AfroPunks!

It's AfroPunk Week in Brooklyn and let me just say that I am truly enjoying the festivities! I <3 AfroPunk. I first attended the festival three years ago with a couple of my friends. It's a festival that at the time was in it's second year and was spawned from a documentary of the same name and directed by James Spooner, a self-proclaimed Afro Punk. It's about race in punk rock, and specifically about Black people who are punk (and have been punk since punk was). It's now in it's fourth year and it draws Afro Punks and Afro Punk enthusiasts from around NYC, the tri-state area, and probably the country. It generates such amazing energy because there is such radical race pride and self-acceptance floating in the air during the festival alongside pure rock and roll, pure music, pure incredible intense love and rebellion and defiance. There are no apologies, no "yea I'm Black but I'm punk" or "I'm not white but I do like punk."

But there are lots of...

"Hell yea I'm punk and hell yea I'm Black! What other way is there to be?"
"Shit yea punk is the Blackest thing on god's green earth, you ain't know?"
"Where the fuck do you think the punk counterculture got it's inspiration from? This is pure Black nationalism...the piercings, the tats, the dreds, the 'hawks...that's Africa babe!"





You see folks with Black power buttons, and tee shirts with messages like "I'm Black...please don't shoot," and golden Africa medallions...

annnd lip rings annnd nostril rings annnd industrials annnd artistically shaved heads annnd ear plugs annnd hair color annnd skateboards

and the space that this festival creates to be all of that and more is so refreshing and empowering and affirming and celebratory and sexy and addictive as hell, and so COMPLETELY necessary.

But that's just a background. This year's festival has so far been amazing, and last night I saw two incredible film selections with friends.

The first was also directed by James Spooner, a "scripted documentary" about a man who rejects his Black self while exploring the punk world, since conventional, white dominated punk outlets don't typically have space for a strong Black consciousness. No, he doesn't conveniently "discover" the AfroPunk scene near the film's end but he does eventually discover himself. Brilliant film, highly recommended.



The second was a hilARious romantic comedy called "I'm Through With White Girls." For me it was an extremely refreshing take on/celebration of Black love amidst the problematic history of race relations in the U.S., but it's one of those films that everyone is bound to take something different yet powerfully affirming from. While some small aspects of it rubbed up against my politics (and lead to a spirited phone conversation with one of my friends until 3:00 am about the biological/socially constructed nature of desire, the troubled history of race and the present manifestation of racism in a colonized world, standards of beauty and desirability that are decidedly anti-Black and anti "real people," and the politics of interracial relationships and skin color in the U.S.), overall it was just such a provocative, intriguing, entertaining, funny, well-acted, relate-able movie. And I'm not even one to really sit through and enjoy movies that don't have a documentary kind of feel to them. But this movie definitely WILL be in my collection when it's released on DVD Aug. 12th. Without a doubt. It was that good, and if you get a chance, you should really check it out.