown girls” who are essentially going against the grain, is Santogold making a cultural point about how general mainstream society sees black & asian women ?

Politics or Sociology: Which one holds the key for Africa ?

My mum is a professor by trade even though she does not teach anymore. Nonetheless, she is so incredibly smart. She was so happy when I decided to do Politics at university in 2004(even though she was not thrilled about me doing French as a joint subject lol). Now, as I am winding up my degree, I do go to my mum for advice about writing essays and formulating arguments. My mum reckons I have become more sociological in my approach. It made me think: is sociology really that bad, is it really the silly relation to politics and history ? And can sociology truly *help* the diaspora ?

Magazine Commentary: Naomi in i-D magazine

NB: No scans of Naomi C in this post!

**Naomi C is in the new issue of i-D magazine. Some readers of the blog may or may not remember that in fact i-D did a controversial fashion spread where a black model looks basically like Aunt Jemima so this magazine is suspect anyway.