That Girl Has Issues.

um, if anybody's reading this...

2011-01-05T15:33:00.000-08:00

...I decided to not blog at tumblr.

Okay then. Happy new year and stuff!

Don't it always seem to go

2010-08-21T17:58:00.000-07:00

That you don't know what you've got til it's gone

Register

2010-08-20T18:33:00.000-07:00

In my first year, first quarter in grad school, I was taking a philosophy course called Subjectivity. The professor used the word "black" to convey "depressing" or "pessimistic."

Immediate interior conflict. The ability to sustain dissonance: "Great, let's outcast blackness during my first ten minutes at grad school." vs "Don't let yourself get too pulled away from class by your own sense of hurt and pc-ness, focus on his point." Having a consciousness of the profound pervasiveness of oppression, creating a perpetual sense of dread, while also being committed to pragmatic living, recognizing that I have to go along to get along.

I would not be the girl to challenge that prof on my first day of school. But I was one of two black women in class. Another sister (darker than me, I noted), poked the problem with a stick and asked: "Why is the word "black" used to convey things that we reject?"

Indeed. Shifts and discomfort from the white students and, did I mention?, white professor. I smiled inwardly, even though I was disappointed that I was not as brave.

That was almost exactly five years ago. The grad school hustle did not get easier, and I increasingly checked out. It is difficult for me to make sense in that space, and make sense of that space. But I am sitting here reading and writing and trying my hardest to get my dissertation completed so it doesn't end up being five or more years of what I like to describe as acid flashbacks.

And I am reading these feminist philosophical articles about women's oppression and autonomy. Apparently there is a forty-year debate, A FORTY-YEAR DEBATE, about whether or not a "deferential wife" is sufficiently morally autonomous. I can't even... The terms of the debate are nowhere near anything that resonates with me and it feels a little crazy-making to even engage the essays deeply. What are they talking about. But if you asked me, I could tell you exactly what they are talking about. I could probably write a pretty good exposition of the arguments. But, in another way, on a different and deeper register, I have no idea what they are talking about.

Anyway, I was reading this 1998/99 article by Kathryn Abrams (I presume a white law prof, but I'm not certain) who puts in her two cents about how autonomous or agentic women are or aren't. Then I read an article by Judy Scales-Trent (a black law prof) who responded to Abrams' article in a way that was so...weird and kind of perfect. She briefly dismisses Abrams' ideas as well as the whole question, and then the majority of her paper is about her tour of "colonial Williamsburg" which is near the location of where the conference for these paper presentations is being held. She proceeds to describe the absurdist ways in which the existence of black people and the fact of slavery is obscured, invisible, or profoundly distorted. She writes,

...I read a flyer put out by the Williamsburg Area Convention & Visitors Bureau, noticing immediately that all of the people pictured in colonial garb had white skin. Had there really been no African-Americans at all in Williamsburg during this period? I then saw that, indeed, there must have been African-Americans in the area because, according to the Visitors Bureau, tourists could visit a "reconstructed slave quarter" on the outskirts of Colonial Williamsburg. What aggravated me in this flyer, however, was the extensive description of the plantations tourists could visit, to see how the "colonial aristocracy" lived. "Aristocracy?" What a fine word! Doesn't it sound elegant and graceful and genteel? I wondered if we were thinking about the same people: were the writers of this brochure thinking about those people who were running slave labor camps? Were they thinking of the same people who kidnapped workers so they would not have to pay them a fair wage? Were they describing the people who enacted laws stating that those African-American workers who tried to escape from forced labor camps were to be punished by dismemberment?

And...her paper just sort of goes along like that for the rest of the essay, offering testimony about her experience of constantly being told up is down during her visit of southern slave plantations. Finally she submits her conclusion in maybe one or two sentences: if anyone should be worried about their autonomy, it should be white people, because their devotion to power and control seems to disrupt any real potential to exercise deliberative choice. She does not defend this view, she simply treats it as self-evident after pages of recounting her bizarre trip to Williamsburg.

This paper is outstanding. I can not think of a more perfect response.

Of course, I imagine that some folks read Scales-Trent's response and was like "WTF?" "This is off topic." "I didn't say that." "Why is she talking about Williamsburg for pages???" "This doesn't make any bloody sense!" "This is crazy."

Yes. It makes no sense at all in one context. (How does Ani DiFranco put it? "Taken out of context, I must seem so strange.") Scales-Trent decided to not accept one single premise in the debate, didn't even bother entertaining the premise that she thought were obviously wrong, and just moved on to write pages and pages recounting her unbearable experiences in Williamsburg. I think it's incredibly brave to insist on a stance that radically departs from a dominant methodology and from premises widely assumed to be obvious.

Ta-Nehisi Coates, a black dude who writes for The Atlantic, thought it was a good idea to say that the the blocking of marriage for lgbt people in the US today is like the blocking of marriage for slaves in the US. I think that comparison ridiculously and needlessly understates the experience of slavery, a position I've gone over here at length. I often like Coates' writing because he's funny and can be sharp, but he can also be rude and arrogant. I tried to engage him in comments in a narrow way that accepted his premises, but instead picked on a turn of phrase, when in fact I thought his whole post was extremely whack. Unfortunately, he was rude and arrogant in his response.

I wish I had been braver and really went there with him, and didn't give a fuck if he or anyone else thought I was just another crazy black girl who is off topic. I want to be unafraid of writing & speaking in that different register. I want to be flexible in it. I want to be able to sing the high notes.

This song makes me laugh, and then feel wistful.

2010-07-30T14:22:00.001-07:00

Worth every seven and a half minutes.

On The Fear of a Black Planet

2010-07-23T14:59:00.000-07:00

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Basically. What did they think Sherrod is going to do -- help white farmers to death?

Before Obama was elected, Melissa Harris Lacewell said something to the effect that it was less interesting that she would have a black president than the fact that Rush Limbaugh, et al would have a black president. After a year and a half, the response has been clear: it's panic about perceived black power.

And Rachel is right, this white fear of perceived black power narrative is not new. Indeed, it's a classic joint. Old school, if you will. The white Southern response to Reconstruction (a short era when some black people were allowed to have a minimal level of institutional power) is Birth of a Nation, the KKK, Black Codes, and thousands lynched because of perceived fear used as a justification to utilize and strengthen white supremacist power. Sherrod herself is intimately familiar with this violent project of sustaining white power when a white farmer murdered her father, a farmer who some sources say was also a member of the Klan.

The way in which male-dominated NAACP and Tom Vilsack chose to trust a fucking tea party blogger over a black woman who has been doing exceptional work for decades shouldn't surprise me, but the absurdity of it continues to boggle the mind. That black men sold out a black woman because they were scared of what white people would say because those white people are scared of that same black woman's "power," even though she is actually helping white people after white people killed her father is so beyond anything I can wrap my head around. I can't even write a proper post about it. It's far too incongruous. All I have to offer is Richard Pryor.

Apparently, I watch hot Ciara videos instead of updating my blog.

2010-06-04T22:09:00.000-07:00

I have about a thousand blog posts memorized, but about a thousand other things I'm committed to that have to take priority. I mean, watching this video continuously for about a half hour, sure, but other stuff too. Political work, dissertation writing, attending to my relationships, and holding down a full time job. And yet, everytime I think I should call it a wrap and delete this little website, I just can't bring myself to do it.

Let's see how the summer goes. In the meantime...

Farewell, Crone Mary Daly

2010-01-15T01:10:00.000-08:00

While I am slowly wrapping my head and heart around the catastrophe in Haiti, I received news that Mary Daly has died.

Here's the thing. My politics are pro-black, pro-intersectionality, anti-essentialist feminism. But, I confess that I have a soft spot for old school lesbian separatist gender-essentialist intersectionality-weak feminist theory. Before I got the chance to read core black feminism, Audre Lorde, Angela Davis, Barbara Smith, etc, my introduction to feminist theory was white-dominated lesbian separatism. Sarah Hoagland. Andrea Dworkin (who wasn't exactly a lesbian, but I always thought of her as a lesbian separatist). Mary Daly. And that was the stuff that saved my life in a time when it desperately needed saving.

Courage to Live (1985 ed.): the Courage to refuse inclusion in the State of the Living Dead, to break out from the deadforms of archetypal deadtime, to take leap after leap of Living Faith; Fiercely Biophilic Courage

Surviving [derived fr. L super- beyond + vivere to live--Webster's] : the process of Spinsters living beyond, above, through, around the perpetual witchcraze of patriarchy; Metaliving, be-ing. Canny Comment:

If anyone should ask a Negro woman what is her greatest achievement, her honest answer would be: "I survived!" -- Pauli Murray, 1970

Heterosexual psychodrama had been kicking my ass. I went back to school. I stopped dating altogether, I was no longer interested in it. I don't endorse separatism as a political project, but perhaps I can get behind separatism as a temporary meditative project. There is a rescuing that happens with separatist imagination. That moment when I was so filled with rage, I needed breathing room. An imaginative breadth where I could see myself in a pause. Space to not have to deal with the ongoingness, the relentlessness of the violence that I once saw as core in the engagement between men and women.

Parthenogenesis (Anne Dellenbaugh) n [derived fr. Gk parthenos virgin + Gk genesis birth--American Heritage] 1 : process of a woman creating her Self 2 : process by which a Virgin brings forth Daughters by herSelf without the interference or input of any male 3 : process by which a Spinster creates unfathered works: SPINNING. See Virgin (W-W 2)

I read Mary Daly's Wickedary and it was like an awakening. A gaping hole in front of me. I hadn't imagined that anyone could break from whole epistemologies, entire vocabularies, miles and miles of crazymaking premises. That book is a work of artistry, of irony, urgency, and love.

Philosophia n : "the wisdom formulated by women; love for the wisdom of women; desire and passion for understanding: an intellectual urge toward love of live"--Emily Erwin Culpepper. See Parthenogenetic Creation

My politics are now so different from this body of work. Now I'm full of plenty of rage for white people too! Ha! There are profound differences regarding race politics, sex work, trans politics, nation... And, in any case, it's not sustainable, realistic, or even desirable to separate from whole groups of people, even if it were possible to draw boundaries through gender, or race, or other constructed populations. Which it's not. And even if it were not possible to love and have relation across those borders. Which, of course, it is. The theories I prioritize and the politics that drive me now seem so alien from and largely opposed to this particular kind of feminism that rescued me so long ago. Even as I flip through Wickedary this evening and review Daly's definition for "Ethnic," I think...noooo. Whiteness and the lessons of difference will never allow me to literally think of the population of women as a nation, an idea that seems to fit snugly in these pages.

But I can occasionally table some of these issues when I rest. These ideas don't have to be like a handbook that shapes an on the ground organizing and life practice. But they can be available when a distance is desperately called for and required. When one's mind is at the state of Enough. There's something about the militancy of it that I find comforting. That it's there if we really need it. It's a reminder that there's a way to completely shut off the volume of noise if we can no longer constantly battle it.

Third Eye : Super Sensory power of transcendent vision; Elemental capacity of Nag-Gnostics to envision Other Whys, Other ways, and Other worlds.

Black feminism is written down on my body, threaded through my heart, it gives form to my relationships, it makes sense of my subjectivity. But my life was already saved by the time I got to it. And even though I can read Gyn/Ecology now and know that it will make me cringe, I will never deny the powerful imaginary that Daly's work provided. What can be done in the absence of the thing that makes one mad, that's hard to name, and seems inescapable? A breather could change everything.

I am so incredibly grateful for her work and I am so sad that she is gone. Safe travels, Crone Mary, may the Elemental Spirits carry you to the next Otherworld.

NYT article: The Americanization of Mental Illness

2010-01-11T12:15:00.000-08:00

Great article, by Ethan Watters.

Excerpt:

In any given era, those who minister to the mentally ill — doctors or shamans or priests — inadvertently help to select which symptoms will be recognized as legitimate. Because the troubled mind has been influenced by healers of diverse religious and scientific persuasions, the forms of madness from one place and time often look remarkably different from the forms of madness in another.

That is until recently.

For more than a generation now, we in the West have aggressively spread our modern knowledge of mental illness around the world. We have done this in the name of science, believing that our approaches reveal the biological basis of psychic suffering and dispel prescientific myths and harmful stigma. There is now good evidence to suggest that in the process of teaching the rest of the world to think like us, we’ve been exporting our Western “symptom repertoire” as well. That is, we’ve been changing not only the treatments but also the expression of mental illness in other cultures. Indeed, a handful of mental-health disorders — depression, post-traumatic stress disorder and anorexia among them — now appear to be spreading across cultures with the speed of contagious diseases. These symptom clusters are becoming the lingua franca of human suffering, replacing indigenous forms of mental illness.

The first paragraph of my dissertation. Thus and so...

2010-01-10T21:26:00.000-08:00

In Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Harriet Jacobs recounts her experiences as an enslaved black woman in 19th century Virginia who immerses herself in a project of self-emancipation. Jacobs devises elaborate plots to elude sexual assault from her legal owner (identified as "Flint" in her narrative) and to ultimately escape bondage, leading herself through a series of anticipations, strategies, choices, and actions. In her narrative, Jacobs intends to circumvent the threat of rape within a social context that constructs her as inherently sexually violable. She makes plans to escape slavery within a legal context that defines flight from her circumstances as criminal or pathological. She purposively acts in order to lay claim to her own body within an economic context that systematically entrenches the idea that her body belongs to others. The relationship between her intentions and her actions are undermined and warped by the dominant political and cultural context in which she attempts to exercise agency.

How do we describe the agency of one who acts in a context of a social and political meanings, logics, and understandings that cannot acknowledge her actions as she intends them and, therefore, disregards or distorts her intentions?

at the movies...

2010-01-06T01:25:00.000-08:00

I've been making a list of movies that came out last decade that transformed the way I understood the world because there's nothing I love more than unreasonable, unfair pop culture "top x of whenever" lists. Here they are, so far:

Mystic River
Memento
Batman Begins

(yeah, I said it)

Brokeback Mountain
The Hours
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
There Will Be Blood
The Lives of Others
AI
Dogville
Closer
Doubt

I was also moved by Kill Bill (both volumes), even though I winced hard at the race politics, which were winceworthy. So, that's it, that's my list. Mock me if you like.

Movies are like drugs, the way they change you. The way that movies can rewire you, reveal unknowns or clarify possibility, give representation to inexpressible truths, is like some kind of crazy power. Movies are like moving pictures of ideas, and, in this way, they are like miracles.

But after I made and reviewed the list, I felt a sense of regret and maybe shame that, with the exception Crouching Tiger, no movies on my list featured major protagonists that were people of color. I didn't see our stories represented.

There were dozens of films last decade that I enjoyed, but wouldn't classify as transformative. In fact, I went to see them with the expectation that they would be greater than they ultimately turned out to be. Some of those that featured black folks in particular include...
Ray
Ali
Hotel Rwanda

I Am Legend
American Gangster
The Great Debaters
Talk to Me

I did love these movies, but I did not walk out of the theater itching to connect, to construct, to create. To write shit down. They all had lovely moments, especially the first three, but they didn't change me, they didn't re-make me.

Movies that feature complex black characters that take on the world's incoherencies like Girl 6 or Eve's Bayou or Basquiat...where were they last decade? I was rewatching Do The Right Thing last month, and I was astonished at how good it still is, I couldn't believe it. I think The Color Purple may be etched into my dna, somehow. I don't understand how black movies aren't just getting better as we go. (Capitalism and the soul death of the film industry?)

This listmaking reminds me of how disappointed I was in Precious. I read Push, the novel by Sapphire that the movie on which the movie is based, many years ago. I read it one sitting, the voice of the protagonist was like a rope, she just pulls you into her consciousness. The movie was the opposite. It pushes away. I could barely hear Precious's voice, it's not sustained. I see her, but I don't know her, don't feel her. In the novel, she has a rich interior life, she has politicized analysis, she has an ironic sense of humor. She communicates (through reflection and action) the complex ways she experiences profound violence. She is complicated. She is a subject.

In the film, she is depoliticized. Flattened. Silenced. The only part of the movie that reached me was the end when Mary, Precious's mother, explains to the social worker what moved her to the choices she made. It was a devastating moment of clarity. A heartbreaking, maddeningly direct confessional. Finally, the subjectivity of someone in the film floats to the screen, in all of its fragmented damage.

This moment is treated as something to transcend rather than something on which to meditate, to absorb, to let change you. What kind of things is one capable of to manage self-loathing and the terror of loneliness? That is the stunning question provoked by this scene. Instead of letting the film give us a minute to think about how human Mary is, we are jerked away. Precious liberates herself from all of that, walks out the social worker's office triumphantly with her two kids. I felt empty. I didn't understand how one woman found herself enveloped by desperation and hatred, while the other could walk away without any real response, voiceless as usual. After all, I felt like I barely knew Precious, but had just gotten to understand, to hear, Mary. But then, right when I finally invested, the film wrapped up with the apparent conclusion that "Mary can be dismissed as a crazy maniac and Precious is gonna make it after all."

It has been said that we should celebrate Precious because it bravely tells a story that must be told. I don't quite know what that means. The story of black pain? of black poverty? Are we to believe that the general public doesn't already have a firm narrative about fat black teenage mothers in the hood? How does Precious recover the stories of these human lives? What if Precious had been not just a recounting of horrible things that happen to these women, a kind of Slumdog, Harlem Edition, but a sustained investigation of how this shapes a person's identity, relationships, actions, and emotional internal life? How these reflect real truths about the nature of human life? A view into her view.

I hate being so hard on this damn movie, mostly because I'm a fan of everyone involved and I hope Mo'Nique gets something out of it. But, this list depresses me, especially considering that there was an era where we were beginning to witness the inner lives of black people on film. There are stories that should be told. I needed Precious to tell Precious's story. I pray that this next decade will be rich with untold stories that expand us beyond what we expected. (Probably need to look harder at the indie flicks...)

*update: I just saw 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days. Riveting, brilliant. Goes on the first list above.

tour de force

2009-11-18T09:59:00.001-08:00

Mary

2009-11-15T20:18:00.000-08:00

I'm searching for my voice by listening to others...this song is like a prayer.

The danger of the single story.

2009-11-13T19:36:00.000-08:00

on agency and slavery

2009-11-13T13:31:00.000-08:00

http://flipfloppingjoy.com/2009/11/12/slave-womanmistress/

bfp, me, and others get into a discussion...

I am so friggin busy, I want to cry!

2009-10-07T22:35:00.000-07:00

So, I started this blog when I was in a different land of availability. I got pretty bummed out and shut down by the war on Gaza. Then I radically increased my news intake b/c, well, it's just been much more interesting to read news now that Bush is gone and Obama is here. Then I joined facebook, which is nothing but a greedy time eater. Then I (stupidly) took on a full time job. And I'm writing my dissertation with way more pressure than last year b/c the advisor is breathing down a sista's neck, especially since the advisor is not so happy about that full time job.

And Michael Jackson died...

And, throughout it all, my poor, beloved blog has just been sitting here like a lump. A blog scorned. But, you know, I've got like, what, 3 readers? 2 of whom I know personally, right? Plus beloved commenter Michelle! So, I figure, it's a little not cool to just disappear like that, but seriously, so few folks really reads this joint, so it's a non-issue.

But then I get this comment a couple of weeks ago from anonymous:

Where are you, thatgirl? This used to be my favorite blog and now it hasn't updated in over half a year. I know times are rough, but I for one would be grateful if you could still write your thoughts on the world's ongoing absurdities from time to time. Please?

And I'm like, for real? Someone who I don't know already and isn't beloved commenter Michelle has this down as their "favorite blog?"

I have to say, I find that astonishing and, yes, okay, I'm a little moved. Dang. Blogging is a responsibility, y'all. Commitments and stuff.

And, truth be told, I do miss blogging. I'm going to try to get back to this starting this weekend and see if it still works for me. And then if not, I'll put out an official farewell for the, I guess now, 4 people who occasionally read this blog. I'm sorry I just cut out like that! Here's a gift that I hope help makes up for it:

Gaza...

2009-01-06T01:59:00.000-08:00

...I can't write on it. Not now. My head is spinning on it, though.

In the meantime, just wanted to post a link to Glenn Greenwald at Salon.com is writing some compelling pieces. We may not 100% agree about what should be done, but I so appreciate his brutally sharp analytic take down of the truly bizarre (and deeply masculinist) justifications for the war.

Here's a quote from his latest:

More to the point: for those who insist that others put themselves in the position of a resident of Sderot -- as though that will, by itself, prove the justifiability of the Israeli attack -- the idea literally never occurs to them that they ought to imagine what it's like to live under foreign occupation for 4 decades (and, despite the 2005 "withdrawal from Gaza," Israel continues to occupy and expand its settlements on Palestinian land and to control and severely restrict many key aspects of Gazan life). No thought is given to what it is like, what emotions it generates, what horrible acts start to appear justifiable, when you have a hostile foreign army control your borders and airspace and internal affairs for 40 years, one which builds walls around you, imposes the most intensely humiliating conditions on your daily life, blockades your land so that you're barred from exiting and prevented from accessing basic nutrition and medical needs for your children to the point where a substantial portion of the underage population suffers from stunted growth.

So extreme is their emotional identification with one side (Israel) that it literally never occurs to them to give any thought to any of that, to imagine what it's like to live in those circumstances. (...)

If you see Palestinians as something less than civilized human beings: as "barbarians" -- just as if you see Americans as infidels warring with God or Jews as sub-human rats -- then it naturally follows that civilian deaths are irrelevant, perhaps even something to cheer. For people who think that way, arguments about "proportionality" won't even begin to resonate -- such concepts can't even be understood -- because the core premise, that excessive civilian deaths are horrible and should be avoided at all costs, isn't accepted. Why should a superior, civilized, peaceful society allow the welfare of violent, hateful barbarians to interfere with its objectives? How can the deaths or suffering of thousands of barbarians ever be weighed against the death of even a single civilized person?

So many of these conflicts -- one might say almost all of them -- end up shaped by the same virtually universal deficiency: excessive tribalistic identification (i.e.: the group with which I was trained to identify is right and good and just and my group's enemy is bad and wrong and violent), which causes people to view the world only from the perspective of their side, to believe that X is good when they do it and evil when it's done to them. X can be torture, or the killing of civilians in order to "send a message" (i.e., Terrorism), or invading and occupying other people's land, or using massive lethal force against defenseless populations, or seeing one's own side as composed of real humans and the other side as sub-human, evil barbarians.

Exactly right. And this is what is making my head explode as I try to "make sense" of all the mainstream debate. It's like crazy talk, like everyone has gone completely mad. Like the Star Trek episode, "Armageddon," when everyone on some planet has decided to have a "clean" war and just calmly walk into the incinerator when their name pops up. It's not just oppressive. It's absurdist.

BlackQueering The Body Politic

2008-12-16T20:26:00.000-08:00

I've been thinking about sex a lot lately, specifically as it relates to the nation state as the embodiment of the nation state is about to take the form of what appears to be a Black het nuclear family. While I get heterosexual "privilege," even as it relates to straight Black people and couples, I can't help but understand Black people and our relationships as fundamentally "queer." Queer in a sense that the fact of our sexuality, in the context of white supremacy, has always been suspect, marginal, and monstrous. Black sexuality -- from Hottentot Venus to the sister from Durham, NC who accused the white boys of raping her -- has been both a subject of fascination and disgust for white folks. So, no matter how conforming the Obamas seem, I see them as transgressive and, well, queer.

Did you do a double take? Naw, that ain't Michelle & Barack, that's RuPaul being fantastically naughty. I love it. His fierce performance of Michelle in this photo reminds me that, no matter how "Mom In Chief" Michelle insists she is, her Blackness keeps her from being fully gender conforming. The debate about whether or not Michelle is selling out a little bit by not conforming to a Hillary Clintonesque first lady ambition is oddly de-raced. (But at this point, I've accepted that the feminist/queer analysis of the Obama moment is generally so weak in the public sphere -- with a few exceptions -- I am no longer surprised at the lack of intersectional ideas.) No matter how straight her hair is, how many shift dresses she wears, and how far of a back burner she places her career, Michelle Obama cannot achieve Donna Reed heights of hetfemale conformity. This is so because that gender is raced as white, hyperwhite, like Martha Stewart white (Martha's alternative gangsta identity notwithstanding). Ideal femininity, or the "cult of true womanhood" as folks used to call it back in the mid-19th century, is simply inaccessible to Black women in the context of white supremacist patriarchy, no matter how hard we try (and many of us do try). I'm not surprised that Michelle hasn't made a "I guess I could stay home and bake cookies" kind of gaffe because, unlike Hillary, Michelle showed up as gender non-conforming before she ever said a word and she has the 411 on what she needs to say (and not say) on that score. Michelle can be a desperate housewife in her own way, but she can't be Bree. She'll always be the angry housewife, the baby mama housewife, a housewife perpetually in the context of a gender breach. The answer from the American gender fantasy to Sojourner Truth's perennial question, "Ain't I a woman?" is decidedly: No, actually, since you asked. Therefore, the performance of femininity by Black women is necessarily queer, by definition.

I also think that Barack, though tough in some ways, also has a bit of a sissy streak. His whole "no girly dog" schtick doesn't fool me, I've already decided he's kind of a girly dog himself (or "mutt," as he puts it) with his effete, hyper-intellectual, limp wrist affectation. This gender that he performs is, I think, a pretty smart strategy to not freak white people out. He's explicit about this in his biography when he writes about how he kept his mother from confronting him about his teenage drug use:

I had given her a reassuring smile and patted her hand and told her not to worry, I wouldn't do anything stupid. It was usually an effective tactic, another one of those tricks I had learned: (White) People were satisfied so long as you were courteous and smiled and made no sudden moves. They were more than satisfied, they were relieved — such a pleasant surprise to find a well-mannered young black man who didn't seem angry all the time.

This excerpt is hilarious because here's the next President of the United States explaining something that most Black people do: self-consciously figure out how to manage white folks and their drama. It turns out that Obama's strategy is to present a certain kind of race/gender performance to not be too, you know, Malcolm X-ey.

So, yes, I think that the construct of Black family, even one as nuclearish as the Obamas, is fundamentally noncompliant with the expectation of U.S. gender roles. I'm not arguing that the Obamas will necessarily usher in a feminist queer politic by virtue of their Blackness, that's silly. But I am arguing that the usual arguments about gender/sexual conformity needs to be more deeply raced than it has been.

It gives us an excuse to more deeply think about how the concept of the nation state is sexualized. Wanda Sykes gets it:

When's the last time you heard someone say that the first lady had a nice ass? Well...it might be fucked up if it wasn't an adorable Black lesbian feminist saying it. Wanda's observations are both compelling and uncomfortable for me. I find it interesting to have a first couple that obviously generates so much heat. But it's scary to talk about because, you know, Black people are considered to be animals, etc. But sex is a normal part of the human condition. But why do Black people have to be the ones to remind folks of that? Because we're at the forefront of liberatory sexual politics? Um, maybe not, but this is a problem I haven't yet figured out how to think about.

I do know that Black people conceptualizing the nation state through a sexual lens isn't new. My favorite example of this is Marvin Gaye straight up seducing us through the national friggin anthem:

A book should be written deconstructing this lovely, moving performance. I'm still anti-american and this video doesn't make me patriotic. However, I love, love, love this performance. Maybe because his delivery, grounded in so much Black soul, transforms the meaning of the song for me. I'm not thinking about the Revolutionary War, watching Marvin break this down. I'm thinking about political struggle in a general sense, and I'm thinking about how the sexual element of the romance of political struggle is suddenly enchanting. It's not just sexy (though it's also pretty sexy too). It's about your full embodied humanity participating in political discourse and struggle that's about life and death.

Prop 8 & Bad Assumptions

2008-11-14T16:31:00.000-08:00

For the record, I voted No on 8 and donated money to the cause (which, lol, almost bounced until I caught it -- because I'm a broke, disorganized, but committed! grad student), even though my politics are a little ambivalent when it comes to gay marriage. My work to end homophobia and sexism in Black communities is an on-going project for me. Forward, Black queer feminism.

That said, I am simmering in frustration with some of the white queer discourse on prop 8 and Black people, which has been stunningly flat and simplistic. Here is a pretty good summary of what has gone down so far. In short, there is some race-based exit poll data about who voted for prop 8 (against gay marriage) and who voted against it (for gay marriage). Turns out, according to a CNN exit poll (which has been called into question), Black folks voted for Prop 8 at a rate of 70%, while 49% of white folks, 53% of Latino folks, 49% of Asian folks, and 51% of the mysterious “other” voted for Prop 8. So, we can see that of the small number of Black Californian voters, we disproportionately voted against gay marriage, which is troubling and should definitely be addressed. However, the discussion has been resembling more of an uproar about the Black "Bigots!" that hate gays and lesbians (because, let's face it, there is no such thing as a B or a T unless we're talking about a sandwich) who are clearly against fundamentally American things like love and family. Black people are no good, I tell you. No. Good.

I get that we're upset that 8 passed and the meanings that this carries, but the sudden move to blame Black people first and foremost is truly a disturbing example of poor analysis and white entitlement. I will not argue the numbers here, others have already done such a fantastic job at this. I am also not going to discuss how problematic it is that marriage has ended up becoming the defining issue of queer dignity and queer liberation, and how this marginalizes other issues that low-income queer people and queer people of color may prioritize over marriage, such as poverty and incarceration, undermining potentially amazing opportunities for coalition building. Again, others have already done such a great job at this. I also recommend Cathy Cohen's work, which has been brilliant on this score, particularly her essay, "Punks, Bulldaggers, & Welfare Queens: The Radical Potential of Queer Politics?"

Instead, I want to try to unpack the unhelpful liberal, individualist, rights-based framework in which this debate is being waged. It goes something like this: LGBT people should have the right to marry. Prop 8 takes away this right. Most Black voters in California voted to take away this right by voting for Prop 8. How could they when they "too" have been victims of having no civil rights? Racism should have taught black people more empathy for others who have no civil rights, "just like" they once experienced (a long, long time ago, you know, before Obama). In this case, oppression is defined as follows:

Black people not allowed to vote = lack of civil right = racism

Makes no sense why those people wouldn't be on our side, they know what "it's like." Therefore, Black people must be homophobes because oppression is defined as follows:

Gays & lesbians not allowed to marry = lack of civil right = homophobia

People are homophobic because they are hateful. Black people are more homophobic than others. Therefore they are more hateful than others, or put another way, morally inferior to white people (and, apparently, other people of color). That's the only rational explanation for why a group of people who have been the victim of oppression (read: having been denied specific civil rights), turn around and do the "same thing" to another group of people.

It's like trying to do analysis in a very tight and narrow little hallway of very bad assumptions. Here are some assumptions that this view makes which, I believe, are false:

1. How racist or homophobic a person is is measurable by objective and scientific means.

2. The only reason why an individual would make a choice to participate in oppression is because she is a VERY BAD PERSON.

3. If you disagree with (2), you do not believe that oppressed people are agents and should be held accountable for their actions.

4. Oppression is oppression. It is wrong to engage in "oppression olympics" and it's totally fine to think of one "civil rights" problem as being in the same category (at most, it's a difference of degree, not difference of a kind).

5. If you disagree with (4), you are just wallowing in your superior victimhood and you refuse to be accountable with your own complicity in perpetuating the oppression of other people.

6. Historical trajectories of oppression mean nothing. We only live in the present and only what's happening now counts.

So, over the past week or so, I have seen primarily rich white men (some gay, some not) operate within these assumptions. It's frustrating. And lazy. Let's take a look at the assumptions.

Assumption 1. How racist or homophobic a person is is measurable by objective and scientific means.

For example, Dan Savage takes a stand:

"I do know this, though: I’m done pretending that the handful of racist gay white men out there—and they’re out there, and I think they’re scum—are a bigger problem for African Americans, gay and straight, than the huge numbers of homophobic African Americans are for gay Americans, whatever their color."

To be honest, I'm not even sure what he means here. Sounds like he feels brave somehow in proclaiming that there are only a "handful" of gay white men, but the numbers of homophobic Black folks are "huge." I'm not sure where he's getting those numbers, but if I had to guess, it's probably something about gay white men across the U.S. voting for Obama (flagging that they are not racist) and 70% of Black Californians who voted on Prop 8 giving it a yes vote (flagging that they are homophobic). There are so many problems here. First, Savage has no data, so the comment is just irresponsible and lazy outright. Second, trying to measure exactly how racist and/or homophobic people are is practically impossible, and it certainly isn't done by using how you voted as a measuring stick. Hell, even the Nazis got desperate enough to throw some votes Obama's way. Racism, homophobia, and other oppressions cannot be objectively measured.

That said, I think it may be fair to presume that if a person voted to end marriage rights for folks in same sex couples, she is probably homophobic -- that is frightened, in some way, of queerness. But I'm not sure it makes her a "bigot," a word that I never use, even though I tend to be an angry Black girl, because it doesn't mean anything to me. The reality is that racism (and other oppressions) is pervasive. It is like air, it's everywhere integrated into our social systems and subconsciouses. Just because a person hasn't called anyone a nigger this morning doesn't mean that all is right with her world as it relates to racism. But, because we can count how many times we've called folks names, or we can assess people's voting patterns, or we can count how many times we've had sex with a person of the same gender or a different race, we think these are the things that will lead us to an objective quantitative assessment of exactly how fucked up we are or are not. Part of the existential problem of oppression is that an objective measurement of who is fucked up and exactly how fucked up they are is not possible. Sorry. That brings us to...

Assumption 2. The only reason why an individual would make a choice to participate in oppression is because they are bad.

Assumption 3. If you disagree with (2), you do not believe that oppressed people are agents and should be held accountable for their actions.

I think Savage's quote implies (2) and I think many of the commenters in these blog discussions and rallies have reflected this assumption. When people say that someone is a "bigot" or a "racist," they are usually implying that the accused is qualitatively bad in a way the rest of us probably aren't. It makes them special, uniquely unkind and unjust. They are separate from the rest of the world. The individual alone is responsible for her beliefs and anyone in 2008 that has been found to harbor a racist belief is, somehow, particularly bad. That's why white folks freak out if they are accused of being racist, because, well, god, they're not Bull Connor hosing people down and stuff, they just feel a little uncomfortable when they're alone in an elevator with a Black or brown dude. (This was Obama's point when he talked about his grandmother's fears in his April speech on race.) Because "racism" and "bigotry" has come to signify some kind of absolute individual moral failing, it's been practically impossible to say that people are behaving racistly without folks totally freaking out. The accuser is the hysterical one who plays the ultimate card, the race card, in order to impugn a generally decent human being.

This is an error for the same reason that (1) is an error. Racism is pervasive and more complicated than a kind of absolutist moral model. However, instead of adopting a more complicated model of how to understand racism, we just use the same flawed model for other oppressions when other oppressed people feel attacked, in this case, homophobia. The intensity in which the the accusation of "Homophobe!" or "Bigot!" is being applied seems to call for some kind of renunciation of the accused individual. She is a VERY BAD PERSON and that's the end of that.

Except, in this case, the accusation targets a whole group of people instead of an individual. We're talking about the monolothic "Black people" instead of individuals, which can't be done to white people because white people aren't white because white is normative. But, the same kind of individualistic moral renunciation can be directed at Black people as if we were one unified individual. That we're only talking about one state, that many of us in California can't or didn't vote (and , therefore, we have no evidence that 70% of all Black adults in California support taking away the right of queers to marry, much less a percentage of all Black adults in the U.S.), that 30% of us that did vote actually voted no, makes no difference. All that cold water just takes away from the pretty drama of the irony of high Black voter turnout. When Savage uses the descriptive "huge numbers," it's not the much huger numbers of millions of "homophobic" white folks that voted for 8 in California. It's the "huge numbers" of Black people, in general, that he claims are "Homophobes!". (Despite the fact that we're now talking about a pretty small percentage of all those who actually voted yes on 8.) He deftly moves from a discussion of prop 8 to a generalization about Black folks everywhere. The generalization isn't caught by many, it's easy to accept, because {Black people} (the brackets signify a set, rather than what the words mean, a diverse group of people) are understood as a unified collective, one body, and, as such, we are all at once irrevocably guilty of an ugly moral failing that can't be explained away with our race cards and our manipulations of white guilt. Savage is DONE PRETENDING THAT {BLACK PEOPLE} AREN'T CAUSING A SERIOUS PROBLEM FOR HIM. Not only are we one person, but he frames himself as doing a brave thing because he's not afraid of the powerful race card because he's not a "Racist!" (who he says are "scum" so he can't possibly be one). He throws down the homophobic bigot card to the one {Black people} that suddenly seems (in a post-Obama age) to somehow hold the golden ticket to gay marriage, even if the same percentage of us had voted no as white people did, it wouldn't have made a damn bit of difference. Does not matter in the face of the big black blockade to gay love and happiness.

The idea behind assumption (3) is that if you do not believe that {Black people} are (is?) bad for being "Homophobic bigots!" then you are exercising, shall we say, the soft bigotry of low expectations. That is, if you want to argue that there are more complicated reasons that Black folks voted yes on 8 other than that they are fundamentally immoral people, then you are not treating them like adults who should be accountable for their actions. Besides my argument here about the unsatisfying ways in which the accusations of "racist," "homophobic," and "bigots" are used, I will address this point while debunking...

Assumption 4. Oppression is oppression. It is wrong to engage in "oppression olympics" and it's totally fine to think of one "civil rights" problem as being in the same category (at most, it's a difference of degree, not difference of a kind).

For example, Keith Olbermann's "special comment" about prop 8. I know a lot of people were really moved by this video, and I am trying to respect that. However, besides generally being annoyed with Keith Olbermann's tendency towards self-importance, I was pretty taken aback with this excerpt:

"Marriages among slaves were not legally recognized. You know, just like marriages today in California are not legally recognized."

Yeah, that comment is special alright. That shit is irritating. Do you really want to argue that the situation of non-marriage in chattel slavery is "just like" prop 8? Enslaved people were not "allowed" to marry because (1) they were considered to be animals, (2) they didn't own their bodies, (3) slave sexuality was seen primarily as potential for a free labor force, (4) they were subject to sexual and reproductive violence as a demonstration that they and their offspring and their families did not belong to themselves or each other... I could go on, but I can't believe I even have to make this argument. Olbermann needs to read a book or something about slavery and rape and reproduction and creating a slave labor force and "following the condition of the mother" and all that other stuff before he says something else really stupid and offensive. I mean, seriously, this is what passes as political analysis? His fucking Edward R. Murrow award should be revoked.

But, alas, I am not surprised at rich white man number two. A liberal individualist framework has a reductive view of rights, rather than a rich, multi-dimensional, historicized analysis of oppression. Slaves? Well, they simply did not have the "right" to marry. Just like LGBT folks nowadays. Both are equally evil. Unless you're being more generous, in which case the liberal might allow that slavery was "worse" than not allowing gay marriage, but she won't argue that there is a difference of a kind, just of degree, because a right is a right. This foul analysis gives us this assumption...

Assumption 5. If you disagree with (4), you are just wallowing in your superior victimhood and you refuse to be accountable with your own complicity in perpetuating the oppression of other people.

That is why we end up with claims like, "{Black people} know what it's like to be discriminated against. Why are they doing to us what happened to them?" White liberals are the first ones to utilize the history of racial violence to demonstrate why another oppression is also bad. "Just like segregation..." "Just like lynching..." Rights are like baseball cards that can be traded because their essential nature is the same.

But this shit is not the same. I don't have to argue that it's worse to assert that it ain't the same. The history of racial violence against Black people since we were brought to these shores to this very day is unique and wholly disturbing. There are lessons we can learn from that history that we can thoughtfully apply to other situations. There are connections between this and other trajectories of colonization and subjugation. But I'm noticing that there are some white folks that feel pretty entitled to rustle around Black history like some kind of curious anthropologist, picking out things that are convenient for them to use, often to legitimize their own experiences of oppression.

To be real, before this prop 8 stuff hit the fan, I was more tolerant of the parallel that some white queers drew between the Black Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s and the more recent LGBT Civil Rights Movements. I thought it might be a useful strategy. However, with all the sturm und drang of the past week, I'm beginning to see how this usage gets boiled down to a tit for tat strategy: We have your back (i.e. voted for Obama, sympathy to the story of the Black Civil Rights Movement), why don't y'all have ours? We (as of 2008) think that U.S. slavery was totally wrong, why don't y'all get that banning gay marriage is wrong? Or Jon Stewart's joke (third rich white guy) that as soon as Black people "made it" with Obama, it only took us 24 hours to use that brand new power against gay folks. Tolerance goes "both ways." "If {your people} want to call me a faggot, I can call you nigger." I'm not even picking on the fellow who gave us that last gem, I really think this is the essential point that Olbermann, Savage, and others are making. It's the same thing. A right is a right. A slur is a slur. There is no substantial difference.

While I have argued that this is the wrong way to think about oppression, I do not believe that just because something is different than something else doesn't mean that it doesn't have it's own moral weight. Just because I think not legalizing gay marriage isn't "just like" not legalizing marriage under chattel slavery (seriously, I can barely write that without making a face), doesn't mean that I don't think that prop 8 doesn't have it's own profound moral significance. I don't understand the "oppression olympics" critique that you can't argue that instances of oppression are worse than others. Of course, some things are different, and in some cases worse, than others. (It doesn't make sense to say something like, patriarchy is worse than colonization, because the two phenomena are much too broad, complex, and intersecting to draw a decent comparison. And it doesn't make sense to make a qualitative comparison about which of all the holocausts was the worst. However, I'm not going to argue that my experience with the racial profiling cop, though surely fucked up, is "just like" when Harriet Jacobs was sexually stalked by her slave master. That's obviously false and, more to the point, disrespectful.) You don't abandon the right to assert that other things are unjust by granting this seemingly self-evident point.

That said, I wouldn't argue that this gives anyone a get out of accountability free card. Black people (like all people) have some work to do when it comes to getting our shit together around homophobia. But it does make the conversation about accountability a little more complicated. It's interesting, white folks can use our history to legitimize their own suffering, but then have a completely de-historicized way of thinking about Black people's choices and accountabilities. Which brings me to...

Assumption 6. Historical trajectories of oppression mean nothing. We only live in the present and only what's happening now counts.

Here's the thing about Black people and homophobia and patriarchy. Black people have been targeted with some shit that white people have not. Our ancestors faced sexual and reproductive violence as slaves, sexualized terrorism during the lynching movement at the turn of the century, forced sterilization during the U.S. eugenics movement, the 1965 Moynihan report that targeted Black women's reproductive and sexual integrity, more forced sterilization in the 1970s and 80s, the welfare queen debacle in the 1980s and 90s, etc. This is to say that Black sexuality has been on the fucking auction bloc since the get. We've been poked, prodded, raped, sold, and cut open primarily as a result of our sexual and reproductive capacities.

There's no real way to measure this, but a reasonable theory could go something like this: Black folks, in general, have a lot more to lose on the battleground of sexuality. Is there any wonder that, after our bodies have been brutally targeted for centuries, after surviving attempts of Black genocide, and even now, while experiencing more sexual violence in prisons (Black people of all genders, that is) because we're disproportionately incarcerated, that there's slightly more skittishness around what gets to be perceived as sexual normalcy. So, you might get a sexual conservative streak in a Black Christian tradition. Perhaps the desire to conform to a Western model of sexual normalcy is a move to prove that we are worth keeping around. Perhaps the possibility that Black folks are slightly more homophobic than, say, white folks, in general, could be related to this crazy history of sexual violence that is not shared by white folks. Folks may think they have more to lose. If we are just "normal enough," maybe we'll get a pass.

As I've mentioned before on this blog, I just recently finished Paula Giddings' new biography of Ida B. Wells and now I'm working on re-reading Harriet Jacobs' Incidents In The Life of A Slave Girl. One thing that I find striking is Wells' and Jacobs' constant and urgent defense of the integrity of Black women's sexuality. I find it heartbreaking, this need to prove that Black women are not animals. To feel it a duty to assert the dignity of Black sexuality because it certainly is not assumed.

I know this can read like a messy pop psychology analysis, so I apologize for that. But, I don't really see how a conversation about Black homophobia can be had without considering the glaring context of hundreds of years of on-going sexual trauma and violence, and how that trauma and fear, gets passed along across generations.

So, what does that mean for accountability? I think it's critical to check ourselves and each other around homophobia, which will require addressing those generational wounds. The opportunities for Black people inherent in sexual liberation for all of us are rich and manifold. And, while there is a lot of homophobia in our communities (as there is in all racial communities in the U.S.), my sense is that things are getting better overall due to the work of Black feminists and queers and Black folks that are pro-feminist and pro-queer. I also believe that this history with its difficult consequences doesn't mean that we can't be morally culpable for our own behavior. But I don't think it's productive, or even true, for that to take the form of calling people "Bigots!". As I've said, I don't even know what that's supposed to mean except that you're A VERY BAD PERSON, which is too simplistic for the complicated realities of oppression.

However, in a liberal rights-based view on these issues, all this history is just a noisy deck of race card excuses whining away accountability. Except when Black history of violence can be used for the purposes of showing how oppressed white people are today. Then it's A-okay. Also, as I am editing this post, I just got an e-mail calling prop 8 a pogrom. That shit is not cool! We don't need to say that prop 8 is a pogrom (which means massacre), or it's "just like" denial of marriage under chattel slavery (which, not to belabor the point, but seriously, wtf?), to defend the position that the passage of prop 8 is a terrible event that should have a powerful response (if gay marriage is how we're going to do queer liberation, which, of course, is still up for some debate).

So, I move that if white folks, including oppressed white folks, want to take the time to assert histories of racial trauma and violence against Black folks for illustrative purposes, they can not do so to lecture or shame us (which, frankly, is how I took Olbermann's "special comment"), but should instead humbly reflect on how those histories (since they suddenly seem so interested in them) might have brought all of us to the place of struggle where we are today. I know that's a lot to ask, especially of rich white men who have felt morally superior this week like Dan Savage, Keith Olbermann, Andrew Sullivan, and, yes, even my favorite rich white guy, Jon Stewart. But I think this will help all of our movements step up our game a little more, so I make the motion anyway and sincerely hope it passes.

Fundamental Difference

2008-11-07T19:36:00.000-08:00

I have been in a weird mood since Obama's Tuesday night speech. Not sad, just feeling really weird.

I've had some discussions with radicals (by "radicals," I mean anti-imperialist, anti-capitalist, pro-queer, racial justice feminists) -- some who think that Obama's win was glorious, some who feel alienated by what they perceive is uncritical celebration. I think I can relate to both views, simultaneously. But I can't relate to the view that all is the same. That is, same song, different color. All is not the same.

(Drawing by Patrick Moberg)

I continue to believe that it is extraordinary that a country can shift from chattel slavery to this phenomenon in 145 years. I remain unpatriotic, I'm no Oprah Winfrey!, but I won't lie and say that I don't think this is not fucking incredible. I just can't. It could be that I'm about to teach a class on Black Feminist Theory, so I've been reading a lot of history, and the background of my consciousness is engaged in a critical dialogue with with Ida B. Wells in the 1890s. I keep being astonished that this daughter of enslaved Black people was able to (practically single handedly) jump start a global movement to end the massive violent attacks against Black people. On one hand, yes, thousands of Black women, men, and children were the victims of systematic terrorist attacks from white folks, and on the other hand, Ida was kicking some major ass while she wrote, researched, hustled people out of the South, spoke around the world, had babies, wrote some more, fundraised, spoke some more, and just caused a whole lot of beautiful trouble. (I keep thinking it's a miracle she wasn't eventually assassinated.)

While others think of this trajectory as slow, I keep thinking how crazy fast it is. It's both. The trajectory is not linear. It was just 3 years ago that we were here

It is both. It is hundreds of thousands of us incarcerated and it is Obama. It is thousands of us lynched and raped and it is Ida. I don't even think of them as exceptional. I use their names as placeholders. It's millions of us living in these contradictions of oppression and possibility. I still think this country is woven with white supremacist identities and agendas, but I am developing a different appreciation for its contradictions and capacity to bend. (Maybe I should make a distinction between the U.S. government, and the U.S. people -- I'm talking about the latter here.)

I will have to get used to the idea that this President Obama thing is happening. Because, frankly, I have my doubts! There is an epistemological problem for me because I deeply associate the U.S. government as a project of whiteness. When he won his first state, Vermont, I was like "I can't believe the brother actually won a whole state." I mean, it was Vermont! I'm a rational person, and I understood rationally that it was highly likely that he was going to win, but there is some kind of deeper distrust in my heart. I don't know, maybe I think the Constitution will burst into flames at his inauguration or something, I am just having a little bit of a hard time. I watched Obama's first press conference today and I kept thinking, "Really? Y'all are just gonna let him do a press conference like he's the President Elect or something crazy like that?"

I guess I don't want to trust it because, unlike my 5 year old nephew, I was not born relatively new into this post-Obama world and I can taste the fear on my tongue. This is a fundamentally different way of relating to the Office of the White House. Both opposed and, despite my politics, on a fundamental level, I am invested. I feel like I can't not support an Obama presidency (even as I oppose much of his politics), my loyalty runs too deep. Over the past few years, I have really tried to critically interrogate my accountabilities as a U.S. citizen while maintaining a DuBoisian dual identity, but I've still been able to create a distance between myself and my government because it wasn't my government, it was theirs. This was especially easy under the W years. But I see now that this move was always disingenuous, even if I wrote in Angela Davis on my ballot. I am experiencing a fundamentally different relationship to the U.S. government and that is really weird.

Also, I think that when we are not used to Black men who become symbols for racial struggle, the way Obama has become, who are not also eventually assassinated. We didn't get to see Martin and Malcolm grow old. They were murdered relatively young, and it was easy to idolize and objectify them, forgetting their errors, only relating to their brilliance. I find myself cringing when Obama makes errors. The bitter thing. The sweetie thing. And today, in his first press conference after becoming President Elect, the Nancy Reagan thing. I sucked wind between my teeth as I watched it, I knew it would cause a wrinkle. I will have to get better at this, lol! It will take some practice letting him occasionally be a doofus, instead of a perfect martyr that will be snuffed out. When my nephew grows up and has reflections about Obama, it won't be of a magnificent lover of Black people that was killed by the U.S. government which will break his heart, it will be the funny, flawed, very smart, center-left community organizer that held the highest office in the U.S. government who (I believe) will live out his natural life. That's a fundamentally different way of thinking about Black heroes and the cost of struggle.

So, the fundamental difference isn't that "We Have Overcome." We haven't and I believe the vast majority of Black folks know this. We haven't overcome capitalist exploitation, imperial projects, and heteropatriarchies. We won't under an Obama presidency. But this win isn't just "mildly better" than W, there is something about it that transcends how Democrats are better than Republicans. It may be an opportunity for how to think about our work and ourselves a little more expansively.

Questlove on Obama's Election Win

2008-11-05T11:59:00.000-08:00

I am speechless.

2008-11-04T22:46:00.000-08:00

There are so many things tumbling around in my brain, I don't know how to organize my thoughts. Obama's speech was heavy. Particularly heavy after listing the bad things of the last 8 years, which was a more distressing exercise than I anticipated.

I don't feel super thrilled, jumping up and down for joy, like I did after he won Ohio and we knew that was it. I'm certainly not unhappy either, my goodness!

I just feel like something very huge -- very, very critical -- just shifted under my feet. My beloved says I look very...satisfied. I don't know...

I don't want to party. I want to think and feel. I need some time to work this out.

But as for my girlfriends who I've been on the phone with all night, sharing our profound joy and excitement -- PARTY ON, SISTAS!!!!

Election Night Lists

2008-11-04T16:24:00.000-08:00

8:36 PST
Not a bad speech from McCain. Moving, even. I had forgotten that he had the capacity to be decent. Too bad about his supporters, right?

7:16 PST
Okay, HuffPost is calling it. I won't be doing a blow by blow of states, I'm not set up for that! I have to take a break, but I'll be back in a bit...

7:00 PST
Results So Far:
Obama wins Iowa
McCain wins Utah

6:41 PST
Results So Far:
Obama wins New Mexico
McCain did win Alabama, so it returns to him.
The pundits are finding a hard time imagining a scenario in which McCain would win.

6:24 PST
Results So Far:
Obama wins, yes that's right, Ohio!
Plus, I'm taking back Alabama from McCain, I got confused b/c liveblogging is too hard.

6:20 PST
Results So Far:
McCain wins Texas

6:11 PST
Results So Far:
Obama wins New Jersey, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan
McCain wins Kansas, Wyoming, Alabama, Oklahoma, Georgia (Georgia hurts. Next time, Black people.)
Damn, it's murder out there for McCain.

5:57 PST
Andrew Young: "[Obama's win] is a victory of faith over fear, grace over greed, vision over violence."

5:36 PST
Results So Far:
Obama wins New Hampshire
Also, one million people may be partying tonight in Chicago's Grant Park. (CBS News, um on my tv, not online, so no link, you just have to trust me.)

5:30 PST
Results So Far:
McCain wins Arkansas

5:23 PST
NPR just called it for Kay Hagan against Elizabeth Dole. See, Liddy, god don't like ugly, you know better. She do not. like. ugly.

5:13 PST
Results So Far:
Obama wins Pennsylvania (!!!!), Massachusetts, Illinois, Connecticut, New Jersey, DC, Maine, Delaware, Maryland
McCain wins Oklahoma, Tennessee

4:36 PST
Results So Far:
Obama wins Vermont
McCain wins Kentucky, West Virginia, South Carolina

(So, I just want to say that the fact that Obama, a Black man who is an inexperienced socialist terrorist, has won just one full state seems crazy to me and makes my heart skip a leap. I know the facts, but just to see it actually happen...I don't know.)

I'm a sucker for "best of" lists -- Rolling Stone and Entertainment Weekly magazines get lots of my pennies when they run "best of" issues. They are always wrong, but I like reading them anyway.

I am starting off three kinds of Election Night Lists:

1. Thank God At Least Some Of Us Survived Your Triflin Ass: A List of Bad Things That Happened As A Result of George W. Bush
* 9/11 - although some of the blame goes to Clinton, and previous administrations , wtf was up with ignoring critical intelligence, perhaps a little too busy figuring out how to break it to us that we were fixin to invade Iraq?

* From Nada: Katrina, Rita, New Orleans. It wasn't the hurricane that devastated the city, it was the levees breaking. And the administration's response to the aftermath was just as criminal.

Yes. The sadness and massive incompetency, from taking funds away from the levees to wage war in Iraq, to the abandonment of survivors, to the criminalization of survivors, to the on-going ethnic cleansing going on in the city, is a truly astonishing thing to behold.

* Iraq War. What the hell kind of crazy set of arrogant lies that set up [oops, didn't finish this before I uploaded] a war that was not even planned. God. If you're going to be an imperium, could you be a barely competent one? I can't even believe the level of disaster that is the Iraq war, primarily for Iraqis, and also for the rest of us.

* The War in Afghanistan. Otherwise known as "The Good War," still having a hard time figuring out what folks think we accomplished there.

* The increased violence against immigrants, the escalated racist hatred against Latinos and Arab folks, the war/wall on the Mexico/U.S. border. These are all great, on-going tragedies.

* Abu Ghraib. I am still deeply sickened.

[I'm starting to feel sick as I list these.]

* The dramatic fall out of the economy as a result of de-regulation and the Bush tax cuts.

* The rejection of science, which led to a slow down or stoppage on research on global warming, disease, healthcare...which led to dramatic consequences not just for Americans, but for people around the globe.

* The subprime mortgage loans scandal, and subsequent housing foreclosures.

* The Enron scandal. (Jesus, it has a been a very long, very fucked up 8 years.)

2. People/Groups/Pop Culture/Events That Helped Us Not Go Completely Batshit Crazy From 2000-2008
* INCITE! Women of Color Against Violence (and all its friends) - the group began the same year that Bush stole the election the first time. It helped me navigate a radical feminist of color politic in a political era that was kind of unbelievably oppressive.

* The radical women of color blogosphere. Aye, too many to link to here, but this is a bad ass group of sistas, along with INCITE that have helped me figure out how to deal with feminism when feminists are saying bomb Afghanistan, elect Hillary, and gender is more important than race.

* From Nada: The gradual (and still partial) awakening amongst some progressives in the US to the reality of Israeli genocidal policies in Palestine. I know I have gotten some comfort from the fact that my allies "get it." But that has not saved a single life... and it certainly wasn't an issue we pressed during the presidential campaign. In fact, we conveniently decided to be quiet about it, i.e. quiet about genocide. A "pragmatic approach" to never again? And the Palestinian people are expendable again...

* The West Wing. A friend used to stop us from saying "Bush" for the first few years of this gem, and insisted that Jeb Bartlett was her true president. We much preferred the drama and snappy writing of The West Wing rather than the madness unfolding on the actual news...

* Dave Chappelle, in general, and particularly the Black Bush skit. I think I must have watched that skit 50, 60 times. It doesn't get old.

* The Daily Show. Secondarily, Stephen Colbert, but mostly it's Jon Stewart as a voice of reason, dripping with sarcasm and silliness which I am drawn too.

* The historic marches around the world protesting the Iraq war. FANTASTIC. Truly inspiring in our unanimity that invading Iraq was an evil, bad idea. How Democrat politicians can say that they were duped by the whack "intelligence" coming from the White House, but millions of people around the world are saying NO!, continues to be astonishing to me. Look out your friggin windows...

* Melissa Harris-Lacewell. When she went one on one on Democracy Now with Gloria Steinem over that ridiculously stupid article Steinem wrote in January, feminists who were appalled by that stupid, stupid article were like: "Okay???"

* The beautifully humongous marches against the awful anti-immigrant bill (which I can't remember the name of...Sensenbrenner?) in the spring of 2006. Si Se Puede!

3. Things That Are Game Changers For The Left As A Result Of This Long Ass Campaign
* White women have somehow become white women in mainstream political discourse, rather than just "women." This was not true in the 2004 discussion of demographics in the Presidential race and I think this shift is really important in folks developing a more nuanced view about gender and race.

* Democrats took back grassroots organizing from the Christian right, and flipped it into a 21st century piece of brilliance. No matter what your politics are, how can you not be blown away? Organizers on the left -- we can criticize Obama all we like, but let's also see what we need to learn from the brotha. Cuz, you know, I'd like us to win eventually...

* Politicization of disaffected Black voters, particularly Black women voters. I wonder if radicals can tap into this.

***
Feel free to add your contribution in comments (or, for those of you who have my e-mail, just e-mail me) and I'll put it up on the list. Let's see if I know enough people to try and make this a little collective...

More Context... Plus, A Little Decorum, Please!

2008-11-04T12:36:00.000-08:00

I keep getting moved to tears. God, I'm such a marshmallow. Look at this. Or this:

Amanda Jones, 109, the daughter of a man born into slavery, has lived a life long enough to touch three centuries. And after voting consistently as a Democrat for 70 years, she has voted early for the country's first black presidential nominee.

The middle child of 13, Jones, who is African American, is part of a family that has lived in Republican-leaning Bastrop County for five generations. The family has remained a fixture in Cedar Creek and other parts of the county, even when its members had to eat at segregated barbecue dives and walk through the back door while white customers walked through the front, said Amanda Jones' 68-year-old daughter, Joyce Jones.

Amanda Jones, a delicate, thin woman wearing golden-rimmed glasses, giggled as the family discussed this year's presidential election. She is too weak to go the polls, so two of her 10 children -- Eloise Baker, 75, and Joyce Jones -- helped her fill out a mail-in ballot for Barack Obama, Baker said. "I feel good about voting for him," Amanda Jones said.

Jones' father herded sheep as a slave until he was 12, according to the family, and once he was freed, he was a farmer who raised cows, hogs and turkeys on land he owned. Her mother was born right after the Emancipation Proclamation was signed, Joyce Jones said.

***

On a lighter note, for you voters who don't know, here's a list of voter etiquette to keep in mind while in those long, long lines...

There will be a lot of people (some of our co-workers included) who will be afraid that an Obama presidency will usher in the end of days. They’ll be watching us on November 5th (the day after the election) for signs of the end times. To keep the peace and keep a lot of folks from getting nervous, I think we should develop a list of acceptable celebrations and behaviors we should probably avoid at least for the first few days:

1. No crying, hugging or shouting ‘Thank you Lord’ at least not in public.

2 No high-fives at least not unless the area is clear and there are no witnesses.

3 No laughing at the McCain/Palin supporters

4 No calling in sick on November 5th. They’ll get nervous if too many of us don’t show up.

5 We’re allowed to give each other knowing winks or nods in passing. Just try to keep from grinning too hard.

6. No singing loudly, We’ve come this Far By Faith (it will be acceptable to hum softly)

7. No bringing of barbeque ribs or fried chicken for lunch in the company lunchroom for at least a week (no chittlings at all) (this may make us seem to ethnic)

8. No leaving kool-aid packages at the water fountain (this might be a sign that poor folks might be getting a break through)

9. No Cupid Shuffle during breaks (this could indicate a little too much excitement)

10. Please no Moving on Up music (we are going to try to remain humble)

11.No doing the George Jefferson dance (unless you’re in your office with the door closed)

12.Please try not to yell—-BOOOO YAH!

13. Just in case you’re wondering, Doing the Running Man, cabbage patch, or a backhand spring on the highway is 100% okay.

I just want to make sure we’re all on the same page when Obama brings this thing home on November 5th. Now go get your vote on and let’s make this thing happen!!!

Updated...

Dammit, that dang Barack can give a damn speech. Here's a story about the primary, final speech before the end.

Why I didn't vote McKinney

2008-11-04T11:11:00.000-08:00

I posted this over at the wonderful La Alma de Fuego...

I voted for Obama with true excitement and joy, which was colored with anxieties about Palestine, his Christian-based homophobia, the escalated violence against immigrants, and FISA. I have left politics, Democrats tend to be to the right of me. But I’m not voting for him just b/c of policies (though, obviously, overall they are better than McCain’s). It’s never really been about that for me. It’s not a Kerry/Gore/Clinton kind of vote.

My vote is affirmative. It’s a vote for grassroots organizing. It’s a vote for my ancestors. It’s a vote for connection. It’s a vote for moving forward. It’s a vote for smart people being in charge after 8 long, long years of unapologetic stupidity. It’s a vote for low-drama people being in charge after the 8 years of Clinton being all about random psychodrama. I’m over it. We can do better.

I am so excited to do better. My vote is for a better methodology and I think this helps the left. I think it brings our bar up for the quality of work we should be doing. This idea is intuitive, I’m not sure exactly why I think it, but something about dismissing Bush/Cheney as fascists for 8 years has made us a little more lazy than we need to be, I think. They may be fascists, but it’s like we don’t think our analysis has to be complex, subtle, interesting, and on point. Look at the ridiculous arguments about feminism earlier this year. Seriously, Gloria Steinem? Gerry Ferraro? The racism of what they were saying was difficult, but even more so, the sheer laziness of their arguments was absolutely frustrating to me.

So, I think the left might get better too, and that’s another reason why I’m voting for Obama. It’s not just about the issues (though Obama is fond of saying we have to get back to “The Issues”), it’s about affirming a way of doing political work. That’s why I voted for Obama and not simply against the Republican like I did in 92, 96, 00, and 04. The latter is just pragmatic minimizing the number of people who will be hurt by U.S. capitalism, imperialism, and war, while the former is also about figuring out what this win can help us build.

I really respect McKinney. I volunteered for her for a hot minute when she was representative from my district in Atlanta. And although we are closer in agreement on policies, it’s not clear if she’s figured out a way to articulate why her candidacy is critical. I’ve seen her interviewed twice this year and, frankly, I don’t think she’s bringing it the way I think that she can. I don’t know, maybe I’m being too harsh. After being blown away by the biography on Ida B. Wells, my standards for everyone (especially myself) are higher. I think she can do better, even as a marginalized radical green party woc candidate. I’d like to see her run again because I think the experience will help her create a better political organization, and hers won’t just be a protest candidacy, but a serious organizing-based candidacy that gets the votes necessary to give the Green Party the relevancy it needs.

That said, I genuinely believe either choice is a very good one.

Mama, Is This Christmas?

2008-11-04T09:27:00.000-08:00

That's what my 5 year old nephew asked his mother this morning. He senses the excitement, the anticipation, and, yes, something that feels a little like holiday-induced stress. I've been up for a while, but let's start the blog off with some Mavis Staples, just to put things in a little bit more context...

Okay, Last Post Until 'Lection Day

2008-10-31T17:03:00.000-07:00

Now that I've gotten that off my chest, I want to acknowledge here that over the past few weeks, I have noticed more familiar attempts at anti-Black racism against Obama. Yeah, I see you Obamabucks, and white lady who clearly has issues lying about being attacked, and skinhead assassination plot. Nice to see white folks can still get old school on ya.

In the meantime, I have become sick with anticipation. All the Black women in my life -- my hairdresser, my neighbor, my mama, my friends -- everybody seems to be one part excited, two parts anxious. Apparently, we're not alone. Yes, I'd be worried for all of our health, but then I go and check out the lines, the long, long lines, of early voting in my old hometown, the ATL. What's up Black people?

She say, "Who am I voting for? Do you have to ask?" LOL.

And, yes, the white South seems to be cracking a little bit at the reality of Black suffrage. Why Senator Chambliss, you actually sound a little bit scared!

It's all good. I feel good. Well, I feel one part excited and two parts anxious, but I'm a Black woman in the U.S. on the eve of something crazy, so that's to be expected.

So, I plan to watch the returns with my beloved and I'll probably live blog during the whole thing. Until then, I'm signing off with my officially favorite article I have seen about this election, here:
http://ta-nehisicoates.theatlantic.com/archives/2008/10/liberalism_bomaye.php

and this video, which just makes me happy. "If you vote for McCain, you gon have some drama!" Ne'er was there a truer word spoken.

Just so you know...

2008-10-31T16:21:00.000-07:00

...I am a total idiot. I go around and around this Obama/Israel/Palestine thing like a hamster on a wheel, and I don't get ANYWHERE. I got a chance to ask a question about the Israel Annexation Wall to an Obama foreign policy advisor and it was like the man had become a blank wall, blinking at me like I had started to speak Klingon.

And now, somehow, the make-believe "whitey" tape has poetically turned into an actual videotape of Obama giving a perfectly nice toast to Rashid Khalidi, an academic that Obama used to kick it with from time to time. The problem? Khalidi has complex views on Israel and supports Palestinian human rights. Um...okay? And, well Obama said something about, Thanks, dude, for "challenging my thinking." Because Obama is generally a sensitive and smart guy, which is nice. So, what's the problem??? Why is everybody freaking out? (I'm not even providing those links, the whole thing is stupid.) Because the LA Times, which reported this and isn't releasing the offending tape, led with the headline "Friends of Palestine See A Friend In Barack Obama." Oh my god, what if the children hear!

Everytime I think of Israel and Palestine, I keep idiotically, probably arrogantly, thinking that this problem shouldn't be that hard. Just keep the state secular, everyone has equal rights, everyone is treated equally under the law. It's a liberal view, not my normal radical anti-colonialist feminist stuff that I work to live by. Just a boring, equal rights, hum drum idea. It won't even bring the things I really want, like reparations and right of return. Just everyone gets to go to the hospital. Everyone gets to go to school, or place of worship, or job, or whatever. This isn't rocket science. This isn't the normal post-civil rights existential alienation that I usually rock on this blog. It's BASIC.

I guess I just do not get it. I have complex views on Israel/Palestine. I understand that it's enormously psychologically complicated situation, given the crazy history of colonization. But I always think I can see where the rubber hits the road, b/c even though I'm a radical with a penchant for angst, I am also, at heart, a classic Black pragmatist and I understand that you have to keep it moving, so bring on the liberal civil rights while we figure out the other stuff in slower work like social movements and therapy. What exactly is the problem, here?

I mean, seriously. Here's an article from Khalidi in The Nation. He's no radical, except to the extent that he call for basic human rights. Basic dignity. How this has come to be perceived as "radical" remains a mystery to idiotic me.

I feel like I must be listening to a COMPLETELY different frequency.

That Girl Hussein Has Issues

2008-10-10T18:29:00.000-07:00

I was taking a break from writing about the campaign, though it is also true that I am privately obsessed with it. I stopped writing b/c, throughout the year, I've found much of the process terribly nauseating. Nauseating in a Sartrian sense, in that things that I presume have certain meanings, have no intrinsic meaning at all. That gap between what I think is obviously true and what I see actually unfold before me creates an unease.

For example, racism. I figured the McCain campaign would pull on explicit racist themes eventually, but I find the moves that they've made over the past couple of months disorienting. I had braced myself for a kind of standby anti-Black racism. I thought they would hammer on Obama's cocaine use or whatever (I guess if they did that, they'd probably have to deal with Cindy McCain's little addiction problem, and I wouldn't be surprised if John McCain used during his wild days, so this strategy, if used too heavily, might backfire). And, though there's been some of that, the real heat actually looks more like Orientalist racism than anti-Black racism. This helpful website summarizes Edward Said's theory of orientalism as such: The West's depictions of "the Arab" as irrational, menacing, untrustworthy, anti-Western, and dishonest.

Watching the feed from the McCain campaign trail lately, I must say this is feeling awfully familiar...

He's being called a traitor, a terrorist, there are threats to kill him, even the people introducing McCain and Palin make sure to emphasize Obama's middle name, as a kind of accusation. Barack Hussein Obama.

This is less an old school "he used cocaine, he's stupid, he's overly sexual, he likes gangster rap and will probably rob me" kind of anti-Blackman racism and more of an updated "his name is Hussein, he's foreign, he'll wage war on me and America, he's a terrorist" kind of anti-Arabman racism. The latter is more grounded in an explicit xenophobia. And a thirst for war. A somewhat different kind of fear.

In her essay, "Heteropatriarchy and the Three Pillars of White Supremacy," which is in Color of Violence, Andrea Smith further defines Orientalism as such:

The logic of Orientalism marks certain peoples or nations as inferior and as posing a constant threat to the well-being of empire. These peoples are still seen as "civilizations" -- they are not property [like Black people, a la slavery] or "disappeared" [like Native people, a la genocide] -- however, they will always be imaged as permanent foreign threats to empire. This logic is evident in the anti-immigration movements within the United States that target immigrants of color. It does not matter how long immigrants of color reside in the United States, they generally become targeted as foreign threats, particularly during war time. Consequently, Orientalism serves as the anchor for war, because it allows the United States to justify being in a constant state of war to protect itself from its enemies.

Anti-Obama racism has a clarity about its xenophobia that anti-Black racism does not necessarily accomplish. Perhaps it's because these white folks understand that Obama isn't African American in the usual sense. He's weirdly Black. Sure, he has the name, his father was Kenyan and grew up in a Muslim family (though reportedly, he himself did not identify as Muslim), and his stepfather was Indonesian and was "Muslim" in the same way that I'm "Catholic" -- sure in a way, but not really. This may explain the white perception of Arab-y foreignness that comes from "his bloodlines" as one person in the video puts it.

However, I think it could be that Obama's mixedraceness is the subtext of the Orientalist fear. It's 2008, so white folks can't say outright that they think it's fucked up that his mama, this nice white girl from America's heartland, Kansas for god's sakes, went and fucked some dark skinned, foreign (in a bad way), African guy and even had a baby with him. And then did it again with a dark skinned Indonesian guy! The fact that both men were Muslim-y is less important, I think, than the fact that they were not white. (It might have been problematic if they had been white Europeans, but this wouldn't have carried with it the same level of anxiety.) They can't lynch anyone or attack his mother for being sexually unruly because, well, all these people have been dead for a while. All we have is the product of their miscegenation who is about to become the most politically powerful person in the country and the world.

An element of Orientalist fear is that, because the enemy is "civilized" and "sophisticated," white people make the grave error of trusting them, giving them access to the vulnerable white homeland. Ultimately, as the narrative goes, the enemy turns out to be two-faced and betrays white people. Thus, the critical "untrustworthy traitor" element of this sort of racism. This is why the West (particularly, the U.S.) must always be at war with "Asia" (think of the wars on Afghanistan & Iraq; the war on Palestine; the threat of war on Iran, Pakistan, and North Korea; the old wars on Vietnam, Japan, Korea; yellow peril; the anxiety that China will replace the U.S. as the most important economic giant on the globe; the reality that the U.S., which has the most powerful military on the planet, got taken down by a few Saudi Arabian guys with box cutters) -- because no matter what the outsiders say, they are manipulative, they are not to be trusted under any circumstances, and they must be destroyed in order for you to ensure safety. Because they are not considered "backwards" but "evil," (as in "axis of evil") they can manipulate their way into your intimate spaces without you even realizing it.

This fear about violating the private sphere, of course, has all kinds of sexual meaning. It's not your average rape story in which there is a clear villain (a la Birth of a Nation), but more like an Eve/Satan/apple story, in which the trusting party is outmaneuvered, taken advantage of, and experiences overwhelmingly dramatic consequences. I think that anti-Obama racism is rooted in a deep resentment that his mother, a white Kansan woman, produced this foreign Black boy, who somehow, through a mastery of manipulation of the public, bested everybody (including other more racially obedient white women such as Clinton and Palin) and will win the highest office in the land. Obama's mama invited the vampire of Black foreignness into the white home of America, and he seduced her, impregnated her, and their spawn has been taking over ever since.

As you might imagine, this may get the folks a little riled up.

But, of course, Clinton and her peeps knew all of this and weren't afraid to use it. The 3 am ad was never about experience, it was about "Do you really trust this foreign outsider motherfucker to protect you and your white blond curly haired children when the enemy attacks us in your sacred white hetero home in the middle of the fucking night when you least expect it?" Her people were the architects of this kind of deeply racialized/sexualized attack.

And, let's not forget that Obama predicted this as well...

Hilariously, after Obama gave that speech in July 2008, which anticipated all of this madness 3 months prior, he was immediately accused of playing "the race card". Oh yes, wait for it...
from the bottom of the deck!

(Just so you know, if I ever play the race card, I intend to use sleight of hand to obscure the part of the deck from which I will pull said card, as to not reveal how I ultimately transform the card into a beautiful parakeet. Obama can only hope for such skill.)

Probably, if you listen closely, you can hear the rhythms of both (and probably other) kinds of racisms harmonizing within the fear... (Check out the random shout out to ACORN -- a lefty economic justice organization that organizes a lot of Black folks -- in the video.) Just more evidence that Black folks and Arab folks need to be strategizing together as we learn more about how these racisms, though maybe somewhat distinct, feed into and shape each other.

So maybe it's not a Sartrian problem, maybe it's the usual problem of racism always being more complicated than I think and the nausea I feel is more about existential angst over what seems like perpetual racial violence. The process of thinking through all of this madness fills me with gloom and anxiety. Now that it looks likely (though not at all certain) that Obama will win, which I hope he will, I have a quiet worry about the potential, maybe even inevitable, backlash.

(Man, you just can not win with some folks...)

Modifying My Tuner...

2008-09-09T17:08:00.000-07:00

I've noticed that I can't shake a feeling of nausea after watching the Republican convention and the public consequently lose its ever loving mind.

So, as usual, I need to modify my tuner. Figure out what's been pouring into my brain and what needs to be jazzed around. I think I'd like to pursue some reflections on Black pop music and sexuality. First up, is this hot, hot tune, "American Boy," from Estelle out of the UK, with a visit from Kanye West. It caught my ear because of the witty sexual assertiveness of Estelle in this song. I've been going back and listening to music from the 90s, and then way, way back to music from the 20s and 30s, thinking about the ways in which Black women singers express complicated sexual boundaries, that are playful, negotiable, but somehow very direct.

I also think the club sound which is evident in the base of the song mixed with the R&B front of it is a compelling combination. I also like that the song isn't hyper-produced (I'm looking at you, Mimi & Jermaine Dupri!), and she doesn't hit all the notes perfectly, which makes the whole effect a little rougher than a pure club/disco song it could have become. Which is great! Plus, Kanye's lyrics are sweet.

The addition of Kanye is also interesting. On Graduation, he seemed to be articulating a kind of frustration with relationships: a simultaneous desire for romantic love and sexual promiscuity, which often don't work together. Andre 3000's The Love Below was a more comprehensive study of this theme (eventually I'll write about that), but Kanye's trademark seems to be more generally about his inner contradictions. Here he is sort of flirting with this woman, but the woman isn't so interested in things American women are stereotypically attracted to (fame, money), so he's a little stuck. I like songs that have a little sexualized call/response between men and women, and the men get a little flummoxed! Particularly when the flummox is happening because of the relaxed intensity of Black feminine cool, which I find so appealing and is beautifully performed by Miss Estelle here...

Corny, Absurdist Humor

2008-07-31T17:10:00.000-07:00

Which, of course, is why I'm attracted to it like a moth to fire...

"To all the real terrorists out there, I say I'm sorry for gettin all up on your list."

Hilarious!

Well...I have to entertain myself somehow, especially since Alison Bechdel took a sabbatical from her Dykes To Watch Out For strip for who knows how long. And, until Obama becomes president, I can't enslave the white race and force them to draw hilarious cartoons about a community of lefty dykes, and then apologize for doing so hundreds of years later.

So, until then, get your war on.

Her Afro, Herself

2008-07-14T17:21:00.000-07:00

Yeah, okay, I can see why folks are irritated...

...but I have to admit, I think it's kind of funny. I mean the bin Laden portrait, and, okay, maybe the machine gun (lol), are over the top, but much of what I see in the photo is rather an improvement. Barack as a Muslim - sounds great! Maybe Islam will center him the way it did for Malcolm. Flag in the fireplace - yep, there are days when I could go for a little flag burning myself.

But what's really interesting to me is that the artist gave Michelle an afro. I thought we were post-race...are afros really still a trigger for white fear? I mean, my own afro can be a little much to handle without the right conditioning, but in the same category as machine guns and Osama Bin Laden? Seriously?

Which makes me wonder - if Michelle really did have an afro, would Barack have been as successful as he has been in this campaign? The issue about afros, as this New Yorker cover does such a good job demonstrating, is that it doesn't only fail to fit Euro-normative feminine beauty standards, but to choose to have an afro instead of straightening your hair is read as rejecting those standards. It's an affirmative political act, representing a failure to assimilate and, thus, lacking authentic Americanness (when "America" is just code for "white"). It's like speaking Spanish. Here you thought you were just speaking the language that your mama taught you, or wearing the hair you happened to be born with, a passive default position. But in the world in which your tongue and your kinks are interpreted as "foreign," "dangerous," "bad," and "ugly," you are perceived as aggressively asserting some kind of hostility. I mean, I assume Michelle's hair would look something like what's on the cover of that magazine if she didn't have regular trips to relaxer-station. I'm not trippin, I don't judge Black women's hair choices, especially since I have DONE IT ALL, but isn't it interesting (and completely unsurprising) that her un-chemicalized, unfucked-with hair is the hair presented as terrorist hair.

And ultimately, no matter how straight Michelle's hair is, it's as if white folks can see right through it.

Yes, her hair may be tamed by Dark & Lovely, but her soul, folks. Her soul is a straight up natural. Michelle Obama is an Angry. Black. Woman. and no amount of lye can disguise her true nature.

I know this is supposed to be the part when the Obama campaign says, hey, Michelle's not angry, she's just a normal American mom, blah, blah, and this kind of stereotyping is racist and sexist, blah, blah... This gets complicated because, though I know it's white folks' racism and sexism driving the narrative, I don't think it's necessary to reject the fact that the sister does seem to have a critique (and a rigorous one) of racism in America. So I, for one, hope that she is in touch -- and stays in touch -- with her inner afro.

Lord knows that'll be a critical place for her to gain some strength as this madness we call "the political process" carries on...

Forward Moving

2008-06-08T17:24:00.000-07:00

On Wednesday morning, the first thing I did was the math. Not the math about delegates and popular votes and so on. The number of years from 1865, when the Thirteenth Amendment abolished slavery, to 2008, when a Black person was able to secure the nomination for President of a major party. 143 years between chattel slavery and likely winning the most powerful position in the world.

I thought about resistance. Slave revolts. Antilynching movements. Pro-education movements. Civil rights and anti-apartheid and Black feminist and anti-prison movements. I thought about Ida and Malcolm. DuBois and Cooper. Giants and all of the millions and millions of the rest of us, pushing it forward. Bitterly and joyously, pushing time forward, building on our genius and making manifest our humanity. 143 years is so incredibly short. Everything feels extraordinary. I can't help but be deeply moved.

It is barely even about Obama. It's about a hopeful whisper thrown into the wind, somehow confident that the vision will live past this moment and on to the next. A confidence about survival.

Martin Luther King, Jr. once told Nichelle Nichols, better known as Uhura on Star Trek, that she should stay on the show even though her role was small. Why? Because, he explained, it was important for Black people to be able to conceptualize themselves existing and being treated with dignity and respect in the future. It was a strategy to address the existential anxieties of Black people. He understood that we needed to know that we would not only exist, which, given oppression, is an open question, but exist in a context that recognizes our full humanity and our capacity for excellence. We needed a vision to help give the present struggle meaning, a reason to struggle on and onward.

Obama isn't the personification of Black liberation, but this accomplishment is an undeniable breathtaking milestone. Still, when I first began to blog about him, I talked about how his candidacy somehow pushes me to take myself, my life, and my work more seriously. It's about pressing for a future existence. There is something incredibly powerful about the possibility of taking genocide/suicide off the table. Indeed, in an interview with Brian Williams on Wednesday, Obama reflects on the importance of the moment: "Probably the most powerful story I heard was today at a conference, a woman came up to me...She said her son teaches in an inner-city school in San Francisco and said that he has seen a change in behavior among the young African-American boys there in terms of how they think about their studies." Yes, a change in how we think of the day to day grind of it all in the context of survival and excellence seeming true and possible. Those boys understand what I've come to understand; that if we survive this catastrophe, this Maafa, then I suppose we'd better have a plan.

Because 143 years is brief, brief. So crazily brief. And what I've learned this week is that time is not something to be taken for granted.

The Place Where We Live Now Is Idea

2008-05-31T11:08:00.001-07:00

In Memoriam, Paula Gunn Allen (Laguna Pueblo/Sioux)

Some Like Indians Endure

i have it in my mind that
dykes are indians

they're a lot like indians
they used to live as tribes
they owned tribal land
it was called the earth

they were massacred
lots of times
they always came back
like the grass
like the clouds
they got massacred again

they thought caringsharing
about the earth and each other
was a good thing
they rode horses
and sang to the moon

but i don't know
about what was so longago
and it's now that dykes
make me think i'm with indians
when i'm with dykes

because they bear
witness bitterly
because they reach
and hold
because they live every day
with despair laughing
in cities and country places
because earth hides them
because they know the moon

because they gather together
enclosing
and spit in the eye of death

indian is an idea
some people have
of themselves
dykes is an idea some women
have of themselves
the place where we live now
is idea
because whiteman took
all the rest
because father
took all the rest
but the idea which
once you have it
you can't be taken
for somebody else
and have nowhere to go
like indians you can be
stubborn

the idea might move you on,
ponydrag behind
taking all your loves and
children maybe downstream

maybe beyond the cliffs
but it hangs in there
an idea
like indians
endures

it might even take your
whole village with it
stone by stone
or leave the stones
and find more
to build another village
someplace else

Campaign Anxieties, Part 8: A Sweetie By Any Other Name

2008-05-18T17:33:00.000-07:00

I keep trying to post this here, but my comment keeps getting eaten up. Oh well, no matter, I gots me own blog.

Much has been discussed about sweetiegate. Briefly, a reporter was asking Obama a question about helping workers as he was walking somewhere and he said something like, "Hold on a minute, sweetie, something, something..." I couldn't make it out, but the video is here.

When I saw the video, the calling of the reporter, "sweetie," seemed less "man talking down to woman" and more "gay dude being overly familiar with some lady." He sounds effete. He is effete. Dude, Obama is so gay.

Did you see him on The View? All these white women inappropriately herding up to Obama and sexually objectifying him. Barbara friggin Walters said "You're very sexy." Really, Barb? You're gonna tell a running presidential candidate that he's sexy?? (I love how Whoopi looks totally uncomfortable and kinda freaked out.) But the thing I really noticed was how Obama responded - limp wrist handfanning. Seriously, could the man be any more of a lady?

If Bill Clinton was the first Black president, I don't see why Obama can't be the first gay president. Well...second after Lincoln.

So...a couple of lessons. Gender identity and sexual objectification is complicated by race. It's not that the formula of "man talks down to woman" doesn't exist, it's that it's not static. Sexual violence is not just a phenomenon of patriarchy, but of white supremacy. White women participate in sexual objectification and violence of Black people as a manifestation of white supremacy. I think we saw that most clearly with Lynndie England. I'm not saying that the Barbara Walters thing is a HUGE deal, it's not, but it's important to flag the presumptuousness and entitlement that white women had over his Black male body at that moment.

Also, it gets a little complicated interpreting what this means in terms of patriarchy when the dude is so lady-like. I don't want to argue that gay men or effeminate men can't be sexist to women, but I do want to suggest that what looks like sexism may have a different meaning to it than it appears if you're not looking at the situation through an intersectional lens.

I'm glad he apologized. It wasn't cool. But, I do want to complicate the critique a bit more here...

Campaign Anxieties, Part 7: Authenticities

2008-05-18T16:21:00.000-07:00

The whole thing is pretty funny, but I especially appreciate the commentary on Obama beginning at 2:53.

We consume him the way we want to consume him. On the other hand, Clinton was doing her thing from the back of a pick up truck and dropping her g's. She constructs an image, people receive it practically with no question (well, except for maybe Jon Stewart). Even though we all suffer from the frustration and alienation of not being able to control the ways other perceive us, it is true that white folks, even white women, have more space to construct their own image just so. There are fewer static narratives etched in the stone of our collective subconscious about white folks, their complex humanity is assumed not argued for. Black folks...not so much.

Oppression confines our identities to external dominant meanings. Our self-asserted identity lacks authority and legitimacy. This creates a despair that, for some of us, is very difficult to negotiate. Obama does seem open and ready to be authentic. It's true, that's partly what draws me to him too, even given the ways he is problematic. However, it's painful to see that openness masticated and digested into something racist and ugly that millions of people easily take as truth.

Sigh...if he wins, good on us, but I've got a long four years ahead of me. I wonder if, after school is over, I can figure out a way to engage this toxic process without it feeling like some kind of public psychological warfare...

Campaign Anxieties, Part Six: My Obama, Myself

2008-05-01T17:15:00.001-07:00

I feel down. The presidential campaign is toxic, I can't deal with it anymore. I'm feeling deeply bitter (yes, bitter) at the Clintons' racism - both casual and extravagant. (Note to Bill: You might remember that slavery was abolished in 1863, thus, you no longer own me, I don't care if your office is in my fucking kitchen.) I'm grudging against Obama and his inability to practice what he preaches when it comes to his latest dealings with Jeremiah Wright. I am astonished at Hillary Clinton's hypocrisy with regards to Florida and Michigan. *Update: Plus her feminist promise to "obliterate Iran" can't be overlooked.* One day, I obsess over media and blogs, the next, the thought of looking at a computer repels me. Elections are gross. Oppression is too predictable. Everything seems ugly to me.

The excitement that I wrote about before is wearing off. My cynicism is returning.

I think I am unreasonably ashamed of Obama's imperfections. I know he's human, but you know how when you hear that the local bank's been robbed, you just hope the person wasn't black or brown? As if that person's actions was a reflection of you because you are black or brown? Sometimes I think I want Clinton to win because, though it would be less interesting, and, I think, more damaging, it would also be less personally painful b/c her inevitable errors wouldn't be as psychological meaningful to me. I don't identify with her as a woman. I see that she is one and I know that I am one, but the same kind of familiar identification doesn't exist. It would never occur to me that her actions are a reflection of me. But Obama is different. I over-identify. If he wins, that's 4-8 years of me being totally emotionally whirlwinded at his every move, at their every perception of him, accurate or otherwise.

I'm so mad at Obama about the stupid "bitter" comments! It's taken me a while to realize this. It's not that he's wrong, of course he's right. Anti-immigrant racism, religious fundamentalism, and gun rights extremism are, in part, fueled by the economic marginalization experienced by white working class people. That's a controversial idea? It's not that he's elitist, or, you know, any more than any other multi-millionaire politician. (Just to be clear, Clinton and McCain are millionaires many, many times over, and Obama just got his millions recently from his books. But! Dude's still a multi-millionaire...) Actually, if you look at all of his remarks, he was making a broader point about nihilism and oppression. He didn't just talk about white working class folks. Come to think of it, he didn't talk about "white working class folks," as such, at all. He talked about rural communities in Pennsylvania, and we have raced that population ourselves. He also talked about poor Black kids in "urban areas." That was actually the group that was specifically raced in his response. But, because we are enormously racist in this country, the only group that was prioritized in the media digestion of Obama's remarks was the group that we could race as white. It's okay to pathologize Black kids, it's not okay to pathologize people who are probably white. Get it? Because the first group is less than human and the second group are Americans. Okay, do you get it now?

Pathology aside, I think that many of us are feeling kinda nihilistic after the last eight disastrous years, so I think it could have been an interesting point, if he made it, say, in a classroom. However, he can't make intellectual observations like that b/c he is Black, the U.S. is racist, and he's trying to run for President, and so saying this kind of stuff which is inflammatory is a stupid move. It's such a stupid mistake! Come on! He should know better. Mask it up, Obama. Masking is a grand Black American tradition, we do it for survival. If you must be genuine, please do so only in prepared and reviewed remarks, not in off the cuff comments. You're making me crazy.

That said, I am still on my break from politics, b/c it's too overwhelming, I'm too invested, and, like love, it is a losing game. I continue to practice re-orientation, re-centering. I want to support Obama, but that scene has got to be in the margin of my worldview, because it's just too batshit crazy right now. Even for me.

For BFP...

2008-04-18T18:56:00.000-07:00

...and my other sisters. This is for the grand project of reorientation: orienting away from fighting with folks who don't want to get it, and towards organizing ourselves and our communities. Don't let the haters get you down, you're ALL THAT, so go on brush your shoulders off!

A Brief Note On "Sisterhood"

2008-04-17T18:43:00.000-07:00

After the controversy of bfp and "x", bfp wrote the following about feminism as a movement:

There is no “feminist movement” because the work being done is not just conflicting with the work of other “sisters”—it’s directly negating it.

Last month was Women's History Month and I settled down to watch a PBS documentary on Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, aka Women's History Month du jour. That was okay, I know that Women's History Month really means White Women's History Month, onward to Anthony and Stanton, let's see what I can learn!

The white women historians interviewed in the documentary were awed with the subject matter, and, because I am a sucker for documentaries and infomercials, I became invested in the story too because I like to join in the fun. Man, that Susan sure is committed to the struggle for suffrage - good for her! Wow, that Elizabeth seemed like a lot of fun, I could've totally had a beer with her!

So, there I was, hanging out in the story, until we get to the debate about the 15th amendment which didn't provide suffrage for women, but did for Black men. Okay, I can see how that's super disappointing, I thought, that's cool, conflict is normal. But then Stanton responds thusly:

"it's a serious question whether we had better stand aside and see 'Sambo' walk into the kingdom [of civil rights] first"
and
"it would be better to be the slave of an educated white man than of an ignorant black one"
and
"The Republican cry of 'Manhood Suffrage' creates an antagonism between black men and all women that will culminate in fearful outrages on womanhood, especially in the southern states"
and
"While the dominant party have with one hand lifted up TWO MILLION BLACK MEN and crowned them with the honor and dignity of citizenship, with the other they have dethroned FIFTEEN MILLION WHITE WOMEN - their own mothers and sisters, their own wives and daughters - and cast them under the heel of the lowest orders of manhood."

Okay. Good, that's right. I sat up and thought to myself, "Of course, you blooming idiot, you couldn't have a beer with Stanton b/c, assuming in this scenario that you're still Black, you would, um, still be Black!"

Misorientation. I laughed to myself - I am SUCH A SUCKER! Pulled in with sweet sugary promises of sisterhood and solidarity, I let myself fall into a narrative about the oppression of women - women as a category that crosses all lines of race and nation - and how I am part of a collective project with all women to end that oppression. And then I get a bitter reminder of how that project isn't collective at all. That white women truly are a different category from women of color, that there is something about the boundary of white supremacist conquest that is deeply significant that interrupts the political category of "woman" as if we could all be neatly stuck under one umbrella. No.

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.

So, you get pissed. And you say things like, "Fuck Seal Press," and you use malcolmxian terms like "white devils," tongue only partly in cheek, and so on because it's not just about Stanton or Anthony or Seal Press or Amanda or Robin Morgan or whoever. The rage is about all of them combined. It gets old. The pattern doesn't change, it stays the same. The pattern doesn't change, it stays the same. The pattern doesn't change, it stays the same. The pattern doesn't change.

It stays the same.

So, you have to fucking change.

And I'm not saying that white women are "bad," that's silly. There have been several white women in my life who have helped care for me when I was lowest and they remain dear friends. But they are not "sisters" in the way that feminists mean to assert "sisterhood." They are foreigners with whom I have a close, but negotiated, intimacy, not unlike my relationship with my close white male friend. White women can not get the benefit of the doubt with me b/c of their gender. That would not be wise dealings and one would be in danger of exposing herself to a serious case of vertigo.

So, to the chorus I'd also like to add: "fuck assumed sisterhood by white feminists," because that shit, my friends, is the quickest way to the head beating on wall moment(s) that truly can't be good for any of us.

Ah, Re-Centering

2008-03-21T23:24:00.000-07:00

Re-orienting myself to a place where I don't have to make excuses for obvious human things, like black rage, and legitimacy is assumed and not pleaded for...

Erykah Badu - Love Of My Life (An Ode To Hip Hop)
Uploaded by Erykah-Badu

Campaign Anxieties, Part Five: Oh My Friggin God, Is Obama Black???!!?!

2008-03-18T18:24:00.001-07:00

Just posted this at bfp's/la chola's:

So, I heard that the Wright video was going around, and I caught bits and pieces of it a week and a half ago, but I just thought it was one of those things and it would all blow over. But apparently, it’s causing some kind of crisis for white obama supporters. If you look at the comments on the news blogs and youtube, they seem to be kind of freaking out. “I voted for Obama in the primary, but not again!” and so on.

I think there’s a hostility about the idea that Obama is secretly Black! And goddammit, he’s been Black the WHOLE TIME! All this talk of unity and postrace and multiracial background and Obama’s “I’m every woman” schtick kind of came to a halt when they found out that he went to a Black church, with Black people, that had a Black pastor, that spoke very Blackly, and said Jesus Christ himself was a Black man.

There was a little of this when Oprah endorsed Obama. This intense hostility that she was only endorsing him b/c he’s Black and she’s Black and they have Black solidarity and they’re Black together, doubling the Blackness, and, well, that shit ain’t fair b/c, frankly, Oprah and Obama are both supposed to be postrace in white folks’ minds.

Then when Obama won southern states with lots of Black people, folks were hostile b/c he has an advantage with Black people. Why are so many Black people voting anyways. I mean, who do they think they ARE??? Voting. For another Black man. For president. Totally unfair.

It’s like there’s been some kind of glazing over and, through the Wright video, folks kind of woke up to the reality that this Black dude, who’s totally hanging out with other Black people, some of whom are kinda pissed, is gonna be in the friggin White House. Oh. Hell. To Tha No.

When I saw today’s video, I was blown away. I really was. I was also uncomfortable with all the distancing (my church has folks praising the lord in a way that might be jarring to white folks, but it’s okay, don’t be scared! we won’t eat you!) and the 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, EIGHT flags (god, we get it Obama, you’re all about America, jeezus), but I really liked two amazing things about the speech:

1) It was stunningly frank. I can’t believe how brave he was to be so frank. Frankly, white people, we talk like this all the time in private. Surprise!
2) I really like the argument that just b/c folks close to us say some shit we don’t like don’t mean we’re gonna abandon them. Deal with it.

I have never wanted someone to win an election as badly as I want this person to win. I’ve signed up to his campaign and I’m hella making phone calls this weekend. His politics aren’t super wonderful, but they work for me at this point and I am feeling very Black all of a sudden, and super, super loyal. I see all these white folks trippin out and I just want to start writing checks and knocking on doors. I want to balance out some of the hatefulness that he’s experiencing b/c the white folks found out about his secret Blackness. Now that it’s all out in the open, I feel less removed and more like I better get it together and help this brother out. If I don’t, I know I’ll regret it later.

Campaign Anxieties, Part Four: I'm A Radical, Stop Making Me Like You, Dammit!

2008-03-18T13:18:00.001-07:00

It is shocking, shocking, that a person who could say things like this actually has a shot at the U.S. presidency.

I'm so bloody cranky today, not enough sleep, writing a paper on racism because, you know, that's what I do. Then I get this and...I don't know. I don't want to feel hopeful today, Barack, why can't you just leave me be? Why are you harassing me with your bizarrely frank speech about race? I feel guilty enough about my post about feminist loyalty below and the obvious contradictions I'm living with as I simmer in rage at Hillary Clinton and every other white feminist who's out to get me.

Damn you, this speech is hot. I don't even care about the stupid patriotism, this speech is hot, you are smart, and I just don't even care about all of the political contradictions. I am giving myself permission to just dig you and that's the way it is. I'm a radical feminist, I question the legitimacy of the U.S. as a nation state, and I'm fixin to go volunteer for Barack Obama. So there.

Campaign Anxieties, Part Three: Extreme Racism

2008-03-17T00:26:00.000-07:00

I feel like I might be going crazy.

**UPDATE! HERE'S A VIDEO THAT WAS JUST E-MAILED TO ME:**

Oh my god, all of a sudden, I feel a lot more sane. It's not just me that sees it!

Campaign Anxieties, Part Two: Feminist Loyalty?

2008-03-16T10:51:00.000-07:00

It would have never occurred to me to vote for Hillary Clinton because I’m a feminist. Even if Obama was not in the picture. I’m not one of those folks who hate on Hillary Clinton because I expect her to conform to some idealized category of woman, but I do have a good memory. I still remember how shocked I was when Bill Clinton decided to implement welfare reform in 1995. The whole project seemed to defy logic. Not because I was confused about Bill Clinton’s race and subsequent race loyalty – I wasn’t and I’m not. But because the policy didn’t make any fucking sense. Force poor single mothers to get a job without providing childcare? I mean, that’s just not rational. Going to school no longer counted in lieu of getting a dead end gig when we knew that the one factor that tracked the little bit of class mobility that people have in the U.S. is attainment of education? I just didn’t get it, I mean, besides the scapegoating of poor women, primarily poor women of color, the “reform” itself seemed so fucking shortsighted. It may have put more people to work in bad jobs, but that's just creating more exploitation, not ending poverty.

But that wasn’t all. The attacks on women of color by the Clinton Administration just went on and on and on in that administration. The Crime Bill. NAFTA. Not to mention Lani Guinier and Jocelyn Elders and Marian Wright Edelman. I mean, if there were benefits for U.S. women overall during the Clinton Administration, I’m sure poor women of color could barely make time in their busy schedules to celebrate, what with being targeted for incarceration in overwhelming numbers due to the grotesque War on Drugs and ever-expanding prison crisis, negotiating the crown of thorns that come with welfare queendom, and being exploited and murdered at the maquiladoras over the border thanks to “free” trade.

I realize that these things happened under the Bill Clinton Administration and Bill and Hillary are two different people. I get that marriage isn’t merging. Let Hillary be judged by the content of her own policies, not by the color of her husband’s loyalty. Except that Hillary supported and supports these fucked up policies. That’s the thing about the whole 35 years of experience thing she keeps talking about. That 35 years counts 8 years in the White House. Her attempt at trying to figure out health care always seemed weighted down by the fact that her partner next door in the Oval Office was ensuring that women needed that now failed health care plan more than ever. Kind of a leaky bucket, no?

Let's see, she supported (and supports) welfare reform. She initially supported the Crime Bill in 1994, but now she wants to "review" it to look into this whole devastation of Black communities thing. Similarly, with NAFTA, she initially enthusiastically supported it, but now says she would slightly reform it. She seems to be arguing that though she supported these bills (which, in my mind, have a direct causal relation on the early deaths of many poor people in the U.S. and abroad) at one time, she'd slightly reform them when she's president. That position is not a convincing one. She's not the same as Bill Clinton, but she actively lobbied for Bill Clinton's worst pieces of legislation, helping them pass. She's the one setting her past work on front and center stage, not me, so we are right to hold her accountable for the devastation to women's lives that took place in the Bill Clinton administration.

That said, I did think it was mildly interesting that she was a woman running for president, though I couldn’t imagine how she would win because, for some reasons that are somewhat unfair, she is hated so. But it never, ever occurred to me that I, as a feminist, should be loyal to her because she’s a woman. Why should I when she hasn’t been loyal to women who look like me? For me, she and her announcement and her neoliberal record faded into the white noise of U.S. political discourse. We’ll see how far she gets, I guess I’ll figure out what to do in November.

But then, only after Obama won the first primary and proved that he was someone to be taken seriously, not just some random Black kid they could pat on the head and put on the side while they coronated their queen, the white feminists started to really lose their heads. Gloria Steinem’s massively stupid New York Times letter and Robin Morgan’s obnoxious essay and New York State NOW’s silly statement and Geraldine Ferraro’s increasing ridiculousness hit the air, demanding my feminist loyalty to gender over race. Sexism is worse than racism! Women are never frontrunners! Barack Obama is an empty shell of a man! And, anyways, he’s got that unfair Black advantage!

Whathuh? What the fuck? I was totally taken aback. You want to know something funny - the first time I read Steinem's article, I thought it was an ironic piece. I thought she was joshing me! But alas, I should be so lucky. And so, I really feel inclined to say that all of these women can seriously kiss my black feminist ass. Seriously. Just when I thought women of color feminism –- you know, intersectionality and all that stuff -– was finally legitimate even in mainstream white feminist space, white feminists demonstrated that they are actually more loyal to their race than to any kind of meaningful feminist politic.

(Hmm…I’m noticing I’m using way more profanity than usual in this post. I guess the idea that I should be guilted, as a feminist, to be loyal to another woman that I think has sketchy politics must hit a nerve.)

Sometimes, I think I should just give up on feminism. Then Andrea Smith reminds me that feminism doesn’t come from these people, they co-opted it. As she says, Native women have been feminists since 1492 – when you center women of color, you realize that we’ve been working on this in the context of colonialism and racism always. Indeed, black feminist intersectionality theory is older than fabulous Kimberle Crenshaw in 1991, and older than the wonderful Combahee River Collective statement in 1974. It was being broken down by Ida B. Wells and Anna Julia Cooper at the end of the 19th century. And that’s just the shit that was written down.

Maybe I get so frustrated with these kinds of white feminists at times because I just don’t want to be associated with them, I find their politics bizarre and offensive. I want to be clear that Steinem and Morgan and Ferraro are not talking to me, not talking about me, don’t fucking care about me, and I owe them, wait let me do a calculation, yes that’s what I thought: ZERO. I certainly do not owe Hillary Clinton a damn thing.

I do think that the media’s sexism towards Hillary Clinton is messed up – I always have. I think it’s disgusting the way they treated her in 1992 all the way through her time in the White House and I think it’s gross the way they treat her now. But, I also understand that the media’s misogyny towards Hillary Clinton is but a tiny fraction of the vile hatefulness that the media directs towards women of color that both Clintons helped drive. I also think it’s bizarre (though predictable) that white feminists keep arguing that the media isn’t being racist towards Barack Obama. The racism towards Obama in the media is explicit, extreme, ongoing, and very, very clear to me. Could it be that the bright light of their whiteness is blinding them to the obvious reality of racism that Hillary Clinton herself (not just her supporters, but them too!) exercises??

Anywho…I guess you could say that I’m a little resentful! I think that white feminists are extraordinarily entitled to my loyalty to them. That entitlement gets framed as “solidarity politics,” but I see it as just same old, same old white entitlement. That is, the call for loyalty from white feminists for Hillary Clinton seems driven more by their race than their gender. So, I not only feel unmoved, but I feel deeply irritated. Each white feminist appeal to my feminist commitment makes me a little more hostile. If Hillary Clinton wants me to vote for her based on her conservative democrat politics, then make the argument. Go ahead, scare me about what the inexperienced childish negro will say when he gets the 3 am call in the White House. Talk to me about how awesome your experience is and how I can trust you even though you voted to give Bush the power to invade Iraq because of what you call “bad intelligence” when millions of people around the world were screaming at the top of our lungs before your vote that the intelligence was bad. No, seriously, break it down for me Hillary. How should these ideas compel me, you know, as a fellow woman?

I don’t think I will vote for her if she gets the nomination. It’s not only about her politics, I’ve held my nose and submitted my ballot before, I’m sure I’ll do it again many times. I’m just having a hard time imagining voting for a person with so much racism in her campaign. I don’t think I can stomach it. Also, frankly, I wouldn’t be excited to have her and Bill’s white hetero psychosexual drama be playing itself out again in the White House. Does anyone really need that shit? I have a good memory. I know how the republicans eat that shit up and I know how stupid we can be in this country, we don’t make sure the media and politicians get off of that (or, more to the point, we enable the media and politicians to get off on that) and move on to things like building the fucking levees.

I could be being unfair. Why should Hillary have to pay for the ickiness of her husband? Yes, that sucks and it’s not fair, but it’s not fair for everyone. If anyone else had relationship drama, they’d practically be automatically disqualified. Well, of course, except if you’re Bill Clinton.

So, no, I don’t want to go back to worrying about how what’s happening with missus and master in the big house is ultimately going to lead to more brutality for everyone else. My feminism doesn’t demand a loyalty to that. I don’t condone the racism of her campaign, my feminism actually demands that I refuse that. And I reject white feminist entitlement to my loyalty, that’s definitely a no go. Goodbye to all that. Since 1492.

Campaign Anxieties, Part 1: Awake

2008-02-20T22:33:00.000-08:00

If I'm honest, I'll admit that the anxiety began in November 2004. I was stunned when Bush was re-elected. Stunned beyond belief. Yes, I know that they stole it. Again. But that it was even close enough, that they got almost half the voting public to vote for him after...everything. I remember standing in my kitchen after the results, slowly washing dishes, crying because I was surrounded by people who were okay with killing tens of thousands, and then hundreds of thousands, of people for reasons that I couldn't tell you why. How could they vote for him after Abu Ghraib? Are they pro-rape, pro-murder? Who are these people sharing pop culture, public transportation, movie theaters, and grocery stores with me?

I felt alienated and disgusted with myself, my neighbors, this government. Full of rage and sick with grief. Then the spring of 2005, out of an urgent yearning for hope and connection, I made bad choices that had the very painful consequence of my most vulnerable self affronted by ugly racism, which hardened me. I was already a cynic, but I was becoming more than that. I was becoming hateful. Deeply in pain and distrusting of white folks in general. And then August 2005, the hurricanes. My heart became a cold stone of seething rage. I could barely contain it. I felt the hope seeping out of me, like sweating in a sauna, I just wanted to lay down and not feel anything.

Some years have passed, and I have recovered from some of this. Or at least I have figured out ways to negotiate my rage so that I can live my life. But what this amounts to is a kind of numbness. Since 2004, I look at news as if it's being told to me through a long tunnel. I read the internet, I watch television, I'm on the phone with people, but I can't bare to let myself really feel it. Israel invades Lebanon. Poor people locked out of New Orleans. The anti-immigrant backlash escalates to intensified racial violence. Coca Cola in Colombia. Massacres in Africa. The school shootings. The news of sexual violence in my family. There is Bush & co still on my tv screen, day, after day, after day...

Though I am invested in humanity in a kind of philosophical sense, the day-to-day investment is shelved. I am much too exhausted. I am moving forward in my political and scholarly work, not out of an honest belief that things will get better, but because I feel morally obligated to do so. So, cynicism. Inappropriate humor. Sometimes, sloppy work. Incomplete papers. Errors in judgment. Not behaving at optimum level because I have put the real world, the sad world, at a distance out of necessity.

And so, that's where Barack Obama comes in. First, a poem:

Yes, good job Darian Dauchan, well done. I am a radical, and I don't kid myself. I know much of Obama's politics do not match my own. His politics on Palestine especially suck. He's a capitalist, of course. As much as he likes to characterize himself as a Washington outsider, he's very much an insider.

But, when he speaks, when he smiles, when he explains things, there is something about this person that startles me. It is at the highest level of irony that this Black man kind of appeared out of seemingly nowhere and started talking about "hope" at a time when I felt most hopeless about not just the U.S. government, but even my own movement on the left. That kind of irony should not be ignored. In fact, I consider it a potential sign from god, who I take to have an excellent sense of humor, that this guy, this really weird random guy, starts talking about hope so compellingly at the exact moment when I am wandering around campus looking at the blue, blue sky wondering about whether hope is necessary for survival seeing as how I don't have any.

He is Black. That is also compelling. His wife behaves in this hilarious way that is kind of "over it all." I find that very appealing! And his politics are as left as they could be in order to get elected at this moment. That is to say, this ain't Colin Powell we're talking about. So, I kind of woke up a bit. Watched him. Paid attention. When he announced he was running, I was like, yeah right, whatever dude. The same when Hillary Clinton announced. Uh huh, like that's going to happen. There was no way I was taking either of them seriously. But here we are.

The reason I am moved by him is because, if he is elected, I feel, in some sense, elected. There is a certain level of freedom in hopelessness. A freedom to be not as hardworking as I should be. To be sloppy and inappropriate. Conversely, when I imagine this person as a leader, my leader, I feel a certain urgency to get my shit together. He makes me want to be a better organizer. I want to mobilize everyone to get him to get his shit together around Palestine, prisons, and poverty. I feel escalated. I feel challenged. I feel like my work matters.

I don't yet feel hopeful, though. Because, as I'll write in future posts about this topic, as the campaigns have trudged along, the discourse about the campaigns, the race/gender drama of it all, is the most anxiety producing exercise I've ever seen. Also, I am braced for the worst. Assassination (god, please, no). Or his inevitable serious fuck ups if he wins. So, not hopeful...

But, I feel an unmistakable temptation of reinstating my investment, anxieties be damned. To take my work, to take myself, a little more seriously.

There is a real potential here of becoming awake.

Honey.

2008-01-30T12:21:00.000-08:00

Sweet little video...

The possibilities of black femininities...expansive.

reprieve

2008-01-25T15:07:00.000-08:00

As a remedy to my persistant and reasonable anxiety, I have been coached to breathe more intentionally. The platform of this coaching has been a cooptation of Eastern spiritual wisdom. Thus, I yoga. I meditate. I visualize inner peace. I open myself to nirvana.

In many ways, ridiculous and inappropriate. Politically problematic. Culturally dishonest. Theft. Plus, there's all the white people in yoga class.

A consequence of not taking antidepressants is that my physical body is so much more present. Anxiety causes nausea. My facial expressions and body language more easily betray my thoughts. Every twitch of the muscle is heavy with message. Every emotional moment is represented in the flesh. The categories of mind, body, and soul collapse into mutual signifiers of each other. Harmonized into a rhythm resistent to domination by any faction. My person is an anarchist, acting and reacting autonomously and in collaboration with its pieces.

"I" don't feel as if I'm participating. A bystander. Trying to infiltrate my thoughts, emotions, flesh, soul with my fake religious interventions and my consumption of vitamins and tea. I'm doing it, but I'm much too cynical to believe in it.

Cynicism. The one thing I'm committed to fully.

And yet, the Palestinians broke through the goddamn Wall. The news of this just fills me with...I don't know...something. It's not hope, I can't remember the last time I felt hopeful. Maybe it's awe. Yes, I think that's it, a spark of brilliant awe, like light. I hadn't expected this turn of events. I saw they were on the wall and I braced myself for the worst -- a mass killing by Egyptian and Israeli military forces. But instead, they fucking tore open the Wall. Yes, the space where the wall once stood was almost immediately filled up again with arrests and violence. But that they did it at all...

Awe.

If I am too cynical to hope for a liberation, for oppressed people everywhere and for myself, I guess what I desire is a reprieve. Yoga and meditation, or going to church or reading more Marx or going to therapy, none of these religions will save me. The world is brutal. We often choose brutality. I can't figure out how to reverse this tide, neither in the world, nor within myself. So, I desire a reprieve. Just a break. Just news from across the world that they broke through the bad, bad Wall. News from the Congo that the guns were laid down, even in one village. News from one U.S. city that, yes, we're going to do something not that hard to do and provide housing for every single person. Liberation requires long-term work and also hope. Reprieve just requires a choice, right there, in the moment. That is all I have room to long for. Thank you, Palestine, for making a choice, allowing me to breathe in deeply just for this day.

I'll blame it on who I want to blame it on.

2007-12-29T16:57:00.000-08:00

It's dark and rainy. I've been to the south to visit the family for Christmas and I'm back in California. In both places, it should be warmish and sunny (or warmer and sunnier than in Seattle where I spent most of my adult life), but it's gray and rainy. I usually like that kind of weather. I'm a gray and rainy kind of gal. I generally find the silicon valley sun obnoxious. It is unstoppable with it's intrusive light all the time, never any clouds anywhere. I think the sun is brighter here than it is on a cloudless sunny day in Seattle. It took months for my eyes to adjust.

But now, over the past couple of days, I've been finding the weather difficult. I really, really need a break. I need light.

Maybe there's a shadow cast over my world since they murdered Bhutto. I mean, after the assassination attempt in October, I guess I knew that it was just a matter of time. But, I am shocked nevertheless. It took a long time to sink in. I experienced the news as I traveled, first on my mother's tiny tv, and then through CNN blaring from television sets perched from airport ceilings. By the evening of the 28th, the news had moved to this somewhat intensive process of describing exactly how she had been killed. No, it had not been a bullet, it was shrapnel. It had not been a gunman, but a suicide bomber. Oh, I see, thank you so much for that clarification. Here I thought she had been assassinated by more civilized Western techniques. By all means, quickly correct this view of mine and make sure that my American mind, boarding and unboarding airplanes, understand that it's just those folks OVER THERE behaving like they do. Not like us, oh no. We like to assassinate our presidents and presidential candidates with guns, like civilized folks. Fucking orientalist racist motherfuckers, don't have any freakin time to process that she's been killed without FOXCNNMSNBC tired motherfuckers fucking with me.

I don't know, maybe I'm just down because I'm fresh from being with the family who, though lovable, make me crazy with the inevitable, inescapable judgments and the dysfunction of it all.

Probably a combination of said reasons. But I'm an American which means I'm gonna blame my troubles on who I want to blame it on. So I'm just gonna blame it all on FOXCNNMSNBC because blaming it on the absent sun or family holiday dysfunction isn't nearly as satisfying. So there. Bastards.

Oppression and Survival

2007-12-18T03:48:00.000-08:00

Brownfemipower has written a beautiful essay about representations of domestic violence in film as it relates to the concept of a linear survival story, and how problematic that is. I have so much to say about it, but I've been working on a post about Oprah and Obama for a million years that I just want to finish. But, I do love her essay for many reasons and I don't want to wait to link to it, so here you go: http://brownfemipower.com/?p=1991

Existential Crisis, Part Two: (In)Sanity

2007-12-08T17:16:00.000-08:00

I've been in and out (and in and out...) of the "mental health" industrial complex many times over. I've spent years engaging the mental health industry, trying to address the many issues facing me. I've been diagnosed, labeled, held down, medicated, insulted, assaulted. I've been a page in a textbook, a challenging case study, a cornucopia of afflictions. A pathos.

I am an expert in brain altering chemistries in many colored pills, psychoanalytic superiorities, cognitive behavioral scientism, and many, many alternative interventions. A playground of personality on which ambitious doctors can try out new vocabulary. An opportunity.

But I get the sneaking suspicion that everyone keeps telling me that I have drapetomania, in increasingly fancier ways. Look at the world, then look at my response. Doesn't my tenuous attitude towards living make sense, given the context? Why am I the one that's diagnosed? Why not everyone else?

Because I have all of these "issues," some have argued that I should adopt the political label of "person with a disability." It's a legitimate argument. If a person is chronically depressed, but carries on, she carries an invisible weight with her that she must endeavor to manage in order to "successfully" participate in the world. This is what's called an "invisible disability." People with invisible disabilities are targeted for ableism. It may not look the same as oppression targeting folks with visible disabilities, but the different manifestations of ableism (or, able-bodied supremacy) are related. In short, ableism demands that you physically conform in order to be valued.

Yes, but if I adopt this argument wholeheartedly, then I have partly conceded the idea that there is something "wrong" with me and not "wrong" with them. I know a radical disability politic asserts that disability is not "wrong," but it does acknowledge difference from the norm. The confusion is about how one uses the term "disability." The political assertion: "Disability is natural," naturalizes people with disabilities and disabilities themselves, undermining the superior dominant norm that doesn't exist. Great. In a way. What if your disability is a result of war, landmines, rape, etc? That complicates things. Still, the idea is that a disability is something that is loathed that ought not be loathed. What if I think of Bush and Cheney as crazy maniacs? Their crazed mania is not natural and it ought to be loathed, no? If I live by the political assertion: "My state of mind is a perfectly natural response to the unnatural conditions of oppression in which I and others live," then I am asserting that the ones who are "dis-abled" are the ones perpetuating conditions of oppression.

Then, to complicate matters, there's the problem of "cure." I was once speaking to a therapist and used the phrase "my depression..." and she interrupted me. She argued that for me to say "my depression" is to presume that I would always be depressed, that it is an unchanging part of me. "If you own it," she remarked, "you are invested in it." That stopped me in my tracks. I thought to myself, well, god she's right in that I am a bit invested in my own madness. I keep thinking that the moment I get "sane" will be the moment that someone has tricked me into drinking the koolaid. I am so concerned that I will be stepford-wifed, that someone will undo my critical eye, that I am invested in staying on the margin of what gets to be called sane and notsane in order to not comply with what I perceive as the world's madness. I am invested in being noncompliant. And I see my depression (there I go again) as an unintentional exercise of my noncompliance.

But, of course, being depressed sucks mostly. And I don't want to be depressed. When I am not depressed, I enjoy not being depressed, but I also feel very suspicious, like I'm missing something. Oppression does that. Higher sensitivities to the living subtext breathing around you. I don't want to give that up - I believe that this consciousness has helped keep me alive because at least now I know why I am (and we are) being raped, beaten, colonized, and conquered. Can I know consistent happiness without losing this vital information?

Other parts of my madness, seems like I should keep. This thing about running away from slavery seems to be okay...

So, am I person with a disability? I've boiled it down to four options:

A. Yes, Political Version: I could self-consciously adopt the political identity of "person with a disability," meaning that my mind, which is part of my body, does not conform with some imaginary yet dominant standard well-being. Further, my disability, seen from a different, more liberatory perspective, is cultural in that it helps me build connections with folks who also think they are going mad, and it's helpful in illuminating the inner workings of oppression.

B. Yes, Medical Version: I could think of my madness as a temporary state of affairs, something that I should actively be working to repair because oppressed people have the right to health and happiness. Political work is all well and good to address some of those pesky "conditions of oppression," but one can only do so much and might as well take on a "healthy" and "holistic" and "well-rounded" attitude towards the care of one's body. It's a form of subversiveness, to support one's own survival, a radical healer might say. So, I would not be a "person with a disability" in a self-conscious political sense, but I would be a person with a disability in a medical sense because the thing that is considered my disability, I would not own as a cultural manifestation, but would be seen as an illness that I ought to endeavor to repair.

C. No, Medical Version: There are "real" disabilities, including real mental health disabilities, and I don't have any of those. The mental health industry over-diagnoses. In a world of a clear boundary between sane and notsane, I am, and always have been, sane. It's inappropriate to politically or medically identify as a person with a disability.

D. No, Political Version: I do not have a disability, but oppression tricks me into thinking that I am mad. Trying to survive while in the context of believing that I am going mad is a difficult project, but is not necessarily a manifestation of ableism. Plus, mostly, I pass. It's inappropriate to politically or medically identify as a person with a disability.

Confusing, right? So I find myself not picking any of these options wholeheartedly but traveling through them, being improvisational with how I want to think about it given the context. We need better models to understand this stuff, I think. This is my first attempt at getting this down in writing.

Submerged

2007-11-26T22:40:00.000-08:00

Thank you, sisters, for your affirmations. They are like breath. Kai wrote, "explain and explain and explain" which is right out of a poem I wrote last August. See how the individuals may be different, the circumstances different, but the experience is exactly the same?

Submerged

In the vast space between individuals
Misrepresentations bloat themselves outward
And drown out the self,
And drown out connection,

We are drenched
In our own contexts
And the contexts assigned to us.

Like Chappelle dropping out because
There’s no space to make connection
Because racism took up all the air
And his meaning got submerged
In an infinite racist re-interpretation
And there was nowhere
To breathe.

Like I am dropping out because
There’s no space to make connection
Because racism takes up all the air
And my meaning is submerged
In an infinite racist re-interpretation
And there is nowhere
To breathe.

Because the idea that
I could expect someone
To shift the center
Of themselves
Only makes sense
In theory.

And trying to describe, clarify, justify,
Communicate, represent, defend, write, articulate,
Teach, rationalize, convince, explain, explain, explain, explain
Myself
Is like torture.

Because a thousand letters have already been written
But who cares about them now?
And a thousand prayers have already been whispered
But who listened to them then?
Because it turns out that any beauty I bring
Is only interesting
When it satisfies
Other people’s agendas.

And the body, once so vulnerably open,
Only provided a back
To be used as a bridge
For other people’s journeys.

And there I am under the bridge
Of my own body
Drowning in a swamp of poor vocabulary.
A muddy water of distorted meaning in which
to be friendly invites entitlement
to be helpful is to be a mammy
to be authentic is to be needy
to be angry is to attack someone
to be trusting is to be dramatic
to be generous is to sell myself out.

Every word I speak is a trap.

And all the white people are so fucking sure
All of this can be worked out
Because vocabulary is not their enemy
And meaning is theirs to build
And water is theirs to drink
And bridges are theirs to cross.

A violent white surf
Of selective memories, rumors, no-shows,
Fucked up assumptions, and predictable presumptuousness,
Swelling up in the space between humans
That should’ve been for patience, humility, and reconciliation.

Submerged in a narrative not designed for me -
Not able to divest for desire for connection,
Not able to engage for protection of integrity.

August 16, 2006

Aye, WhiteMan, You Almost Got Me!

2007-11-26T15:06:00.000-08:00

I am bored. Things move slowly and I am of a generation that needs constant change in order to remain attentive. If I can not undo oppression, then I'd like for oppression to be more interesting. More inventive, if you will. Less predictable.

White feminist teacher dude defends book about feminism that some women of color and white women have critiqued. Debate about white feminism and white feminist studies and white feminist books in the women of color blogosphere ensues. Check it: link, link, link, and lovely link. Lush discussions. I am grateful.

I went to the offending blog and began to write a very long comment, patiently instructing this fellow on his many errors. He put the links up, same as above, perhaps demonstrating that he had read them. But there was no effect. Zero. Poetic, confessional, analytical, playful, all thoughtful, these commentaries. Very effective for me. Zero effect for him.

I have a habit of thinking that if I could just explain it the right way, I could get a shift. If I could just use the right metaphor, connect the right concepts, draw the right diagrams, then *pow* they'd get it. Rarely does it work. But I don't really stop trying. I'm a masochist this way. I thought to myself, you know, this is a habit I see colored people enact, this teaching thing that we do. This dancing for the wall. We write the most beautiful analysis anyone has ever seen, construct the most lovely theory, offer our backs as bridges to brighter, shinier ideas. And they come back with "she's just playing the race card" or "my other colored friends said it was okay" or "you're just looking for someone to pick on." Or the other end of the whipping stick: "thank you so much, you're the most brilliant person ever" or "can you come explain it to my friends, I can't do as good a job as you" or "everything I do is bad and wrong, I can't do anything right, I need you to help me." In both kinds of responses, your voice is taken away. You're either the bitter blackgirl, or the better blackgirl, both caricatures that hold court in their psyche.

So, I deleted my long, rational, academic, teaching comment and, because I haven't totally divested, settled on a short smarmy response to said white dude, having made peace with the fact that, if he wasn't moved by the gorgeous posts above, he certainly wasn't gonna get anywhere with anything I had to offer, in all of my exhaustion and creaky boredom. He almost got me to go there, though.

I'm finding that it's easy to let white people distract me from my work. This draw I have to correcting the racism of liberal to radical white people, especially white feminists, really must end. I am drawn in by the hypnotic promise of proving to them that I am not a caricature in either direction, a project which already centers them. That's why my last two posts have been about black creativity rather than just oppression. I am trying to center my own folks here. A project which is, for whatever reason, a helluva lot harder than lecturing to stupid white people about their flaws. Because who am I trying to convince anyway? I get so frustrated with white folks - why? They won't get it, but if they do and behave accordingly, does that finally make me valid?

I am practicing divestment from their development. Better to practice receiving my own answers, better to build worlds of legitimacy on the terms of blackfemaleness.

Black Cool / Black Futurism

2007-11-03T17:22:00.000-07:00

I miss Aaliyah. Review the video:

So many genres tapped in this short little video. Aaliyah's presentation (both as an artist with her own interests and her handlers expert in creating a particular persona) was able to express the intersection of futurism and hyper-technology, naturalism, hip hop cool, and weave in a black high femme sexuality through all of it. At once, high-tech and high-retro (check the reference to Eve in the garden of Eden), but always, always Black. I don't think this video would have meant the same thing if it had been a white artist. There's something about the flexibility of hip hop, or the chemistry between Timbaland's techno beats and Aaliyah's high songbird voice that refuses to be rushed along. Something about constructing the culture of the 'hood as a rich location for future production, rather than something wrong or sick to destroy.

And Aaliyah somehow embodies this vision. A homegirl, with her baggy jeans and sneakers in the dance portion, but simultaneously maintaining a smoldering sensuality that is less accessible than your average homegirl. This creates a particular kind of feminine black cool: the alchemy of old and new, natural and technological, girl next door and siren, making all of those categories so much more interesting.

When she died in 2001, so young, others really pedestaled her, calling her an angel and reminding us that her name is Arabic for "one most high, exalted one." Yet, when asked what made her so special, they said it was because she was humble, such a hard worker, down to earth, super kind and generous and funny and sweet. These qualities seemed to facilitate a reconstruction as someone "too good for this world." Another contradiction of accessibility and inaccessibility. This contradiction, I think, is the core of Black cool. It is about producing in the context of both familiarity and detached idealism. Home and heaven.

She died just a couple of weeks before 9/11. From my own perspective as an American, the U.S. response to 9/11 helped make clear how incredibly expedited high tech war, global capitalism, and conquest had become. Technology for destruction rather than production. Their projects were a kind of idealism...evil kinds! Kind of the same way "white man's burden" is a kind of white idealism, so is Bush and co's imperialist world view. Both from the same poison colonialist root. But, one thing that is missing in this go round are the bodies. Literally, we're not allowed to see the dead - not the people of Iraq and certainly not the U.S. soldiers. Instead, we get blurry night time video of exploding villages, deaths implied with distant bursts of blue. Increasing amount of blood spilt, but the organic nature of war sanitized away from us.

The best Black futurism demonstrates hybridism. It's not about purity -- purity requires resources we often don't have. It's about making do with the resources one does have, instilling the need for a kind of creativity. Improvisational. Jazz. Embodying contradictions through postulating new and interesting ways to conceive of old, worn things. Alchemy.

And so, though Black people are targets for genocide leaving our future fate questionable, we keep helping to push the whole culture into a more human and humane future.

I've been watching the new Battlestar Galactica. Wonderful show. The premise is that humans created robots to be their slaves. The robots, or Cylon, developed consciousness, and attempted to kill off the human race as a response to their treatment. I haven't watched the earlier shows, but I have to say that the idea of creating robots to be slaves seems, yes, quite a correct view of how the dominant culture views the purpose of technology. Technology for a death culture. But Black futurism is grounded not in just technology for its own sake, but in technology as one tool of many for movement towards life.

(I'm using the word "Black" here not just as a descriptive, but as a conscious political location. More like "feminist" than "woman.")

Black Sisterhood

2007-06-27T05:32:00.000-07:00

I actually got weepy after I watched this:

[UPDATE: The link to the video was taken down, so I'm deleting it. It was the performance of Jennifer Holliday and Jennifer Hudson singing the "you're gonna love me" song from Dreamgirls, and the duet was a powerful one...]

I know. It's Dreamgirls, I know! But what I see are two Black women who became beautifully reconciled. Actually, three. Or four. See, the backstory is that when the movie Dreamgirls came out last year and Jennifer Hudson became all the rage, Jennifer Holliday, who played the same role on Broadway back in the early 80s, got kinda shut out of this new hype. She let it be known that that hurt. She's a struggling Black woman performer, getting gigs here and there. It would've been nice if she could have been included in this media attention.

JHud didn't respond terribly well to this. I mean, she wasn't mean, but in an Essence interview, she wasn't very sympathetic to the situation. This was a little frustrating for me b/c I wanted her to get it. The story of Dreamgirls is partly about the way that capitalism, white supremacy, and patriarchy intersect in the music industry to eat Black women alive. Takes them apart. Divides them (setting them up to compete against each other instead of complement each other). And attempts to conquer them. This is what happened to Florence Ballard of The Supremes, a woman whose life is the inspiration for the character that Holliday and Hudson both play in their respective versions of Dreamgirls. So yes, I wanted Hudson to understand that the thing that destroyed Ballard was the same thing haunting Holliday and so many other Black women performers.

The only thing that can resist this is unity and generosity among Black women artists. If they are unified in resisting oppressive divide and conquer tactics within the industry, there's a chance that they can survive (you know, until the revolution where we'll fix all this crap...).

So, it was such a delight for me to see this performance, registering for me that there must have been some talking, some education, some mutual appreciation, collaboration, and understanding that we must have each other's backs.

Then, to see Diana Ross giving these sisters a standing ovation. That was pretty intense. Here's a 60 something year old woman who was part of the Supremes and, yes, many have argued that she wronged Flo Ballard and she's been a diva ever since. Sure, maybe, I don't know. But I also know that she's said that Dreamgirls (the musical and the movie) have hurt her. She thought it was a direct attack on her. Let's say Ms. Ross was the biggest diva ever, her diva ways could never outmatch the sheer power of the entertainment industry. To have what happened laid on her shoulders only instead of understanding the way that the industry truly sets people up is a convenient way to miss the larger point of institutional oppression. In the meantime, another Black woman gets scapegoated, and we all leave the theater thinking about her instead of the folks making the real money off of all the destruction.

So, I was moved to see Diana Ross in the audience giving these women a standing ovation as they dueted the opus for the show.

And lastly, a shot of Beyonce smiling and clapping. I'm working on an open letter to Beyonce addressing the song "Upgrade U," which is just unacceptable. Sorry Bey! But, it's also nice to see her there supporting these two women b/c the media constantly tried to make a catfight out of her and Jennifer Hudson. So boring. Maybe there were some issues between them, I don't know, I don't hang out with these people! But how predictable is it that the media would try to capitalize on this shit? It's the same pattern. So, word to this too.

Cross-generational reconciling sistas undermining the capitalist hegemony. Just makes me so sentimental! Also, Jennifer Hudson's dress is hot.

My Uterus Dominates On Wall Street

2007-03-23T18:49:00.000-07:00

Well, CRACK wants to pay us $200 to get sterilized, but Texas wants to pay us $500 to not have abortions. Mixed messaging people! Note to right wing: Please make your messaging for capitalist coercion of my reproductive activities more consistent.

However, it is heartening to know that the market value of what happens (or fails to happen) in my uterus has gone up a bit this year. Perhaps we could really maximize the profit margin if my uterus went on, I don't know, an auction block of some sort?

Oh wait, been there, done that...

Patrick's adoption incentive is baby selling, some say

By JANET ELLIOTT
Copyright 2007
Houston Chronicle Austin Bureau

AUSTIN — Houston state Sen. Dan Patrick wants the state to pay $500 to women who give their babies up for adoption instead of aborting them, an idea some say borders on baby selling.

"We want that lady to have an incentive that makes her stop and think about having an abortion and that gives her a reason to put her baby up for adoption," said Patrick, a radio broadcaster who champions conservative causes such as abortion and tightening the border.

The Republican lawmaker's Senate Bill 1567 was referred to the Senate Health and Human Services Committee on Wednesday. No committee hearing has been scheduled for the bill, which has yet to draw any co-sponsors.

"My goal is to save as many babies as we possibly can," said Patrick, who also has a bill to trigger an abortion ban in Texas should the U.S. Supreme Court ever reverse its landmark 1973 decision, Roe v. Wade, legalizing abortion.

Critics say his bill doesn't recognize the complex issues involved in a woman's decision to place her baby for adoption and comes dangerously close to baby selling.

One anti-abortion group — while supporting the goal of encouraging adoption over abortion — expressed caution.

"We just need to make sure there isn't even the perception of baby buying going on," said Joe Pojman, executive director of Texas Alliance for Life.

An organization that supports a woman's right to choose said Patrick's bill is terrible.

"It's the stuff nightmares are made of," said Fran Hagerty of the Women's Health and Family Planning Association of Texas. "This is insulting to women and also insulting to all the great charitable organizations out there that do wonderful work finding adoptive parents and taking care of the birth mother."

It is a crime in Texas to offer to give a thing of value to another for acquiring a child for purposes of adoption. Exceptions are made for necessary pregnancy-related expense that benefit the mother.

Patrick said the payments would not be akin to baby selling.

"We're just giving someone an incentive to put your baby up for adoption," he said. "Then the baby goes through the normal adoptive process. No one is coming in here and buying a baby."

Another group that advocates reproductive freedom said the emphasis should be on preventing unplanned pregnancies by providing women with birth-control options.

"If Sen. Dan Patrick wants to improve women's health care options, then he should support the Prevention First Act, which includes common sense ways to reduce the need for abortion," said Carol Drennan, interim executive director of NARAL Pro-Choice Texas, in a prepared statement.

The head of a national adoption-policy group said a recent study on birth mothers who gave up their children found that many experienced lifelong guilt over their decision.

Adam Pertman, executive director of the Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute, said good adoption practice means presenting all options on a level playing field.

"You let women respectfully make the best decision they can at an excruciatingly difficult time. Introducing money into the mix can be coercive," Pertman said.

If the bill reduced the 77,374 abortions performed in Texas in 2005 by 5 percent, more than 3,000 babies' lives would be saved, Patrick said.

janet.elliott@chron.com

Existential Crises, Part One: Children

2006-12-26T01:57:00.000-08:00

Because I've figured out how to embed the video and because it's worth posting again, I'm reposting Kiri Davis's very, very good mini-doc, "A Girl Like Me." I'm also re-posting it because it freaks me out and makes me feel like I'm going crazy and because...I don't know, what the hell am I supposed to *do* with this information?? Oh my god.

Lately, I've been thinking about having children. I'm not getting any younger and the good ole fertility clock is tick tocking away. I think, after oppression, and maybe mortality, pregnancy is the most absurd thing I can think of.

Me to my pregnant friends: So, let me get this straight, there's a person. In your body. Like, right now? And she can hear us? And she's with you, like, all the time? Isn't that a little intrusive? And anyways, what are you? Are you one person or like two people or something else? I don't understand, start over.

When the babies came, they were at first like little needy aliens. I felt disconnected. Even a tiny bit resentful of them taking up my friends' time which I once happily enjoyed rarely interrupted.

Then, about 3 months in, I sort of started falling in love with them. Lovely, amazing, brilliant creatures. The whole idea of creating a person was vastly interesting. I practically co-parented one of them for his first two years. I hadn't realized that I could love another person this intensely who didn't even know about Prince or Star Trek or Frantz Fanon. It was overwhelming.

Then, around the time of November 2004, after the re-"election", I got a little scared for them. Even depressed. Why bother contributing to the creation of such fabulous, wonderful people if their little minds will become warped by oppression? It's not the usual lefty obsession about bringing a kid into a bad world, it's my concern about what the world does to people. We really fuck people up. I don't want these kids to be fucked up. They are currently robust, self-assured, life-loving, self-loving, loud, strong little kids. I don't want presidential elections or other absurd manifestations of oppression to push them off the edge the way they push me.

So, now I'm thinking about my own potential offspring. I keep thinking that, besides my own philosophical concerns about pregnancy, the most moral thing to do is to adopt some child who is doomed to some extent anyway b/c she's already here. Might as well love her like hell and raise her to be a resilient bad ass.

I'm also thinking about genocide. I'm not a nationalist, but I also know that my people have it hard in terms of survival, what with the prison industry, HIV, infant mortality, poverty, stress, and so on. I'm a feminist who laughs bitterly at the idea of women having babies for the movement. But I think that I have avoided thinking about children for so long until they were literally in my face partly because they trigger existential crises about whether or not my people can weather...I don't know, the weather. (Katrina, anyone?) It's difficult watching this video not just because the damage that has been done to those children is laid bare for all to see (though, that by itself is heart-wrenching enough), but because I start to feel that much closer to genocide and therefore to not existing at all.

Children remind me that there's not much time to fix everything. We are temporary and new people keep coming that ought not be exposed to all of this. Further, for Black people and Native folks -- people who have high infant mortality rates specifically because of racism (not just classism, but racism) -- every child seems like a prayer on behalf of all of us. Exist.

That's a lot of pressure for a kid. A lot of meaning to put on a little one's back or anyone's back. But that's what they remind me of. Their vitality reminds me of the fragility of life, especially under conditions of oppression. We were never meant to survive, said Audre Lord. But when I watch them create and insist and deliberate and rejoice and despair, I think two very different things: "Protect!" and "I don't know, maybe we have a shot..."

If a racist says something racist, and nobody hears it, does she make a sound?

2006-12-12T19:12:00.000-08:00

After his oddly explicit racist rant last month ("oddly" because, though white racism runs rampant, white celebrities are not usually known to call people niggers and make jokes about lynching as part of their public performances -- they save that stuff for the privacy of their own homes or when they get pulled over for DUIs), Michael Richards went on David Letterman to explain his behavior. There, he said a really interesting thing: "I'm not a racist."

Well, heck. If calling people niggers and making jokes about rape and lynching doesn't make a fellow racist, then what exactly constitutes "being a racist?"

I mean, yeah, some of us would say, Michael, Michael, Michael. You're in denial, my brother. You're a big, giant, fallin thru doors, white, whitey racist mofo. Walk towards the truth, Michael, the truth will set you free.

And the more radical folks might say, yeah, that shit Michael said was hella fucked up, but hey, aren't all white people racist? I mean, the only difference is that Michael was on stage, on video, and he just isn't reflective about racism as some of us are, but we're all racist just like Mike.

And still other folks would say, look the man was having a bad night, emotional problems or what have you, and he just grabbed at something, and the something he grabbed was, granted racist remarks, but saying something racist doesn't make you actively pursing racist agendas, like an aryan power person, say, or a klansman, and therefore, doesn't make you a racist.

Aye, we are so, so confused - we don't even have the same vocabulary. To that end, I've come up with a few models of racism that we can refer to that may help us to discuss racism and what's racist and who's being a big ole racist. I'm putting it up here b/c I'm sick of looking at Angie Jolie in blackface every time I check my blog and I'm looking for any opportunity to avoid my homework. These ideas are in draft form and I'd love your feedback.

Okay, here are my models...

So, the binary model is pretty straightforward. You either are or you are not a racist. If you use this model, then you can start defining what constitutes being a racist and what doesn't. If Michael says, well, calling people niggers and reminiscing about the halcyon days of raping and lynching black people may constitute racism, but doing so does not necessarily constitute me, as an individual perpetrating this behavior, as a racist. He may define "racist" as a person who actively pursues a political agenda to rape and lynch and enslave and perhaps forcibly emigrate black people. If he expresses a wish for the days in which these kinds of activities were part of the normal state of affairs, that is not the same as pursuing an agenda, thus, he is able to say racist things while not being a racist.

Of course, one could say, within this model, "being a racist" would constitute saying the things that Michael said. One who says "nigger" is one who is a racist. Kinda like one who blogs is one who is a blogger. One's actions defines one's identity.

Perhaps, but then, according to this model, we'd have to say that Michael wasn't a racist until the word "nigger" escaped his lips. Only after he said the word is he identified objectively as a racist within this model. Before that night at the laugh factory, he was not a racist, but after that night, a raving racist he was. That seems odd. Surely being a racist is more complicated than just saying a word or any one kind of behavior. Even any one particular thought seems too simplistic a definition of racism. I think racist actions are integrated into the context of the world and we can't work with binaries, so then we came up with a couple of continuum based models...

Okay, so now we realize that some people can be more racist than others. Maybe Michael is more racist than, I don't know, John Brown, but less racist than, gosh, Hitler or somebody like that. This continuum only exists for racists, though, not non-racists. So, on the continuum of racists there is Hitler, and then later Michael Richards, and then later Bill Clinton or whatever, and then later you get to a point where you just stop. That is to say, John Brown is not a racist because he helped organize rebellions against slavery.

But that still means that there is a difference between acting racistly and being racist. So, I could say that John Brown endeavored not to act racistly (though, perhaps he was not successful all of the time, I don't really know), but does that necessarily mean that he is not a racist? What if John Brown advocated violent insurrections against chattel slavery -- which was helpful, thank you John Brown -- and he was murdered by the government as a result...and he still was informed by the values and anticipations of white supremacy? Can one escape being a racist, given how pervasive racism is? Can one be radically against racism and still struggle with racism within her own consciousness?

Yes! says our radical anti-racist friends, and so they've come up with this other infinite continuum...

So, here, everyone is racist (or at least all the white people, it's not clear how people of color stand on this continuum). However, don't fret, you're not necessarily like Mike because our continuum differentiates between people who are enthusiastically racist, ambivalently racist (you know, "slavery was immoral and I have nothing against blacks, just don't want them dating my daughter), and actively anti-racist. In this model, you can be a racist that pursues ways to be actively anti-racist. You are not a racist and a non-racist at the same time, you are a racist but you are trying to behave anti-racistly. This used to strike me as somewhat confusing, but I worked with it because it's the best model I had access to. It's infinite on both sides because, though everyone is a racist, one can behave infinitely more racistly and one can infinitely work to behave less racistly. The point is that I can't escape the context of white supremacy, but I can passionately and enthusiastically work to re-educate myself and be less of an asshole than I am taught and pressured to be. I'll slip up, but that's the nature of the game, so don't hate the playa, hate the game!

This model is okay in a pinch, but it doesn't really capture the way racism works. We are more complicated than this. Oppression is intersectional, for one thing. We've got this problem of internalized oppression. There's the issue of agency, of context, of relationships. And there's the broader thing of the system of white supremacy which includes material-based institutional racism as well as cultural narratives that are spun by white supremacy (i.e., Black people are lazy, criminal, or whatever; Black women are strong, resilient, sexually available, or whatever; etc.) that are anchored in our subconsciouses. All of this stuff manifests dynamically, like a dance of human pain and desire and power and misery. Just because it's complicated, doesn't mean that some people don't have more power than others. U.S. racism is based on a thread of the supremacy of whiteness and all of these things are built from that basis. But, Michael Richards is different from Bill Clinton not just because they are on different places on a flat continuum (and where on earth would I even put them on a continuum? Mapping people is impossible within flat, static models), but because they have contexts that are both shared and distinct.

So I offer this draft, incomplete, to-be-filled-in-later model...

The squiggly lines represent the dynamism of all the stuff in this pot of white supremacy -- other oppressions, individual contexts, agency, power, etc. I know it doesn't totally make sense right now, it's mostly intuitive. I may not even be able to develop a good picture model. But that's what I've got so far!

Thoughts??

Mother Superior

2006-10-12T21:05:00.000-07:00

A friend who's a Black feminist attorney is having a bit of a nervous breakdown because she's been assigned to cases working with poor Black women who's children are being taken away from them and their caseworkers -- who are white, liberal, and supposed to be these women's advocates -- are more often than not these women's foes, testifying against them, creating barriers rather than bridges. And my friend is just beginning to see just exactly how Black motherhood is not an entitled position, but a position of struggle. A struggle for one to be understood as maternal, as woman, as legitimate.

***

Brad Pitt's production company, Plan B, is making a movie (A Mighty Heart) based on the life of Daniel Pearl, the Wall Street Journal reporter who was murdered in Pakistan. Pearl, who was Jewish and his mother is an Iraqi Jew, was married to Mariane Pearl, who is multi-racial -- Afro-Cuban

and Dutch. That is to say, the sista is a multi-racial Black woman. She was pregnant when Daniel was murdered. So, she was a Black pregnant woman who had her man taken from her because of the men who murdered him and because of the conditions of war and imperialism in which they chose to murder him.

It's a hard, hard world.

In A Mighty Heart, Brad Pitt's white non-wife, Angelina Jolie, is playing the character of Mariane Pearl. See the first photo above. My concern should be obvious. Look at the makeup. Look at the wig. Look at the swollen belly.

Angelina and Brad, along with other (mostly white) celebrities, have made Africa the hottest cause in town. At first, I didn't mind much. I mean, as you might have heard, the motherland has some problems, and

many countries are at catastrophe status (thanks in no small part to the legacy of colonization, imperialism, theft, and global capitalism). Though the faddishness is pretty gross, I was willing to take what I can get given that Africa is such a blindspot for the world. (Blackness can be such a blindspot for the world.) But, I thought that just meant forgiving Bono-type attention where celebrity goes to politician and says, hey politician, get your act together around Africa. Or Clooney-type attention where celebrity takes a camera to Africa and holds a press conference to draw attention to a war to force the media to give the war some airtime. Or even to some kinds of twisted Jolie/Pitt-type attention where celebrity sells the photo of first born to raise money for a village hospital. It's all pretty problematic, but bigger fish to fry, right?

Until I started to realize that the trend had gotten much more pervasive than I initially understood. It's connected to the problems of "solidarity politics," but it's even worse. It's explicit and egregious eating of the other. Wealthy, white celebrities are not just presuming a political relationship with Africans, they are actually becoming more legitimately Black than actual Black people.

Take Angelina Jolie. There's the whole kidnapping poor other-nationed colored children thing, which has always been pretty creepy. I won't go into all of the problems of transnational adoption/abuction here, so many more able activists and scholars have done a great job mining this phenomenon. My issue with Angie is this problem of white motherhood taking the place of colored motherhood. Motherhood does not transcend race. Race does not transcend motherhood. Because of the fact that control of reproduction is a main tool of white supremacist imperialism and colonization, race and motherhood are undeniably intertwined with one another.

Angelina's now playing the role of, not just a bereaved Black woman, but a bereaved pregnant Black woman. It's not enough that she's a white woman mothering colored children, she is now assuming the role of Black mother.

Given how ridiculously difficult it is for actresses of color to get decent film (or television or stage) roles, how is it that a potentially juicy role of a Black mother in complicated, politicized jeopardy went to, not just any white woman, but to a white woman who is hopelessly confused about her own whiteness and its relationship to her identity as a mother?

How did she become the most legitimate African mother?

Who is the most legitimate African mother?

Is it Gwyneth Paltrow who, in the ad above, apparently asserts that she is African given an interesting choice of makeup and accessories?

Is it Kate Moss, fresh from her cocaine scandal, who has been dipped in ebony and placed next to the statement "Not A Fashion Statement." Not sure if it's a fashion statement, because she's not actually wearing any fashion, except of course for the clothing of her black, black, black skin. Black skin: a fashion accessory to put on or take off, given the party you're attending and the crowd you're running with.

It's not an accident that these are white women. In a moment when celebrity transracial/transnational adoption is reaching new heights (Madonna swung by Malawi to pick up a nice African boy just the other day), I'm beginning to realize that the issue is not just about kidnapping African children, but it's about asserting themselves as true, authentic African mothers. They're not just opting out of whiteness (and all the guilt and responsibility that entails), but they are darky-ing up as women and as mothers.

This blackface is different than blackface of yore. Before, white folks put on black makeup to demonstrate the inferiority of Black people. Their characters were stupid, greedy, violent, childlike, and animalistic. These new caricatures, being done in the context of humanitarian concern for Africa that is at once urgently needed and frighteningly popular with the cool kids in Hollywood, are noble, maternal, worldly, and, well, hot. (I mean, if the Kate Moss look is your thing, it ain't mine.) The caricatures are not in the tradition of anti-Black racism, they're actually just using a kind of racism that is used more in the context of culturally appropriating Indigenous culture (the noble savage, etc.), which is just as fucked up. It's blackface done, not in the tradition of blackface, but in the tradition of redface, and, because of the nature of anti-Indigenous racism, redface has never been taken seriously anyway.

My lawyer friend kind of can't believe how brutal the justice system is to Black mothers. Black mothers are set up to fail at every level. This is also true for Black mothers outside of the U.S.. Black mothers around the world are working desperately to protect themselves and their children from HIV, war, rape, poverty, and environmental devastation. Working and sometimes failing because oppression makes for a terrible and hard world.

Maybe white women are trying to demonstrate how to be more successful at Black motherhood. Their whiteness protects them from these oppressions, which means they can protect their adopted Black children from these oppressions, which makes them superior Black mothers.

W. E. B. DuBois once asked himself, as a Black person in America, "How does it feel to be a problem?" Not a person with problems, but a problem. Black mothers, because of the overwhelming conditions of oppression, are seen not just as people with problems, but as problems. What do well-meaning people do with problems? They try to get rid of 'em. The people who think they are saving us (which has it's own white man's burden issues of paternalism) are actually erasing us.

No, wait. They're not just erasing us, the problem is even more pernicious than straightforward genocide. They are consuming us. Asserting themselves into an incredibly intimate part of our lives -- mothering -- and presenting themselves as a superior version of us. We won't be remembered when we are gone because they won't know that we have disappeared. They are African women, you see. They are pregnant with African babies. They mother African children. Though they once needed us as a prop so that they could be perceived as hip and trendy and generous, they have now become us and no longer need us at all.

A Critique of Solidarity Politics

2006-10-07T16:20:00.000-07:00

Last year, I found myself trapped in a train wreck of a conflict with two white people (a woman and a man) in my life, a conflict that the white woman insisted on calling a "personal/political" problem. These two white people considered themselves "feminists" and "anti-racist white allies." Their feminist politics were in high drive, indeed, and they were mostly interested in how the white woman had been wronged by the standards of their feminist values. The "political" in the "personal/political" was political only insofar as she felt victimized politically. That's pretty much where the "political" began and ended as far as they were concerned. They treated me poorly because they thought it was the feminist thing to do.

Their entitlement to assert with characteristic white presumption what was feminist, what was accountable, and what was just, was palpable. Words like "basic" and "obvious" and "straightforward" rolled off their tongues as if they were Adam giving the things of the world their original names.

Their "anti-racism," interestingly, did not get to do any of the "personal/political" work in their own thinking, but merely just lounged around in the boring, one-dimensional "political." Whiteness disappears into the background because, for white people, especially white people in a lot of pain, whiteness is assumed, universal, and legitimate. Therefore, white feminism equals assumed, universal, and legitimate feminism.

And, though I've got my own hard-earned feminist politics that are very distinct from these two folks, the word "feminism" began to taste very bitter in my mouth. I began to hate feminism. What is this thing, "feminism," that these people are using to rationalize their shitty behavior towards me, I wondered. What on earth did I sign on to?

But my friends assured me, no, no, what they're doing is not feminism. I mean, it's sort of an unfortunate and unsurprising intersection of white supremacy and feminism, but, as I've been writing in this blog, I also believe there was something else going on. It was white people using political code words to rationalize (and maybe justify) their own existential fears and desires. They had deep, deep problems. I was a tool, a symbol, an objectified persona, a learning opportunity, a signifying monkey, as it were, a compass used by the two of them as they waded through the flood of all of their neuroses. And isn't this essentially the relationship between white folks and Black folks in America? (For a more extended -- and brilliant -- analysis of this phenomenon, see Toni Morrison's short book of essays, Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination.)

They didn't do it in order to be oppressive - I don't believe being oppressive was their goal. I believe they used their politic to orient themselves in a world of pain and, when people are in pain, they often use whatever is within their reach to alleviate themselves. The problem with radical white people is that they do this in Sartrian bad faith. They tell themselves they have to do this shitty thing because it's feminist, when in fact, they want to do it and choose to do it because it keeps them from facing hard truths about themselves. It temporarily makes them feel better because they now have a whole ideology to explain away their hurt feelings and consequent bad behavior. These white folks got to feel righteous, even angry, about the fact that I thought their politics were whack and about my insistence on doing what I wanted to do rather than what they demanded that I do (uppity, unruly Black girl that I am). And this feeling of righteousness takes the place of the much worse feelings of deep fear, unfulfilled longing, self-loathing, and self-doubt. White supremacist feminism saves the day.

Crazy times, indeed.

***

A friend in New Orleans now hates the word "solidarity." She's a radical Black feminist that's been dealing with the onslaught of white do-gooders since Katrina. There are the white folks that are very clear that they are there to do charity work. They are God-fearing missionaries that want to "give back" so that they don't feel bad and to improve their chances of being enveloped in Jesus's embrace for all of eternity. That is what it is, but at least it's honest.

But then there are the radical white folks who say things like "solidarity, not charity," and those are usually the anti-racist, white feminists that have been causing her all kinds of hell. Solidarity, not charity. What does that mean, anyway? I suppose it means that we who did not experience the disaster of the hurricane and of white supremacist oppression want to be political allies with you in your struggle against oppression, we're not just here to pass you the free canned goods.

But I share my friend's trepidation about this thing, “white solidarity,” especially after my own adventures with well-meaning white people. The word "solidarity," comes from the French root solidaire, which means "interdependent" or, from Old French, "in common." The root of solidaire is solidus, which is Latin for "solid" or "whole." "Solidarity," as a political term, was historically used in the context of union organizing. Workers were "in solidarity" with each other as a tactic of strengthening each other's negotiating power with the company heads. Their interdependence was direct because, if one group of workers were exploited, it was easier to exploit other groups of workers, unless the groups of workers were organizing in solidarity with one another. In this class-based (or caste-based) framework, solidarity was an exercise among equals, people who had something "in common." There were certainly differences among workers, and those differences were raced, gendered, aged, ability-based, and even classed, but the solidarity was based on the wholeness of their shared caste as workers.

Somehow, "solidarity" has transitioned to mean something that people of the oppressor group exercise to be on the side of people of the oppressed group. Men's solidarity with women (aka feminist men), white people's solidarity with people of color (aka anti-racist white allies), etc. The problem is that, though "solidarity" was once used to signify a relationship between shared experience and interest, this current use of "solidarity" signifies a relationship between experiences that are explicitly and intentionally not shared.

There is a gulf of power weaved within contemporary solidarity politics that problematizes the concept of "solidarity." The idea is that the power difference is supposed to be the issue at hand for people working in solidarity. So, feminist men talk about their institutional power in the patriarchy and anti-racist white folks talk about their institutional power within white supremacy. However, I think that, somehow, this practice of solidarity ultimately eludes them from a consciousness of their own participation and investment in this power.

If the one that's acting in "solidarity" is part of the oppressor group, then "solidarity" necessarily implicates her identity, experiences, needs, and desires into her political work, and those things are informed by her own membership in the oppressor group. As an illustration of what this means, let's compare working in "solidarity" with the process of working for "justice." If one is working for justice, then her identity, experiences, needs, and desires are only important insofar as it helps or hinders her from contributing to the business of justice. But, if one is working in "solidarity," then all those things about her become incredibly important, and even central, because then the issue is about the relationship between the oppressor and the oppressed (because "solidarity" implies relationship) instead of ending oppression (which is the point of "justice").

A is in solidarity with B with regards to the problem X. What is the most important part of this sentence? What is the thing that “in solidarity” most highlights in our subconscious: A, B, or X? A, it seems to me. A is the subject, the doer, the agent. B is the object that is done upon or done for, and X is, at best, a marginal issue, only used for descriptive purposes. Solidarity seems to create a platform for people of the oppressor group, instead of creating a platform to end oppression.

Further, because "in solidarity" is a descriptive for the person in the oppressor group (A), then that person can easily slip into thinking that she's got good politics when she's actually behaving in ways that are kind of fucked up. She's a good white ally, or he's a good male ally, or whatever, not because of what they're doing, but because they're "in solidarity." This kind of thing can make a person lazy, leaning on the designation of "in solidarity" instead of paying attention to her actions.

As an alternative to solidarity politics, I prefer an ethical commitment to the liberation of all peoples. So, I say to myself, I’m a human being that wants to be ethical, to do the right thing. As it happens, I’m an American and my country is killing the world. Does that mean I should start saying things like, I’m in solidarity with the Zapatistas, the Venezuelans, the Palestinians, and the bad ass sistas in Nigeria? I don’t even know what that means. I don’t feel entitled to be “in solidarity,” because I’m only vaguely familiar with any of these complicated struggles that have been lasting for generations. I don’t avoid Shell gas because I’m acting “in solidarity” with the sistas in Nigeria. Do they need me to be “in solidarity” with them? Do they even care who I am or what my politics are? What difference does it make? They need Shell Oil to stop fucking with them. I also need Shell Oil to stop fucking with them. So, I’ll do my small part by girlcotting Shell gas, and my large part by participating in a global movement for racial, gender, environmental, and economic justice. It’s the right thing to do and I don’t need to presume an inauthentic political relationship with sistas in Nigeria in order to do it. No need for me to go around saying I’m down with the women of the Niger Delta and gaining any activist cred for it (though, to be fair, these sistas haven’t been oppressed-group-of-the-month for a while, so I probably wouldn’t get much cred for it anyway). No need for me to judge how down everyone is around me (read: other Americans) by wondering if they are appropriately “in solidarity” with the Nigerian activists. No need for me to use those women’s struggles to feel politically superior, to seem more interesting, to alleviate my American guilt, or to deal with any other existential problems I may be having. It’s not about me.

This is what it means to not feel entitled to be “in solidarity” but to feel entitled to be ethical and to do the right thing and recognizing that the ethical thing to do is to help unravel the killing machine that is my government. Look at this sentence: It is ethical to do X. Or this sentence: X is the right thing to do. Everything changes, the subject is the action rather than the person of the oppressor group (in this case, me, as an American). The focus is on justice rather than me.

That doesn’t mean I disappear. My desire and commitment to be ethical and my choices and actions are where my subjectivity lives. But my desires and commitments aren’t the most important things. The most important thing is identifying the ethical thing to do and doing it.

Further, feminism and anti-racism (and other ideologies) are only tools that are used to figure out the ethical thing to do, instead of shackles of bad faith or presumptuous pathways into “relationships” with oppressed people. We are not slaves to ideologies -- that’s what went wrong in Cuba (with all due respect). In Stalin’s Russia. My commitment to feminism doesn’t transcend my commitment to my own agency. Feminism is one of many useful guides I have to help me figure out the right thing to do, but it doesn’t possess me. Though I am in relationship with people, I belong to groups, and I generally subscribe to ideologies, no person, no group, and no ideology owns me. I am the only one responsible for my actions that I freely choose.

Dwellings

2006-09-27T22:55:00.000-07:00

A friend commented the other day that this blog is "pretty intense." I honestly hadn't expected that, thinking that it's just a forum where I write about stuff that I talk and think about all the time. Is it unusually intense? I read over the past entries and, gosh, yes, they are kind of gloomy. But, I'm only reflecting back what I see.

Got some bad news today that people very close to me are struggling with issues of years-long repressed memories of sexual abuse and domestic violence. After she told me, she said that she didn't want me to dwell on it. Her big worry was that I would dwell on it...

This is the world -- my home, my dwelling. It's disturbing. It's violent. It's not random, but it is absurd. These issues are my thoughts only insofar as these thoughts are where I actually live. It's too late to worry about my various dwellings. At this point, I'm only surprised if people tell me they haven't experienced some kind of violence.

I went to a conference on philosophy of race the other day and someone gave a paper on Frederick Douglass's resistance to race essentialism. Douglass was about to give a pro-abolition speech when the organizer asked him if he could, at some point in his talk, take off his shirt to show the audience his whipping scars on his back. Douglass declined, insisting that the only true way to compel his audience to make a genuine paradigm shift is to appeal to their reason instead of their empathy.

Douglass made the right decision -- it is unnecessarily objectifying to demand that his body be used as evidence for an argument. However, I don't understand why it is that he thought that slavery -- that racism -- is an error of reason. If only it were so! I can imagine this man, this brilliant Black man, considering his life and the life of other enslaved people, and considering the absolute irrationality that melanin equals chattel slavery. Of course, it's irrational and kind of maddening as a result.

But that doesn't mean that Africans were enslaved because white folks didn't know any better. No, no, no, no. They chose to not know better. Rational persuasion does not work on a person who chooses irrational behavior in order to benefit in some way. And I'm not just talking about the profit of free labor and the asset of caste that slavery provided to white people, though these are profoundly significant. But there is also the fact that this person is actually working from an absurd point of view. She is scared of her own mortality. She is scared of her own sexuality. She is scared of being a bad person. She is scared to lose the stability that her world view gives her. She is scared of her own freedom. These fears can not be argued away.

We can make arguments about why slavery is bad for enslaved people, bad for slaving people, bad for America, for the world. But, the investments that people have in oppression are very complicated and transcend material gains. Rational persuasion is needed, but it is also woefully inadequate.

How do we get to these other existential problems that afflict individuals and institutions and, to a large part, are used by people to justify participating in oppression? It's like there's an emptiness in the souls manifesting oppression that's hard to talk about... These are the dwellings whose doors I'd like wide open.

Fun Home

2006-09-20T21:30:00.000-07:00

I just read Alison Bechdel's Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic, a graphic novel exploring Bechdel's upbringing, her relationship with her closeted father, and his suicide. The book is more devastating than I anticipated. Because of the central role classic literature played in her bookish family and in her own life, Bechdel reaches out for a dizzying set of literary references and metaphors to illustrate the complicated back and forths of relationships. Her father is Icarus, their relationship is like Stephen and Bloom out of Ulysses, he has found a common soul in Camus in his contemplation of suicide. This technique used to communicate the complex multi-layered natures of character and relationship created a kind of distance between myself and the text, as I struggled to remember the references or to relate to her story without familiarity with the references...

And so, as I read her novel, I thought to myself that, though the topic is dark, it's an emotionally safe novel, kind of an academic exercise before I get back to class. An exercise of intellectualized autobiography. I'm familiar with that kind of thing. Hell, I do that kind of thing. This blog is that kind of thing.

But, it's not safe. Her attempts at intellectual distance (which actually may be her way of confessing intimacies, she may not see it as distancing at all) only creates an elongated suspense. And the concluding page of her book which is a final quiet reference to the reality of her father's suicide was like a sudden gasp of cold air in a room that I didn't notice was warm and stifling. Out of the comfortable confusion of theoretical interpretation comes an abrupt and terrible reminder that we're talking about the brutal erasure of someone's life. In more ways than one.

Because I have a lot of work to do but I keep seeing those buildings fall apart...

2006-09-11T12:11:00.000-07:00

So, this is what it's like to be a blogger. I have officially added another thing to do to help me procrastinate from doing my overdue political work and my overdue school work. Instead, all I want to do is write about my own ideas. Which makes me overly self-involved. That's just great.

Apparently, I am a blogger who is, in principle, against blogs. Blogs undermine community and intimacy, they reward people for navel-gazing, and they're just another brick in the road towards the end of human relationships. Down with blogs!

I'm annoyed at the 5-year anniversary of 9/11 events, television specials, photos, etc. I hate it all. There's no room for me to mourn this. It's all wrapped up in the American flag and patriotism is like a giant wall (not unlike that wall built by Israel) that separates me from the prayers I need to say for the souls we lost that day, the souls we lost before that day, and the souls we have been losing ever since...

I hate my government and I can pretend that 9/11 is minor to me because it doesn't compare with all of the harm that my government has done and continues to do. But I know better. I know that I'm an American and when I was woken up by a friend that morning to watch those buildings burn and crumble, I felt like I was dying.

Even now, I have to turn away when they continue to show those planes flying, flying, crashing.

I'm so angry. I can't get to the mourning because I'm so fucking angry. Angry at those men who flew those planes, but angrier still with the decades long choices of my government that helped to create the conditions in which flying planes into buildings seemed to someone like a necessary option.

But who do I direct my anger to? W? Maybe W stands for white people. White people? But some of my best friends are white people. The flag? Isn't there an amendment now that jails me if I'm angry at the flag?

It's bigger than Bush and Co. The rage has the capacity to eat a person up because there's no specific target to which one can direct it. Perhaps that's why we have flyers of planes into buildings. No specific person to assassinate, forget it let's just take down those big ass buildings and see if we'll feel better in heaven. It's gross, I know, but oppression is gross.

On July 29, 2006, Naveed Afzal Haq, a self-identified Muslim American man went into the Seattle Jewish Federation building, killed a person, and shot five others in the stomach. He said (according to the Seattle Times) that he was "angry at Israel." One of the victims, Dayna Klein, says that Haq said "that he was a Muslim, (and) this was his personal statement against Jews and the Bush administration for giving money to Jews, and for us Jews for giving money to Israel, about Hezbollah, the war in Iraq, and he wanted to talk to CNN."

Oh god, oh god, oh god.

Apparently Haq is bipolar, according to his parents and friends. Apparently Haq has been watching television and absorbing war in the privacy and isolation of his own home. Apparently Haq decided to find those responsible by -- oh my god -- googling "something jewish," according to the Seattle police chief.

Apparently Haq did find something -- and some people -- Jewish, that also, incidentally, supports Israel.

If I look away, maybe the buildings will stop falling.

We must say that Haq was crazy, lonely, and isolated. That he lives in a world informed by anti-Semitism. That he himself is anti-Semitic. That those people at the federation did not deserve to be on the other side of his gun. And we would be right on every count.

And we must also say that Haq was full of rage, much of it legit. That he lives in a world informed by Israel-sponsored violence and anti-Arab racism. That the isolation he felt was also about his own experience of racism. That his craziness is partly about not having a target for his rage when the problem is so impossibly overwhelming. That the people at the federation, the people of Lebanon, the people of Palestine, the people of Iraq, the people of Afghanistan, the people who died in those planes and buildings five years ago here on this shore, do not deserve to be on the other side of a gun.

Those people at the Federation were not targeted because the Federation supports Israel. They were targeted because they are Jewish. That is hateful. Frankly, I think if they were targeted because they support Israel, then that would be hateful too. Because they're just people, social workers for crying out loud, trying to do the next thing.

But there must be some clarity about the fact that the man was wigged out about Israel's invasion of Lebanon. What are we supposed to do with all the rage that governments create when they invade, kill, exploit, and rape other peoples? How are we, as members of communities, as friends, family members, lovers, and neighbors, supposed to then contain that shit? What is the system for checking in with Haq after not having had his medication and staying up all night watching hundreds of people get bombed to kingdom come?

What is the system for checking in with me after I watch all of this appalling 9/11 anniversary festival of pro-america bullshit?

There are consequences to building a world on a foundation of violence and oppression that transcend those directly impacted. Our humanity is undermined. Our rage festers. Our relationships are eroded. Our sanity is tested again and again.

That Girl's Had Issues Since 1851.

2006-09-09T11:55:00.000-07:00

Diseases and Peculiarities of the Negro Race:

DRAPETOMANIA, OR THE DISEASE CAUSING NEGROES TO RUN AWAY
by Louisiania physician, Dr. Samuel Cartwright, 1851

It is unknown to our medical authorities, although its diagnostic symptom, the absconding from service, is well known to our planters and overseers... In noticing a disease not heretofore classed among the long list of maladies that man is subject to, it was necessary to have a new term to express it. The cause in the most of cases, that induces the negro to run away from service, is as much a disease of the mind as any other species of mental alienation, and much more curable, as a general rule. With the advantages of proper medical advice, strictly followed, this troublesome practice that many negroes have of running away, can be almost entirely prevented, although the slaves be located on the borders of a free state, within a stone's throw of the abolitionists.

If the white man attempts to oppose the Deity's will, by trying to make the negro anything else than "the submissive knee-bender," (which the Almighty declared he should be,) by trying to raise him to a level with himself, or by putting himself on an equality with the negro; or if he abuses the power which God has given him over his fellow-man, by being cruel to him, or punishing him in anger, or by neglecting to protect him from the wanton abuses of his fellow-servants and all others, or by denying him the usual comforts and necessaries of life, the negro will run away; but if he keeps him in the position that we learn from the Scriptures he was intended to occupy, that is, the position of submission; and if his master or overseer be kind and gracious in his hearing towards him, without condescension, and at the same time ministers to his physical wants, and protects him from abuses, the negro is spell-bound, and cannot run away.

According to my experience, the "genu flexit"--the awe and reverence, must be exacted from them, or they will despise their masters, become rude and ungovernable, and run away. On Mason and Dixon's line, two classes of persons were apt to lose their negroes: those who made themselves too familiar with them, treating them as equals, and making little or no distinction in regard to color; and, on the other hand, those who treated them cruelly, denied them the common necessaries of life, neglected to protect them against the abuses of others, or frightened them by a blustering manner of approach, when about to punish them for misdemeanors. Before the negroes run away, unless they are frightened or panic-struck, they become sulky and dissatisfied. The cause of this sulkiness and dissatisfaction should be inquired into and removed, or they are apt to run away or fall into the negro consumption. When sulky and dissatisfied without cause, the experience of those on the line and elsewhere, was decidedly in favor of whipping them out of it, as a preventive measure against absconding, or other bad conduct. It was called whipping the devil out of them.

If treated kindly, well fed and clothed, with fuel enough to keep a small fire burning all night--separated into families, each family having its own house--not permitted to run about at night to visit their neighbors, to receive visits or use intoxicating liquors, and not overworked or exposed too much to the weather, they are very easily governed--more so than any other people in the world. When all this is done, if any one of more of them, at any time, are inclined to raise their heads to a level with their master or overseer, humanity and their own good require that they should be punished until they fall into that submissive state which it was intended for them to occupy in all after-time, when their progenitor received the name of Canaan or "submissive knee-bender." They have only to be kept in that state and treated like children, with care, kindness, attention and humanity, to prevent and cure them from running away.

***

Enough of Dr. Cartwright, back to me...

When my father justifies his violence towards me and my mother, he does not say that it was God's will for him to assert patriarchal authority using violence, he simply says it was not that bad. She did not go to the hospital, he argues. She rarely called the police. After all, he reasons, you are so successful because you grew up in a two parent home.

This is not the worst part. The worst part is that I almost allowed myself to be seduced by his rationalizations. The violence itself is too absurd to face, maybe he's right. Maybe it wasn't as bad as I remember.

There is the violence of material oppression -- enslavement, domestic violence, genocide, poverty, etc. -- and then there is this other meta-oppression of being made to feel like you are wrong (mistaken, dramatic, oversensitive, clinically insane, etc.) when you identify the experience as bad.

The difficulty is that it is tempting to buy into a narrative that you are mistaken, dramatic, oversensitive, or clinically insane. The alternative is to face the reality that something deeply terrible is happening to you and your options for resistance are limited. Perhaps some of us may think that this is the more courageous option. To resist the project of oppression defining us. Maybe. But let's consider for a moment an enslaved person who might support Dr. Cartwright's theory. That nigger's crazy, he might say, as he watches another enslaved person prepare to escape. Where would she go?, he might think. She's risking her life -- it's not rational.

We can say, in the comfort of not experiencing the violence of being enslaved, that it's perfectly rational for that enslaved person to try to escape and Cartwright is a white supremacist quack. And we would be right. But my question is why would the non-escaping enslaved person question the escapee? One reason could be that not supporting the escapee, questioning the escapee's capacity for rational thinking, keeps this other enslaved person from being forced to face the horror of his life. This is also a rational, self-protective act. If the critique is that this non-escapee is suffering from internalized oppression, then I submit that internalized oppression could be being used as a tool for mental survival.

As I listened to my father, I imagined myself adopting his distorted account of my childhood. Things would be so much easier for me, I thought, if he were right and I were wrong and it hadn't been that bad. I could live in a perfectly lovely fantasy world in which I am not burdened with those experiences and I too am finally sane just like everyone else. Yes, dear father, let's make a deal. I'll be the crazy one and I'll go to a nice freudian therapist and take my brain altering pills and get all fixed up so that I will eventually come to see that I was merely mistaken. In exchange, all will be well in my family and I won't be rootless anymore. I'll be the nice girl robot and the world will be full of lemonade and happy little reality tv shows.

I suspect this would not be a sustainable choice -- ultimately, I am too hardheaded to just accept his version of what happened and thank god for that. But I remain curious about the fact that I was momentarily seduced by this other option. Internalized oppression can offer a temporary reprieve to keep you from completely self-destructing. Internalized oppression could sometimes be employed as a temporary harm reduction strategy.

Sounds depressing? Perhaps, but the idea is to figure out a way to sustain oppressed people to deal with the stories of their experiences without it being so traumatic that they can't deal and instead are more likely to accept some ridiculous story that they are crazy.

It is my belief that if we could end internalized oppression, the revolution would have been won a long time ago. Now the question is, what makes internalized oppression so damned popular? It's not just manipulation by others, it's also what we gain from it. A clarity. Poor people are lazy, wealthy people are hard workers -- this assertion presents a simplicity. It's wrong, but it's clear. A belonging. A desire to be seen as normal. A release from the pressure of knowledge and the frustration of powerlessness. A deeply blissful ignorance.

Dave Chappelle, we hardly knew ye

2006-09-09T00:43:00.000-07:00

This is the best article I have seen analyzing Dave Chappelle's retreat from his Comedy Central show:
http://www.seeingblack.com/article_70.shtml

Thank god, for Chappelle's sake, that he realized he needed to retreat for his own well-being. Too bad for us. The article is compelling because it reveals how we can't control how we are interpreted by others, especially given oppression. Chappelle (and Pryor) created brilliantly subversive humor, but unless you understand (and perhaps empathize with) the joke, it's not hard to re-interpret their work within a racist paradigm. The meaning is no longer subversive, but supports the narrative of white supremacy. If you can't control how your work will be interpreted, especially as you become more popular to white folks, how do you maintain your integrity? Maybe you can't and you just need to be done with it.

Sigh. White people ruin everything.

Incidentally, Chappelle's Black Bush skit is the funniest, most ridiculous, most true thing I have ever seen in life.

Brown vs. Board doll test redux

2006-09-03T20:05:00.000-07:00

Check out this video:

http://www.mediathatmattersfest.org/6/index.php?id=2

It's a 7-minute documentary by a 16-year old Black girl, Kiri Davis, about Black girls and self-image. She did a repeat of the famous Brown vs. Board of Education test where young Black children were shown a black doll and a white doll and asked which doll is "bad" and which is "good," and so on. The results of the test were...well, you know what the results of the tests were.

It's hard to watch the children articulate which dolls they prefer and why. Really heartbreaking.

Uphill battles...

That Girl Has Issues. Welcome!

2006-09-03T09:33:00.000-07:00

Are you someone with issues?

Do you ever think that, mostly you're okay, given that, yes your government is killing the world, and sure, you don't completely know how you're gonna make rent, but whatever, you're hangin in there, and then you find out that the next season of Survivor is going to be a race-based orgy of badness and you suddenly find yourself realizing that perhaps somewhere along the way you must have

gone

completely

mad?

Oppression is an absurd phenomenon that makes no sense, and yet is oddly predictable. This blog is basically a public process of me trying to unravel oppression's bizarre and deadly tentacles. From pop culture to political organizing to personal life, I'm really trying to figure this thing out and I think it may be more interesting to do that in conversation with others. Real life conversations are awesome, but blogs offer documentation and convenience!

I'm a radical Black feminist, also known as a racewoman. I'm a former community organizer and currently a grad student within the academic industrial complex studying philosophy. Since Bush was re-"elected" in Nov 2004, I've been having a bit of a nervous breakdown, but I come from a long line of resilient racewomen and racemen, so I think I'll survive - I just wish the circumstances would allow more of us to do so.

I'm definitely a product of my generation - Gen Xer internet nerd, cynic, postmoderny, and somewhat irreverent. But I try to be a good person, nevertheless.

I like to read Us magazine, radical women of color manifestos, and Martin Buber. I like to watch awards shows and unfairly judge celebrities for not being feminists and for wearing ugly dresses. I am a contradiction, but I'm not very comfortable with contradictions. I am easily shocked. I don't hold my liquor that well. Rationality is both my enemy and my saving grace.

I'm not really a "kid person," but the kids in my life are the most awesome people I've ever known and I love them...strange, short, ridiculously adorable little people that are smarter than we think.

I am an ally to the coming revolt of the oppressed peoples of the world, but I secretly hope that life post the revolution will somehow include episodes of Project Runway.

I am prone to engaging conspiracy theories, though I can't help but wonder if the creation of conspiracy theories is just a big conspiracy designed to keep us from seeing what's really happening. Still, I think Ann Coulter is an evil robot from outerspace and I'm pretty sure Condi Rice is out to get me.

And it's from this perspective that I'll be exploring issues of oppression and internalized oppression. So, should be an interesting ride!