“In a perfect world, both Lauryn Hill and Beyoncé Knowles-Carter would have their different choices celebrated, would share the spotlight, and would make alternate appearances in mainstream media.  Instead, the ascendancy of one star and the decline of another reveals what Patricia Hill Collins describes as the “politics of containment” concerning the hypervisibility of African American women – in which certain icons are singly, rather than simultaneously, promoted – which is also used to render invisible the multiple forms of oppression that intersect in the lives of the majority of black women in this country, and throughout the world.  By placing the two icons alongside each other, we have an opportunity to examine the treatment of high-profile black women in the public sphere and intersect racial and sexual politics.”

(Source: sonofbaldwin)

You can tell a lot about someone by friends they keep.

“Still, whether we can admit it or not (whether we can face it or not), our society is severely damaged and because it is so damaged, coming out has become a necessary tool in the battle against homoantagonism (heterosexists otherwise erase the shit out of us and deny we exist) and many black queer lives—particularly black queer children—will be saved because of his announcement.”

From http://sonofbaldwin.tumblr.com/