Another Great Show!
On Sunday [Sept 13th] Rain and I had the pleasure of speaking with two AMAZING women. Our first guest was our high school Alum and friend Najah Rahman [aka NajR] Najah is the founder NajRstyles.com; a website that offers quality wardrobe styling at an affordable cost.
Her stylist team consist of Sashi, and Lisa, whose services cater to both ‘curvy’ and ‘slim’ women. As New York Fashion Week came to a close, the trio provided us with the popular fall color trends and they also reminded us that ” FASHION is what you make of it ”
” You can walk down the street and take a touch of what everyone has on and make it a whole look and that becomes a STYLE. I think most people feel that you have to wear the big names, the Gucci, the Prada to be fashionable and YOU DON’T. Your Style Is Your Style – @Lessstyles of @Najr_fashion_consulting. ”
” We do alot of wardrobe makeovers and surprisingly ALOT of people struggle with accessorizing. Even though they know how to put their look together they don’t know how what accessories I should wear. It’s a toss up between whether or not you go with BOLD or whether you simplify it. Sometimes less is more… – NajR “
Up next was my former colleague and friend, Nana Duncan. Both Nana Duncan and I served in the non-profit sector for well over five years and we also served as peer facilitators for D.I.V.A.S – Diverse Individuals Visualizing & Achieving Success ; a female empowerment group created by a few other amazing women and I for the female participants of the Harlem Children Zone, and it still exists to this very day. .
Nana is a recent NYU graduate with a Master’s degree in Public Administration, and she recently launched her very own non-profit organization entitled “Your Chapters”; a youth focused organization which exists to remove identified and expressed blockades to potential for the growing community of aging out youth.
We continued our discussion surrounding the continued unrest in Ferguson and the issues of RACE in America. While protests calm down, the problem with Race Relations still exists.
” Our Slave History Is Not One Of Slavery. It’s One Of Victory, Overcoming, Strength, and Intelligence – Nana..”
” It’s not about being depressed, its about a show of POWER because we’re powerful people. To even deal with the slave master the way they we did and in some ways let him feel like he was in power.. so we have to get back to that – Nana . “
On Ferguson, and What Now?:
” When Ferguson happened I think I went back to what I’ve always believe is that as a people [pause] … I actually try pull away from saying Black America because it gives us the impression that we’re not Americans. So the issue is that we have NOT had alot of PROJECTION of what is become the ideal of American image.
White people have had it since the beginning of TV and Media. They had this look of what an ideal American look like. So if a white American man is a ‘CEO’ or a ‘Judge’….. and the same for white American women, and on TV this what we’re told this is what America looks like. So for TV this is all we know. But we know NOT all American White families are perfect and NOT all White Americans are ‘Rich’ and ‘Successful’ but we don’t have to think about that because the MEDIA has told us that they are.
Unfortunately with Black America we haven’t had those projections ENOUGH. We had the ‘Cosby Show’ to represent what the ideal black family looks like, we had the black college students on ‘A Different World’ and then we had what a black ‘single’ person looks like with ‘Living Single’ and those are great images shows but there’s been a drought since then and we have ALOT of work to do.
So when Ferguson happened I thought about what Martin Luther King said back in the day is that the three greatest threats for Black America is RACISM, POVERTY, and MILITARIZATION“, and that exactly what’s going on in Ferguson. Fast forward to 2014 we’re seeing with the same issues. So we need NATION building – Nana “
Listen to our full interview with these AMAZING women. The trio breaks down the trendy colors for the fall season, and Nana talks about what we need to restore our POWER as a PEOPLE both individually and collectively.
“(New York, New York) ‘The Rain & Kaye Plum Show’ @rkpradio airs live [via Ustream TV App] every Sunday from 2pm -3pm est. on DaMatrix Studios.com
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