Notes on Sarah Baartman and Serena Williams by Marvin X
kSarah Baateman, "Hottentot Venus" aka, Miss Universe
- Jun 28 at 11:16 PMWe are transforming the Bay Area art scene and the world, so we need your support! With your help, we look forward to bringing you beautiful gifts of art and community.
Our names are Karen Seneferu and Melorra Green. We are artists, activists, and change-makers. We love Black art and work to create spaces for Black women artists who are often marginalized in the art world.
Last year we had 2,000 people come out to the opening reception of The Black Woman Is God at SOMArts in San Francisco. So many performers, artists, healers, and stewards helped make this mammoth exhibition possible — providing a platform for 60 Black visual artists to contribute over 100 pieces of artwork and over 75 dancers, drummers, and performers to activate the exhibition at the opening reception.
Since then, SOMArts has created space for us to bring The Black Woman is God back in 2017 and the exhibition has gotten bigger. We are reaching out to you for financial support to show appreciation for those who continue to give without requesting to be paid. Let's show the artists, the communities and the world that The Black Woman is God is not only an exhibition but a movement that has the power to bring about healing and transformation.
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Help expand The Black Woman is God! We are transforming the Bay Area art scene and the world, so we need your s...Thank you,Karen SeneferuFounder and Co-CuratorThe Black Woman Is God©2013
Notes on the Black Woman is God--from Sarah Baateman to Serena Williams
by
Marvin X
The African and/or black body has always been supreme universally, male and female. As per Greeks, Africans were models for their sculpture, just as African thought and mythology was the model for Greek philosophy and mythology (see George M. James, Dr. Ben, Cheikh Anta Dioip, et al.)
The Europeans can claim Sarah was primitivo,i.e., savage, yet she exhibited the finest example of the female physiognomy. Otherwise, how did she become the "Hottentot Venus"? Was she a freak descending from baboons or the model of feminine physiognomy caught in the patriarchal white supremacy mythology that honored, praised and worshiped the African body (and mind), while simultaneously pathologically envious and jealous of such?
In modern times, we have the African goddess supreme, Serena Williams, not to leave out her sister Venus. I must mention the most powerful reaction to a poem I ever heard was at Spelman College in Atlanta, after BAM Master poet Askia Toure' read his praise poem in honor of the William sisters. The applause from the audience of mostly women was deafening, like an earthquake of pure female joy exploding in the room. It frightened me and when I looked at Askia, he seemed shocked and frightened as well. His poem simply praised the two sistas for their primordial, primitivo, African beauty, more precisely, their Black African beauty as well as their overwhelming skills on the tennis court, comparing them to two black panthers devouring their foes with consummate skill.
And for this moment at Spelman College, Black African women were praised, honored and respected for enduring the degradation of centuries, experimentation, examination, mutilation of the Black Goddess body, heart, mind, soul and color.. See the book Medical Apartheid. From Sara to Serena, the Black Goddess has been the subject of experimentation, alas, she was the foundation of the medical profession known as gynecology. She we begin with Sara? Is not Serena the modern version of Sara, exhibiting her physiognomy and prowness in the present era?
Let’s dispel the patriarchal mythology! Alas, my Mother raised nine children of her own and two grandchildren by herself, a single women. Who do you think god is in my eyes, Mama!.
Little has changed since the era of the socalled "Hottentot Venus." She was from a tribe that was free, not slave, since the Dutch could not conquer them. A socalled free African man assisted and managed her European "tour". Yet, she was a de facto slave. Well, Serena must be considered a free African woman who excelled to the heights with her physical skills at tennis. And yes, she exhibited the consummate African body beautiful, artful, skillful to smash her European Barby Doll opponents so gloriously described in Askia's poem.
So what is the connection between Sarah and Serena, two African goddesses in two eras centuries apart?Well, in the post-black era, we would like to say Serena is just as free and powerful as Sara claimed to be with her exhibition contracts, though most people suspect the contracts were a fraud and she was a de facto slave.
On the other hand, Serena is technically a free North American African woman, though we wonder if she is among the truly free North American Africans, why does the Voting Rights Act need to be renewed to insure her citizenship and voting rights?
Is there really a distance in time and space between Sara and Serena? For sure, Serena did not need to pose nude and pregnant to earn a dollar. We know Serena is rich and yet how similar the pose of Sara and Serena on page nine. How can a socalled free African and her modern counterpart strike the same pose?
Unless she is simply proud of her body as we are of her's and ours, why did she need to pose pregnant in the nude? Sara did try to pose with trappings of civility as per her genitalia.
I am with those in love with our bodies, unashamed of our bodies no matter what shape or form. If my grandchildren would see the pregnant Serena, they would say, "Grandpa, you look like Serena!" And then I would let them punch me in the belly to show them there was strength in my fat pregnant looking belly, so similar to Serena's, especially in the mind of my grandchildren. y
One of my partner’s said she appreciated me because I went nude in the house without shame of my obesity, which didn’t bother me at all.
So we suspect Serena is secure within herself as per her body, thus it was no problem for her to pose nude and pregnant, no matter that some would and did say to me, "She looks like a gorilla," though we suspect they ignore her royal African beauty in league with her ancestor Sara, especially since she was impregnated by a European and many North American African men find this most disgusting in the biological war over the Black sperm between the white and black woman. This white woman/black woman war over sperm is a war of the most pervasive nature. This is biology at its greatest, alas, a life and death battle over the generations to come.
Chancellor Williams told us in his classic Destruction of African Civilizations, this war began 6,000 years ago when the invaders took Kemet and thus began the 6,000 year struggle with mulattoes and their crisis that persisted down to Prince and Obama, “Am I Black, Am I White?” Purple Rain!
Without a doubt, there is war between the white woman and black woman over the black sperm, although on another level the black woman is in desperate straits to answer the call of her body clock! You don't hear me. Maybe if you had daughters and bothered to listen to them, you would be concerned about the Mythology of Pussy and Dick, title of my most controversial book, printed as an 18 page pamphlet, expanded to 400 pages.
As the father of three unmarried daughters, although they are mothers and highly successful women, I am without words when it comes to their choice of a man. Of course, as a revolutionary Black nationalist, I want my daughters to marry Black, but one daughter informed me 75% of her friends have connected with "others".
Let us not berate Serena for hooking up with a European, after all, as one of my daughters told me, "Dad, my biological clock is ticking, please don't answer my phone, I'll never get a man!"
I am not mad at Serena for finding love. Any one of us shall be lucky to find love in this Crazy House Called America. Go for it!
--Marvin X
