Zoe Saldana Portraying Nina Simone is a Gross Whitewashing of Unapologetic Blackness

A few months ago, I wrote that I did not support the casting of Zoe Saldana as songstress Nina Simone. And now, with a release date set, and a promotional poster and trailer revealed, I stand — even more ardently — in my assertion that Saldana’s casting is both inappropriate and violent to Simone’s radical pro-Black legacy.

Nina Simone’s core pro-Black value system is the cornerstone of most of her cultural contributions. As Ruth Feldstein describes in “‘I Don’t Trust You Anymore’: Nina Simone, Culture, and Black Activism in the 1960s,” Nina Simone was radicalized following the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church bombing (1963), and subsequently disavowed gradualism and respectability politics as effective methods towards racial justice.

My country is full of lies/We all gonna die/and die like flies

I don’t trust nobody anymore/They keep on sayin’ ‘Go slow.’

To Nina Simone, doing “things gradually, will bring more tragedy.” And she was right. With the gradual rollback of visible Jim Crow segregation, Black people are now merciless survivors and victims of mass incarceration, poisoned water, and politricks. Gradualism has worked to invisibilize anti-Blackness — its continuing violence conveniently hidden in a massive web of laws, schemes, and bureaucracies.

Nina Simone brilliantly intertwined gender and sexuality politics with her racial justice cultural activism. In many of her records, Nina’s protagonists are Black women, thus allowing space for the artist to masterfully detail the particular struggles and conflicts of Black women forced to live under the suffocating dynamics of white supremacist racism and patriarchy — namely how our sexuality is taboo and inappropriate in times of mass uprising.

In the song “Go Limp,” Nina tells the story of a young woman who decides to march. The protagonist’s mother warns her daughter to remain a nonviolent virgin. Feldstein writes “Simone used humor to suggest that it would not be easy for the young woman to meet these dual goals.”

Oh mother, dear mother, no I’m not afraid/For I’ll go on that march and return a virgin maid

With a brick on my handbag and a scoul on my face/And a barbed wire in my underwear to shed off disgrace.

“Go Limp” is illustrative in its wit and profundity; it’s a politically charged commentary on how respectability is especially (mis)applied when Black women’s sexuality is intrinsically present in Black uprisings.

Nina Simone is an exemplary icon for unapologetic Black cultural activism. She is versatile in her craft, vocal in her womanist radicalism, and authoritative in her self-determined identity. She renounced Eurocentric beauty standards, centered Black freedom over white feelings, and provoked thought through a sex-positive gendered lens.

And then there’s Nina’s appearance. A direct affront to white supremacist beauty standards, her appearance spoke volumes against those racist metrics that deem our natural physical attributes as ugly and unfitting. Nina embodied the mantra “the personal is the political.” Blogger Kirsti-Jewel of She’s.Got.The.Mic writes poignantly:

Nina Simone’s appearance shaped her experience, and view of the world. While she was political for many of her choices, she was inherently political because of her appearance.

And this is why Zoe’s casting as this incredibly complicated, multi-layered, dark-skinned, nappy-haired Black idol is violent.

The whitewashing of Black herstorical icons is standard practice in Hollywood. StonewallExodus: Gods and Kings, and Gods of Egypt are recent, well-publicized examples.

But given the current socio-political climate ushered in by the emergent Black Lives Matter movement, Nina Simone’s necessary depiction requires a significant level of pro-Black understanding. Saldana’s casting is brutal in its obvious whitewashing and racialized tone-deafness.

As a Black Lives Matter community organizer and independent media maker, I care about Nina’s holistically accurate representation. The movement of which I am a part brings to life her Black radical ideal. Our principles are those that are queer, trans*, and female-bodied affirming. We do not uplift the myth of racial gradualism and respectability, and refuse to be manipulated by the dominant political establishment. We are courageous in our justified anger, and vocal in our renunciation of anti-Blackness.

I understand that Zoe Saldana gotta eat. There is an entire scholarship on the lack of diversity in Hollywood, and I am absolutely positive that as an Afro-Latina actress, getting career-making roles is a sparse reality. But the portrayal of Nina Simone isn’t the role for her. The blotchy makeup and prosthetic noses pieces ain’t working. She is simply not fit to depict the icon whose radical socialization was shaped by both appearance and experience.

In this contemporary moment of mass racial upset, Nina’s representation is crucial. She must be embodied with perfection, care, nuance, and sensitivity. She need not be tamed to make her more digestible to a white mainstream audience.

Because it’s not a far guess that she’d be the last one to stand for that.

Fiocruz: Zika Virus Experimentally Introduced Into Culex Mosquitoes

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It is widely assumed that the Aedes Aegypti mosquito (and very possibly the Aedes Albopictus) are the primary mosquito vectors for Zika, Dengue and Chikungunya. Both are well distributed in Central and South America, and both make serious inroads into North America as well.

But there are other mosquito species known to carry diseases that can  infect humans, and few have been examined to see if they can transmit Zika. 

During yesterday’s PAHO press conference the speaker from the FIOCRUZ (Fundação Oswaldo Cruz) scientific research institute announced their researchers had experimentally infected Culex mosquitoes with the Zika virus, and that the virus was was subsequently detected in their salivary glands. 

Culex is a large genus of mosquitoes that contains hundreds of species, which are well distributed around the globe, and range much farther than do Aedes mosquitoes.

Several breeds of Culex are known to vector diseases including West Nile virus, Japanese encephalitis, and St. Louis encephalitis.  Whether they can vector the Zika virus is still not known, and may not be for several more months.

Last January, in FIOCRUZ Researchers Investigate Other Possible Zika Mosquito Vectors, we looked at ongoing research into non-Aedes Zika vectors by researcher Constância Ayres, followed again in February by a Lancet commentary (see Identification Of Zika Virus Vectors).

While some headlines overnight are prematurely declaring Culex a vector of Zika, for now it is only a possibility, as explained in the following (translated) report from Pernambuco nordeste.

02/03/2016 17h36 – Updated 03/02/2016 17h36

Still can not confirm that the common mosquito transmits the disease. The  end result of the research will be known within eight months.


The ease of spread of zika virus in Culex mosquitoes infected in the laboratory was confirmed on Wednesday (2) by the researcher Constance Ayres, of vector design of the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation institution ( Fiocruz ) in Pernambuco . “This means that, in the laboratory, the virus managed to escape some barriers in the mosquito and reached the salivary gland,” the researcher explained. The Culex is the common mosquito, popularly known as muriçoca or stilt.

During the second day of the workshop A, B, C, D, E Zika virus, held in Recife , the biologist presented the preliminary results of research showing the spread of the virus to the mosquito ‘s salivary gland, where happen to transmission disease to humans. After performing three infections in 200 Culex mosquitoes (the first two in December last year and the third in February), research shows the vector competence of mosquito in the laboratory.

The survey results are still partial, it is still not possible to say whether the mosquito is capable of transmitting the virus to zika people. “To complete this, lack identify in the field the species of mosquito infected with the virus zika,” says the biologist. 

(Continue . . .)

Culex mosquitoes, while more plentiful and better distributed than the Aedes mosquito, are more likely to get a blood meal from birds than from humans.  Which is not to say they don’t bite humans, only that humans are not their primary target.

Some Culex mosquitoes feed exclusively on birds, while others feed on birds and mammals, providing a `bridge‘ for vectoring diseases like West Nile Virus from birds to humans. From the EID Journal, we get:


To evaluate the role of Culex mosquitoes as enzootic and epidemic vectors for WNV, we identified the source of vertebrate blood by polymerase chain reaction amplification and sequencing portions of the cytochrome b gene of mitochondrial DNA.

All Cx. restuans and 93% of Cx. pipiens acquired blood from avian hosts; Cx. salinarius fed frequently on both mammals (53%) and birds (36%). Mixed-blood meals were detected in 11% and 4% of Cx. salinarius and Cx. pipiens, respectively. American robin was the most common source of vertebrate blood for Cx. pipiens (38%) and Cx. restuans (37%). American crow represented less than 1% of the blood meals in Cx. pipiens and none in Cx. restuans.

Human-derived blood meals were identified from 2 Cx. salinarius and 1 Cx. pipiens. Results suggest that Cx. salinarius is an important bridge vector to humans, while Cx. pipiens and Cx. restuans are more efficient enzootic vectors in the northeastern United States.  

(Continue . . .)

While it has been estimated that humans provide less than 5% of blood meals to Culex mosquitoes, given their number – particularly in densely populated urban areas – their ability to spread diseases remains substantial.

But whether they will prove to be a significant factor in the spread of Zika is something we’ll simply have to wait to see.

History of U.S Airmail Service – 29 Amazing Vintage Photos of the early Days of Transporting Letters and Packages by Planes in America

These photos show the nearly 100-year-old history of U.S airmail service, beginning on May 15, 1918.

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First day of the U.S airmail service, May 15, 1918

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JR-1B mail airplane designed by the Standard Aircraft Corporation, 31 Dec. 1918

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JR-1B mail airplane, 1918

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Loading airmail in New Brunswick, New Jersey, 1925

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New York City postmaster Thomas G. Patten and airmail pilot Lt. Torrey Webb, 1918

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