Positive Black Images Magazine is presented as a platform for growth and empowerment.  The intent from inception has been to present personalities from the Black community doing positive things. Period.  The site was created to profile average Joes and Janes.  My subjects are not necessarily saving babies from burning buildings daily but they do counteract the misinformation in the media that implies that all Black people are lazy, dumb, unfit parents, on their way to, in the process of or just finishing committing a crime.  This miseducation is at the center of a seemingly deliberate campaign to devalue Black lives and culture. So PBI exists to display the business owners and entrepreneurs in our community, the high school and college graduates, the intellectuals, the creative souls, the educators, the BA, Masters and PhD holders, the activists or the everyday people that make up a majority of the Black community. 

 

Their existence may not seem like a news flash to those of us who see and interact with them in our community regularly, but PBI is intended to speak to those who don’t.  Hopefully, PBI speaks to Black children to show that the possibilities are endless in terms of their education, careers or overall success.  They can be whatever their imagination tells them, and not whatever the current rap artists say.  People who look just like them are doctors and lawyers and CEOs.  No jump shot or demo tape required.

 

That’s what PBI is.

 

What it’s not is a platform to bash other races.  I would never sweep our history or current social circumstances under the rug, but I don’t ever want to come from a place of hate on this platform.  That’s not what PBI is about and it surely isn’t what I am about, personally.

 

Education, empowerment and uplifting the culture is all I aim to do.  If it ever turns out that I can’t do those things, Positive Black Images Magazine will cease to exist.  That is not to say that I will ever take a neutral stand on social injustice or inequality (that's also not what I'm about) but the PBI voice will come from a place that I see fit.

 

I hope readers find the work worthy. 

 

Peace and love.

 

Vernon 'V. Ray' Heard

#positiveblack