More than just a "colorful" outfit
Sometimes my outfits are beyond just being "colorful"
I want to talk to you about a particular pic of me this year, but, before I do:
-- Black Lives Matter
-- Wear A Damn Mask
Ok, getting that out of the way, let's go to the pic at question:
click here
I showed this picture a while back, celebrating my Blackness, my queer gay fashion art, and my personal responsibility to the human race to obey social distancing
guidelines. In the midst of this I was alerted to the presence of a supremacist person, who sadly was also steampunk like me, who was pushing for a nationalist
agenda of exclusivity according to her more socially and systemically "dominant" race, and was pushing for it quite fervently, excluding all POC, all queer folk,
and everyone that wasn't cishet and racially like them. So, I sent this person this pic as a means of offering perspective about being proud of who you are, your
race, your gender and sexual identity, and your creativity, alongside your social responsibility. Their only comment? "I like it; it's colorful".
Aside from the absolutely obvious attempt at
tokenizing me, what this does is ensure that this person refused to see the message behind the meaning of this outfit, or, at least, simply never knew or
understood what the meaning was.
Allow me to enlighten you.
The pattern you see is known as Kente, a pattern that
was inspired by the West African disapora due to the transatlantic slave trade. Since most of our historical and cultural records were wiped out by slaveowners and
slave-friendly society, because we were property, we, unlike the more dominant populations in North America and Europe, have had to create our own in order to have a
sense of our own identity, and our own sense of existence. My understanding of my identity has shaped my dandyism; this being reflected in my favorite book, "Slaves
To Fashion", by Monica L. Miller (click here to learn more). Tis a pity that this racist-turned-supremacist couldn't, or doesn't want to,
see that, but, instead, see something "colorful". I don't know if they even believe in wearing a mask during a pandemic!
My dandyism, my art, is beyond something "colorful", and I hope my friends, my allies, and the fans of this site, realize that we Black people do our art oftentimes to
clearly convey a message that we want you to hear; in this case, it's kente-and-senkofa clear:
-- Black Lives Matter
-- Wear A Damn Mask
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