What is Social Justice to a Slave?

"For those living with some comfort in the First World, the future no longer exists as a common reference point. Yet for human beings, being sane depends on the acknowledgment of a continuity between the long since dead and those waiting to be born. The richer societies are being increasingly deprived of a temporal dimension essential to any spiritual life." --John Berger, “Foreword: To Try and Understand,” in The Algebra of Infinite Justice, by Arundhati Roy (London: Flamingo, 2002), xvii

In the U.S., we've fallen into the dangerous habit of speaking of slavery and segregation as though the words represent some Time Long Past. Slavery as that Troubling Matter of whips and cotton and bent backs and Roots which is thankfully behind us now. Segregation as those hoses, dogs and embarrassing Southern ignorance we finally got rid of (as though Jim Crow was purely a Mississippi Delta phenomenon and racism existed solely below the Mason-Dixon line).

We hardly speak of chattel slavery as the foundation of our economic system, social inequalities, and political radicalism. Of slaves as the first freedom fighters, activists, and community organizers. Of Freedom Riders as part of the legacy of that activism. Of Rosa and Coretta, Etta and Fannie. And these are the well-known names.

We've moved on to More Important Things. Our histories have become stories have become myths mumbled out of obligation to our predecessors instead of out of a recognition that the ghost of the plantation (and the workshop, and the mill, and the kitchen) sits right over our shoulder. We invoke Ann Nixon Cooper as a symbol of a life lived and then ignore those who question the very role and relevance of what that life might mean. We seat a Sojourner in our Capital and celebrate our journey from slaves to citizens, but ask the welfare queen to put her tiara back on because this stimulus is only for "those who did everything right" and you ran your credit card balance just a little too high.

As the recession deepens, words and statues should accompany public policies that consider a legacy of unequal distribution of resources and acknowledge a history of violence and of resilience. But few economists extend their analysis of the current crisis further back than the last decade. Which means the importance of houses--of land itself--to a long since distressed African-American community is dismissed in the scramble for better credit plans and harder stress tests. Which means that black farmers--yes there are still black farmers--continue to clamor for change they can believe in.

Our forgetting extends with each monument and each moment because we desperately want to believe a page has turned and the past is finally presenting us with a clean slate.

But even our blank sheets of paper are bloodstained.

In the meantime, the past roars in the silence.

....

The UN Special Focus Report on the demolition of Palestian neighborhoods in East Jersualem begins simply:

"In 1967, Israel occupied the West Bank and unilaterally
annexed to its territory 70.5 km2 of the occupied area, which
were subsequently integrated within the Jersualem municipality. This annexation contravenes international law..."

Appropriation of land for "green areas," exorbitant legal fees and fines on Palestinan men and women attempting to block the demolition of their homes or plan construction of new ones, and re-re-zonings of pre-1967 neighborhoods all amount to a systematic effort to displace Palestinan landowners.

The report reads like a lesson in 1930s urban redlining. (Or perhaps "predatory lending in reverse").

...

"In 1979, after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the CIA and Pakistan's ISI (Inter Services Intelligence) launched the largest covert operation in the history of the CIA. Their purpose was to harness the energy of Afghan resistance to the Soviets and expand it into a holy war, an Islamic jihad, which would turn Muslim countries within the Soviet Union against the communist regime and eventually destabilise it."

The birth of the Taliban as we know it today.

...

On June 12, 1967, Chief Justice Warren delivered the opinion of the Supreme Court in Loving v. Virginia:

"This case presents a constitutional question never addressed by this Court: whether a statutory scheme adopted by the State of Virginia to prevent marriages between persons solely on the basis of racial classifications violates the Equal Protection and Due Process Clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment. For reasons which seem to us to reflect the central meaning of those constitutional commands, we conclude that these statutes cannot stand consistently with the Fourteenth Amendment."

Overturning the original trial judge's contention that:

"Almight God created the races white, black, yellow, malay and red, and he placed them on separate continents. And, but for the interference with this arrangement, there would be no cause for such marriage. The fact that he separated the races shows that he did not intend for the races to mix."

An uncomfortably familiar argument. And yes...he said malay.


...

This should not even be up for debate (you're a Jack Bauer kind of girl?)

....

It is our responsibility to remember, to research, to honor and re-honor our own dead. But the forgetting? That part isn't entirely our fault. Revisionist history is as American as fried chicken and apple pie. Black people in the U.S. manifest the best and worst of what this country has to offer. Its determined hope, drive and ambition for the future. Its self-centered and viral xenophobia. Its radical love and sense of global citizenship. And its selective amnesia to any and all facts that might restate, reshape, reimagine the case--whatever the case of the moment might be.

This existence, with all of its contradictions, has galvanized us but also threaten to tear us apart by blinding us to the truth.

And what is the truth?

What is social justice to a slave?

To struggle on a daily basis--

to love who we wanted when we wanted, to claim family despite the caprice of market prices, to love the land and hate the lash, to love our children and hate their father, to worship fire-breathing gods and goddesses whose power screamed through our skin that we were the chosen ones

--to live "while we are alive" not after we are dead.

It is our responsibility to remember our dead and to shape a politics that honors the struggles
of our ancestors. Only we can teach our children how to move forward because only we best recognize the potholes our labor pains left behind.

We can't learn from our experience if we are consistently forgetting it.

We can move forward human, sane and full-bodied if instead of relying on ideology or the caprice of this theoryexpertcounselorpoliticianacademic who happens to be center stage right now (yes, even Barack; yes, even little ole me) we rely on the whole of our experience in the modern world. All fraught and fragile 400+ years and of it. And conduct ourselves accordingly.

Only the Prez #1

Welcome to the first issue of "Only the Prez."

Also known as, "Things Only Obama Can Do Lest You Be Wrecked by the Kis."

After all, he is the first black President. People of all backgrounds and ignorance levels will make silly mistakes and try to justify them because, "Heck, Obama did it."

I am just trying to help YOU out.

This installment will be short, sweet, and is meant to forestall the ridiculous that may follow a certain press conference remark made today:

1. Only the Prez can call himself a "mutt."

2. You may not arbitrarily call the mixed-race people around you, including Kismet, mutts.

3. #2 applies no matter your racial or ethnic background (i.e. There is no "Ghetto Pass" on this one. Black folks you are barred too)



Any questions?

Game on, Bitches.

H/T: rikyrah of J&JP

The Audacity of Hip Hop

When superstar lyricist Nas declared, "Hip-hop is dead!" in 2006, he reignited a long-running debate among artists and observers in the rap community. While the money-guns-girls wing of commercial rap is certainly here to stay, many fans insist that hip hop's political roots are rotting. But on the eve of an election in which a presidential candidate is a professed Jay-Z fan who brushes off his shoulders in speeches and fist-bumps his wife, it appears that the political soul of hip hop is primed for a reawakening.

Read the rest here.

X-Posted @ YBP

Morning Video Love

South Africa supposedly banned this SABC television commercial (although there are reports it is still running) of an alternative Soweto.



(Courtesy Chioma via Grupo Afrodescendiente)


I think because of Summer of Our Lorde, I am thinking more and more about our [insert poc, woc, queer & trans, working class here] anger. Note how this man's anger simmers and then righteously explodes. I felt like I was watching myself waiting to speak....except, as a woc, I may not have spoken at all and let it simmer...because too many of us don't speak our anger and let it sit...and now imagine that anger sitting somewhere in my stomach, twisting, growing, into something dangerous....like violence...or cancer...

Anyway, here's the clip.



(Courtesy: Renee @ Womanist Musings)

And this video has gone around before. Let's give it another push around again. What's worse? The C-word? Or the N-word? And is there a radio silence on the McCain and the first?

Soledad, This Is What I Wanted

Oh Soledad. Afrodescendiente Soledad. One "o" short of illumination.

Let me preface this by saying I did not watch CNN's Black in America part 1, 2 or any this week. I was busy being black in America.

Whatever that means.

Still, after engaging in a variety of conversations on the special and the general state of black America throughout the day, I did get asked one excellent question that I can answer having watched or not.

So what would you guys have preferred to see in a documentary called 'Black in America', and who would be your target audience?

I'll amend it to "what would I like to see in a documentary entitled 'Black in America.'"

First, I'd like to see 'black' defined. Or, rather, undefined. I want to hear about the daily struggles and triumphs of African Americans from all walks of life. But I also want to hear about the Haitian, Nigerian and Dominican communities and their experiences with that fickle and promiscuous thing we call race. I want to hear about the first great migration of Puerto Ricans from the islad to Nueva York and how they were treated as blacks, how they organized with African Americans, and how they did it while creating the peculiar blend of Afro-Spanglish insurgency we like to call the Nuyorican. I want to hear about those of half n half bi-racial, bi-cultural folks--the black and Latin@, black and white, black and Asian, black and African. I want to know about the immigration and immigrant experiences of those of African descent who have come to live here. And I want to know about the expat experiences of those of African American descent who have left for Paris, for Germany, for Ghana. Blogs already pick up on these communities, including Black Women in Europe and Afro-European Sisters. These ladies keep it so poppin that I wish I were in Amsterdam for one of their conferences.

Then I'd like to see a special that walked black males and black females hand in hand through its narrative. And I am going to steal something Lex said in another discussion:

black women
and their families

which means all types of black women, queer black women, single black women, married black women, YOUNG black women, old black women, immigrant black women, professional black women, black women artists, black women politicians

and all kinds of black families which means families with two mommies, black single mothers of different classes and situations, black women raising their siblings, black women with chosen families of close friends, black women who survived abusive families...etc.

She said it better than I could. All I would add is I would like all types to include queer black men, single fathers, married black men, young black men, old black men, immigrant black men...you get the idea?

Ahh, but here's the trick. I, and I can only hope Lex does not mind me taking liberties with her words, I want to see them spoken and written of without pathology. Which means that a single mother is not a somehow deficient mother. She is not somehow destined to raise a gaggle of violent, abusive, jail-bound brats who are leeches on the System. She is just a single mother. And guess what? She has a name! She has dreams and aspirations. She has pain and loneliness. She also has the strength and determination of Job la Virgen to make shit happen.

And if she doesn't, then how dare you blame her? Because she didn't get up at 6 am to make breakfast because she came home from work at 4 am the same morning after working two jobs to keep her daughters in school? Word? Because a black man hurt her by leaving/hitting/taking/raping/inflicting on her the same pain society has inflicted on him his entire lineage, and she actually has both physical and mental scars? Who are you? What have you lived through? What have you pushed so deep inside your gut that it reappears in cancer/diabetes/obesity/arthritis/heart attacks? I want to see a documentary that takes all of this into account and shows the humanity that my words are unable to express, because this language is trapped in a history that it doesn't understand and there are no letters/words/sentences that I can string together that will properly communicate my absolute, my profound love and respect for every single mother across this world trying to save her own life...

And I want black men treated with the same love and humanity. Even though I also want to hear about the fathers who left their wives/girlfriends/mothers/children because this greedy, materialistic, capitalist society made lose their minds, the same way black women lose theirs--but I want to hear also about how the SEXISM (hello!) in this society and RACIST GENDER CONVENTIONS puts the WEIGHT of their insanity in black women's laps. In their broken arms. In their violated bodies. And I don't want to blame them for the craziness that is in their head but I sure as hell want them to be held accountable for the violence that they have done and continue to do. Women of color are dying. They are dying every day. And black men our dying, and yes I still care, because they are the sons, brothers, cousins, and fathers, and uncles, and grandfathers of black women! And the issue is so complicated we don't even know how to twist our minds around it in a way that says Yes! to our anger and our love.

I'd like to see the grassroots movements for change. And I don't want Obama highlighted, believe it or not. I want to hear about Critical Resistance or Incite: Women of Color Against Violence. I want to hear about really local endeavors like Peaceoholics or Youth Education Alliance or Visions to Peace Project. Or the community that rallies itself against violence. I want to hear about projects that are organized in radical ways, like Broken Beautiful Press or the Ubuntu Project--in the face of hateful backlash. I want to see how the black academy is using technology in new ways, like e-Black Studies. I'd like to hear about the diversity in our music, like Jay Electronica or Janelle Monae.

I'd like to hear about filmmakers like Haile Gerima, Charles Burnett, Aisha Simmons, and M. Asli Dukan.

I would not like to see Jesse "them N----rs" Jackson or Al "Where's My Photo Op" Sharpton. I would like mainstream media to find new black "figureheads" to turn to. Because, again, what is black?

I would like to pee my pants with excitement because mainstream media discovered that those heads are cut in the figure of a woman of color.

There is so, so, so, so much more.

But don't say it is too much or ask how can all of that fit in one documentary? The details may be too much because they can't be compartmentalized. Because our lives, as human beings, are messy but inchoate, and constantly evolving.

I would like to see a 'Black in America' that understood that. A film that was focused not on stereotypes and tropes but on the humanity of people of African descent. That didn't try to name, categorize, or sort out our lives on some pre-defined track of mammy, Sambo or N*****r.

And the truth is, if I can't see that, if I can't have a documentary that gives all the blessings and praise and frustration and angst and rant and rave I heap on the black community...a community I claim...which claims me and doesn't like to share me....which has given me more than my share of trauma....which is the reason I am in the business I am in...which is life to my breath and breath to my life....

...if I can't have that...

...then I'd really rather have nothing at all.

The mainstream doesn't need any more help making up myths and fantasies about poc. They have plenty of their own.

And we--black peoples--need to do a better job recriminating our own myths and fantasies, and joining hands across ethnicity, nationality, language, sexual orientation, religion, and political affiliation.

Because, with Obama as the presumptive Democratic nominee, we've got plenty of "friends" who are so, so, so, SO ready to believe that we've got 99 problems....but race ain't one.

All that said....Soledad? I really hope you did a good job.

X-posted at YBP

Think You're Anti-Racist? Take the Test

Reading this post at Racialious I came across this Adrian Piper quote:

Her observation brings to mind the groundbreaking essay “Passing for White, Passing for Black” by artist Adrian Piper. In the essay, Piper suggests peering at a white person’s features and complimentarily telling the person that he or she appears to have African ancestry, then watching the person’s reaction. She writes:

The ultimate test of a person’s repudiation of racism is not what she can contemplate doing for or on behalf of black people, but whether she herself can contemplate calmly the likelihood of being black. If racial hatred has not manifested itself in any other context, it will do so here if it exists, in hatred of the self as identified as the other—that is, as self-hatred projected onto the other.

I can think of more than a few people (white and Latina/o!) that I want to give THIS test to.

And the post at Racialicious was an interesting read. Go read it for yourself.

Online Comments on Ronnie White's Death: "Blame It On Rap Music and the Wire"

Investigations are underway trying to determine why a teenager accused of killing a police officer is dead.

I did it. I know, I know. It was a bad idea to do. It always hurts my heart. And my head. But I did it anyway.

I read the comments under the online articles. Here's a particularly stomach roiling sample from WPO:

And this is relevant to....what? So you honestly expect there to be an "uproar" when some gangbanging piece of trash gets whacked while pulling a gun on a cop? But if a cop gets killed in the line of duty, hey whats the big deal, happens all the time. And the thing is, I have had a few bad experiences with cops myself,but give me a break. And you something, anytime somebody says, "I could care less if the person involved was polka-dot" generally those are the biggest racists around. I hope that guy died in jail choking on his own vomit, he STILL would have suffered less than the the cop he ran over and dragged to his death.

What's sad is that some of the black folks posting and stating that his Mr. White was killed are probably the same people that blame everyone else for their problems. The fact is, this young man committed a crime and killed a police officer while in the act of committing the crime. If he wasn't out committing the crime then he probably wouldn't be sitting the jail cell.

From here on out, I intend to organize counter lawsuits -- taxpayer class-actions -- against the imbecile single "purents" of our dysfunctional criminal class who have the audacity to sue us when their murderous little cretins end up dead after clashing with police. It seems to me that their negligence as parents results in huge taxpayer expenditures for welfare, special ed, stolen property, and criminal investigations, prosecutions and incarcerations. My lawsuits won't be able to squeeze much money out of these miscreants, of course, but I'll be willing to settle if they agree to vasectomies and tubal ligations and never sue taxpayer-funded authorities again.

And from WUSA9:

HE RAN OVER A HUMAN BEING! WHAT MORE DO YOU WANT? MAYBE WE SHOULD SEND HIM TO COLLEGE TO MAKE HIM LOOK BETTER! SO WHAT IF THE POLICE DID IT! AN EYE FOR AN EYE

Another said case of some mother and father not parenting their child appropriately and their child turns into an animal of 19 years with no morals, no values, and no respect. It is a sad commentary on the state of life in PG County that this type of stuff continues to happen with their youth and people just look around and point blame at others. Mothers and Fathers look into the mirror. Raise your children. Teach them to dress appropriately and carry themselves as if they are a child of God.

Apparently you knew the selfish low life and failed to read all the blogs.You are the ONLY person here who feels this "boy" of 19 years old is not "just" a criminal.You are right about one thing, he had absolutely no conscience, nor respect for life.Did he not serve 6 months in prison for drug possesion and distribution?As well as charges of gun possession?He WAS a criminal.The media is not making him look bad you ignorant moron.HE proved that all himself.He took away a father, husband, son, friend, and a true hero.Someone Ronnie White was never man enough to be.What other side of the story could there be when Ronnie White ran Corporal Findley over to his tragic death?Maybe you should shut your mouth and accept the truth for who Ronnie really was instead of placing blame for his "unfortunate" death.You know what they say about karma. My thoughts and prayers are with the Findley family.He will never be forgotten.

And, of course, we can't ever seem to stop ourselves from dropping this little piece of wisdom whenever any "urban" crime occurs:

blame it on rap music and The Wire.

So true! Let me throw out my Wire Season 2 DVDs RIGHT NOW! Because THAT is going to protect me from police assault and guarantee me due process when my case goes up to trial!

WTF?

Random Question: Why is it always the Wire anyway? Why not the District? Or friggin Jack Bauer? Or all the other Dirty Harry police shows that were in the making way before the Wire?

More Relevant Question: Since when is vigilante justice, justice?

Duh, Kismet. Since Billie sang "Strange Fruit"....

Sorry. I meant to reserve my opinion on this and let the facts speak for themselves. I'll try to restrain myself.

W2S readers, what do you think? I know some of you (lurkers and commentators) have had discussions about violence, police harassment, the prison industrial complex, and the criminal justice system with your friends and foes before. I know many of you may have personal contact with all of the above--you or someone you know. And I know a good number of you have VERY STRONG opinions on this subject.

Thoughts?

2 Sidenotes:

• The attention WUSA9 has given this story makes my heart happy. Every other news network (and, remember, the DMV gets two signals--the B-More and D.C.--for each network) has buried it. Even WPO is stepping back.

• PGC County is passing the case on to the Maryland State Police (hmm) and the FBI (hmm!). The FBI is also making this a civil rights case.
  

Diminishers and Deniers of the Isms

Diminishers have a subtle intellectual superiority and depend on the word "ignorant." They believe that black people still encounter unpleasantness related to blackness but in benign forms and from unhappy people or crazy people or people with good intentions that are bungled in execution. Diminishers think that people can be "ignorant" but not "racist" because these people have black friends, supported the civil rights movements or had abolitionist forebears.

Deniers believe that black people stopped encountering unpleasantness related to their blackness when Martin Luther King Jr. died. They are "colorblind" and use expressions like "white, black or purple, we're all the same" -- as though race were a biological rather than a social identity. Incidents that black people attribute to blackness are really about other factors, such as having too many children or driving too fast, but if deniers are compelled to accept that an incident was indeed about blackness, they launch into stories of Irish or Native American oppression, as though to deny the legitimacy of one story by generalizing about others. Deniers use "racist" as one would use "dinosaur," to refer to a phenomenon that no longer exists.

Read the rest.

H/T: The Luscious Librarian which I discovered via Hagar's Daughters which made note of it after Sojourner's Place passed them the Arte y Pico award. And the blogosphere turns round and round neteros!

Real Talk on Michelle Obama

Because most people know how a White woman sounds, acts and feels, most people expect that all other women are going to act this way. Michelle Obama does not sound like a White woman. Nope, she sounds like a Black woman from the south side of Chicago *Imagine my lips pursed and my neck poppin' as I say what I'm about to say* She's not on that with you!...

But because people are not used to a woman like her, I'd argue that they're threatened (hence the "need" to soften her image). And they're threatened BECAUSE they don't know how not to be BECAUSE they've never been taught, never been exposed to a woman like her. Be it educated woman, black woman, real woman, pretty-but-still- smart woman. I don't know that it's a strictly race thing, but I know race has a lot to do with it.

Want the rest? Go have some Tea.

Don Imus, I Believe You

Do You?

R.Kelly: Let's Discuss

I didn't want to. I don't think he's worth the internet pages on my blog.

But a discussion has begun between me and Locked With Patience, who left a comment on WAOD, and I wanted to do her response justice.

First the history. On June 13, What About Our Daughters hosted an R. Kelly Verdict open thread. Locked with Patience wrote:

hello,
all that i can honestly say is that I didn't see the tape. that's it. i don't know if that's him or not since i have not witnessed it. so i can't condemn him.

on top of htat, i think that in order to have an honest conversation about statutory rape... we really have to have an honest conversation. some of these girls DO lie and some of these girls DO portray themselves as older than what they really are. Now if a man does not know about their real age, what are they suppose to do? now, i'm not talking about the man who does and is still pursuing.

anyways, i just think that this whole story is sad. i'll never know the truth, that i know.

My response--in part to LWP, but also in general to the Kels supporters--was:

Locked with Patience (And Other Kels Supporters),

Girls make false rape accusations only 2% of the time. That's an FBI statistic. It's the same percentage as false accusations of other crime. And its inflated by the number of girls who are actually fudging certain parts of the accusation ("i didn't get in the car with him" when she did) to protect themselves from the media trollery that ensues when women confront their attackers and get called sluts....

The girl never came forward. The tape surfaced. The tape was clearly him. A video expert was brought in to give testimony that it was him. Why wouldn't she come forward you ask? She's his goddaughter--trouble enough when family gets involved. She's been paid--we know how the media/community treats rape victims who have even the SEMBLEANCE of supposedly "benefitting" from the rape. She was a CHILD--and child sexual assault victims rarely come forward because they are children, scared, freaked out, confused, and a host of other reasons on top of the usual reasons women don't come forward. This thing started as a media circus--we have grown women who don't admit rape in the most supportive of situations. And we expected her to immediately point a finger? To want her name dragged through the mud? With her godfather--oh, my bad, the King of R&B?

Girls do fudge their age (I was one of them). And maybe a 13 year old girl can fool an 18 year old. Maybe. But a 13 year old girl cannot fool a 30 year old man. A MAN knows the difference in the same way that a WOMAN of the same age knows the difference between a well developed 13 year old boy and one who is an adult. We are talking about grammar school here.

And while I think what you are saying is completely wrong and forgets that we are supposed to protect our little sisters, daughters, goddaughters and nieces from this--I know that the messed up part is that a number of folks in our neighborhoods and homes think the same.

So I'm not attacking--I'm just trying to clarify.

And I'm not surprised at the verdict for the same reason.

We need you and all those who think that way because you are our sisters, brothers, uncles, fathers, and children. We are a kind of family, after all. We need to lift as we climb.

And as pissed as I am (and as violated as I feel for myself, my sisters and my future daughter)--what are next steps? How do we make sure this conversation never has to happen again and these events--from Kelly to Bynum--never happen again?

WAOD is definitely in the vanguard of action...I appreciate that.

LWP came to visit the crib (i.e. Waiting 2 Speak) and left this comment:

Kismet,

I am not a kelly "supporter". THe only thing that I said was that because I have not been presented with the evidence, so i can examine it individually, I am going to refrain from calling him a rapist.

If you want to know the truth, that is what is wrong with the black commmunity. Us not wanting to examine the situation! Instead we take people's word for it and run.

Also I didn't mean to say that women lie about being rape (though there are cases). I meant to say that there are girls who lie about their age and portray themselves as older than what they really are.

Also concernign statutory rape, I too find it hard for a 30 year old to beleive that a 13 year old was a grown woman. BUT those aren't teh only cases of statutory rape. What do we do about 16 and 17 year old girls who lies to 20 year olds? Are we really calling a 20 year old a pedophile for sleeping with a 17 year old? Do you believe that nothing should happen to the 16 and 17 year old for their lies? We're not suppose to punish "victims".

Condemn me all you want and tell me something is wrong with me. I'm not some dumb black chick who is going to allow anyone to bully me into believing what they believe, all because I ask for evidence and until then hold out from giving my own verdict in such sensitive cases.

All caught up folks? Good.

So, to LWP (and welcome to the blog, btw),

"If you want to know the truth, that is what is wrong with the black commmunity. Us not wanting to examine the situation! Instead we take people's word for it and run."

I completely agree and don't condemn you for it.

In fact, I think that happens on both sides of this particular case and happens often within the black community all the time when celebrities (or media splashed cases) come up for discussion. Kobe, O.J., Clarence Thomas, Dunbar rapists (according to Sharpton), etc. We ("black community") either champion or vilify. What is problematic to me is that loudest voices are often in the championing side. They are also almost never on the young woman's side. With the exception of the Duke rape crisis, the "black community" appears (APPEARS) to put the blame, slander, greed and scandal on the female's side.

You are refraining form calling him a rapist. Congratulations. You aren't refraining from calling her a liar though? Or molested? Or abused? Or even remotely put in an unbalanced power situation because, as someone on WAOD commented--if it isn't Kels, it is someone over 30 years old and she is stll a victim. So, you aren't reserving judgement before you know the facts---you're just reserving judgment on him. Which, by default, actually makes her guilty of something--being too sexy, lying about her age, not acting like a child, not having the right parents, being a golddigger and getting paid for it...etc.

Statutory rape is one issue, one I am not prepared to get into a debate about. Like I said in my original comment, I am definitely one of the girls who lied about her age. And I definitely had friends who were in a range of relationships with men who could have gone to jail for being with them. In my personal opinion, each of those situations involved some kind of unbalance in power and I never felt comfortable about them. There was always something about the way those guys (even when they were just 20 and we were 16) flaunted their money, cars, clothes, and style as a way to keep our attention...even to let us know that they'd paid for us, so they deserved to get something for it. Still, let's clear up another little myth here--there was nothing innocent about statutory rape then or now. The 20 year olds knew they weren't messing with 18 year olds, even when we lied. I'm sorry, I'm not convinced. They may have decided to let themselves be convinced, or to ignore it, but they weren't ever 100% sure that we were of age. And we weren't greedy harlots trying to raise our age by a few years to snag a man. We were kids, acting like kids. And they were men (20 = man) and should have been acting like men.

Hmm...kinda like a recently famous 13 year old may have been?

That issue aside, and since it seems to me that we at least agree that a 30+ man can tell the difference between an 18+ young woman and a 13 year old girl, then in what way do we not pronounce her a victim? And, if we need to, how does this relate to our reluctance to see 16 year old girls who raise their age a couple of years as victims of also of being taken advantage of, physically or sexually abused by 20 year old men? Why do we ("black community") seem to jump immediately to the defense of the young man and not the young woman.

What would happen if we centered her experience? If, instead of saying, "there's no proof it was him on the tape" we saw in the tape (or in the news hype) a girl who was abused by first an older man, then the media circus, and now the criminal justice system? Instead of behaving as though we needed proof that she was a legitimate victim (whatever the hell that is), what if we just took her side immediately, and said, "alright, my dear. Let's roast the fuckers who did this to you."

Okay, I have an ambivalent relationship to the criminal justice system. So maybe not that exactly. But this is part of my point--almost no one in the mainstream "black community" seems to say that. Black women in particular. Their first response is to protect the black male celebrity and condemn her for whatever we imagine her slight was.

And I don't think that is an issue of being a dumb black girl. If I were to call you that I'd have to call me that as well. Because these aren't attitudes that will change over night and I don't claim that I'm above them either. Just the other day I was dogging out Kim Kardashian and got checked by a friend of mine who noted that, whatever she did, it seems like she's in a commited relationship now with a man who loves her. I felt kinda salty about that. It's not related, but I definitely let the media influence what I thought of her instead of centering her as a woman.

Just four years ago I was on Kels. defense. I am Chicago born and bred.

So it's not a "I've been Bamboozled" thing. I think it's just an issue of growing up in a racist patriarchal society. And I think it's doing leaps and bounds of damage to our young girls and their self image and its giving free reign for older men (just like Kels) to do what they want--because SHE shouldn't have worn that around you, or SHE shouldn't have lied about her age or SHE got paid for it.

~*~*~

Alright Waiting 2 Speak readers....What say you?

(And thanks to LWP for engaging me in conversation on this as well.)

I HATE Hypocrites

I don't even know why I'm giving this man the internet publicity. But I'm link loving What About Our Daughters which posted Roland Martin's interview with Bob Johnson. Johnson's condescension, his arrogance, his temporizing, his old timey help-me-white-power-structure politics and his pathetic need to sniff and scratch at the skirts of privilege.....

Let me stop. Listen to his foolishness please. I'm disgusted.

Thank you Roland Martin for rippin him up. I appreciate it.

God Bless America!

"I can be called white but you can't be called black? That's not my America!"

Hmm, let me check. What can I be called in "your" America?

Negro
Nigger
Spic
Colored
Mammy
Jezebel
Sapphire
Magical Negro All Day (H/T Inkognegro)
Welfare Queen
Nappy Headed Ho'
(Black) Bitch
Roller (Pronouned "Rolla" = DC slang the Chicago translation of which would be "Jump Off")

Off the top of my head, why, you're right, Ms. Christian! That's not equality.

And that's not my America, either.



(Vid H/T: Electronic Village)

Race, "the Sexies," and Sex in the City

The "Sexies" (as opposed to Trekkies) saw and participated in Sex in the City Premier Fab. We gabbed. We ate yummy chicken alfredo ziti and drank Kendall Jax. We wore beautiful dresses and stilettos to the movie theater

I LOVED the movie. I will probably go see it again.

Still, to LOVE it, I had to do a willing suspension of disbelief that the following could occur.

I think the Diva will be writing an extensive post on this subject. So I'm just going to list the things I happened to catch.

(In order, from most obvious to least.  ***SPOILER ALERT***)

1. Definitely most obvious: Jennifer Hudson's entire role. Purpose? Oh right, to uplift Carrie the White Woman as "Saint Louise." There's much more (Your sole purpose in going to New York is to fall in love but you rent Louis Vutton hand bags? Can your purpose be to find a career beyond personal assistant?) but her character deserves its own essay--I'll leave it to the Diva)

2. You can't drink the water Charlotte? Really? What do you think the locals drink?

3. Miranda: "This is the up and coming neighborhood" (Read: Gentrificaiton) "Follow the White Man with the Baby!" (Read: White men are safe, Asian men and women are not -or- Read: Gentrifiers travel in packs.)

4. Charlotte's Cambodian daughter Lily says one word the whole movie: "Sex." Miranda's son Grady says much more, and, yeah, he's a little older, but they aren't that far apart in age for one to be/appear so much more engaged with the world.

5. Charlotte gives birth to her own baby. Yes, I am very excited about it and cried like anyone else. But, hmm, what DOES that mean for Lily who is not only not her daughter but not white? Not discussed. Charlotte, happy "every day" doesn't even bring it up. (But I betcha her daughter will in a few years....)

6. Props: Charlotte the mom putting Lily to bed with an Asian girl doll. Semi-conscious activity that I did appreciate.

7. UnProps: The Honeymoon in "Mexico." Also known as the Universal Rich White Girl resort available for purchase in "tropical" and "exotic" (and *gasp* Third World) venues all around the globe. Super!

8. Props: Interesting diversity on the runway during fashion week. (I'm trying to resist giving this "UnProps" because of the different way fashion was represented on different women. I don't do fashion enough to know if my instincts are right on this....)

9. Anti-fur activists who look decidedly UN fab. Reminds me of posts on various blogs (and the Diva's whole motto) which question why activists, particularly female activists, always get portrayed as granola, grimy, tangle haired crones. Not that they, we, aren't. But we are also divafied, casual, sporty, laidback, jazzy, sexy, and a range of races and ethnicities.

Hmm....any that you caught?

Sing a Black Girl's Song: Body Image

For the last few weeks I've been working with fifth and sixth grade girls of African descent making collages, scrapbook pages, and whatever else you can imagine doing with magazines, glue sticks, and some poetry.

The first week or two the girls were pretty creative, but notice anything?



You guessed it. Light skin, long hair, slim to skinny figures. Yes, there are women of color in the last collage. But put in context with the other two (which are representative of the whole) it is both the exception and blatantly unexceptional. At the end of the day, all of the women look very much the same. When I took my girls work home and took a look, the glaring truth was disturbing and painfully obvious. Asked to find "positive" images, and when given no other guidance, they unerringly choose women who looked nothing like them.

But I took the responsibility on myself. After all, it was my mistake to give them mainstream magazines like Lucky and InStyle to choose their images from. So I went on a metaphoric dumpster dive for positive images and I gave them more specific instructions. On a canvas of pre-selected images of women obviously of African descent--with dark skin, kinky hair, and some with a little more bump to their rump, although that last was hard to find even in an Essence--the girls would add positive words from the same magazines, little pictures, and words/phrases from the poem "Phenomenal Woman" by Maya Angelou and "Let it Go" by Keyisha Cole.

I rubber cemented their images on cardstock and in class this week I passed them around.

Initial reaction --> "Uh UH! I don't want that one!"

Now, I let that slide. Normally I do let them choose their own images so it seemed logical that they would cry foul when I gave them what would be their main image. And, accordingly, when I made it clear that this was what they had to work with, most settled in.

But a couple of students were adamant. "I DON'T want that one. I don't want those!"

These were students with the images of the darkest women. One was what I thought was a shadowed image of a long, lanky woman with dark, velvety skin in an ad Johnson's Baby Oil. The other was an editorial page but the featured image was Angie Stone.

So I tried diplomacy. "Well, what's wrong with those images?"

"I don't want them. What about this one?" The one with Angie Stone flipped it over. Hers was one I'd forgotten to glue to cardstock. On the back was an ad with Beyonce Knowles at her tragic mulatta loveliest for American Express. I rolled my eyes inside. Jeez.

"No, not that one. In fact, here." I corrected my mistake, glued her image down, leaving her with Angie's dark eyes smiling at her. "Here you go."

"No!"

Meanwhile, across the table, the student with the Johnson's ad was cutting out a full page Herbal Essences ad prominently featuring an ambiguous Latina. "What are you going to do with that?," I ask. Diplomacy.

"I'm going to cover it," she smiled. And proceeded to place the ad, the entire full page, on top of the darker woman.

No way. Diplomacy, I saw, was going to have to go out the window. Not that I am one to crush creative impulses, but this was getting ridiculous. In actuality, I was beginning to feel a little helpless and frustrated.

I shook my head. "Nope. You have to use the image I gave you. You can add around it if you want."

She glared at me. When I looked up again, she'd cut out some words like "Beautiful" and "Feel Good."

And she'd placed them on top of the dark woman's face and thighs in preparation for gluing them down.

I moved quickly. "Whoa, buddy. Now what are you doing?"

The girl wrinkled her nose. "I'm trying to cover her! She's naked!"

"She's not naked. You can't even see anything. Just that beautiful brown skin." I said it deliberately. And she and her partner jumped right to the bait.

"Uh uh! She's not brown--she's CRISPY!"

"Yeah! She's BLACK!"

I smiled. "Oh yeah? You're right. And that's a Johnson ad, so she's all oiled up and beautiful. Something wrong with that?"

The girls blushed, smiling, shaking their head, shrugging--didn't know what to say. And I was thanking God that at least they didn't immediately respond that, "Yes, there IS something wrong with that." Because I don't know what I would have done.

So I tapped the image, deliberately moving the words out of the way. "She's got beautiful skin, don't you think? You should move the words around it to highlight that. And highlight her face."

Groans. Aww mans. Ahh, c'mons. But they moved the words around so that Beautiful floated (just below the face, dangerously close) gently along the woman's arm and Feel Good was tattooed on her thigh.



Meanwhile, the girl with Angie Stone was busy cutting out Beyonce and placing her beside Angie on her picture.



I watched warily, but decided there was only so much I could do with their creative license. I'd at least succeeded in stopping both of them enacting internalized oppression violence on the women's faces.

I spoke too soon.

One of my more promising students, a serious, creative girl who'd actually taken herself away from the group into the corner to work, came over with a smile. "I'm done!" I smiled back. I'd given her a fashion couture shot of a dark brown woman with braids coiled in a sophisticated coif around her head. I was excited to see what she came up with.



Beautiful. And violent. "This is really great--but why did you write across her face? And put "Rise" across her nose?"

This student had the presence of mind to blush. She shrugged. "I dunno. I messed up."

I was grinding my teeth inside, because I didn't want her to think she messed up! Darn it self-denigrating-youth-of-color!

"No, just think about it for next time. Try to find images that would frame her beautiful face. Especially the contrast with her clothes, how it highlights that lovely brown." Word choice deliberate. But she still looked a little flustered so I pointed out that the strawberries were a nice, clever touch. She went back to her seat smiling.

The rest of class was uneventful, or at least the events ran along similar lines. But by the end I was exhausted. I'd thought by giving them images of black women with no option to skate around them that they would simply transfer the positive from the white/mixed race to the dark. I thought it was an issue of lack of option.

But it was much more complicated than that. From outright erasure to discrete vandalizing, these girls did their best to remove themselves from identification with the images, to deny the beauty and humanity of the photos, and to replace/rewrite/retain the stereotypes of beauty/good/healthy/nice as white/light that they'd been socialized into. And they were prepared to argue with me on the matter! Although, like I said, at least they weren't so bold as to say directly to me, "Kinky hair is ugly and black skin is too."

Man. Kenneth Clark would have a field day.

And I won't lie--I felt personally attacked. Although I know they didn't mean it, here I sit, in solidarity with them, dark brown just like they are dark brown, kinky haired just like they are kinky haired (albeit some with relaxers) and the first image they reach for is lighter skinned, long haired Beyonce or Christina Milian. And, even more frightening, the first image they reject is dark skinned, curly haired Angie Stone. Where then does that leave us, my darlings? What do we think of ourselves if we are ready to paste newspaper over own arms and thighs to cover up the color, if we are ready to scrawl permanent marker across our faces, slam white paper over our flat noses to mask the sight, if we are read to tear out an image of a white woman and glue it wholescale over our entire SELVES because we don't like what we see?

The choosing of one the white image I was prepared for. The absolute rejection of the black one I was not.

And I'm not prepared, at all, to deal with this. How do I approach this issue in a way that is not going to squish their creative juices but is also going to challenge them on a deeper level to CRITIQUE these ideas of beauty that they are already indoctrinated into?

Any ideas? Comments welcome, necessary. Help me sing a black girl's song....

The Questions: White Women, White Feminists

Via the Jaded Hippy:

And it is this jolt, not of racism, but of misorientation, that drives the
boundless rage. Because the misorientation is not just morally wrong, but it's
crazy-making. It's a rage that white feminists don't understand partly because
you don't see it as much between women of color and white men who don't
self-consciously identify as feminists. I'm not saying it's all good between
these groups either (!), but, you see, the boundaries are clear, and therefore
there is never a real chance for misorientation. One is never pulled in b/c one
knows what to expect. But if you have a group of white people who say, "Hey
we're feminists and that means we're all in this together and we call this
togetherness 'sisterhood' b/c we're supposed to have each other's backs" and so
on, but then you get stabbed in that very back that they were supposed to have
b/c, oh wait, they be white and you be not, then it's really fucking
startling.

Plus, b/c we have this wrong idea that the trajectory of history is that
things are getting better so surely white women will figure it out one of these
decades, but then they don't, you start feeling a little like, goddammit, you're
getting stabbed A LOT. For a really long time. Like, for hundreds of years, the
stabbings.

And the now classic (I am late on posting this) BFP Final Words.

If the question is why do women of color have issues with white women and/or white feminists....

Above is the answer. Read both in their entirety. Misorientation is a b*tch. Betrayal is a b*tch. And if you're a white woman, you probably never had to deal with either as they are conceived of in those two friggin brilliant posts.

If the question (continues to be) why do women of color have issues with Mrs. Clinton....

Above is the answer. And yeah I'm posting this again (because I just can't seem to get enough)

"But Kismet," you ask, "aren't you a woman of color?"

*

*

*

*cricket, cricket*

Let's be clear, Kismet has white female friends that she is proud to claim as friends, confidants, comrades. That she considers sisters in the struggle. The fact that, few as they are, they continue to rise above and beyond the boundaries of race, class and sexual orientation is what makes them allies.

But....well....

Don't think that a part of me isn't still watching my back...just in case.

"this past was waiting for me
when i came"

How to turn this around? Take a step, ally-to-be. Try this one.

"Critical Latinidad" makes the cover of Latinidades

Cover Image: Viajero#14, David Amoroso (2007)

One of Waiting 2 Speak's most clicked makes its published debut!

"It is only recently that U.S. Latina/o studies has begun to recognize the importance of Afro-Latina/os to Latina/o history, culture and condition in the United States."

Click here for the free download.

UMCP Latina/o Studies Working Group Founder and Director Robb Hernandez is the Managing Editor. Article submissions and art work inquiries can be made to him at robbher3@[no-spam]umd.edu. (Remove the no-spam when you email!)

Bill Cosby's Original Words

Not that this needs to make the rounds again, but I wanted to plant it here as part of the Archive. Because the Archive's motto is: "If you are going to join the debate, be informed."

May 17, 2004
Bill Cosby at Constitution Hall in Washington D.C.