For the first few weeks of his life my brothers name was Israel. Biblically it means ‘God perseveres’. My parents are very particular about the meanings of our names and chose it for this reason. However, we found that when we introduced him to neighbours and family friends who were not Christian, the conflict in the middle east had bastardised the beauty of the name. My parents changed his name. For the second time in my life the politics of the Israel – Palestine conflict overlap with my personal understanding of how easily spirituality can be weaponised to demonise a people who are only seeking to exist.
Black history coincides with lots of drawing/art challenges popularised on social media. I have had @simkrays Black History Month Challenge saved for years because I love that it acknowledges Black History Month whilst most are American centric and only focus on Halloween.
I can never commit to the full 30 and it usually puts me off joining in at all but I decided to just task myself with doing four. It felt better than doing none at all. I used the list for inspiration and settled on drawing a Zombie, Mami Wata, a Jab Jab and a Mummy. A few years ago I made my Black Victorians activity book and wanted to do something similar with these monsters from black history. However, a booklet is a bigger project than I have time for at the moment so I settled for simple paper dolls.
Though I wasn’t going to include any information about the history of these monsters I still did some brief research in order to better gain a sense of the characters.
I realised that actually, these weren’t ‘frightening, imaginary creatures’ but rather deities, and images of spiritualities from Black history that have been bastardised and demonised. I started to question who decides what we call a monster.
This year the tragedy of genocide has been heavy on my mind. Not least because in hearing mainstream medias reports of the Israeli – Palestinian conflict I felt like I was going crazy. The idea that there is two sides to the story, or that some terror can be sanctified is absolutely absurd to me. I had to go back read up on the history of the conflict to double check that what we are witnessing – as I had thought to begin with – is the genocide of Palestinians, and not a war of equals.
It may seem like a random link between Black and Palestinian history, but i realised the similarities because as the terror on Palestine continues, friends and followers with interests in Black thought continue to highlight how Black activists have historically stood with Palestine. In between posts about our history and our oppression I keep seeing the following quote:
“If you’re not careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed, and loving the people who are doing the oppressing.”
Malcom X
Amara Antoinette 