Cult-Nat vs Freaky Deke

This is a tough question because one person who was interviewed during Harlem Cultural Festival, Summer of Soul said that the festival was a distraction from keeping black people from burning down the city in response to the assisinations of John F Kennedy, Martin Luther King Jr, Bobby Kennedy, and Malcolm X. Considering how perilous the sixties were maybe tearing America city by city could’ve been a chance for us to rebuild it in a way that served us in much more wholesome way or not, who knows? Off the top of my head I would say that Freaknik created more social problems because what comes to mind is black women acting wild, but honestly I know that I’m being bias because I’m a male. The political creation of “black womanhood” was never based on respectability. Black women during slavery were victims of sexual violence, medical violence and they were primarily viewed as breeding machines as well as private property that belong to slave owners. Education has given black women a chance to gain respectability but only a black woman can speak to that truth, as a black man I know they still have to fight for respect in this world. So when a black woman expresses herself in whatever way she deems soulful or fun who can judge her?  Soul is an essence to be honored. One of the narrators  in this film  told her father that she doesn’t sing any blues after being invited to the festival. He responded by telling her that if she listened to their music she would hear every kind of music in their songs, I agree with this statement. In the spirit of carefulness I would say that events like Freaknik would create more social problems because it involves drugs and alcohol which can impair judgment that can lead to black women being taken advantage of through sexual violence. A while back I also saw how the release of past episodes of Freakniks was causing a lot of anxiety because black women who have attained respectability through education and careers didn’t want to be judged based off of one or two summers of their lives. The fear was that the perception of them could be viewed negatively by their employers, family members, or society at large thus making it a public shaming methodology.