Golliwog doll pulled from Australian store so as not offend Oprah during her tour of Australia

The UK blog Madnews wrote that a doll shop in Australia has withdrawn a female golliwog soft toy from its prominent window display to avoid offending the Oprah Winfrey roadshow Down Under.

The store in Melbourne, Victoria, removed the ‘Mamee’ washer woman dolls following a visit by Oprah’s production company ahead of a personal appearance by the popular 56-year-old U.S. talk show host.

Golliwogs are deeply offensive because of their perceived links to slavery and racism.

But the Dafel Dolls and Bears shop in Block Arcade – where 110 of Oprah’s guests will attend a cocktail party tonight – will continue to display other golliwogs which do not cast a black figure in such an overtly servile image.

The store owner declined to comment because she had signed a confidentiality agreement with Harpo productions, but confirmed a meeting had taken place.

‘Oprah’s people came… and yes it was discussed,’ a source familiar with the agreement told Melbourne’s Herald Sun newspaper. Continue Reading…at Madnews

Since I am not British I would like to know who is buying these dolls and what do they do with them. This is so typical British. It looks like an English boarding school habit.

Bi-racial children in the Ukraine - "Family Portrait in Black and White"

Spotted on Blackgermans
"Family Portrait in Black and White" is a compelling film of Russian/Canadian Filmmaker Julia Ivanova about a group of bi-racial/black orphans in the former Soviet republic Ukraine.

Forced to constantly defend themselves from racist neighbours and skinheads, these children have to be on guard against the world that surrounds them.

The film is still in production, but will have its World Premiere at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival





Short synopsis: Olga Nenya, from a small Ukrainian town, is raising sixteen black orphans in a country of Slavic blue-eyed blonds. The reality of growing up as a bi-racial child in Eastern Europe, a rare and truly visible minority, is not for the faint of heart. While Olga is on a crusade to save her children from the unjust world, she is also determined to shape their future according to her own, sometimes limited vision.

Long synopsis: Olga Nenya has 27 children. Four of them, now adults, are her biological children; the other 23 are adopted or foster children. Of those 23, 16 are bi-racial. She calls them "my chocolates," and is raising them to be patriotic Ukrainians. Some residents of Sumy, Ukraine, consider Olga a saint, but many believe she is simply crazy.

An inheritance from the Soviet era, a stigma persists here against interracial relationships, and against children born as the result of romantic encounters between Ukrainian girls and exchange students from Africa. For more than a decade, Olga has been picking up the black babies left in Ukrainian orphanages and raising them together so that they may support and protect one another.

The filmmakers interview Neo-Nazis in Ukraine reveals the real dangers for a dark-skinned individual in the street. These white supremacist youth joke about their evening raids and how police seem to let them do it. Prosecutors are not particularly determined to give strict sentences to racially motivated crimes, and young thugs can get away with probation for beating someone nearly to death.

Olga sends her foster children to stay with host families in France and Italy in the summers and over Christmas, where they are cared for by charitable families who have committed to helping disadvantage Ukrainian youth since the Chernobyl disaster. Olga's kids now speak different languages, and the older girls chat in fluent Italian with each other even while cooking a vat of borscht. But Olga doesn't believe in international adoption and has refused to sign adoption papers from host families that wanted to adopt her kids.

"At least when the kids grow up, they'll have a mother to blame for all the failures that will happen in their lives," she says.

See more information about the film and mixed race at www.mixedracestudies.org

See official website of the film at www.familyportraitthefilm.com

And see film synopsis in pdf at www.interfilm.ca

25 Years of ISD: Initiative Black People in Germany

The year 2010 is nearly over. Another few weeks and it’s 2011. I didn’t post much lately but thanks to my blog partner and founder of this website Afro-Europe International Blog is still alive and kicking.

Initiative Schwarze Menschen in Deutschland (ISD-Initiative Black Germans) celebrated their 25 years of existence this year and made a little video to commemorate this event. Before the end of this festive year I am happy to post their video now so that people all over the world can experience how ISD keeps on moving, producing and organizing for the benefit of the black community in Germany and will keep on doing this in the future.

I want to thank them again for the great welcoming they gave me when visiting their annual meeting last summer.


25. Years ISD with engl. subtitles from BlackMediaGermany on Vimeo.

Also see the post: Sharing the AfroEuropean Experience. My visit to the 25th yearly Bundestreffen in Germany.

Film: "For Colored Girls" - In UK Cinema Dec. 10th + Review

"For Colored Girls" is the new film of Tyler Perry. The film brings to the screen Ntozake Shange's Obie Award-winning play, a poetic exploration of what is to be of color and a female in this world. The film opens in the UK on the 10th of December.

According to the UK webmagazine Catch a Vibe one of the criticisms about the film was that the male characters had no redeeming qualities. Michael O’sullivan’s review in the Washington Post pretty much described For Colored Girls as male-bashing galore ‘It paints a bleak picture of masculinity as the domain of liars and thieves, paranoid alcoholics, unemployed moochers, adulterers, sex addicts and paedophiles.



The magazine expects that For Colored Girls will polarise UK audiences. "You’ll either love it or hate it, there really is no middle ground here. Perry’s latest endeavour isn’t perfect and could benefit from a more experienced director and a well-developed script, but—if given a chance—For Colored Girls might surprise you in a good way or maybe not."

About Tyler Perry the New York Times wrote. "Tyler Perry has been led out to critical slaughter so many times, it might seem a wonder that he continues to make movies. Except that Mr. Perry addresses his movies to black audiences and, until recently, has shown relatively little interest in crossing over. His enormous commercial success with a mainly black audience and the often ferociously hostile reviews from mostly white critics might seem symptomatic of an insurmountable racial divide. Black people love him and white people don’t get him, and that sort of thing, which might be somewhat true but ignores that another important dividing line runs along taste and not color."

But Perry does know how to pick his cast, the film stars Janet Jackson, Loretta Devine, Michael Ealy, Kimberly Elise, Omari Hardwick, Hill Harper, Thandie Newton, Phylicia Rashad, Anika Noni Rose, Tessa Thompson, Kerry Washington, Whoopi Goldberg and Macy Gray.

Black Women in Europe - List of most powerfull women in Europe 2010

The blog Black Women in Europe compiled a list of the most powerfull women in Europe. The Power List include seasoned politicians, accomplished performers, and champion athletes as well as social entrepreneurs and rising stars in the business world.

The list does not aim to assess rank but rather to underscore influential women from six categories: business, lifestyle, media, politics, and social entrepeneurs/NGOs. (Photo Diane Abbott MP UK.)



See the list at http://blog.blackwomenineurope.com

Must See Video: "Influencers" - A webdoc about New York influential creatives

INFLUENCERS is a short documentary that explores what it means to be an influencer and how trends and creativity become contagious today in music, fashion and entertainment.

The film attempts to understand the essence of influence, what makes a person influential without taking a statistical or metric approach.

Written and Directed by Paul Rojanathara and Davis Johnson, the film is a Polaroid snapshot of New York influential creatives (advertising, design, fashion and entertainment) who are shaping today's pop culture.



"Influencers" belongs to the new generation of short films, webdocs, which combine the documentary style and the online experience.

The music in the beginning of the video is from the Robert Glasper Trio.

The Robert Glasper Trio - No Worries

Great Jazz music from Robert Glasper. The track "No Worries" is from his album Double Booked. Glasper was a sideman with Hip-Hop artists such as Mos Def, Q Tip and the Roots.

His music was also used in the webdoc Influencers.

Video: Isaias Matiaba - "Tha Perimeno" (Greece)

Isaias Matiaba (Greek: Ησαΐας Ματιάμπα) is a Greek singer-songwriter.

Isaias Matiaba was born in Ioannina, Greece (1983) to a Greek mother and a Zairian father. From an early age he began studying classical piano and took classical singing lessons.

Tip from: NEMESIS N.W.O.

Book: Diana Evans - "The Wonder" - A Notting Hill novel

The plot of Diana Evans’s first novel, 26a, had its roots in her north London childhood and the suicide of her twin sister.

Her second, The Wonder, draws on another aspect of Evans’s experience. Before she turned to writing she was a dancer, and at the heart of The Wonder is The Midnight Ballet, an imaginary black dance company founded by a brilliant, troubled Jamaican dancer, Antoney Matheus, wrote the Telegraph book review.



Diana Evans was born in London and spent part of her childhood in Lagos, Nigeria. She studied Media Studies at the University of Sussex and was a dancer in the Brighton-based troupe Mashango before becoming a journalist and author.

The Wonder is not a new Novel, it is published in September 2009 and since August it is available in paperback.

Vintage books wrote about the novel: It’s carnival time! Diana Evans’s second novel The Wonder takes the reader on a dance through Notting Hill past and present.

We see Antoney Matheus and his mother arriving from Jamaica in 1958 to stay in a dim room on the corner of Portobello and Faraday Road; we watch Antoney take his first steps as a dancer to Baba Brooks, the Mighty Sparrow and James Brown in a house on Tavistock Crescent where the Marshall Brothers, from Trinidad, put on a regular Blues party; we see Antoney’s son Lucas wandering a prettified Portobello Road in the nineties trying to piece together his lost father’s life. Check out the sixties Carnival scene on p. 106: ‘There were all kinds of folks about. Whistle-blowing teenagers, spacy Mediterranean students in stripy tops, big-haired Jamaican girls in mini-dresses, old black men slurping pints outside the pubs, shopkeepers, policemen, open-shirted steel band skivers, a well-known barmaid in her famous leopard-print coat. There were fragments in this district of the Sahara Desert and the Irish Sea, the Panama Canal and the music box of Kingston, and the happy and terrible commotion that had developed from this was that you could find a good party as easily as you could a good fight.’

Official website www.dianaommoevans.com

Charl Landvreugd - An artist-in-residence experience in Amsterdam Bijlmer - 13/12/2010

On Monday 13th of December Dutch artist Charl Landvreugd will present his new work Atlantic Transformerz 2010 and discuss his experience in the BijlmAIR residency, where he stayed for four months (sept-dec 2010) during the production of the work.

BijlmAIR is an artist-in-residence programme run by Centrum Beeldende Kunst Zuidoost (CBK Zuidoost), Stedelijk Museum Bureau Amsterdam and Stichting Flat. Door open: 19.30h, start: 20.00h. Language of the evening: Dutch. Free entrance

The making of Atlantic Transformerz 2010 - Inspired by the
gathering of people from the African diaspora in the Bijlmer in Amsterdam, he unites the four continents around the Atlantic in this video


Landvreugd is a Dutch artist, born in Suriname and raised in Rotterdam.
Aesthetically, politically, theoretically as well as practically, black is
the base colour in his practice. The artist has studied at the Goldsmiths
College (London) and Columbia University (NYC), and now continues his
investigations of black and Blackness. He explores the plurality of black
hues and advocates for distinctions in black diversity. Inspired by the
gathering of people from the African diaspora in the Bijlmer, he unites the
four continents around the Atlantic in the video work Atlantic Transformerz
2010.

In his presentation Landvreugd makes connections with the legacy of the
Continental Black European thinkers Frantz fanon and Edgar Cairo. He is
inspired by the concept Ujamaa (extended family), Sun Ra, The Transformers,
Star Wars, the 90’s club-scene, Bruce Weber’s portrayal of the male body,
and the music videos by Hype Williams. These Afro-Futuristic and
postcolonial elements constitute the context of his work.


Artists website at www.charll.com

Stedelijk Museum Bureau Amsterdam at www.smba.nl

Russia won the 2018 World Cup! But ...

Russia has been chosen to host the 2018 World Cup, but the country still has a slight diversity problem. Or better it has some problems with ethic diversity.

On the Dutch 8 O'clock news the reporter in Russia expressed her concern about the safety of African teams and their supporters. She noted the widespread racism in Russia towards people from different ethnic origins.

It appears drunken Russian football fans attack people from the Asian republic Uzbekistan after a football match. Uzbekistan is a former Sovjet republic.

But I am sure Poetin wants so show a Russia that can not only build stadiums for the World Cup, but also a Russia that can handle a World Cup audience.

Video: World Aids Day 2010 Nike (Red)

It’s World Aids Day 2010 today.

Who will host the FIFA World Cup in 2018?

The Fifa World Cup 2018 hosting ballot will be on Thursday December 2nd. But after the latest revelations of corruption it's not clear if it will be a fair race.

Former international football star Ruud Gullit, who is the president of Holland and Belgium's joint bid, says in an interview (Dutch) in Football International today that the scandals create an advantage for the candidacy of the Netherlands and Belgium.

The Fifa World Cup race 2018 is between England, Russia, Spain/Portugal and Netherlands/Belgium.

I think Spain/Portugal will get the Prize.