Black Power

A homage of sorts to the Black Power Movement. Get ready for a long explanation:

For a long time in my life, I was ashamed of being a Black girl. I hated how I looked in braids. I hated how my hair wasn't straight and silky. I hated my skin being brown. I hated how my eyes weren't blue or green. I hated my community. I hated rap and hip-hop and R&B. And more importantly, I hated how trapped I felt as I was oppressed by stereotypes and expectations and, well, fear.

It wasn't until after taking an African-American history class in college and learning more about my culture did I really begin to respect myself as a Black woman. That was about 20 years of self-loathing. I thought I knew about Black history because I was Black, but there was so much about our past and present struggles that I was completely unaware of.

One thing I learned was how important the radical Black Power Movement was for cultivating love and self-respect for ourselves as a race. The media often portrays the Black Power Movement as being "black supremacy". But it wasn't like that. Sure there were several bad apples in the bunch, but organizations like the Black Panthers spoke for an end to the oppression and an end to the self-hatred. They spoke of "Black love" not "White hate".

So this is showing my respect and love for an "ideology" that was so necessary to the entire Civil Rights movement that without it, I don't even know if the Civil Rights movement would have succeeded. After all, how can we fight for our rights if we do not love ourselves enough to truly believe we deserve those rights?

So in the words of James Brown, "I'm Black, and I'm PROUD!".

The words in the background are the lyrics to the song/poem, "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised" by Gil Scott-Heron. You can see the whole lyrics here: [link]

And for those who may still misconstrue the positive aspects of Black Power, I have found a very informative link on the Black Power movement!

---

Artistically speaking, I used a different coloring technique than usual. I tried really hard to get a hang of this soft cel-shading thing, lol. I'm really proud of it. The color scheme of the whole picture is the colors of Pan-Africanism: gold, green, black, red. Gold represents the wealth of Africa, green represents the rich land of Africa, black represents the skin of the African people, and red represents the blood that binds all people of African-descent. So says a lot of sources I've heard over the course of my life, lol.

I didn't use as much yellow as I wanted...There was gonna be yellow in the background but the words of the poem was gonna be extremely obscured (more so than it already is...). So yeah...the yellow was restricted to her accessories.

I have to say that the thing I'm most proud of in this picture is DEFINITELY that awesome fist! I am loving that fist. It was extremely hard to draw and I had to actually stand in this pose in order to draw it. But it came out good.

I hope everyone enjoys this picture as much as I do! Black Power peoples!