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The Real Housewives of The Help Go to Africa

2012-01-30T08:52:00.002-06:00

Hollywood is so full of liberal do-gooders always on the cutting edge. As such, in advance of Black History Month, they have bestowed many acting awards upon members of the cast of The Help, namely Viola Davis and Octavia Spencer, who both won SAG Awards last night.

Perhaps it was because the embarrassingly entertaining Real Housewives of Atlanta happened to be arguing about how to properly acknowledge one another at the mall at the same time the SAG Awards aired, but Twitter responses to Marlo's desire to eat some African (it's a country, you know) food like fish (what she order?/fish filet?) were briefly interrupted by folks going on and on about the greatness of Viola Davis' acceptance speech. My allegiances are to RHOA, so I googled the speech. Davis looked really nice (those Bassett-esque arms!). Her professional community gave her a standing ovation. She talked about dreams. Shouted out Cicely Tyson and Meryl Streep.

If my feed was any indication, (Black) Twitter really loved this moment. When the most sensible member of RHOA has to be fed a line about apartheid, I can understand the adulation. Juxtaposition compels one to do odd things.

But wait.

Weren't we just mad about this movie three months ago?

Although I tend to think I have the ability to understand contradiction, I'm having some difficulty comprehending the collective embrace of this ambiguity. Many of us criticized--or refused to read--the book. Many of us criticized--or refused to see--the movie. Yet, we laud the speech of an actor who has become a critical darling and gives a speech we deem "brilliant," "wonderful," and "beautiful," precisely because she starred in the very film that we so stringently derided? Um, how does that work?

Perhaps it was the fact that I experienced all of this through social media, but the RHOA/SAG Awards moment was so incredibly odd. On one hand, I'm reading tweets about how embarrassing the former is--a humiliation so integrally tied to context. The twitterati's chagrin was so palpable, you would have thought Nelson Mandela was within earshot of Sheree and Marlo's argument. After all, the RHOA are up to their usual weekly shenanigans, but it's the fact that they're in an apartment in South Africa that makes it all the worse. And we all know you don't play with Africa. It's the Motherland! From whence we came! No jokes nor (n)ignorance allowed. Serious business. Singular and serious focus is required at all times. So much so that we cannot possibly begin to unpack the way in which that kind of grave reverence is based upon a fetishization that is just as problematic as Cynthia's dashiki or Kandi's chosen animal print dress for evening festivities. On the other hand, voices from the same cohort praised Viola Davis' speech. An admiration that required a willing forgetfulness of the vehicle which brought her and her co-star, Octavia Spencer, to that stage last night. An admiration totally divorced from that context. Convenient, really. Inconsistent, truly.

Davis and Spencer are both incredible actors whose talent demands that they consistently star in--and be awarded for--performances that do not require the revivification of old stereotypes. And if it is our claim that Hollywood needs to do better, I'm not sure how we applaud acceptance speeches that don't begin with, "Damn, it sucks who I had to play to get this..." Context is everything. And it is not a convenience. We cannot cringe at the thought that @BravoAndy has watched and will be commenting upon Negroes acting crazy for our entertainment with some Hollywood celebrities (or the owners of RHOA resident house slave, Sweetie, for last night's episode) after we've stopped shaking our heads, then not feel similarly nauseated by the visual of a room full of (white) Hollywood standing and applauding our latest pitch-perfect portrayal of a maid--even if she is dressed to the nines.

Despite the implications of that last line, I say that with a deep respect for Viola Davis' dream and her ability as an actor. My comments, though inspired by, are not about her. But how we applaud her acceptance speech without giving her at least a little Sam Jackson Face is something that perplexes me. (Unless, of course, it's because we had a sneaking suspicion that someone had to tell Mo'Nique who Hattie McDaniel was, and we assumed Viola Davis knew her history all along.)

Clarity regarding the matter would be greatly appreciated.

Toure's Northern State of Mind*

2012-01-09T11:20:00.002-06:00

A few weeks ago, writer slash (cultural) critic slash Twitter all-star, Toure published a piece in the The New York Times about the allegedly recent flurry of white women rappers. From rehashing black respectability in an article about Michael Vick, to considering the black middle class in a discussion of the Obamas' vacationing tendencies, Toure is no stranger to writing incendiary and ill-conceived articles. And this latest work is no different. Like the ones before them, this story generated a considerable amount of discussion on Twitter and other social media outlets where anyone with an internet connection can articulate her beef.

In the piece, Toure argues that even within a genre considered so hypermasculine and black, the combination of the largely white male demographic that listens to rap music and Americans' overall obsession with blondes indicates that eventually--perhaps even soon and very soon--a white woman rapper or several will garner mainstream attention. Toure then goes on to list a small group of white women emcees who have gained some notoriety on the web.

Of course many took ~~the bait~~ issue with Toure's article and his list. Some showed concern over the fact that he ignored a slew of white women rappers, such as Detroit's Invincible, who have been around since before a Twitterfeed and a YouTube channel was all one needed to become famous. Others scoffed at his vehement reluctance to acknowledge black women rhymers in any sustained manner. I have no similar beef. The problem with Toure's work here, as I see it, is the position he has to adopt in order to make this subject matter even remotely interesting--or infuriating--to readers. In the preamble to the list, Toure writes:

There is nothing about the skills required to be an M.C. that makes it impossible for white women to rhyme. It’s not that their mouths can’t do it. The true barrier to entry is that there is an essence at the center of hip-hop that white women have an extraordinarily hard time exuding or even copying. For many Americans, black male rappers are entrancing because they give off a sense of black masculine power — that sense of strength, ego and menace that derives from being part of the street — or because of the seductive display of black male cool.

Black women and white men who have been successful in hip-hop have found ways to embody those senses and make them their own. But hip-hop coming from a white woman is almost always an immediate joke. Take Gwyneth Paltrow, for example, showing how much she loves hip-hop by earnestly rhyming the lyrics to N.W.A.’s “Straight Outta Compton” on a British television show or Natalie Portman furiously spitting rhymes ingangsta-rap style on “Saturday Night Live.”
As soon as white women start rhyming, no matter what they say, it’s seen as cute and comical, like a cat walking on its hind legs. Seeing them try to embody the attributes of hip-hop’s vision of black masculinity is a hysterical gender disjunction: they wear it as convincingly as a woman wearing her husband’s clothes.

A (re)phrasing of the assumptions made in this argument are in order. And I understand it as this: The premise of the entire article is the reification of racialized gender stereotypes in order to delineate the kind of aural and visual dissonance that seeing a white female rapper compels in the viewer. In other words, white women have to be understood as the apotheosis of American cultural femininity in order for this article to be at all "interesting." White men can quasi-access this (black) male masculinity because they are men. Black women can almost gain entrance because they've been emasculating black men for centuries, as the story goes, so their appearance in the hip-hop cosmos, if I may borrow Toure's language, isn't at all worth note. So although I appreciate those who want to teach Toure his white female emcee history or call him out for his ignoring and utter disrespect for black women--again--in this case, I think those critiques miss a central and problematic point.

This article is remarkable precisely because it relies on and echos a problematic understanding of black maleness and gender roles that black women have never really had access to--and frankly, why would they want to?--in order to be noteworthy. So Toure's dismissal of black women, it seems, is less about his dislike, but more about his implicit rehashing of damaging stereotypes in order to justify a thousand words on white female rappers. Gwyneth Paltrow's recitation of NWA is funny and "cute" only if we interpret her as an ideal example of femininity and female beauty articulating a language that is thoroughly antithetical to her physicality and our understanding of her social position. Our laughter ceases, however, when we realize what such chuckles would require us to think of white women, black men, and everyone in between. It's all very Soul on Ice if you ask me (see: "The Allegory of the Black Eunuchs"). This is why Invincible, those unnamed black women rappers, et. al. don't make the cut: they're not feminine in the way Toure needs them to be.

I bring all of this up not simply to knock Toure's hustle--and a hustle it is--or take it as another opportunity to call him out for the way his antagonism toward black women is always present just underneath the surface (as exemplified here). Nor is my desire to note how un-post-black (whatever that means) Toure's work often seems despite his recent book. Rather, I wanted mark this latest moment because Toure seems to be mainstream media's latest black "it" guy. He's evolved from that crazy Afro dude who wrote that one article about Lauryn Hill and appeared on all those Vh1 shows, to a suit rocking commentator with expertise enough to explain racism in sports and moderate some topic of discussion involving black people in a city near you. Folks, this is the latest guy charged with explaining black people, black culture to the masses. Yet as fresh as his face might be to many, it seems that this jack of all trades has simply repackaged an ever-problematic understanding of the way race and gender work.

So retweet and quote him if you want to, consider him your Twitter guide to all things black and relevant, but remember that it's all the same song. A misogynistic and un-nuanced notion of blackness refrain that should grate upon your ears more than his voice does. #justsayin

*FYI: Northern State

Pariah's Pariah: A Review, a Critique

2012-01-02T10:09:00.005-06:00

*Spoiler Alert*

On Friday, Dee Rees' much lauded independent film, Pariah will expand its release from four theaters to eleven, increasing the opportunity for many to view this incredibly important Focus Features picture. Rees' debut work has deservedly generated a deluge of critical praise, and should at the very least garner a few nominations come award season.

The coming of age story centers on Alike (pronounced uh-LEE-kay), played pitch perfectly by Adepero Oduye as a somewhat awkward 17-year-old high school student and aspiring poet. On the cusp of fully coming into her sexuality, Alike dons herself in boy's clothing at school and as she explores the gay nightlife of New York City with her friend Laura (Pernell Walker). At home, however, Alike dresses in a more traditionally feminine costume to throw her mother, Audrey (Kim Wayans) off of her increasingly difficult to mask scent. This, of course, is the core tension in the film, and the viewer's stomach tightens as the stakes get increasingly higher. As this central narrative unfolds, Alike smartly navigates her way through personal discovery, experiencing first love and a gut-wrenchingly painful heartbreak, all the while preparing for that ever difficult task of leaving the (parents') nest.

I had the fortune of screening Pariah at Chicago's Reeling Film Festival last fall, and it is excellent. The film is visually stunning and presents New York through an incredibly fresh and unique lens. Writer/director Rees has crafted a compellingly human cast of rich characters, including veteran comedian, Kim Wayans, whose convincing turn as Alike's prudish and lonely mother may come as a surprise to those familiar with her résumé. Wayans was absolutely impressive in her role, and has rightfully received buzz for her dramatic performance. Alas, Wayans' character is the most glaring of the few troubling aspects of Rees' otherwise awesome work.

At several moments in the film, I was reminded of Lee Daniel's comparatively more problematic movie, Precious (2009), the filmic rendering of Sapphire's novel Push (1996). My recalling Daniels' work has nothing to do with limited knowledge of film or a (mainstream) reviewer's rather lazy impulse to compare Pariah to the other, black film she was last required to see. Rather, the commonalities between the two films are few but significant, and include but go beyond the way that--although the lens is softer--the milieu, the visual effect of Pariah reminds me of the scenes inside Precious' apartment. And although both Precious and Alike are helped along the road of self-discovery through writing and poetry and the support of a (light-skinned) English teacher, that similarity is not the most glaring. In fact, Pariah has none of the issues around color Daniels' work does. One might determine that my comparison is rooted in the fact that Wayans, just like Precious' Mo'Nique, was known as a comedic actor before being cast in a dramatic role as the mother of a black teenager. And that is at least in the same region as my issue. For as impressive as Pariah is, the tension that propels this narrative is the unfortunately familiar castigation of black motherhood.

My praises of Wayans' portrayal notwithstanding, though the character she is charged to play is the seeming antithesis of Precious Jones' mother, she reeks of a similar kind of pathology. That is, Audrey is unliked, distant, and the enemy of her daughter. As the matriarch of her conservative family, Audrey has an investment in maintaining a traditional, respectable family image that both her daughter and her husband (through his implied extramarital affair) reject with their actions. The irony, of course, is that black mothers are generally vilified for their inability to assimilate into the common nuclear family structure through their out of wedlock children, unmarried status, multiple sexual partners (and hence baby-daddies), and poverty. Wayans' Audrey shows that even attempting to emulate the nuclear family structure through consistent church attendance, commitment to traditional gender roles and heterosexual monogamy does not give one access to a kinder, gentler image of (black) motherhood that is seemingly endemic to one Clair Huxtable. Instead, Audrey, like black mothers before her, is cold, irrational, and incapable of unconditional love, a fact reiterated in a scene between Laura and her mother. Although Audrey's struggle to maintain a grasp of her traditional family unit through these resistances might allow for the structure itself to be called into question, the film expresses that the problem lies with Audrey and her selfish refusal to let her husband and daughter evolve (away from her).

Audrey is the personification of repellent. Nobody likes her. She has no work friends (she eats lunch alone while her coworkers talk about her within earshot), and her only social engagement is at church. Audrey's isolation might generate sympathy from the audience, but her inability to control her Lutie Johnson-esque rage means that the anger continuously boils over, scalding her family. The audience's spying of Audrey waiting for her allegedly adulterous husband, Arthur, is the lone attempt to engender some form a sympathy for Audrey, but her other antics neutralize the scene, rendering it meaningless. Further, it's Arthur's adultery that becomes his part of an unarticulated connection with Alike.

Both Arthur and Alike forge a bond by knowing and keeping each other's secrets--from Audrey. Although this subplot sweetens an already loving relationship between father and daughter, the problem with this subplot is that it requires an understanding that the two have a common enemy, Audrey, and further ensconces her as such. So, as much as the audience thirsts for this black father-daughter link, that connection is predicated upon an implicit castigation of black motherhood. Which, as award history suggests, is probably part of the reason why Wayans is the cast member most likely to win an award. At least Mrs. Jones got to explain herself. Pariah leaves the impression that Audrey will soon lose her already tenuous grasp. And the audience is left with the impression that it should not care.

As much as I enjoyed Pariah and as much as it increased my fandom of Kim Wayans, I found her character disappointing. Pariah is an incredibly rich film that explodes caricatures of blackness and sexuality through its commitment to expressing the humanity underneath those identity markers. Unfortunately, as powerful as the storytelling is, it still rests upon and forwards an all too common image of black motherhood. So even as I applaud the film and strongly encourage everyone to go see Pariah, my ovation is tempered and slightly hesitant.

Fightin’ Words: On Awkward Black Girl and the CFC

2011-12-12T12:38:00.002-06:00

Of the many things I’ve received from the inimitable Grandma Charlotte, including second-hand smoke, the basics of knitting, and a tendency to yell at people appearing on television as if they can somehow hear me, her literary example and advice on general matters are probably the gifts I hold most dear. Grandma Charlotte is always reading; she has been known to give people book covers as gifts because she has not finished the book it clothed. Along with telling me that books were my friends, it was from Grandma that I first learned the following axiom on semantics, “It’s not what you say, but how you say it. It’s not the words that you use, but the way that you convey it.”

The above saying was one of the first things I thought of when I heard about the response (and ensuing "controversy") to the latest episode of the increasingly popular webseries, The Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl, which has garnered praise from several websites including this one. Like many, on the first Thursday of each month or thereabouts, I log-on toYoutube and watch Issa Rae's extremely likable character, J, get in and out of awkward situations at work and in her dating life. This last clip is no different. After having dissed her best friend, Cece to continue trick-or-treating with one of her suitors, White Jay, J has to implore Cece to forgive her, because after an awkward moment on her date with White Jay, she needs advice. The trouble is this: the couple run into White Jay's ex-girlfriend, a moment that renders him speechless and J invisible. As J and Cece discuss what happened, J admits to feeling like Missy Elliott (she was wearing a garbage bag; see Missy's video "The Rain [Supa Dupa Fly]" to catch the reference) next to Angelina Jolie, to which Cece replies that "[White Jay's] ex-girlfriend is a tranny bitch in heels."

A letter appeared on the Crunk Feminist Collective Tumblr site in response, mainly, to this bit of dialogue and some other issues the composers of the letter wanted to bring to the fore.* A mini-internet controversy commenced in response to the response, with commenters calling the writers of the letter too sensitive, too politically correct, too much. In other words, many were just not going to allow any sort of critique of ABG stand, while others defended the perspective the letter took, while still others simply instigated everything. My purpose here is to do none of that. Rather, I'd like to unpack what I think the entire issue circulates around, which, put succinctly is this: the joke just didn't work.

Part of what makes Rae's series successful is main character J's likability, and part of this likability is the audience's ability to readily identify with J's context, her cultural touchstones. We understand the above Missy reference without the assistance of Google. We appreciate the casual shout outs to Saved by the Bell and California Dreams. We've seen School Dazeas many times as she has; we'd quote Sam Jackson characters in our rap lyrics, too. Her touchstones are ours. To echo one of the central themes of this season, we get J. And we think J, in turn, gets us.

What we also get is that the writers of ABG know how to navigate touchy subjects like race and gender for comedic effect very well. They know what the words mean, they know what they meant, they understand interlocuters' relationship to them and how, then, audiences might respond to their use. They're well-versed. And generally the effect is funny. ABG thrives on our understanding that what happens is ironic and/or absurd. So when the omniracial character uses his racial illegibility to make stereotypical statements, but is later outed as Armenian and has to go to racial sensitivity training, we're supposed to laugh because it's ironic. Sub-plots like that work because we can see how the writers' mastery of the subject matter allows for that kind of manipulation. The writing is less successful when the fat jokes and lines about tranny bitches in heels get used as throwaway dialogue that is supposed to make J feel better and/or audiences chuckle. It becomes clear that the writers were less adept at understanding how those phrases might come off than they are about others.

And I think that's where I can understand what the letter posted on the CFC Tumblr was trying to do, but was unsuccessful because it resembles the kinds of texts people often associate with censorship through the forwarding of politically correct language and language policing. I understand another version of the letter might have read: Hey, FYI: These words may connote some stuff you might not have realized and/or may want to think about the next time you decide to use them. kthxbye. I may have written a version of the note that simply said: I don't think these kinds of jokes work, and here's why... But that message gets buried by the rather unfortunate line, "We have seen your responsiveness to the fans of ABG and we hope that by raising this concern you will respond accordingly by not using such language in future episodes."

Right or wrong, asking/telling people not to say things because they hurt our feelings inevitably engenders the kind of backlash we saw after the letter was published, and truly undermines the other, really useful parts of the note. Instead of a fruitful conversation about what does and doesn't work in this genre, the black versus queer debate was again inflamed and the lede got buried. Now we have, oddly, blackness in one corner and queerness in the other. Even worse, those on either side of the debate are deploying what I, in my secret life of writing stand-up jokes, call The Nigger Test.

Bear with me.

If I were a stand-up comedian, I'd have a joke called The Nigger Test. The Nigger Test is something people use when someone says something that is ostensibly, debatably offensive. It works like this: someone says fag, someone takes offense, some else says, "What's the big deal?" Then someone else says, "If they had said nigger instead of fag, you'd feel differently." In other words, substitute the offensive word in question with nigger, try the statement again, and see if it's offensive now. This test is in the politically correct handbook or something--and I hate it: 1. I'm tired of black people being used as some baseline example of discrimination, as if that's all we're good for; 2. If I am ever in a situation where I'd have to use The Nigger Test, I'm going to gouge out my eyes because the person I'm talking to ended up in the wrong century. Seriously, if your response to hearing someone use The Nigger Test is, "Ohhhhh, I get it now," please leave 2011; 3. Nigger is not a synonym for other offensive words. It is not analogous to other words, not even slave. Nigger has its own history, and it is not available for lease; 4. Slurs and other offensive language have their own histories that need to be heeded and known on their own accord.

Folks defended both sides by using The Nigger Test, and it doesn't work. It didn't work because it obscured the issues the letter writers were concerned with and placed queerness and blackness at odds. It also didn't work because we know that the writers of ABG know how to deploy nigga properly. In addition, The Nigger Test also allowed for the false analogy of ABG and other, non-fictional use of slurs and offensive language like Michael Richards or Don Imus, for example. The fallacy of those comparisons is that the latter examples were moments where such language was used with either lack of forethought or with the precise desire to incite, whereas the scene in ABG offers none of that. Which brings me back to Grandma Charlotte's point: It wasn't simply what Cece said; it was how she said it. Reviewing the scene, it's clear to me that those who wrote it have no Imus-like intentions, which is to say, they know what they're saying is problematic, and that's exactly why they're deploying it. Instead, what I saw was an attempt to say something snarky, funny even without knowing the full context. Like a kid cursing. The remark seemed lazy, haphazard. An attempt at a quick laugh that fell flat.

The joke didn't work. And it didn't work for the same reason the other jokes in the series do, which has nothing to do with being part of the in-group. Rather, it is a matter of being impeccable with language and requires an intimate knowledge of the words that are deployed. Still, eliciting offense instead of laughter does not call for the jettisoning of such language altogether. We must allow words, even the ones that hurt our feelings, to breathe. As writers, we have to be purposeful with our language. And should we choose to water the seeds of certain words, then it behooves us to understand the soil from which they grow. And if we fail at that, then our narratives do, too. It's a risk we take. It's why revision is key. It is why criticism--including the CFC letter--is crucial. It is why Grandma Charlotte, as she told me when I was a child, is always right.

*Full disclosure: I consider myself a friend of Moya Bailey, one of the letter writers, and chatted with her briefly regarding this issue.

N.B. There's a really good scene in the series, Louie that articulates this issue much better than I have. Feel free to skip to the 5:10 mark. *NSFW*

Gumbel's Stern Words

2011-10-24T10:52:00.001-05:00

Last week, Bryant Gumbel's closing remarks at the end of his Emmy Award-winning HBO series, Real Sports sparked controversy:

"Finally, tonight, if the NBA lockout is going to be resolved any time soon, it seems likely to be done in spite of David Stern, not because of him. I say that because the NBA's infamously egocentric commissioner seemed more hellbent recently on demeaning the players rather than his game's labor impasse.

"How else to explain Stern's rants in recent days. To any and everyone who would listen, he has alternately knocked union leader Billy Hunter, said the players were getting inaccurate information, and started sounding 'Chicken Little' claims about what games might be lost if players didn't soon see things his way.

"Stern's version of what has been going on behind closed doors has of course been disputed, but his efforts were typical of a commissioner who has always seemed eager to be viewed as some kind of modern plantation overseer, treating NBA men as if they were his boys. It's part of Stern's M.O., like his past self-serving edicts on dress code and the questioning of officials. His moves were intended to do little more than show how he's the one keeping the hired hands in their place.

"Some will of course cringe at that characterization but Stern's disdain for the players is as palpable and pathetic as his motives are transparent. Yes, the NBA's business model is broken. But to fix it, maybe the league's commissioner should concern himself most with the solution and stop being part of the problem."

Of course, the pundits went right to work dismissing Gumbel's comments, even with the recent anecdote about NBA star, Dwyane Wade telling Stern not to point at him like he was a child still very easy to find via a Google search. As theLeBron James-Dan Gilbert situation showed two summers ago and Adrian Peterson's comments during the NFL lockout last spring also proved, folks are committed to preserving the sanctity of chattel slavery in the United States. Slavery is so Prince (or the Sinead O'Connor cover).

And I think that's wrong.

Yes, these are millionaires. Yes, professional sports labor strikes have absolutely nothing to do with the systemic and systematic dehumanization and disenfranchisement of an entire people, and its effects will not resound hundreds of years from now. I get it. I understand it. I promise I do. But...

Professional sports is a straight-up plantation economy. And when the primary bodies laboring in that economy are black, while those who both own and manage those bodies are mostly white--a group of white elites, mind you--it becomes a bit difficult not to think about the way that slavery echoes in
yet another
this multi-billion dollar industry.

When Stern took over as commissioner of the NBA, he was given the task to "clean up" a league that was regarded as too black to be economically successful; Stern's job was to make it more respectable, more palatable to white audiences. One such effort, for example, was instituting a dress code when hip-hop had thoroughly "invaded" the league. In other words, much of Stern's job is managing black bodies so that they are palatable to white audiences at all times. He manages their production on the court and their presentation while off. Yet we scoff at Gumbel's assertion that Stern is kind of a modern-day overseer?

I'm just sayin'. There is a curious racial component to both the NFL and NBA lockouts that cannot be adequately described as labor strife. It just can't, especially when we consider the incredibly short average career of both NFL and NBA athletes. Those bodies are used and discarded. (I will never forget how slowly Doug Williams shuffled into that Las Vegas food court. Never.) And when I hear pundits shut down the conversations that Gumbel's words reinvigorate, it's frustrating. Because it shuts down conversations about what it means to vicariously "own" these black bodies in fantasy leagues. It shuts down conversations about what means to call these black men "beasts" when we are in awe of their physical talents. It shuts down conversations about what it means to put players on the trading block or talk about their "value." It shuts down conversations about the entire fucking NFL Combine. It shuts down conversations about how the spectacle we so enjoy is contingent upon exploiting these men's physical skill set without ensuring that they have other skill sets to flourish once their bodies can no longer do the work of dunking and tip-toeing the sideline. It shuts down conversations about how irritated we get when athletes offer opinions; we don't want to know that they think!

The above isn't basic labor stuff. I'm no expert, but I'm not sure how the way workers are/were treated in factories, for example, give lucidity to this conversation. The plantation economy and the language of slavery sure is helpful, though. If there is another, less sacred example(s) we might employ to help explore Gumbel's words and all that they've reanimated, I'm very happy to hear them. But if we can only properly understand this by invoking the legacy of slavery, then why are we so reluctant?

Alternatives to Occupying Things

2011-10-17T10:05:00.000-05:00

Morning.

Last week, I ranted a little about the language of Occupy _insert city here_, and how we really need to consider how semantics inform our actions. As a bit of a reminder, I support actions that look to significantly counter the growing chasm between the haves and the have-nots, but I don't think we need to adopt the language--and behavior--of colonialists to do that. Besides, occupying occupied spaces does not make us much--if any--better than the folks we're protesting.

All that said, I thought I might start a list here. What alternatives are availble to those of us who can't or won't occupy _insert city here_ ? What else can we do to disrupt the heart of capitalism? Since we live here, it's nearly impossible not to participate, but perhaps we can limit our activity in some noticeable way.

Barter -- There's no rule (is there?) saying one has to pay money for services. If you have a useful skill, why not offer that instead of the Benjamins? You need a hair cut? Offer to clean-up the shop in exchange for a fade. Accountant? Do someone's taxes in exchange for bike or car maintenance.
Bank account -- Move your money. Find a bank or a credit union that didn't take a bailout. Or one that doesn't arrest folks for closing bank accounts. (So. Not. Cool.) Hell, you and your friends pool your money and start your own bank. Yes, ATM's are convenient, but with bartering, who needs money?
Support independent shop owners -- The holidays are coming. How about copping gifts some place not immediately tied to those Wall Street fat cats? This holiday season, buy unique gifts from a place that is not the subsidiary to some large multinational corporation. Or make gifts. Kwanzaa does not have a monopoly on the hand-made gifts game. That said, if someone can hand-make an iPad for me, I'll tweet or hate on people or fax stuff for her for like three years. (Sorry. Only skills I have.)
Check 'Other' -- Seriously, folks. We can change the tennis match between Democrats and Republicans by adding other parties to hold serve. We treat our political system as if it's 1950s television. We're in the cable era now; let's require more choices. The two-party system is bogus. It's apparent. And both sides of the aisle are filled with folks who are more focused on maintaining power than employing it to make their constituents' lives better. There are options beyond Democrat and Republican. Perhaps those so inclined to vote should demand the other options.

I hope we can generate conversation about how we can help with the aims of this OWS movement without occupying spaces. I know the above list is just a beginning. I also know that many folks who are in support of OWS and its goals want to help but can't. Perhaps those of us who can, will. I hope the (better) ideas I didn't mention here are shared. We've got to find a way to get what we want without replicating the behavior of our oppressors. Otherwise, such actions are pointless.

Two-for-One Monday

2011-10-10T08:26:00.003-05:00

Instead of giving you a long-winded blog wherein I attempt to make sense of (read: hate on) some nugget of pop culture, I thought I just comment on two issues that have stuck with me since I last wrote.

On Useless Knowledge and Occupy Wall Street
As a kid, I used to collect useless knowledge. You know, stuff like, If you tap the 57 on a Heinz bottle it'll make the ketchup come out faster. (You're welcome.) Now, I'm sure the invention of Google has made this kind of knowledge a little easier to come by and a lot less impressive--even when coming from the mouth of a 12-year-old. But I must share one more: Wall Street is called Wall Street because the Dutch built a wall to keep the indigenous folks from "invading." Perhaps this account is disputed, but even if this factoid is not entirely true, I think it's important to think about it in terms of the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations.

Grandma Charlotte says, "It's not what you say, it's how you say it." I understand that demonstrators are saying no to corporate greed and other reasons for the growing economic inequality in this country, but why do they have to employ the semantics of colonialism to express it? Although I can support the larger aims of these kinds of demonstrations, I cannot support how they are being expressed. I'm not trying to occupy anything. Calling for an occupation ain't revolutionizing anything.

Just as Slut Walk has an inherently bourgeois, white woman tenor it--there's no point in attempting to reclaim a word you been called for forever and a day since your chastity has never been assumed--Occupy Wall Street has a similar feel. Ask the descendants of the indigenous folks the Dutch were trying to keep out--if they're still around. We like to remind folks on Columbus Day that you can't discover a place that is already populated; well, you can't occupy a space that is already occupied--and why would you want to?

Perhaps I am too crunk about semantics. But unless we are deliberate, we think what we say what we act. If we really want to revolutionize, how about everybody who shouldn't really be on Wall Street leave? Yeah. I didn't think so.

N.B. I know that many sites that speak to issues that (in)directly involve indigenous folks and colonialist discourse have been eloquently arguing this point. I wanted to both echo and acknowledge them, and present a sloppy version of those arguments in this space.

Clothes, the Boogie Man, and... You?

Has Hallmark come up with a line of coming out cards yet? Tomorrow is National Coming Out Day. Wouldn't coming out be easier if you could just head out to your local drugstore and pick up a pack of coming out cards that look just like those Valentine's joints we used to have to buy for our 3rd grade class? I can think of several catchy phrases to put on the front along with pictures of kittens--and Subarus.

Seriously, though, I very rarely speak to the (black) youth who presumably read this blog. So to them and others who have trepidation about the ritual of coming out: If you don't want to, you don't have to. Although it does help sell memoirs, coming out in some (elaborate) manner is not an integral part of the gay certification process. Manage your life the best way you know how. If coming out feels dangerous, uncomfortable, or you're just otherwise not with it, I support you and your decision. And if there is (are) someone(s) telling you differently, exacerbating your trepidation, fuck them. Your life, your timing. We love you, anyway
, Dana
.

Happy Columbus Needed a GPS Day.

Today in Post-Race History: A Rock and a Hard Place

2011-10-03T08:00:00.000-05:00

I really hate it when politics interrupt my fantasy football preparation. There I was checking Twitter for tweets that might help my abysmal fantasy team when I started seeing posts about presidential candidate Rick Perry's little problem.

In case you missed it, according to a story published in The Washington Post last Saturday, Perry's family's hunting camp was known as Niggerhead. In fact, the word was etched on a rock at the camp's entrance and, according to the article, the word was not painted over for quite some time.

Gosh, don't you just love vintage America?

Of course, Perry disputes several witnesses (some of them anonymous) who claim that there was a noticeable delay between when the Perry family began leasing the camp and when Niggerhead got the Sherwin-Williams treatment. Some claim Niggerhead could be seen on the rock throughout the 1980s and 1990s, while one alleges that Niggerhead was readily viewable on the rock as recently as 2008. Perry issued a patriotic nuh-unh with the following explanation:

“When my Dad joined the lease in 1983, he took the first opportunity he had to paint over the offensive word on the rock during the 4th of July holiday,” Perry said in his initial response. “It is my understanding that the rock was eventually turned over to further obscure what was originally written on it.”

And later:

"My mother and father went to the lease and painted the rock in either 1983 or 1984,” Perry wrote. “This occurred after I paid a visit to the property with a friend and saw the rock with the offensive word. After my visit I called my folks and mentioned it to them, and they painted it over during their next visit.”

I love this response. If one has decided to lie, one might as well embellish. And Perry does so quite nicely. It's Perry's moral fortitude that brings the issue to the attention of his parents, because otherwise I suppose they wouldn't have noticed. Isn't it fun just imagining that conversation?

Perry: Hey Mom and Dad! Didn't know if you noticed, but there's a big rock that says 'Niggerhead' at the entrance of our camp.

Mom and Dad: Sure we did. Is there a problem?

Perry: Mom and Dad, the n-word is totally offensive. Didn't you guys see Roots? Eyes on the Prize? Any movie starring Cicely Tyson?

Or something like that. To ensure that discerning ears realized he was lying, Perry suavely mentions that his family had the word painted over during the 4th of July holiday...because they are patriots like that. Yet, if I may crudely paraphrase Frederick Douglass, what, to a niggerhead, is the 4th of July? But seriously, who outside of the campaign cares about Perry's statement regarding the matter? Isn't this the kind of response that we expected? God knows I hope this statement was sufficient. Otherwise, we may be hearing Perry's version of "A More Perfect Union," a speech I couldn't stomach the first time.

This entire issue isn't about Perry's or his response, though; it's about ours. It's about our collective feigning of surprise that stories like this exist. It's about how offended we are--and why. We're not offended by the fact that Niggerhead existed, but about how long a future presidential candidate waited to paint over the words. Because, I suppose, we all always do what would be regarded as the right thing in a timely manner.

I'm not sure, though, what this story tells me about Rick Perry that I wouldn't otherwise know. Actually, I'm somewhat irked by the fact that The Washington Post allowed this many words to be dedicated to such a story. I understand, though. Such tales get clicks; they titillate us. They get us talking. But what they also do is allow racism to return to the realm of the impolite. Timing, after all, is everything. And one week after I joined the cavalcade of folks writing in response to the unjust killing of Troy Davis, we are talking about the name of the camp the governor who holds the modern-day record for prisoner executions. The death penalty is both classist and racist--and it is policy. Not painting over the word 'Niggerhead' is comparatively uncouth. But it is our wont to deal with surface level issues that allow us to believe we have positively exorcised racism from our body politic, instead of demanding acts that would eradicate racism to the degree that we would have to revolutionize our lifestyle. Responding to stories like 'Niggerhead' allows us to pretend that we've changed our diet. Getting riled up over the name 'Niggerhead,' then, is the moral equivalent to weight loss surgery.

In fact, I appreciate the symbolism of a rock with 'Niggerhead' on it at the entrance of a space where some of this country's most powerful (white) men have convened to engage in the violent act of hunting at one time or another over the years. As the article notes, the rock had been painted over, but a close observer could still see the words, "In the photos, it was to the left of the gate. It was laid down flat. The exposed face was brushed clean of dirt. White paint, dried drippings visible, covered a word across the surface. An N and two G’s were faintly visible." Eventually the rock was turned over, but it was never removed--maybe it can't be. I think that's one of the most apposite stories about race we've had in a while. Don't you?

They Reminisce Over You

2011-09-26T08:37:00.000-05:00

Last week I made the decision not to mention Troy Davis in my blog. This week, however, I feel the need to make a desultory remark or two. So random are my words that I am thinking about the law and morality. A bad move, I know. But I can't help it:

Despite my overall pessimism and general belief that this country will rarely, if ever, do the right thing, the hours I spent watching Democracy Now!'s fantastic coverage of the Troy Davis case last Thursday evening revealed that occasionally a modicum of hope that dwells underneath a crusty armor of curmudgeonly discontent emerges just long enough to be thoroughly crushed before I can toss it back into its secret hiding place. In other words, by 11:09 last Thursday evening, I was totally shook.They killed Troy Davis. And those who had the power to stop it did not.

After the Supreme Court decided that the travesty of justice would go on, the last hope I had was that maybe a prison guard would say no and that such an act of courage would spread. Yet I understand that such an act would have required the sacrifice of one's livelihood. That kind of heroism should not be necessary. When those in power refuse to do the right thing, how can one expect those who are more immediately vulnerable to model the kind of moral courageousness we'd wish to see in our leaders?

The Obama Administration should have said--done?--something, instead of hiding behind the veil of civility. Such problem solving is beyond the pay grade of a beer summit, I suppose. So nevermind. (And yes, we should be "unfair" to Obama by questioning him about this. Because if you can conveniently embrace blackness as an election strategy, then you need embrace everything about it--including the "burden.")

If saying nothing about state sanctioned injustice is, and my friend Ashon noted, an act of civility, then perhaps it is time for us to act "inappropriate and uncivil" (terms that, interestingly, are often associated with black people, anyway). Clearly, civility--and respectability--hasn't gotten folks very far.

They killed Troy Davis.

But there are more Troy Davises waiting to be executed. And all those death sentences are wrong. They are cruel. They are unusual. And there are many others who did, indeed, commit the crimes that landed them on death row. And all those death sentences are wrong. They are cruel. They are unusual.

And I am again drawn to the idea of a nihilism for Negroes because, again, it seems like the only thing that makes sense. How else can my brain process the meaning of all this trouble in the world?

Transgender Pillars of Salt

2011-09-26T08:35:00.000-05:00

Although I'd like to spend this morning ranting about how Peyton Manning's neck is going to make this the most intolerable football season in years, I understand that no one but me, Colts fans, and folks who drafted him in their fantasy league really care. And so, I dedicate this morning's post to something we all care about. That's right.Dancing with the Stars.

It seems that while I was preparing for fantasy football drafts and such, the ABC Network was looking for more than contestants when it enlisted Chaz Bono, transgender activist and child of Sonny and Cher. When DWTS announced that Bono, who underwent both a physical and social gender transition several months ago, would be taking part in this season, controversy ensued. Organizations such as onemillionmoms.com have called for a boycott of the show, saying that Bono's casting was "unacceptable" and imploring Christians not to watch it--to prevent any requisite eye-gouging, I'm sure. The Family Research Council has gone as far as to suggest that ABC is attempting to indoctrinate viewers--because, I suppose, one surely catches "the transgender" by looking.

As much as I try to respect the views of others, even those who would love to ensure that gays like myself did not exist, this is just silly. And a really pitiful approach, actually. One million moms should know better. I'm only quasi-parental and I know that the worst way to keep anyone from doing something is by telling them not to do it. That's, like, basic parenting. You tell a kid not to touch something, and what does she do? Touch it. Congratulations, onemillionmoms. You've just boosted DWTS's ratings. Further, if the FRC thinks that the LGBTQ community can successfully indoctrinate a noticeable segment of the population by having one transgender person--of 12 total contestants--appear on a show once every 13 seasons, then that says a helluva lot about the power of "the gay." Because, you know, ballroom dancing is otherwise a thoroughly heterosexual endeavor.

Or perhaps the fear of one Chaz Bono "against" eleven other ostensibly cis-gendered contestants speaks more directly to the tenuousness of sexuality and traditional gender roles these organizations are attempting to preserve above anything else. The fear inherent to these hysterical responses to Bono's appearance on DWTS is so incredibly transparent, that one is compelled to wonder if treating Chaz Bono as if he is kryptonite is more of an attempt to defend having to confront the construction of gender than it is an attempt to defend traditional "values."

Above all, though, I suspect that this entire controversy will unfortunately garner support for Bono and prevent us from remembering who we all should really be voting for. That's right. Ron Artest.

Game Theory #Pause

2011-09-26T08:34:00.000-05:00

Not that I pay that much attention to hip-hop anymore, but rapper, [The] Game (when did he drop the article?) spoke out recently about gays and hip-hop, and I noticed. And by "notice" I mean someone mentioned it to me and I bothered to Google it. Call it preparation for LGBTQ History Month.
In case you were wondering or concerned, "Game don't have a problem with gay people." Let's all take a moment and release that collective sigh of relief. I wish I could follow that quote with "The Game don't have a problem with not making albums anymore," but that would be a lie--or a wish. Take your pick. But I digress. So, yeah, The Game don't have a problem with gay people, but he does have a problem with believing myths and spreading them as if they are factually correct. The Game may not have a problem with the gays--and by gays The Game seems to speak exclusively about gay men--but he does have a problem with closeted men sleeping with straight women and consequently spreading AIDS to straight men who, I guess, would otherwise not have gotten caught up. This theory, as many of us know, has gained the appellation, "The Down Low Myth," and several blogs have responded to The Game's comments by refuting his argument. I support those efforts. And I hope those fans of The Game (because, seriously, who else was paying attention) who believed his words read those responses and gained some clarity. There was, however, something that the pundits missed, and I'd like to address it here.

The Game logged on to Twitter to clarify some of his initial statements. Because, you know, what better place to attempt to clarify something you said than a space that only allows you 140 characters at a time? The Game reiterated that he doesn't have a problem with gay people. To be sure, I think that's a really great thing to say. The Game went on, though. In typical "Some of my best friends are..." fashion, to prove that he really was indeed ok with gay people, TheGame mentioned that he's cool with his girlfriend's hair stylist, who's gay (duh) and rapper, 50 Cent, who The Gamealso claims is gay.

Now, I've said this many times, but it bears repeating: I'm not a supporter of outing people. I think coming out is a ritual fraught with many problems. More importantly, I think people know their situation better than others, and if they've chosen not to come out, we need to respect that. In no way do I support outing people for some larger cause. That's word to Queen Latifah.

That said, when The Game suggested that gay rappers come out of the closet, I semi-nodded my head in agreement. Not because I think it would be an excellent way of countering the homophobic lyrics in hip-hop. Not because word that a rapper is gay would spark the same kind of gossipy interest we have when we hear about ministers getting caught in the park with their pants literally down. But because if the "right" group of rappers came out, then maybe gay hip-hop wouldn't suck so much.

I'm going to get in trouble for that last statement, but I stick by it. Hip-hop in its current state sucks. Gay hip-hop reallysucks. I know. Most of any given genre sucks--maybe 10 or 15% doesn't. Yet I've yet to encounter enough decent gay hip-hop to fill that 10-15% void. But I'm convinced I can't because most of the good rappers are closeted for one reason or another, and out rappers generate a noticeable portion of their fan base precisely because they are out. There is something to be said about being drawn to a public figure because they seemingly represent you. I cheer for black people on Jeopardy! for that very reason. But when it comes to art, I'm a little more discriminating in my tastes. I'd much rather listen to a misogynistic, homophobic rapper who can actually spit than a politically correct one who can't. And I'm not going to support the latter. I just can't muster support based on representation alone. Clarence Thomas taught me that lesson many years ago when I watched his confirmation hearings with my great-grandparents after school. Yes, Tupac's "Dear Mama," may be uplifting and nice to some, but Biggie's "I Got a Story to Tell," is one of the illest, misogynistic yet poetic narratives you'll hear, and it makes "Dear Mama" sound like the wackness that it is. (Sorry.) The same rules apply for gay hip-hop. (Sorry.)

So, yes, I suppose on one level I'm with The Game. I want gay rappers to come out. And if my gaydar works, I'm pretty sure many of the good rappers--some of the best even--are closeted. And if they came out and kept rhyming the way they have, then maybe the wackness quotient of gay hip-hop would diminish some. A purely selfish reason, indeed. Then again, isn't that where the impulse to out other people stems, anyway?

What's Your Fantasy?

2011-08-29T08:10:00.001-05:00

I keep trying to come up with reasons to justify my addiction to (fantasy) football. I praise the parity of the NFL and argue that the helmets help create anonymity that makes football the ultimate team sport. I discuss the elegance of a tightly thrown spiral arching through the air, landing in the hands of wide receiver walking the tight rope of a sideline. Those things may all be true. But what is also true is that football is America's gladiator sport. It is violent and boorishly brutal. And homoerotic as hell. I love it.

Last Friday marked the inaugural draft party of the Dirty Dianas Fantasy Football League. A small group of women gathered at my homie, Maeg's house to
get drunk
get in on the nerdiest way to watch sports. As the commissioner of this new league, I wanted a few things to happen: our league would be all women, we would throw a party (and there would be cake!), and despite my ophidiophobia, we'd hold a snake [!!!!] draft.

There are a myriad of ways that one can construct a fantasy football league. But, from what I can tell, there are two ways to hold a draft. The most common way is a snake [!!!!] draft, where the first person to draft in round one will be the last to draft in the second round, etc. According to the fantasy experts, though, the fairest way to draft is via auction, where players are ranked, their "dollar" value pre-determined, nominated during the draft process, and auctioned off to the highest "bidder." Yes, you read that correctly.

I know, I know. LeBron's infamous decision last summer stirred up incredible controversy, including discussions about whether or not multi-million dollar athletes could liken themselves to slaves. Indeed, professional sports is not chattel slavery, but the lexicon of slavery remains hauntingly useful for those who talk about sports. One need only follow scouts on Twitter during the NFL combine--the "audition" many college football players participate in before the actual draft--to understand what I mean. But in case you missed those tweets last spring, the language around fantasy football helps illustrate, too.

If you peruse ESPN's fantasy football rankings, for instance, you will find a dollar amount next to each name on the list under the heading "Auction." Of the top fifteen players, 14 are black. In a league where 65% of the players are black, the ease with which commentators and fantasy fans employ the language of slavery is chilling. Fantasy football participants love to talk about the players they own. Yes, own. Listening to a fantasy football podcast for just a few minutes in, say, October, will yield discussions of trade value and whether or not a player is equal to another. Now that I have successfully uploaded the team rosters on to our site, any member of the Dirty Dianas can edit her trading blockby marking whether a player is "on the block" or "untouchable." Clearly, folks who play fantasy football are not engaging in the real life buying and selling of other human beings. Yet the language that helped vivify that institution resonates in the realm of the NFL draft and in the region of fantasy football.
And most of us use it with such ease.

Perhaps we should slow the impulse to criticize players when they say that they are being treated like slaves when the language we deploy to describe them seems to suggest that we view them as such. If someone talked freely about my wingspan and flight time, I might occasionally imagine that I am a bird. So, although we know that professional sports does not require plantation work, we still must wonder how quickly that point is obscured as players are paraded in front of team representatives and measured for their brute force and (natural) athletic ability so that their value can be determined. How stringently can we chastise Adrian Peterson for saying he's treated like a slave when ESPN has his auction value starting at $59? It seems to me that if he is ridiculous, so are we for not checking each other for so glibly hanging around the water cooler talking about who we own in our fantasy league. I cringe at the fact that looking for a job in academia is described as going on the market. How many fantasy football team owners twittered similarly problematic and obnoxious words about their ownership of Arian Foster to Arian Foster when he hurt his hamstring the other day? I cannot imagine the number.

This language is not necessary. Rather, it is the residual effect of a capitalistic society that reduces humans, particularly black humans, to tools or commodities whose value is purely determined by (white male) gazers, whether the stakes are actual or fictional. If we can call out millionaire players for their hyperbole, then surely we have the ability to check our own language and interrogate the ways that the words we use show what, who, and how we value.With the popularity of fantasy sports reaching well beyond the realm of nerdy white boys, it seems time we highlight the language we use when we play. After all, games both reflect and teach us about culture; what does the language of fantasy sports, then, tell us about the reality of ours?

P.S. Happy birthday, Michael Joseph Jackson

Commercial Break: Athlete Slash Musician

2011-08-22T08:57:00.001-05:00

It seems I've been more polemical than usual these last few weeks. So how about something completely worthless and asinine--ok, more worthless and asinine than what I usually post here--this Monday? Because, frankly, all I have to say about The Help's (and The Smurfs') continued box office success this weekend is: Effing really‽‽ (God bless the interrobang.)

Anyway, in case you missed it, the NFL lockout ended, and I'm using the breaks from dissertating to prepare for the upcoming fantasy football season. I'm ready to defend last year's title (and take that money); I've also started a women's fantasy football league (because that's why feminists burned their bras in the 70s). In an effort to find enough women to participate, the homie, Liz and I Twitter-stalked ESPN's Jemele Hill trying to get her to take one of our slots. Despite the hilarity of our tweets to her, she eventually declined due to schedule (or so she says #notbitter). One of tweets I sent her was a mash-up of the New York Jets, Bart Scott's now hilariously infamous post-game interview and Nu Shooz 80s hit, "I Can't Wait." My foray into technological prowess combined with Deion "Must be the Money Sanders' induction into the NFL Hall of Fame a few weeks ago got me thinking about athletes and their musical careers. And so, instead of the scathing pop culture criticism you've grown used to, I present:

Athlete Slash "Musician": A List

Carlos Boozer, "Winning Streak" -- "Winning Streak" is a little like Carlos Boozer's stat line. You see 20 (points) and 10 (rebounds) and think this guy's an All-Star. You see Twista and Mario Winans (Quit frontin'. You know "I Need a Girl" was your jam) are on this song and think that it might not be as bad as you think. Then you listen and the first and only thought you have is how terribly wrong you were to argue that the worst thing about Carlos Boozer was his defense.

Best line: I used to be another fellow with hoop dreams/Now I got the game laced up/Shoe strings
Roy Jones Jr. "Ya'll Must've Forgot" -- True Story: I remember seeing the premiere of this video on 106 and Park. And if Free and AJ can't find anything nice to say... "Ya'll Must've Forgot" might be most aptly described as: Roy Jones Jr. raps his boxing résumé. That said, Jones Jr. must've forgot that raps lines are supposed to rhyme.

Best line: And they got the nerve to say I ain't fight nobody/I just made 'em look like nobody. Totally, Roy.
Tony Parker "Balance-toi" -- One of the first things I learned in graduate school was that you seem a lot smarter if your rudimentary comment contains a French phrase--because everything sounds better in French. Tony Parker totally explodes that argument with one rap song. Best line: Uhh, who wants to translate this for me?
Carl Lewis "Break it Up" -- Remember when Carl Lewis jacked up the national anthem? Well, this is worse. The "Break it Up" video is something like Olivia Newton-John's "Let's Get Physical" meets an 80s hairband video meets Carl Lewis' SportsCenter highlights. And you know what? I love every minute of it.
Best line: The entire song is the best thing ever.
Kobe Bryant "K.O.B.E." -- I relish at any and every opportunity to clown Kobe Bryant. I'm still trying to decide if Tyra Banks singing the hook to this song is the best or worst thing about it. Why stadiums don't play this when Kobe is announced during the starting lineup is beyond me.
Best line: Type that be loud in public/refrain my hand from a slap? Um, what?
Ron Artest "Champion" -- Apparently right after thanking his psychologist after winning the NBA championship, Ron Artest (aka Metta World Peace) penned the lines of "Champions" wherein he touts his awesomeness on the hardcourt and every other playing field. FYI: If you need someone who specializes in the impossible, including pissing off the Zen Master, Phil Jackson, Ron's your guy.
Best line: Call me incredible/work ethic impeccable/I did it for the decimals Thanks, Ron. Sincerely, Decimals.
Shaquille O'Neal "What's Up Doc? (Can We Rock)"-- This already basketball-heavy list could have been populated entirely with Shaq songs, but I chose this one because I needed a reason to bring up Moc Fu, Chip Fu, and Poc Fu, known collectively as Fu Schnickens. Oh, and Shaq's dance moves! Best line: That's ok, not being bragadocious/I'm supercalifragilistic Shaq is alidocious. Indeed, Shaq.
Allen Iverson aka Jewelz "40 Bars" (NSFW) -- No, he's not talking 'bout practice. Basically, Allen Iverson wants to kill you. And rob you.
Best line: Sons and daughters/one order you'll be floating in water So much for the children being our future.
Juan Pierre "The Natural" -- Nothing like winning the World Series to make you feel like you can do anything. Juan Pierre must have gone to the Roy Jones Jr. School of Rapping because none of this shit rhymes.

Best line: And then we what?/We went to New York. Because you know he briefly forgot what happened next.
Deion Sanders "Must be the Money" -- Best for last. Confession: I listen to this song once a week. Deion Sanders was not only an incredible football and baseball player, but he was a hip-hop pioneer, sing-rapping more than a decade before Kanye, Pharrell, or Drake. The number of body rolls in this video make it must see tv.
Best line: A drop-top Benz when I'm with my lady-friends. Because when's the last time you heard a woman referred to as a "lady-friend" in a rap song--or ever?

Bonus: Willie Beamen "My Name is Willie" (NSFW) -- Sure, this comes from the movie, Any Given Sunday, but I couldn't resist.

What better way to start your Monday than by making fun of rich men with ridiculous athletic ability? Cheers.

On Not Seeing 'The Help'

2011-08-15T08:00:00.000-05:00

I did not see The Help this weekend; I also did not read the book. Since I both read and saw The Secret Life of Bees a couple of years ago and am conversationally familiar with The Blind Side, I figured I had earned enough credit to sit this one out. Call it a mental health decision.

The title alone was enough for me to know to stay away. The synopsis confirmed that I had made the right decision: A young southern white woman with dreams of becoming a writer comes home from college and upon hearing the news that her mammy has abruptly left Mississippi for Chicago, realizes that black maids are treated differently from white people and thusly decides to write about them from their perspective. This, folks, is a classic case of cinematic enwhitlement...and exactly how Hollywood--and the rest of America--addresses race: A well-meaning (often southern) and heretofore racially oblivious (shall we say color-blind?) white person randomly discovers that the Negro they love most (and by extension other black people) is treated "differently," becomes tragically affected by the epiphany, heroically takes up the cause (on a micro or macro level), and gets some Colored Only signs removed. Oh and a whole bunch of funny shit happens in the middle. Like Klansmen becoming comic relief. Yep. That's exactly how Jim Crow was.

Despite my decision not to see The Help's version of what I've just described, I was within earshot of those circles who had decided to address the film. And you know what? The Help is exactly what I had expected: historically inaccurate, stereotypical, reductive. Although viewing such films and responding in kind is the kind of thing I might have done previously, it's become pretty apparent that my words (to the choir) are thoroughly unnecessary. There are plenty of better equipped people eloquently discussing the issues in films like The Help. See, for example, the Association of Black Women Historian's letter to fans of the film.

Besides, I was neither invited to Michelle Obama's White House screening of the The Help nor to any other free viewing party. In order to see The Help, then, I would have had to pay. And since there's no space on a dollar bill to write, "I only paid to see this movie so that I could talk shit about it in an informed manner," I figured it best to avoid the cineplex altogether. Paying to see the film would have simply translated into support for more of these kinds of films to be made, and any critical words I might have written on a blog would not have countered that action at all.

But (as Tyler Perry teaches us) my dollars can say something to Hollywood. So how about you and I take the 45 gazillion dollars we would have paid for snacks and tickets to The Help and put it behind, I don't know, a kickstarter project that counters these trite race narratives Hollywood keeps feeding the masses? Dolen Perkins-Valdez' novel, Wench has been optioned for film. How about a bunch of folks buy her book so the film actually gets made? What if enough of us bought copies of The Chaneysville Incident to put it on a bestseller's list? And although I absolutely cringe at the idea, don't you want--and think people need--to see Octavia's work on the big screen? (Nevermind.)

Or, you know, we could just all go see Rise of the Planet of the Apes again. #HailCaesar

P.S. I cannot believe Whoopi Goldberg and/or Morgan Freeman were not in this film. Just can't believe it.

Some Unsolicited Love Advice for Queen Latifah

2011-08-08T08:30:00.002-05:00

(Since my last two blogs have been relatively serious, how about something light this Monday morning?)

Dear Queen Latifah,

Well, look at you! Just the other week I was considering the conditions under which you might come out, and now word on the street is you're all up in the magazines talking about what kind of women you like:

Queen Latifah: …I just like ladies who have class. Period. And if it’s “T and A” you’re sellin’, that’s fine, as long as that’s what you’re selling. But you don’t have to show everything, you know? You can hold some back and just be yourself and let your personality shine and let your individuality show. To me, that’s sexier. A confident woman is a sexy woman, in my opinion. And I think guys find that to be the same way.

Jamie: Right.

Queen Latifah: You don’t have to show everything; you don’t have to put it all out there to attract a guy. Because what kind of guy are you gonna attract? What is he really looking for? If you wanna be a booty call, I guess you can throw it all out there. (laughs) But if you’re looking for a relationship with someone who respects you and respects things other than your body—your mind, your spirit, your personality, your smile—then you have to kind of exude that more so than just yo’ booty and yo’ titties.

Niiiiice ! (Before I go on, shout out to Sister 2 Sister magazine for still being in existence. Who knew?)

Now, Queen, I know that there's a very distinct possibility that your people will issue a statement saying you're not a lesbian and that you were simply answering a question completely unrelated to your sexuality. Fine, fine, fine. That's what PR people are for. Besides, we all know that interviewers are constantly asking women celebrities to chime in on the kind of women they like. Our bad for getting all crunk and jumping to conclusions. We'll cancel the parade.

Should you not issue such a statement, however, should this latest quote be yet another example of you edging closer to unequivocally admitting that you have an Isles of Lesbos stamp in your passport, well, ~~about effin' time~~ good for you. I'm sure your people started receiving calls from Ellen and Olivia Cruises and Rosie and Suburu and Bravo after your appearance on Single Ladies, thereby confirming what your character, Sharon Love suggested: that being famous and gay doesn't really seem all that bad. Gay is not the new black, but it can be the new green for the more notable of us. I suspect that you have time to endorse a few more products in between filming movies. As the great Katt Williams says, "By all means, get ya paper, boo boo." Yet the other word on the street is that your long-time girlfriend broke up with you and that you want her back desperately. So here's a bit of advice from a lowly commoner: Coming out as a business decision is lucrative; coming out to get your girl back is more gangster than Cleo.

Listen, Queen, I'm not trying to tell you what to do. I'm just sayin'. Publicly acknowledging what the public already knows in an effort to get back your boo could be the best business decision you make this year. What you really want is to be a guest judge on Top Chef so that you can hype your HSN line. Saying you're gay could get you all of that. But confirming you're gay under the guise of a broken heart!? You get your guest appearance, you and your woman (reunited and it feels so good) are on the cover of Ebony (seriously, if Tyler Perry can talk about a "girlfriend" in Ebony it can't be all that blasphemous to put you and your girl on the cover), your jazz albums are back on the charts (wtf?), and all of a sudden there's pre-Oscar buzz about you in the starring role for the Bessie Smith biopic written, produced, and directed by that white dude who brought us Ray and Dream Girls...And you prove me correct.

Do you see my vision, Queen? This is not about pride parades and rainbow wallpaper in your guest bath. This is about getting you into the Oscar winners party. It could be epic. And you'd get your baby back. Think about it.

Thank me later.

Sincerely,
Summer M.

The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill's Fans

2011-08-01T08:00:00.000-05:00

Last week, Lauryn Hill announced the birth of her sixth child, a son, and then somehow found the strength to perform in LA just days after giving birth. Of course, this newest edition to Hill's family surprised very few, since photographs of her on stage during her Moving Target tour last spring led to speculations that she was pregnant--a rumor she later confirmed. As is the tendency when news of Hill's personal life emerges, the commoners side-eyed, sighed, smh'd and almost angrily mumbled about Lauryn running game like the Knicks/build [us] up only to lose the championship. Would she still appear at Rock the Bells and perform 1998's axis-altering solo debut, The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill as had been planned? Would we ever hear that follow-up studio album? This latest pregnancy put everything (the fans wanted) in jeopardy.

And then, Rohan Marley, son of the legendary Bob Marley and the father of Hill's five other children, deflected our attention back to Hill's pregnancy. Almost as soon after we got that Lauryn Hill is pregnant again? look off of our faces, Marley turned to Twitter and denied paternity, his fathering this child, too, being something many had simply taken for granted. The vitriol with which many responded to Marley was palpable through our keyboards, and, perhaps, not unwarranted. After all, how many of us considered Marley an inherent part, if not the entire reason for Hill's "fall"? Wasn't he the one who started seeing Hill when he was already married? Did we not blame Hill's failure to come back on her seemingly constantly being pregnant...by Rohan Marley? What (career) woman would have that many kids voluntarily? He was keeping her from us, right? And here Rohan was publicly denying Lauryn and their unborn child. How dare he?

Many of us responded similarly last week when Rohan, again on Twitter, congratulated Ms. Hill on the birth of her new son. And again: How dare he disrespect Hill by claiming denying that he was the father of this latest child? Our righteous indignation, it seems, was somewhat misguided. In a surprising move, Lauryn Hill responded to fans decrying Marley's denial of paternity, stating (you guessed it, via Twitter):

“Mr. Marley and I have a long and complex history about which MANY inaccuracies have been reported since the beginning. To speculate without the facts can only cause people to form WRONG conclusions. We both value privacy and for that reason defend and preserve our right to it. Contrary to numerous reports, Mr. Marley did not abandon me while pregnant with his child. We have had long periods of separation over the years but our 5 children together remain a joy to both of us. Thank you for you concern and I appreciate all the well wishes regarding the birth of my new son.”

I guess we were wrong in our assumption(s). Duly noted.

Now, I'm not seeking to absolve Marley or his tweets. I found Marley's words of denial and later congratulations reeking of the stench of passive-aggressiveness. As part of such a private couple, it seems odd that Marley would be so public in his remarks--congratulatory or otherwise. And in both cases, Marley shot first, if you will, responding to rumors through a not so subtle invocation of Hill's sexuality and sexual practices. Marley's tweets seemed insincere and particularly tasteless, especially since they were directed towards someone he had been involved with since the late 1990s and has children with.

Yet news that Marley is not the father of Hill's newborn is what hardly interests me in this story. As I hinted to above, it seems to me that one of the narratives that has been constructed about Hill's private life is one that places Marley at--or at least near--the center of Hill's alleged downfall. That somehow, Hill would produce The Miseducation... Part II if she ~~hadn't gotten caught up in some real basic shit~~ would just stop having babies with Rohan. This, of course, stands in stark contrast to the story we tell ourselves about Erykah Badu who, although we still position ourselves as judge and jury of her sexual practices, has garnered some sort of mythical status when it comes to sexual encounters. The story we've created for Lauryn, however, is one where she is sort of endlessly dealing with Rohan, waiting for him to stop stunting like his daddy, cavorting with ex-wives or Brazilian models, and just come home. This may have something to do with the vulnerability and subject matter on The Miseducation and the way we came to understand Hill's relationship with fellow Fugees band member, Wyclef Jean. It also probably has to do with the fact that we just can't help but monitor black women's sexuality. The title of CNN's article about the matter, "Who's Lauryn Hill's Baby Daddy?"is proof enough of this point.

The mere suggestion, by Hill herself, that her relationship with Marley is complicated to say the least, that he is not the father of her child--thereby suggesting, for the monogamous persons paying attention--that during those lulls she was engaged with other(s) and not necessarily waiting for Rohan to act right, nuances overly simplistic stories Hill's (alleged) fans have been circulating amongst each other. Perhaps the correction issued by Hill not only shows us how wrong we are and how we really just need to shut up about such things, it also exposes the level of difficulty the public have in properly computing non-normative relationships. Hill's statement demands a re-evaluation of our motives behind constructing her as a non-agent wasting her immense talent by allocating her time to fraught romantic relationships. Such tales only distract us from other, perhaps more honest assessments of her reclusiveness: that she wanted to (be a) mother, or that, as Amy's death reminded us, fame--and our demands on the famous--really, really sucks.

Not that we should be talking about any of this anyway.

Amy Winehouse (1983 - 2011)

2011-07-25T08:00:00.003-05:00

Many of us were not surprised, but shocked nonetheless to learn of British soul singer Amy Winehouse's sudden death at the age of 27. Winehouse was found dead in her London home on July 23. As is the trend these days, fans and friends of Winehouse set Twitter on fire with condolences and all the mourning one can pack into 140 characters (or fewer). Sometimes, the internet is the only place big enough to collect all the sadness that accompanies such news. The world lost a very talented person two days ago.

Although the cause of death has yet to be determined, many have speculated that Winehouse's long and highly publicized struggle with drugs is the reason--at least in part--for her leaving this realm at such a young age. More than likely, they are right. I hope, as information emerges that will inevitably contribute to the narrative chronicling Winehouse's last few hours--a tale that will surely reach folkloric status--that we remember a few things. First, addiction, more accurately conquering an addiction, is not a matter of will power. Addiction is a disease that has to be treated, and those of us with hubris enough to judge folks who are struggling clearly have no idea that overcoming addiction is not a matter of strength of mind. Second, as much as we might romanticize the 27 Club, not many of us want to become members. There's a stark correlation between what troubles an artist and that which makes her great--or at least a strong belief in this seeming phenomenon. As someone who does not believe that happy art is good, I fall prey to such thinking. Winehouse's death is a moment to reflect on such theories. Finally, fame sucks. And if you don't believe me, look around. I cannot begin to imagine what it would be like to have your fuck-ups, your mistakes at 18, 21, 25 publicized for everyone to see.

Inevitably, (more) conversations about Winehouse's relationship to black music and larger issues of black cultural appropriation will re-emerge. It's my view that one might place an asterisk by the names of white British soul singers (Lisa Stansfield, Simply Red, Eurhythmics) that are uttered in such discussions. No matter what one's opinion of Winehouse and her relationship to black music is, she was a freakishly talented singer with a deep appreciation for (black) music, more than many of her black contemporaries featured prominently on your favorite blazing hip-hop and R&B station. At the end of the day, Winehouse made timeless, unforgettable music, and sadly left an abbreviated oeuvre for generations of fans to come to know and appreciate.

May she realize the peace she could not find while living.

Ladies First (and Only)?

2011-07-18T08:16:00.001-05:00

It wasn't until I sat down to write this that I realized I'd have to confess to watching Single Ladies--more than once. It's true. Admittedly, I watched the first episode because I think Dionne Stacey Dash is fine. And although I find the acting in some ways utterly intolerable, somehow I've seen enough episodes since to still be able to follow the story line. Saying I watch because I want to support Lisa[waaaaaybeyondhershelflife]Raye for miraculously still finding work--even in a recession--is pretty unconvincing. Perhaps I should just blame baseball season. Apparently, I'm not alone. Viewership of Single Ladies has been consistent, and Vh1, which has been steadily rebranding itself as a grown and sexy, older sibling counterpart to BET's blazing hip-hop and R&B, will more than likely renew the (two-thirds) black version of Sex and the City for another season.

Last week, Single Ladies accrued the most internet buzz it's had since the premiere, and it wasn't because viewers still find it hard to believe that there are that many straight people in Atlanta. (Or maybe that's just me.) Series executive producer, Queen Latifah made cameos on the last two episodes, appearing as Sharon Love, main protagonist Val's (Stacey Dash) former college roommate. As a teaser for last week's show, two weeks ago Love, a television personality, admitted to sleeping with Val when they were college roommates. Unfortunately for Val, the admission came while Love was mic'd and on air. Then last week, Love visited Val's boutique, offering following insight:

“It turns out being gay is fabulous. My Twitter is all atwitter. I have six new Facebook fan pages. And for every sponsor that’s fallen out, I’ve gotten two more. Who knew? Being gay is the new black.”

Yes, Sharon, I suppose it is. Such a minor plot point might not normally cause such an internet stir. Yet folks have speculated about Queen Latifah's sexuality for practically her entire career, and Latifah's role in Set it Off as hyper-butch, bank robber Cleo notwithstanding, her remarks as Sharon Love mark the first moment that the queen has seemingly embraced (the idea of) the gay. QL's brief appearance on Single Ladies has left many of us wondering if Sharon Love may be a foreshadowing of what real life announcements may come. Does Queen Latifah intend to officially come out soon? October 11 is just around the corner.

I'm more interested in a public apology for Bringing Down the House and forcing us to endure Common as the romantic lead in a movie than I am about Queen Latifah confirming some shit we already know. And I suspect that QL might only admit that she's been scuba diving in the lady pond like she was looking for Nemo if, in fact, she could pull a Sharon Love and turn such public confirmations into some lucrative lesbionicness. We're still waiting for our black Ellen, I guess. Sheryl Swoopes is on the back of my almond milk carton. Shout out to Wanda Sykes, but that voice is nearly Talib Kweli-esque. And although she did ride the "I sleep with chicks" wave until it crashed into a talk show and increased publicity, frankly she never had the pre-coming out cache of Degeneres--or Latifah. Furthermore, Sykes' situation is hardly analogous, and can't necessarily serve as a good measure of what Latifah might gain--or lose--should she choose to come out. It was--and still is--pretty apparent that Sykes has very little interest or investment in a black audience, and seems to nearly exclusively appeal to a white and gay one; QL, on the other hand, through her early days in hip-hop, starring role in Living Single, and the fact that she hosted last year's BET Awards, has a sizable one and may have some concerns that coming out will alienate black audiences who are presumably more homophobic than others.

So perhaps Sharon Love is QL sticking her proverbial toe in the water. With Whoopi Goldberg as perhaps the only precedent to QL's Hollywood popularity, there's a lot at stake. Maybe our e-responses will help gauge what more, if anything, QL may say. If rumors of their break-up are untrue, perhaps Dana and Jeannette can become the black gay version of Barack and Michelle. Maybe black gay America may soon have its own first couple? Next thing you know our favorite Cover Girl is on the red carpet holding hands with her lady talking about adopting babies. Don't hold your breath, though. QL's may counter her Single Ladies cameo with a string of appearances wherein she returns to being annoyingly heterosexual, as is her wont.

We'll see.

On Little Dragon

2011-07-11T10:55:00.000-05:00

If I had to choose, I suppose I would list Little Dragon as my favorite band. In fact, I spent the entire weekend listening to the quartet's second album, Machine Dreams perhaps in a little subconscious preparation for the release of their new album, Ritual Union next week.

Normally, I leave the music posts to Dallas, but a few words about the quartet from Gothenberg, Sweden: THEY ARE FANTASTIC.

I have to credit an ex for turning me on the Little Dragon several years ago. She had an assistant who slipped her a Little Dragon CD and upon hearing the opening notes of "Twice," she caught the Holy Ghost and started playing it on the radio. I, of course, benefited from this hand-to-hand exchange, and was also instantaneously converted into a fan, especially once I realized that the lead singer of Little Dragon, Yukimi Nagano, had been the voice on all those Koop songs I dug. I'm usually mad late to the game, but I'm glad to say I entered the Little Dragon building on the ground floor, and have been more or less glad to see their following swell.

Perhaps this is why I feel so, I dunno, invested in them. And as a selfish fan, this latest increase in their popularity concerns me. Yukimi seems to be everywhere: magazine spreads, on songs with Big Boi, on songs that are later "remixed" with a Drake verse. With my "Little Dragon" Google alert on fire lately, I worry that my beloved Little Dragon will soon go the way of Janelle Monae: awesome as a below the radar artist, but thoroughly and obnoxiously pretentious and intolerable once the masses start paying attention.

The first time I saw LD in Chicago, I went alone. I was standing by the bar waiting for my drink, and Yukimi Nagano walked by only to return moments later, standing close enough for me to tap her on her shoulder and say something dumb like, "Hey, next to those fish and Ikea, you guys are like the greatest Swedish export ever," but I was way too shook to say anything to her. Instead I was too shook, and opted to text my friends about how I was close enough to spill a drink of Little Dragon's lead singer. Next time they blow through the City of Wind, I doubt such intimacy will exist.

Although my track record of all-time favorite artists--Res, Esthero, Van Hunt, Lauryn Hill, to name a few--allows my narcissistic mind to logically conclude that the last thing a musician wants is me as a superfan, in actuality, I worry less about or even them releasing my personal jam as a single, and more about the way that notoriety seemingly destroys artistry. It's the curse of becoming a trend, I suppose. First you're a group of backpackers begging to for someone to listen to your demo. A decision or two later and you're the half-time entertainment at the Super Bowl. The capitalistic aspects of fame suck like that. Dear white Jesus, please don't let Little Dragon become the next Black Eyed Peas.

Yukimi's voice is so unique, though, it can't be long before everyone--including Pepsi or somebody--will start paying attention. I suppose those of us hard core Little Dragon stans can hope the group either a.) resist the temptation of being the soundtrack to Apple's latest ad, or b.) somehow find a way to be the same inspiring, quirky, creative, and ever-evolving band and super popular.

Cross your fingers.

Monday Morning Bullets

2011-06-27T09:12:00.003-05:00

Here goes:

Last week, I was listening to NPR on my drive home and heard Michelle (say it with me, now Meeee-shell) Norris' description of FLOTUS, Michelle Obama's trip to South Africa. During her introduction, Norris was sure to mention that the FLOTUS danced with some South African kids.

Did Michelle O's Dougie spark a minor obsession with her dance moves? There's a partial list of news sources discussing FLOTUS dancing here. I think this is something worth keeping an eye on. Viral videos of the FLOTUS cutting a rug inevitably raise questions about black spectacle, white consumption, and also about the relatability/likeability of our head(s) of state and his family. It's complicated, a very thin line, but worthy of unpacking.
Now, if FLOTUS does The Percolator and/or engages in a footworking contest with Chicago Bulls star, Derrick Rose, let me know, because I will want to see that.

Speaking of dancing machines, folks took to their Twitter and Tumblr accounts to honor the greatest entertainer of all time, Michael Joseph Jackson. June 25th marked the 2nd year since his passing. I honor him here by repeating the following: I still don't think (read: hope) he's dead; the P.Y.T. demo > P.Y.T. that appeared on Thriller; "Smooth Criminal" is the greatest music video of all time.
I'm sure the gay pride celebrations in New York City were especially live this weekend now that gays and lesbians are now free ~~to legally make each other miserable~~
marry in the Empire State. Lady Justice and the Statue of Liberty are totally getting hitched now.
Speaking of gay people, as a follow-up to last week's post, I ate way too many Chick-fil-A nuggets last Friday. Way too many.
Leon and the rest of the Five Heartbeats notwithstanding, last night's BET Awards were total crap. Yeah, like, unequivocal crap. Chris "Chrisqo" Brown needs an intervention; Cherelle and Alexander O'Neal did more for me than D.A.R.E. ever could have. But Patti LaBelle's performance is making me seriously consider only buying concert tickets for performers who also have an AARP subscription. She's amazing, and I want her to be my great-aunt or something.
Octavia Butler would have also made great-aunt material. ~~Had the government not kill her,~~
she would have been 64 last week. For those of you not familiar with her work (beyond Kindred), I encourage you to add her to your summer reading list. Her Parable series is a great place to start.
I generally don't do summer reading lists since I'm always reading for school, but if you're looking for a few titles, here are a few suggestions: Suzanne Collins, The Hunger Games trilogy (it's going to be a movie, so read it now); John Twelve Hawks, The Traveler trilogy (Big Brother is watching); Dolen Perkins-Valdez, Wench; pratically anything by Victor LaValle or Colson Whitehead; Tayari Jones has a new novel, Silver Sparrow; and if you are so inclined, Danzy Senna has a new book of short stories coming out soon, too.

Have a great week.

Chick-fil-Gay

2011-06-20T08:17:00.001-05:00

Last week, Atlanta-based fast food chain, Chick-fil-A opened its very first Chicago restaurant. Although it does not counteract the negative effect of parking meters and winter, this culinary addition only helps the argument that Chicago is the greatest (American) city ever. (New York, NOLA, I love you, but the City of Wind tops my list.) I've not been yet, but please believe that Chick-fil-A may very well be the last meal I have before I go on my next detox. Chick-fil-A nuggets--along with jibaritos and bleucheeseburgers--is what prevents me from actually believing I could ever permanently be vegetarian.

My Chick-fil-A love is well documented here and other places. The simple mention of the place makes me all teary-eyed as I think about waffle fries and sweet tea and how every time you say, "Thank you," to a Chick-fil-A employee, she has to respond with, "My pleasure." It's true. My sister told me. You should try it. Like, even if you said, "You're a buster ass mark, and I want to hit you in your face. Thank you," they'd probably have to say "My pleasure." Politeness is in the rule book or something. It's kind of awesome. Especially when you consider how drive-thru people at other fast food institutions seem adamant about communicating as little as possible with their customers. It's Jesus chicken. If Jesus served chicken (at the Last Supper or anytime thereafter), it would have tasted like Chick-fil-A. And I say that not simply because it's that good, but also because Chick-fil-A rolls hard for Jesus. Like, not open on Sundays (boo!) hard. Like, they should hire Davey and Goliath when those cows retire hard.

As Chick-Fil-A has expanded, slowly establishing a north of the Mason-Dixon presence beyond suburban mall foodcourts and into urban centers like Chicago, some of the company's conservative Christian values and conservative leanings have been widely publicized:

[Chick-Fil-A] has strong, deep ties to anti-gay organizations like Focus on the Family and the Fellowship of Christian Athletes, and its charitable division has provided more than $1.1 million to organizations that deliver anti-LGBT messages and promote egregious practices like reparative therapy that seek to "free" people of being gay.

Call it appalling, but such news does not deter me from making plans to eat at the Chicago Chick-fil-A soon. Although I could probably waste blog space pretending to have the right politics by telling you to protest Chick-fil-A because they fund organizations working to ensure that I can never ever marry another girl, that would just be a lie. I'd rather you try their breakfast biscuit. I've endured a crappy Chicago fast-food ecosystem for long enough (White Castle? Uh, gross.), and I want some nuggets, regarding each bite of those honey mustard-coated nuggets as a juicy, tender and yummy tiny morsel of self-hate.

Just add "Refused to allow politics get in the way of a good chicken sandwich" to the list of things that make me a bad queer. I don't care. I could call my dedication to Chick-fil-A a symbol of just how committed I am to getting LGBTQ folks to re-think whether or not they actually want to be married, but that would just be a lie. This is just one of my many, many contradictions. I'm part of the problem. What, I wonder, would Chick-fil-A have to do to make me leave the dark side, despite their fantastic chicken, and become part of the solution? What would Chick-fil-A have to fund for me to buy, uh, McNuggets? What's the difference? What's the point?

To what degree are we, our politics what we eat? I'll be munching on waffle fries until you tell me.

Today in Post-Race History: Kreayshawn

2011-06-13T08:13:00.001-05:00

*sigh* Well, there's one (or more) for every generation.

I think Kreayshawn (nee Natassia Zolot) is a fraud. I don't believe she's serious; I don't believe she's real. Some good discussion about Kreayshawn and appropriation is happening, but I'm still at the start line refusing to believe her alleged biography about being the child of a teenaged mother and growing up in East Oakland.

White people do this kind of thing--and by "kind of thing" I mean fabricate a story that somehow makes them more authentic, more "down"--all the time. Vanilla Ice was never really stabbed five times; Margaret B. Jones was never really a gang member in L.A. despite what her memoir said. (Apparently, folks love to lie in memoirs.) So, I'll just take Natassia's stage name at its word: Kreayshawn = Creation.

Perhaps the truth will come out now that she's inked a record deal.

We should, I suppose, ask: What would the point be of making all of this up? To prove that even in Obama's America, even during the recession, blackface money can always be made? To remind us that white people acting how they think black people do will always prove endlessly fascinating and lucrative? To suggest that talent only actually matters when you're the person whose likeness is actually being appropriated?

What say you about Kreayshawn?

On Black Beauty

2011-06-06T10:30:00.005-05:00

The nature of blogging necessitates that each Monday I dedicate my time to commenting on the most recent news that I care about to varying degrees. That said, I thought I'd take this first June entry to say something about an issue that I didn't have an opportunity to discuss because I was busy hating on Common and famous gay people.

Last month, a few completely different, yet not altogether unrelated issues made a blip on my pop culture radar. Briefly:

Rap group, Dead Prez released the video for "The Beauty Within," a track off their latest mixtape. The song is both a celebration of "natural" black women and a response to the Bruno Mars track it samples. The Mars' video celebrates those women who live in Omniracial City or its near suburbs. Dead Prez give the brown sisters a shoutout, and crunchy women everywhere ashéd for forty days.
Psychologist, Satoshi Kanazawa, did his best John Mayer imitation by publishing an article wherein he presents "scientific evidence" that black women are the least attractive, but tend to think of themselves as more attractive than they actually are. The internet nearly blew up until someone decided to start a petition, instead.
A 9-minute clip for the new Bill Duke documentary--and perhaps I should say I use the term loosely--Dark Girls began circulating the internet. Dark-skinned black women, accompanied with music from the Save a Starving African Child soundtrack, recount their (horror) stories of growing up in color struck (Black) America. The interviews came off as melodramatically pathetic and, frankly, fake; some of them seemed more actress auditioning for a Hollywood revamp of Imitation of Life than dark girl recounting the trauma of elementary school.

The overarching commonality between these three pop culture bites is quite obvious. All, in some way, are invested in highlighting black women's beauty--or lack thereof--and its value within a larger social context. Each is a response to, in one way or another, prevailing notions of white (women's) beauty and the effects it has on others, namely men and black women.

What also comes to mind, though, is the way in which this investment in women's beauty is rendered. Each assessment of beauty--whether positive or negative--is filtered through the male gaze and is thusly dependent upon male (dis)approval. Even the Dead Prez validation, which attempts to celebrate "natural" black beauty, is contingent upon a male perspective in its celebration of this particular aesthetic. The Duke film, which relies very heavily on black women's testimonies, is both the vehicle of a male (Duke), and seems sort of incomplete and perhaps unbelievable, until the viewer watches a young black man brashly discuss his dating preferences. And so, it seems to me, that black women's response to each of these--whether it's excitement over the Dead Prez clip, a signature on a petition, or expressing a desire to see the complete version of the Duke film--reflects a substantial belief and investment in the importance of these points of view. In other words, the overwhelming response to each issue reinforces the significance of a male's perspective in determining the value of black women's beauty.

Second, each works as a reaction to prevailing notions of beauty in ways that don't question the core norm black women's beauty seems to circulating around and working against. None of these work to disrupt or even adequately trouble the uninterrogated norm of white beauty, but rather work from (the pathology of) black women's assessment of their physical qualities. Which, in effect, looks at black women's understanding of their attractiveness as some sort of problem: Dead Prez wants to assure black women that they're beautiful even though society tells them they're not and just in case that influence rubbed off on them; Kanazawa wants black women to know they're hardly as attractive as they think they are, which is a problem; Duke's clip, the young black man notwithstanding, pays substantial attention to the mothers and light-skinned black girls who made dark-skinned black girls feel bad about themselves. All because, of course, they are men and have the authority to make you feel better or worse about your face and body.

I say all of this not to suggest that black women's beauty and the way that it is appreciated isn't an issue worthy of discussion, but rather to point out the way in which that discussion has been framed. Is it possible, for example, for black women to talk about this subject without getting all sad and self-loathing--and be listened to? Can black women discuss and/or respond to discussions about beauty in a way that is not contingent upon (over)valuing male desire and validation? What about a response to Dead Prez' borderline fetishistic ode to natural black women that reads something like, "Thanks, but we knew that already"? Isn't that much more empowering?

I understand that my position as a queer, masculine of center person (or whatever the correct language is) significantly colors my perspective on this. Yet from my (somewhat distant) vantage, so often it seems that discussion of black women as it pertains to beauty or their inability to find an upwardly mobile good black man can be articulated as a perpetual quest for admission into a club that would never have them in the first place or even treat them very well if they were allowed in the building. So why, I wonder, do black women respond with such surprise when a representative from the set that has been saying that they were ugly for the last 400 years or so says, well, that they're (still) ugly? Don't we know this already?

How can the energy spent responding to the denigration or exaltation of black women be shifted to a place where male desire and validation is of lesser significance? Is Dark Girls going to tell us anything we don't already know? Aren't Kanazawa's words little reflex hammers, reminders that, fake science or not, it still really stings that mainstream society doesn't find black women beautiful? We've been discussing this so long we should have automated responses to issue when such moments occur. That way we can get so caught up in the real work of telling ourselves, each other we are beautiful with such adamant vigor that Dead Prez' background music and this other, racistly familiar chatter sounds like nothing but a bunch of unnecessary white noise.

It Gets Better...When You're Rich and/or Famous

2011-05-23T10:13:00.002-05:00

Note: I was so concerned about the rapture on May 21, that I failed to post last Monday. Now I realize that when they said "rapture" all they really meant was that Oprah was ending her show and Chicago's mayor is no longer named Daley. You can totally interpret such events as the end of the world. Anyway, I finished what should have been last week's blog and posted it here .)

True story: Although the maternal side of my family knew, I didn't tell my biological father that I was gay until (quite literally) the day of my sister's wedding nearly year ago, just before he was about to walk her down the aisle. What began as an incredibly awkward moment involving me in ~~drag~~a dress and makeup and weird conversation before the wedding, resulted in an embrace and my father's loving (for him) utterance of "We deuces," to let me know that we were still cool by the time we were taking post-nuptial photos; he even took the time to tell my girlfriend she was welcome to visit anytime. It was a tremendous relief. Sure, I probably should have done it much sooner, but procrastination is a tough drug to kick. Besides, I had never hidden anything from my dad or ever talked to him about relationships, so the idea of me sitting him down and telling him that he could add dating women to the list of things he and I had in common seemed really forced and inauthentic. Although it has always felt as if coming out was a ritual reserved for privileged white folks and Logo series, once I figured out that my dad inquiring, "So you cut your hair again, hunh?" wasn't a euphemism for "Are you gay?" I knew I had to say something.

Perhaps it's the fact that we are within sniffing distance of Memorial Day barbecue--and hence pride season for my Roy G. Biv crew--but last week, a noticeable number of notable folks had to say something, too. Former Villanova University basketball player, Will Sheridan, Phoenix Suns president and CEO, Rick Welts, and CNN's Don "Double Minority" Lemon all came out publicly. I'm happy for them. It's great that they now get to live their lives openly and honestly...and that they were remarkable enough for the media to pick up their stories in time for music video premieres and books being published. Hopefully they can Sheryl Swoopes their way into an endorsement deal or two. It was nice getting a hug from my father, but a contract with Olivia cruises or a Bravo reality show would have been even nicer. /sarcasm.

In addition, Charles Barkley (I swear I could listen to him talk all day) and MSNBC's Rachel Maddow have made comments about the topic recently. Barkley, whose heart and mind almost always seem to be in the right place (even if his grammar isn't), not only said that he knew he had played with gay teammates, but pushed back on the idea that athletes are especially homophobic, "It bothers me when I hear these reporters and jocks get on TV and say: 'Oh, no guy can come out in a team sport. These guys would go crazy.' First of all, quit telling me what I think. I'd rather have a gay guy who can play than a straight guy who can't play." For her part, Maddow, who is openly gay, explained that when she stated "if you're gay you have a responsibility to come out," she was not referring to fellow television anchor, Anderson Cooper. On her blog, Maddow clarified her beliefs about coming out:

1. Gay people -- generally speaking -- have a responsibility to our own community and to future generations of gay people to come out, if and when we feel that we can.
2. We should all get to decide for ourselves the "if and when we feel that we can" part of that.
3. Closeted people should reasonably expect to be outed by other gay people if (and only if) they prey on the gay community in public, but are secretly gay themselves.

I also believe that coming out makes for a happier life, but that's not a matter of ethics, that's just corny advice.

Lemon seemed to agree with Maddow saying in an interview, "I think it would be great if everybody could be out [...] I think if I had seen more people like me who are out and proud, it wouldn’t have taken me 45 years to say it, to walk in the truth."

And I seem to just be, well, annoyed. Perhaps it's the combination of these PR projects cloaked as coming out stories and the deeply problematic "It Gets Better Campaign," but I've had my fill of public figures coming out in ways that ostensibly forward their career goals then encouraging others to do the same because then the world would be really, really gay and hence more awesome.

For a lot of folks--black and not, athletes and not--it doesn't get better. For a lot of folks, it gets worse. For a lot of folks, the Times won't carry an interview that will help promote a new memoir or your league's new "Saying Gay is Bad" campaign--which apparently isn't working (Hello, Joakim Noah). For a lot of folks, corny advice cannot be heeded. As anxious as I was about my father rejecting me, what helped me was that fact that I knew that at the end of the day my mother still loved me. But I know that that's not a lot folks' reality. And I think it's time for would-be memoirists and musicians to acknowledge that in their interviews. It seems to me that it's a lot easier to be gay when you're HGTV's newest and hottest interior designer. When coming out means you may become a homeless teenager? Not so much.

It seems to me that coming out in a way that conveniently promotes a pet project caters more to individual interests than it does to some anonymous Michigan teenager who has gone from suicide watch to inspired now that the latest public figure has been able to exorcise some gay demons in a memoir or that Woody from Toy Story says it's all good. How, then, can we come out in one breath and then somehow suggest that those less famous and/or fortunate have a responsibility to a gay community that is more often than not white, elitist, racist, classist, etc. and refuses to acknowledge that sometimes there is safety in the closet, especially when Bravo doesn't need you for this season of Top Chef?

It gets better when we're honest about our motives and the privilege implicit in coming out. The only responsibility those who are gay and less famous and/or moneyed is to trust themselves and their ability to navigate their world safely. To echo Sir Charles, these tv anchors, etc. aren't role models--and shouldn't be until they acknowledge that being on tv makes being gay a little bit easier. As do the residuals and/or advance money they got for the book.

Mistaken Identity

2011-05-16T10:10:00.002-05:00

So last week, the black blogosphere was ablaze about Fox News' objection to rapper, Common's appearance at the White House for an evening of poetry. (I blame spoken word's roach-like ability to last so long on something incredibly jacked up I must have done in a former life.) Calling the "controversial" rapper "vile," the right wing's media arm made the hip-hop heads, et. al. go ballistic. They tweeted and blogged about the lunacy of such charges, in the process proving that Fox News is more out of touch than an AT&T cell subscriber not standing next to a tower. Although Common performed anyway, and most of the Negro section of the internet has seemed to move on, I'm taking up the issue now, not because I can't believe the folks at the White House thought it was a good idea to invite Common to recite anything, but because I can't really be all that mad at Fox News. After all, aren't people often inaccurately describing Common? I'd like to take this blip on the pop culture radar to reiterate the fact that if one can glean any significance from Common's appearance at the White House, it's that he's exactly who some of his longest and most strident fans seem to forget he is: that is, a "conscious" rapper who finds the revolution--and its purveyors-- suitable for nothing but sampling and/or cameos. Though ostensibly harmless and hardly who Fox thinks he is, Common has been confusing folks for the bulk of his career. How mad can we be with Fox News for this latest flub?

Newsflash: Unless your name is Converse (or Gap, or...), the revolution will not be televised nor its soundtrack brought to you by Common (or Kweli or Mos or...). And we would be fools, just like Fox News, to think otherwise. Fox News took some things Common said (out of context) and believed them to be true--like many of us do. Just as Common is neither vile nor controversial, he is also not your radical, deep-thinking and sensitive rapper who connects with the Obamas simply on Chi City love. Part of this impression of Common as the kinder, gentler, harmless rapper is the implicit benefit of being automatically juxtaposed to his less respectable counterparts. Perhaps most accurately described as a poor person's version of the Black Eyed Peas, Common has his own share of misogynistic songs and a track record that suggests that if Common has done anything, it's successfully cash in on the cultural capital of black revolution and appear like some sort of Wayne Brady of rap. (Really sorry about that, Wayne.)

Admittedly, pre-Be Common was my favorite emcee. But I had to begrudgingly jump off of that bandwagon once it became blatantly apparent that Common had become so much of what he lamented in "I Used to Love H.E.R.," the song I'd rush home from school to catch on Rap City. (Did I just age myself?) It seemed to me that the official link with Kanye West along with the movies and the aforementioned ad campaigns showed that Common had made a decision, a choice to stop struggling within the margins of highly respected, if hardly profitable emcee, to mainstream media's "conscious" rap representative. Less combative and polarizing than, say, a KRS-One or Chuck D., Vh1, Oprah, et. al. seem to have opted Common when they needed a rapper with no nihilistic thoughts. So often such entities opted for the handsome, light-skinned bald dude with his ostensibly thoughtful and slow cadence (but, seriously, does he ever say anything illuminating?) when Mos Def wasn't available or Kweli's helium-sucking high voice was intolerable, that one might actually be duped into thinking that Common's version of hip-hop was all right for the smooth jazz crowd.

Is it, though? "Heidi Hoe" is not the only smudge on this kinder, gentler rapper's resume. Although more subtle, Be's the last verse of "Go," featuring John Mayer of all people, is nothing but a male-driven fantasy of a ménage à trois wherein the women sexually explore each other for the speaker's/Common's erotic delight. Common's appearance on Kid Cudi's "Make Her Say" nee "I Poke Her Face" reiterated the under-appreciated fact that Common is sometimes more like his hip-hop brethren than not; such Common/common verses might be the topic of longer conversation, perhaps, if Lil Wayne wasn't so blatant about his misogyny.

And frankly, there's just something so malleable about the guy. Knit pants to veganism, The Last Poets to the White House lawn, Common will be that. And I wouldn't necessarily hate on him so hard for it if there wasn't this belief held (by him, and/or maybe his fans) that there was some sort of genuine authenticity to it all. And frankly, Common's dopeness is already suspect simply due to the fact that he's a rapper who dated Erykah Badu for like three years, but they don't have a baby. If Common had just said, "Yo, I can't date Serena Williams being a backpacker's idol and shit," then maybe, just maybe, his decision to posit himself in a more mainstream region wouldn't be so intolerable. Yet Common seems to want to hold on to the reputation he earned during those early years. How long, though, does such a hall pass last? How many movies? How many political functions until we come to terms with the fact that Common has evolved into more of a company man than a maturing revolutionary? There's nothing wrong with such decisions. It's just important to be honest about them. Otherwise it's incredibly difficult to determine who you are. And we, along with Fox News, will just keep mistaking you for someone else.

Proof: What is a Picture Worth?

2011-05-09T08:20:00.001-05:00

Although I'd like to put Dead Prez on blast--like I planned on doing last week--I think it would be most appropriate to follow up last week's post. I can't believe I'm about to force my fingers to type the following sentence, but here goes: I agree with the Obama Administration's decision not to publish the photos of Osama Bin Laden.

One moment, please. I feel a little dirty.

In fact, although I know such a desire exists, I'm not even sure I could wrap my mind around the idea of actually wanting to see them.

I think Photoshop and other similar kinds of programs indicate that photographs can't really be regarded as any kind of evidence that certain events occurred. So, the argument that circulating these photos as sufficient proof to assuage the curiosity of even the mildest conspiracy theorists or latest Republican presidential candidate, or quell any of those "OBL ain't really dead," whispers seems a bit misguided to me. Frankly, technology has reached such a level that it seems like we can only believe those things we actually saw--and maybe not even then. Either way, eventually a documentary delineating why this latest "victory" on the War on Terror was a total fabrication or hoax will make its way to Youtube. ~~And I will watch it.~~

I also agree with the Obama Administration [lord, help me] that circulating pictures could incite or further exacerbate violence in other parts of the world. I won't deny the possibility. Yet I imagine what would make the possibility of such violence even more highly probable isn't simply the circulation of them, but how Americans might use them. Forgive me for having little faith in some of my fellow citizens, but images of the absurdly inappropriate acts some of them might engage in once they printed a copy or several just flooded my mind's eye. Such moments would also make their way to Youtube, and although I wouldn't watch it, my guess is a montage of these scenes would appear on the evening news and computer screens in other parts of the world, yet again proving to observers how little we understand of US foreign policy.

Furthermore, and perhaps most importantly, the circulation of the photos would not necessarily usher in a deluge of closure. Admittedly, I did not lose anyone close to me on 9/11 or in these wars; still today, my heart goes out to those who have, just as it would to anyone who lost a loved one in an unexpected tragedy--both those that garnered national attention and those that did not. Yet I wonder if the relief one might feel by gazing upon the picture of a dead Osama Bin Laden may be only temporary. Is closure that can only be attained through (the confirmation of) violence closure at all?

For those arguing that seeing the pictures would help heal a decade-old national wound, I ask them to remember that this picture is more than Osama Bin Laden, more than proof, more than a thousand words. That picture is not simply every life lost in those towers. That picture is every dollar spent on these wars. That picture is every life lost--both soldier and civilian--since the United States started Operation Iraqi Freedom, Enduring Freedom, Whatever Freedom.

So is it worth as much as some of us thought it was?

Death Certificate

2011-05-02T08:14:00.000-05:00

I had planned to write a mini-diatribe about why I did not at all enjoy the Dead Prez' song and video "The Beauty Within" (a "response" to Bruno Mars' "Nothing on You") that was released late last week. However, I've decided to abandon a hate-filled monologue on something asinine, and be a more mindful blogger by saying a word or two about what happened last night. I'll save that hate for next week.
Because I don't watch the news, I heard about the killing of Osama Bin Laden via Twitter and, frankly, Andy Cohen...because I had just finished watching the last half-hour of The Real Housewives of Orange County #noshame. I didn't stay on Twitter long. The jokes being shared were just too much for me. I just don't find the violent death of anyone--and yes, we'll just assume this news is true for the moment--a reason to celebrate and/or joke. Seriously, folks, this is why they hate us.

And I guess Obama is having the best week ever because everyone has seen his birth certificate and he finished the job Dubya couldn't. "I killed Bin Laden," though not very catchy, will be a sufficient campaign slogan, right? And that's pretty much the significance of this news for me--part of a steady platform for a political campaign. Gas prices will not decrease. The wars waged have not been "won." Thousands of people not named Osama Bin Laden have been killed or injured in the quest of preserving freedom or whatever phrase we are currently fooling ourselves with. The deaths of those who died on 9/11 have neither been honored or avenged. Poor, black and brown folks will continue to be deployed and charged with destroying the lives of other black and brown people.

Shame on those who celebrated in front of the White House or anywhere else for that matter. This is not a point for Team America. We should not relish those "victories" that seek to continue world dominance. This War on Terror, if you will, did not end last night, and it won't end tonight or even tomorrow night. The Islamaphobia running rampant in American culture was not countered by this (alleged) burial at sea. Celebrating Bin Laden's death proves that we have learned nothing in the last decade. Hell, we've learned nothing (ok, very little) since 1776.

We still have such a dichotomous vision of the world. Right and wrong. Good and evil. We should check our HDTV flatscreen televisions; Last night yet again proved that they still broadcast in black and white.

Beyonce, No

2011-04-25T08:00:00.002-05:00

Last week's post on Kobe's faux pax and the subject matter of this week's entry are leading me to believe that I am fully committed to being unequivocally hated by my sister and my fellow homogays. That's right. I listened to Beyonce's recently leaked single, "Girls (Who Run the World)." And you know what? It's craptastic. And by "craptastic" I don't mean it in that "Oh my god, what a vacuous, yet catchy new Beyonce song. I think I'll shake my ass" type way. I mean "craptastic" in that "Neither the world's most powerful wind machine nor all the of glitter in the world could save this dissonant shit" type way.

Please excuse me while I watch my rainbow colored bridge burn.

Seriously, though, I can't get those 4 minutes of my life back. The entire experience compelled the following thoughts:

Oh, Beyonce. Even J-Lo wouldn't sing this. Not even if she could, you know, sing.
If the soundtracks to "Slumdog Millionaire" and "Drumline" got together and had (really, really awkward) sex and we were within earshot, this is what we would hear. That's a really long-winded way of describing this as a pop music mess or whatever you call it.
Is Alicia not letting you play with Swizz anymore?
If the above is not the case, what are you doing hanging out with Diplo and Switch? Don't screw too much with your sound. You saw what happened when Janet stopped messing with Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis, didn't you? (Can't just blame #nipplegate) Think about it.
Lil Jon? Are you serious? I know you're probably not that good at math, but I think you forgot to add a decade. 2001 wants its favorite rapper back. I thought they had buried Lil Jon under some crunk rock and here you come resurrecting him. 2011 Lil Jon isn't even a poor man's version of Lil Jon. He's not even on the top ten list of "Rappers Who Go by 'Lil'" anymore. Was Wayne busy? Is T.I. in jail (again)? What about Drake? Or your husband?
If you're going to put Lil Jon on a track, you might as well call Ja Rule.
I generally ignore your Jekyll and Hyde pseudo-feminist but soooo not act, but this is beyond pathetic. If this is your new independent women anthem, I'd rather you tell women to put a ring on it. (Because it's still the jam. Oh-oh-oh!)
I cannot two-step to this shit!
If I may echo the homie, Moya B., Sasha, this is so not fierce.
Thank you for ruining my summer. I can't believe I ever quasi-jokingly defended you.

A swing and a miss!

Enjoy your week, folks.

The F-bomb

2011-04-18T15:02:00.000-05:00

Seriously, folks, I want to put my basketball blogs in the Disney vault, but since it's the only thing I find worth watching, I kind of have to continue writing about the sport. Go with what I know. Last week, Kobe Bryant got into all kinds of trouble for spazzing the bleep out at a referee after a call went against him. Bryant received a technical foul for arguing with the official--NBA don't play that--but since he's a brat and a superstar he wasn't tossed from the game for violently, angrily heading to the bench, hitting his chair and a teammate, and throwing his towel.

Perhaps if the refs had tossed him from the game like they should have, the cameras wouldn't have caught Bryant calling the referee a "fucking faggot." As always, here's the video:

Uh-oh.
Bryant said sorry:

“What I said last night should not be taken literally [but, um, figuratively? What's a figurative faggot?]. My actions were out of frustration during the heat of the game, period,” Bryant said in a statement issued through the Lakers on Wednesday. “The words expressed do NOT reflect my feelings towards the gay and lesbian communities and were NOT meant to offend anyone [except for that p***-*** referee].”

Now maybe it's because I like to eat Chick-fil-A and bought some stuff from Target even after it was exposed that the latter corporation was funding anti-gay politicians, but I don't really think that such language indicates that Bryant is a homophobe. Nor do I think Bryant needs to make any "saying faggot is bad" public service announcements. I do think Bryant spoke the words out of frustration, and accessed a lexicon that would disrespect the referee. This, although in ways inextricably linked, had less to do with Bryant's opinion of gay people and more to do with undercutting the ref's masculinity. Because, you know, even though they walk around the locker room naked and hit one another on the butt, athletes are so manly. And manly dudes aren't gay.

All of that to say although it is technically GLAAD's et. al. job to issue statements and furrow its brow at Bryant and pull out the dry-erase board to compose a strategy to combat these kinds of outbursts, the strategy seems, well, played. And what ends up happening is pundits on ESPN debate whether or not Bryant is a homophobe in his heart (their words, not mine), and the latest campaign to eliminate words from our epithet vocabularies. (And if that happens, what is Bryant supposed to call the ref? A fucking bitch? Soooooo much less alliterative than the original.)

In my estimation, these kinds of politically correct efforts never really solve the problem. Rather, we end up with genius solutions like "let's replace the word faggot with slave." Instead, perhaps one might consider the way in which larger, more systemic constructions of masculinity influence the use of such terms in these instances. Because, frankly, even if the camera doesn't catch Bryant, I'm pretty sure that the next school day some little boy was bullied for being effeminate. And the perpetrators got the signal that such acerbic chastisement was all right from a myriad of cultural sources and not only--or even--from the basketball court.

The basketball court reflects society at large. New versions of masculinity do not appear in that arena. I'm not absolving Bryant, but fining him 100 large and getting him to issue an apology does not disrupt the rather constricted notion of masculinity that dominates our visions of who or what men should be. Interpreting Kobe's words as not simply "you're gay (and that's bad)," but rather "you're not a man," lends itself to a larger conversation that inevitably addresses not only homosexuality, but sexuality in general. Or we could simply just tell people to stop saying faggot because it's bad. Yeah, let's do that. It's a lot easier.

Detox

2011-04-11T09:31:00.000-05:00

For the last couple of weeks, I've been detoxing. That's right. No cheeseburgers, no jibaritos, no vanilla malts. First a vegan diet, then a raw one, now a vegetable juice fast. Although some of the stuff I've had tastes ~~like ass~~ terrible, I did enjoy much of it. Coconut water, an acquired taste for many, can be mildly addictive #teamvitacoco. I'm very proud of myself for making it this far. Heretofore, I've had very little food discipline. I derive way too much pleasure from eating, I guess. I tried The Master Cleanse for all of six hours, only to end up breaking that fast by eating a delicious, delicious hot dog. The idea of syrup and cayenne pepper or whatever was ridiculous to me anyway.

Still, I cannot wait to return to the world of warm, dead food. Though I wish they'd stop trying to make vegetables and nuts taste like other things, I've learned to appreciate the raw foodists and the vegans. I can't say I'll ever permanently join their movement, but I understand. I had no solid plans to do this detox--like I said I love food too much. Then I was struck by the idea that detoxing is a way of giving my body, my system a rest. I see no conversion to living foods in my future; I didn't do this detox to lose weight--I don't even own a scale. I did it because my body needed a break. In a lot of ways, I think my brain has needed a similar break.

Most Mondays, I climb upon my soapbox, rant about some societal ill, and then go about the business of avoiding my dissertation. And maybe you read it and go about your own business. Fact is, somebody said something racist yesterday. And someone will say something sexist today. And tomorrow, some homophobe will say something, well, homophobic. And Fox News or somebody will tell you that all Muslims are terrorists. And Obama will say something some of us hate and others of us defend. And I will tell you that I'm still not voting for Obama--or anybody. And a rapper will liken a black woman to some inanimate object to be (ab)used as he sees fit. And Target will stop funding anti-gay organizations, but will still run your local apothecary out of business. And some of us will write. And many of us will do nothing about the injustices of the world. Because fighting injustice, in whichever way so few of us choose to do, seems to be the only thing we are doing. And I guess I'm just not in the mood to sound like a broken record/scratched CD/jacked up mp3 this morning. I need[ed] a detox.

I needed to give my brain a timeout. Because really what's on my mind isn't Ashley Judd or Obama 2012. It's how Palm Sunday makes me miss my great-grandmother. And I just need[ed] to create space to say that. My corner of the blogosphere is full of sites that decry the injustices of the world in the same way that the American landscape is full of burger joints. And the work is needed and all well and good, but one cannot eat that everyday. And lately, I just can't. I had to detox. I had to, I don't know, write about basketball for a few weeks. And this week I had to write about...nothing.

Because we all need breaks, right? Lest we forget what we're doing, what we're saying--and why we're saying it. And just as the detox showed me that I'm not ready to give up meat and cheese entirely, I do need to eat it sparingly, just like I need to choose the verbal battles I wage here each week. Otherwise I'm just spinning the same arguments, and no one is listening--not even me.

So in the meantime, I leave you not without your weekly glass of haterade (which surely tastes better than rejuvelac), but with those adorable kids from PS22, and my favorite band, Little Dragon:

Enjoy your week.

Bracket Buster

2011-04-04T08:32:00.000-05:00

I know, I know. I really, really need to stop blogging about basketball. What can you expect from me if it's practically the only thing I watch these days? Seriously, I'm going to start weening myself off of March Madness. I have got to kick this college basketball jones. This will be hard, but I have to do it. I didn't fill out a bracket this year--a good sign. And I only watched, maybe, fewer than a handful of games. I imagine that I'll peek at tonight's final between Butler and UConn. After that, though, I really need to change my viewing habits or something. Not that that will do anything but help me avoid being entertained by such blatant exploitation.

Last week, I caught Frontline's twenty-minute segment on the business of March Madness. A story from the obvious files? Perhaps. Yet I had not seen a story that delineated the situation as clearly as this report did. Here's the link.

Watch the full episode. See more FRONTLINE.

90% of the NCAA's revenue comes from March Madness. That comes to about $700 million a year. The money funds other NCAA championships, the folks who work for the NCAA, etc. But the players will see none of that money. Although there's no practical solution offered, the blatant exploitation in that set-up is sickening enough for me to start finding another way to entertain myself between the Super Bowl and the beginning of the NBA playoffs. It's a ridiculous economic arrangement that our culture is way to in love with, especially when we recall that basketball players must attend college for at least one year before they can declare themselves eligible for the NBA.

I've gone from One Shining Moment to One Shining Buzzkill. It's difficult to watch these young man--many of whom will not graduate--run up and down the court, risking injury for the sake of my entertainment and the NCAA president's country club membership. Meanwhile, the NCAA continues to punish recruits and players who receive[d] money from boosters and other sources from colleges wanting them to play basketball for their program. Hypocritical much?

Just something to think about for those of us who watch the tournament.

On Dirty Laundry

2011-03-28T06:57:00.002-05:00

I swear I'll stop writing about Jalen Rose and The Fab Five after this week. I promise. I did, however, want to ~~beat~~ ~~this dead horse one more good time~~ take a moment to make a request of my (s)kinfolk.
What follows is a clip of ESPN's Chris Broussard discussing the Jalen Rose/Grant Hill issue on First Take. What I'm mostly concerned with begins around minute 1:55.

Now, I have a lot of respect for Broussard. I think he's a great NBA reporter. I follow him on Twitter and read his articles especially around the trade deadline and free agent season. However, this bit of commentary here made me stare at my computer with WTF-face. It was as if Broussard wanted to cram everything Baines taught Malcolm into one tv segment. That's not my point--or my beef. What is, though, is very simply outlined below:

Dear Black People (especially those charged with explaining black people to the cable tv masses):

Can we retire the phrase "dirty laundry" from our vocabularies, like, now? Please?

Love,
me

No, seriously. Can this just, um, stop? Does the NAACP have a word/phrase burial application I can complete to make this happen?

Although he doesn't explain exactly what he means, I think Broussard employs the phrase to describe the class tension inherent in the discussion about Rose and Hill. And, well, I think that's kind of ridiculous. Broussard, however, isn't the only one to do this. Anytime black folk start acting out in places where white folk can see, someone is bound to talk about "airing dirty laundry." And that needs to stop.

Black people's laundry is no dirtier than anyone else's. Don't believe me? Watch an episode of Dateline. Or last season of Intervention.
Making a claim that allows for discussion about certain tensions between black people at large is not the same as putting your business out on front street.
To that last point, such discussions inevitably show that black people are not monolithic. Rather, it proves that black people look like Jalen Rose and Grant Hill and the Huxtables and the Evanses and everything in between. If such laundry is not aired, if you will, the prevailing, stereotypical images that Broussard finds so frustrating continue to monopolize public images of blackness. And the opinions about authentic blackness that Broussard focuses on are never disrupted.
In my mind, "dirty laundry" is a euphemism for "making a fool of yourself/us in front of white people." And that is rooted in this impulse to appear respectable--yes, that's the word of the week again--in front of company, as if such excellent behavior would be rewarded with things like, I dunno, voting rights or a decent grocery store in the 'hood. Frankly, how irrational is that? Black people disagreeing amongst each other or revealing that they don't all think the same way or have the same experiences or even like each other is not a bad thing. Nor should such exercises be implicitly discouraged because it opens black people to judgment by some invisible jury whose power we should have stopped believing in long ago. Further, it makes no sense to me to suggest that class tension is some secret of blackness that should not be discussed in mixed company. It's class tension, not the solution to next week's Soul Train scramble board.

Above all, the phrase "dirty laundry" when racialized in such a way has at its core the desire to appear decent. And such desires, I think, need to be abandoned. At this juncture, we should understand that the path of (appearing) respectable was not entirely successful, and one that probably should not have been taken in the first place. We should leave dirty laundry on that road and head for another one.

That is all.

Two more random things:

Shout out to VCU!

Other than the fact that his blonde hair means that I will be referring to him as Chrisqo, I have nothing to say about Chris Brown.

Full Court Press: A (Long-Winded) Defense of Jalen Rose

2011-03-21T09:19:00.003-05:00

If last week's rather desultory and occasionally poorly rendered post on The Fab Five was any indication, my love for Jalen Rose and the rest of the Fab Five is immense and endures even today. I appreciate many of the things they symbolized. Just like back in '91, many do not hold this cohort of young black men in the same esteem that I do. Since its airing, the reaction to the Fab Five documentary has mostly centered on Rose's comments about his views of the Duke Blue Devils and its black players, Grant Hill in particular. In the documentary, Rose employed the term "Uncle Tom" to describe how his 18-year-old self understood black Duke players like Hill. Here's the clip:

After the initial broadcast on ESPN last Sunday night, Grant Hill wrote a response to Rose--which appeared in The New York friggin' Times, mind you (Duke alums stay ~~elitist~~ classy all day, everyday, I guess.), calling the moment a "sad and somewhat pathetic turn of events." Hill later refers to Rose's comments as "garbled." The shout out to John Thompson's awesomely black Georgetown Hoyas teams of the 1980s notwithstanding, Hill's response reeks of that we often smell when Negroes go about defending the respectability that "made them who they are today." In this case, specifically, that which partly helped make Hill an attractive Duke recruit in the first place. Further, Hill's op-ed exacerbates the irritatingly misleading chorus of negative responses to Rose's comments. I understand the impulse to "defend" his family, but Hill's rhetorical strategy merely further obscures that which spawned the comments in the first place: rejection.

Jalen Rose gave his detractors an out, or rather an attractive distraction, by employing the term "Uncle Tom" to characterize Duke's black players. Like other racially charged terms that I will resist the impulse to type here for fear that a reader might like to take that opportunity to diverge down paths that move us away from my core points, employing the term "Uncle Tom," generally understood to describe a black person who is obsequious to Mister Charlie 'n'em, almost always results in everything said before or after sounding like adults in Peanuts specials to those within listening range. As such, one misses a few key points in Rose's eloquent--and not hardly garbled--description of how his 19-year-old self felt about the Duke basketball program. What has gotten muddled in the response to this very brief moment in the documentary was that Jalen Rose was hurt. He was hurt by the absence of his father, and envied Hill's relationship with his own. By using the term "Uncle Tom," Rose allowed the pundits to miss that point--or at least pretend that they did. Not that they would have heard it if Rose had chosen a different phrase. After all, hearing a black man talk about his feelings sounds foreign to many of us. Rose might as well have been speaking Martian.

What further upset Rose and the rest of the Fab Five was the way in which their socio-economic backgrounds--with the exception of Webber who, despite a modest upbringing attended the prestigious Detroit Country Day School--disqualified them from being recruited by Duke. In an incredibly lucid comparison of his upbringing to Hill's, Rose articulates a point about Duke basketball that is very obvious even to the most casual basketball observer: the most talented white and most respectable, palatable black basketball players are the ones who perpetually make up the Duke roster, and sports commentators revere the program partly for that reason although they'd never admit it. The most visible of all of Duke athletic programs--despite the Duke lacrosse team's brief moment in the sun--of the 13 players on the Duke basketball team, 5 are black, and all of them seem to come from the kinds of backgrounds conducive to the smug and elitist image Duke has conveyed. In other words, through no fault of his own, Rose was not the kind of black player Duke would ever recruit. And Rose realized that this rejection had nothing at all to do with his talent, but everything to do with the fact that his socioeconomic background could not ameliorate all that his melanin symbolizes.

Grant Hill not only ignores Rose's hurt, but like others who have responded to The Fab Five, pretends that the image Rose described was merely a figment of his imagination. Instead of taking up or even acknowledging some of the key issues Rose's commentary brought to the fore, Hill opted for the typically conservative, pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps narrative one comes to expect in such instances. Hill attempts to obscure by justifying and defending rather than engaging. Hill asserts that by using the term "Uncle Tom," Rose "hint[ed] that those who grew up in a household with a mother and father are somehow less black than those who did not," a point that Hill deems "beyond ridiculous." Oh, the problem of using the term "Uncle Tom." From my vantage, Rose isn't suggesting that Hill and other Duke players are less black, but that they were acceptable despite being black. They are black, but: they are middle class...and they know their fathers...and they don't scare white people all that much...and they didn't go to public school in the inner city. Hill's familial background is a Moynihanian wet dream. Duke basketball is comprised of seemingly respectable Negroes, and that was the point Rose was trying to make. It is not a matter of being more or less black from Rose's point of view, but rather from the perspective of (southern?) whiteness. Grant Hill seemed less black not to Jalen Rose, but to Coach K and everyone else who determines the structure of the program. Yes, you can recruit black ballplayers here, but they better not be thugs. Yet in his op-ed, Hill doesn't choose to entertain that possibility:

I am beyond fortunate to have two parents who are still working well into their 60s. They received great educations and use them every day. My parents taught me a personal ethic I try to live by and pass on to my children.

I come from a strong legacy of black Americans. My namesake, Henry Hill, my father’s father, was a day laborer in Baltimore. He could not read or write until he was taught to do so by my grandmother. His first present to my dad was a set of encyclopedias, which I now have. He wanted his only child, my father, to have a good education, so he made numerous sacrifices to see that he got an education, including attending Yale.

This is part of our great tradition as black Americans. We aspire for the best or better for our children and work hard to make that happen for them. Jalen’s mother is part of our great black tradition and made the same sacrifices for him.

Understandably, Hill glowingly remarks upon the education and work ethic that he feels benefited his family without taking account of the kind of crap shoot such "success" seems to be. If "Jalen’s mother is part of our great black tradition and made the same sacrifices for him," why, then did her son not reap similar benefits? If hard work is imperative to the process and Jalen's mother worked hard, why didn't her life look more like Janet Hill's? Was the set of encyclopedias the difference? Why weren't her sacrifices sufficient enough to ensure that Rose had the option of receiving a good education at a place like Duke? Because hard work and sacrifice, no matter how often we repeat that mantra to ourselves, are never the only parts of the formula. In his response, Hill fails to mention that.

Jalen Rose was saying: if I am talented at basketball, then the best programs, including Duke, should want to recruit me to their school. Why, then, did they ignore me? Refusing to speak ill of his alma mater, Hill responds to Rose with a narrative that attempts to further obscure the glaring truth that can be found in Rose's statement, instead of using his standing as a Duke alum to interrogate the claims constructively, therein amplifying the class tension inherent to this conflict. Hill goes as far as erroneously suggesting that current Duke player, Nolan Smith, because he was raised by his mother, undermines Rose's argument. Hill conveniently leaves out that Smith's father was a professional basketball player and NBA assistant coach before he died tragically, and that his mother has a law degree. Such facts are not an indictment of Smith's (authentic) blackness, but of why he's so attractive to the Duke program in the first place.

What I like about the Fab Five was that they took that rejection and didn't internalize it into self-hatred, but rather allowed it to fuel them; they took that Scarlet Letter and embraced it, showed it off, flaunted it, and made it so fashionable that it had to be commodified and sold to the masses. What I don't like about Hill's response is his refusal to acknowledge Duke's recruiting practices and engage Rose's hurt feelings. Instead, Hill chose to defend his college and his family, perhaps because his masculinity had been called into question (not entirely by Rose). Indeed, the subtext also at work in this story is being called a bitch in a documentary, and the implicit asexuality of Uncle Tom. The non-threatening appearance of the likes of Hill and other Duke alum is rooted in a long discourse of black male sexuality. And the unbridled and cocky way in which the Fab Five played basketball inevitably conjures such images, especially when home games are played on Tobacco Road. Yet all of that got muddied by our insistence on castigating Rose for his word choice.

We should be similarly critical of Hill and the argument he chose to forward. As a student of an elite institution--so elite that it left the Big Ten many moons ago for nerdier pastures--I understand my role not to justify my existence here, but to question it. I am not here simply because I worked harder than others. I know that a set of circumstances beyond my control were also in play way before I got here. I seek not to use the knowledge I've acquired to defend why I deserve my situation. Rather, I choose to question the situation entirely, especially its desireability. It's prime time we stop defending our respectable Negroeness at every opportunity. It's not only annoying, but marginalizes and categorically denies the experience of others whose lives don't neatly fit into a system that none of us should want to be a part or a shining example of in the first place. After all, is resistance not the most attractive feature of that mythical black tradition we revere so much?

March Madness: The Fab Five

2011-03-14T09:17:00.000-05:00

Last night I caught ESPN's 30 for 30 installment, The Fab Five. The documentary chronicles the two years the University of Michigan men's basketball team captured the imagination--and ire--of the sports watching public. I was a young kid when Jalen Rose, Jimmy King, Juwan Howard, Ray Jackson, and Chris Webber revolutionized college basketball and rocked my basketball-loving world, even more so than the Larry Johnson-led UNLV Runnin' Rebels who came a few years before them. Growing up in basketball obessed Indiana, loyalities were given to either the Purdue Boilermakers or the Indiana Hoosiers. I had always been rather uninspired by the rivalry, couldn't care less about Gene Keady or Bob Knight. But the Fab Five? I wanted to be their little tomboyish sister or something. I wanted the baggy shorts, the black socks, the black sneakers--that I had to convince my dad to buy me, because according to him, "girls don't wear black gym shoes."--and maybe even the bald head. The Fab Five documentary took me back to those inevitably heartbreaking two years when Jalen Rose was my favorite Fab Fiver and the Duke Blue Devils were exactly that--devils. Although the film primarily spoke to the part of me that never got over the Wolverines losing in the NCAA tournament, what also coalesced in the film was perhaps a incredibly pivotal moment in black cultural when desire for respect and the pursuit for respectability were abandoned, inevitably resulting into a hyper-commodified and commericialized black culture that has now reached an extremely nihilistic moment.

The literary work I do centers on late 20th century black culture and that surrounding it: racial integration, the rise of multiracial identity, the idea of post-soul, crack, Cosby,OJ, Rodney King. All that good stuff. Consequently, I find myself searching for a moment, or a set of moments that mark a shift in black identity and/or culture. What The Fab Five showed me was perhaps one of those shifts. The Fab Five emerges towards the end of the Cosby-era, if you will, and the beginning of hip-hop's reign as the primary soundtrack to young American life. With their aforementioned sartorial choices, their playing style, their swagger, their youth, the Fab Five disrupted college basketball. They didn't care about fitting in, or waiting their turn; they wanted to be their cocky selves and do things their way. This put them in stark contrast to Duke, for example, who, as Jalen Rose correctly asserts in the documentary, only recruited (and still only recruits from what I can tell), Cosby-esque black basketball players such as Grant Hill, who come from traditional, respectable family structures and solid middle-class backgrounds. The Fab Five cared nothing about appearing respectable, palatable to the NCAA or appealing to the American public. And this is what makes these young black men fascinating. Nothing in the portrayal of these young men suggests that they ever desired to be or make one think that they were "just like (white) America," or that they were just so happy have an opportunity to be at an institution like the Univeristy of Michigan. Rather, they embraced the fact that they were the personification of the antithesis, and their popularity demanded that we paid attention to that. At this juncture, one could still theoretically not be familiar with rap music, but the Fab Five are on national television beating the mess out of people's beloved alma maters. One would have to work much harder to avoid them, especially come March when 35 million people are glued to their televisions for the NCAA basketball championship. What America feared, in a sense, was on primetime--and their college campuses.
Of course, like everything else seemingly different and brand new, the marketplace took notice and immediately created products based upon the images of the Fab Five. I couldn't be the little sister that I wanted to be, but Nike made sure that I could buy black socks and sneakers. The Fab Five recognized that they were being exploited--Nike, after all, was selling "Fab Five" sneakers that none of the Fab Five could afford to buy. They sold out arenas, but didn't have gas money. They rebeled by wearing plain t-shirts instead of ones with the Michigan and Nike emblems prominently displayed. Yet America was already thirsting for a product that Nike was more than happy to provide. I had more than just the black socks; I had a Michigan warm-up, shorts, and a custom Michigan jersey in my wardrobe. It never occured to me that these young icons I admired were eating cereal for dinner some nights. They were just cool to me, and I wanted to be like them. I had yet to discover that capitalism assigned a price to cool and adjusted the market accordingly.
Such realities should hopefully compel us into reassessing the state of amateur athletes. I've mentioned this previously, but I think it bears repeating: a "free" college education is not sufficient payment for the revenue these young athletes generate for the institutions they represent, especially with such dismal graduation rates--in basketball in particular. Since most of us refuse to question the very odd idea that men and women are given athletic scholarships to academic institutions, perhaps at the very least we should demand an overhaul of the system. The NCAA remains one of the most hypocritical institutions in all of sports. The Fab Five's two trips to the Final Four and other accomplishments were "erased" from the U of M record books once it was deteremined that Chris Webber had taken money from a U of M booster. The evidence is specious at best. Of course, none of the revenue U of M and the NCAA generated while Webber was a member of the Fab Five was returned. Appalling, indeed.

Above all else, last night I was reminded of why I love the Fab Five, why no matter how many times I watch the highlight and although I know the outcome, I pray that Chris Webber doesn't call that timeout; that he passes the ball to Jalen and somehow they score. I love them for being young and black and arrogant and brave enough to be their brash selves. I love them for being revolutionary by just being themselves. I love them for recognizing how their images were being manipulated and fighting against it. (Such maneuvers seem like logical starting points for considering how/why so many young black men in hip-hop especially aim to self-exploit and -caricature for their own benefit.) I love them for being brothers above all else. And I'm glad they're all still around to witness their iconic status.
If you see Chris Webber, be nice to him. He's still hurting.
Fill out your bracket. Enjoy the tournament. Boiler Up! (I'll always have a soft spot for Michigan basketball, but an alum is an alum.)

God's iPod

2011-02-28T10:49:00.001-06:00

I was going to serve up a nice little nihilistic rant to begin the week, but I've thought better of it. Instead, I will provide you with a list. It's been a while since I've done a list, right?

Last week, I failed to give a special birthday shout out to Nina Simone. After posting my blog, I spent most of the day listening to Nina (partly because it was her birthday, partly because I needed to get Soulja Boy's "Speakers Going Hammer" out of my head). The exercise lead me to Youtube. One of the comments on a clip of "Sinnerman" reads: this is on God's iPod.

I'm stealing that idea for today's blog. What, exactly, is on God's iPod? A few guesses (which may just look like a list of some of my personal jams, because the God I believe in has the same [excellent] taste in music that I have. Me being made in His image and all.):

Michael Jackson, "Human Nature" -- Like, duh.
Bob Marley, "Forever Loving Jah" -- Because if the Old Testament teaches you anything, it's that God is a narcissist. A really, really, really, really angry narcissist.
Tears for Fears, "Everybody Wants to Rule the World" -- This is God's theme song. And He plays it over and over during the State of the Union address.
Meshell N'degeocello, "Devil's Halo" -- Sure, He has beef with the guy, but a bangin' instrumental is a bangin' instrumental.
Hall and Oates, "Private Eyes" -- Because God is the original Big Brother
Talking Heads, "Once in a Lifetime" -- God's answer to Talking Heads' profound question, "Well, how did I get here?" is "Me, silly."
Jay-Z, "Izzo (H.O.VA.)" & "Lucifer" -- Because if God were a rapper, he'd sound like Jay-Z: Can't leave Earth alone, the game needs me.
Roy Davis Jr., "Heavenly Father" -- Because in God's house, they play house. Gospel house.
Sam Sparro, "Black and Gold" -- Because can't nobody sing about God the way the gays sing about God.
Stevie Wonder, "Heaven is 10 Zillion Light Years Away" -- God doesn't like Stevie's math, but He likes this song.
Neneh Cherry, "Buffalo Stance" -- Mostly for the line, No money man can win my love/it's sweetness that I'm thinking of. But also because it's still the jam.

I ask my brilliant and blasphemous reader(s): What else might be on God's iPod?

Today in Post-Race History: Pepsi Challenge[d]

2011-02-14T14:04:00.000-06:00

Now that the Super Bowl dust has settled, I am nursing my way out of an omg-no-football-for-seven-months depression with small bits of NBA basketball (Derek Rose has overtaken Chris Paul as my favorite player), until March Madness helps me get through the last leg of my winter hibernation. Overall, the big game was rather entertaining, but the most discussion-worthy moments occurred before and in between it. The reading of the Declaration of Independence by current and former NFL players and members of the military perfectly displayed why the terrorists hate us. Yet for that to be followed immediately by Xtina's flub of the national anthem perhaps best symbolized the cracks of ignorance jeopardizing the whole God Bless America foundation so many of Fox News' employees stand upon. The Black Eyed Peas' halftime performance indicated that the only thing that rivals American faux patriotism is our tone deafness and love for a group that cashed in on its obnoxious sound and trendy racial diversity--although the latter only became America-friendly when they traded their black woman singer in for a newer, white(r) model. The Super Bowl commercials were blah at best. There was one, however, that caused me to pay attention. And what better way to honor of black history month and Valentine's Day (a.k.a. Single Awareness Day) simultaneously than by mentioning the Super Bowl Pepsi ad that seemed to be all about black love? Have a look:

Now, several people weren't at all happy with this ad. The (black) blogs addressed it; Rep. Sheila Jackson-Lee got really mad rapper about the whole situation, and expressed her disgust on the House floor. Rush Limbaugh even had a word or two to say about it. What no one of them mentions, however, is Pepsi's somewhat interesting relationship with black consumers. A history, in fact, that leads me to wonder if Pepsi was less invested in reinvigorating stereotypes, but was perhaps sincerely interested in appealing to black consumers in the way that it previously has.

Practically all the pop-drinking black people I know imbibe Pepsi. We never had Coke in the house. My stepdad kept a case of Pepsi in the refrigerator in the garage--totally off limits to the kids. My great-grandparents, Nannie and Papa only drank Pepsi. They stocked it in the basement. My sister used to pilfer them and drink them on her way to school in the morning until she got caught. Nannie would to sing the Pepsi jingle to me (Pepsi-Cola hits the spot/twelve full ounces...) when I was a kid. I don't drink pop, but if I was offered a Pepsi or a Coke, I'd take a Pepsi. It tastes better.

A while back, I was having a conversation with a (Pepsi-drinking) friend about Negroes and Pepsi. I was curious about the relationship, so I decided to research it. Consequently, I learned that Pepsi wasn't, I dunno, the fried chicken of soft drinks, but that the company had been--pre-Mad Men, mind you--one of the first organizations to actively pursue black consumers as an untapped niche market:

In 1947, the same year that the Brooklyn Dodgers shattered racial segregation in major league baseball by signing Jackie Robinson, Pepsi-Cola hired [black marketing executive, Edward F.] Boyd to create a special markets team of African-American salesman. In the language of the time, which had unconscious overtones of slavery and the Jim Crow era, Boyd's sales unit was characterized in some publications as a "Negro field staff."

Pepsi-Cola's venture, part of the post-World War II effort to promote racial harmony, actually predated the story of Jackie Robinson by seven years. Walter Mack, the president of Pepsi-Cola, took the small, if bold, step of hiring an African-American newspaper adman, Herman T. Smith, in 1940 to help increase sales of Pepsi in the African-American community. Profit making and prophetic leadership were inseparably bound together in Pepsi-Cola's recognition of African-American buying power.

So, Pepsi's popularity with blacks, at least the ones I know, was due to, in part at least, the company's decision to pursue black dollars by gearing advertising to black folks, portraying them in a positive light. My awareness of this brief epoch in Pepsi history caused me not to get all Sheila Jackson-Lee about the situation, but rather wonder if Pepsi had simply taken a cue from black popular culture and decided to, unfortunately, appropriate it for their latest ad.

I appreciate the blogs and Rep. Lee for calling out this Pepsi ad, but I think they get it wrong. Or not all the way right. Tyler Perry could have easily directed this commercial. And Steve Harvey could have been in charge of the storyboard. In fact, the male lead in this ad looks like Rockmond Dunbar, the hard-working husband from one of Perry's flicks, The Family that Preys. What we have in this ad isn't an angry black woman, but rather a violent, controlling, and emasculating one. She controls what her man eats; she controls the phallus. All the stuff Harvey warns women against. Like so many of the Steve Harvey book-reading, pre-saved by Madea and the love of a blue-collar (light-skinned) black man that so often populate Perry's work, this woman is acting out of place. In my view, this is less about her skin tone--or his--but her behavior. She dominates her husband, infantilizes him. And such behavior, as Tyler Perry teaches us, results in trouble: an abusive husband, estrangement from family, or, as Pepsi would have it, accidentally knocking the piss out of that symbol of supreme beauty and all that is right about the world, the white woman.

Of course, this ultimate transgression creates an aperture through which her husband can (re)claim his rightful place as leader. As she freezes, he acts, grabbing her hand and leading her away from the scene of the crime. Black men, of course, knowing how to run away from seemingly vulnerable white women better than anyone else on the planet. Moreover, the wife's rushed, half-whispered apology and the fact that she's being taken from the scene by her husband (re)feminizes, dis-empowers her, and reinstates him. The Perry-esque moment (re)unites the couple. And it feels so good. Black love brought to you through the power of fear, heteronormativity and, of course, Pepsi.

Does the ad play upon tired stereotypes to peddle a product? Of course. Yet I think Pepsi finds its inspiration less from the archives of white supremacy, though, and more from those figures who currently dominate black tastemaking. As Pepsi then played upon civil rights discourse that aimed and desired for an image of respectable and positive blackness sixty years ago, Pepsi now plays upon the books we buy and the movies we see. This ad proves that Pepsi followed black dollars to the images they support, and to rail against them without indicting these other folks, without indicting ourselves is incredibly short-sighted and lacking in self-criticism. Sure, Pepsi put the discourse on blast during the Super Bowl, but Steve Harvey isn't just on What Chili Wants. He's on NPR now, too. And he gained admission with the Oprah stamp of approval and because black people started paying attention to them.

So if we're going to pick on Pepsi, that's fine. But it's not enough. Pepsi's just looking to capitalize on the tastes of Negroes. But they didn't start the fire. And if you think they did, well, you got the wrong one, baby.

Snow Day Dibs

2011-02-07T08:10:00.001-06:00

Your favorite (Chicago) blogger has emerged from the Chicago Blizzard of '011. I know you were worried. Had I waited any longer to leave campus last Tuesday, I would have been part of the group of lucky motorists who got stranded on Lake Shore Drive because of car accidents and snow drifts. Yet I made it home and quickly caught cabin fever, tweeting and posting the most asinine things to my Facebook page for most of the night. (Even in the most dire circumstances, one should not share a link to Snow's "Informer" under any circumstances--even blizzard conditions.)

Despite obsessively tweeting silliness such as "snow em gee" and "My city is a snow globe in the hands of a six-year-old high on Halloween candy and red Kool-Aid," I waited two days before going outside to shovel my car out of its space. I was out there for a few hours, and my crappy iPod bailed on me early in the game. So I had time to think, to get all introspective and things. And it wasn't long before I started contemplating the Chicago practice of parking spot dibs.

For those of you who don't know, I'm referring to a practice--that I've only seen in Chicago, but am sure it is recognized in other places--where one places a chair or other objects in the parking space one has just shoveled. Seriously. No one wants to drive up the street to Walgreens, leaving the spot they spent two hours and 650 calories to create only to return and see that some bastard in a Chevy Tahoe has taken one's brief absence as an opportunity to take the spot. When you put an old lawn chair or a couple of milk crates in that spot, the Chevy Tahoe moves along. People respect the practice. From what I can tell.

At first, one might think parking spot dibs is such a classically, obnoxiously American thing to do: There many of us go again, planting our little flags in land we don't even own. There we go again thinking land is something that should be claimed, owned. There we go again talking about how we pulled ourselves up by our own snowbootstraps and worked hard to carve a space out in this world, and we'll be damned if some freeloading Chevy Tahoe is going to come in with its hand out trying to take what is rightfully ours. (I really have nothing against Chevy Tahoes. I have no idea why I've chosen the vehicle for these purposes.)

Maybe that assessment of is why I never really practiced dibs myself--until last week. My triceps, I confess, demanded it. If the fact that I have been known to go to three different Walgreens in the same day didn't officially make me a Chicagoan, I think grabbing a couple of chairs to stake a claim on my parking space definitely does. Perhaps I'm trying to paint a flowery excuses, but I think there is another, less annoying metaphor that could be gleaned from this practice.

I've seen the myriad of objects that people have placed in their parking spaces: not just chairs, but also milk crates, wood, trash cans, overturned ironing boards. And no matter what it is that holds one's parking spot, the people of Chicago more or less acknowledge it and move on. No one says, "Well, those are just mail bins. Those don't count. I have every right to take over that space." Maybe I was out in the cold too long, but I thought about Chicago's collective understanding of parking spot dibs, and wondered what the implications of adopting that kind of philosophy in other aspects of life.

Mother Nature, life, whatever puts the smack down on every one of us; it does not discriminate. And when the coast is seemingly clear, all most of us want to do is to carve out a space for ourselves--no more, no less--and have a little comfort in knowing that no matter where we go whatever we put in our space is just as valid as what one puts in her own space, and therefore won't be violated by others when we aren't looking. We all just want space in the world, and the freedom to fill that space with whatever we can manage, salvage. I make no claim to having the right kind of politics. I just want to live in a world where we are all free to be our beautiful fucked up selves, in whatever space we carved out.

That, I imagine, is the best that we can do until the "dibs-free" revolution, when we all get shovels and a pack of matches--to torch the garages, of course.

And that, dear readers, is your horrible, horrible metaphor for Monday.

Happy Dilla Day:

A (Friendly) Reminder

2011-01-31T08:10:00.001-06:00

Antoine Dodson's fifteen minutes are not over yet. Last week, I learned (via Twitter, duh), that Dodson, who became (internet) famous when his rant to the local news was remixed by The Gregory Brothers into "The Bed Intruder Song," has already begun filming a reality show based upon his move from the Alabama projects to West Hollywood (of course). This should make for good television, as Dodson is charming (in both the southern and gay sense), has enough (gay) slang to keep the allegedly hetero masses tuning in weekly for lessons, and looks fierce in a pair of women's jeans.

The evolution, the etymology of Dodson's fame is impressive. Not nearly Bieber-esque, but fantastic enough for me furrow my brow in confused amazement. Dodson's local news interview not only spawned the aforementioned song, but a slew of covers and remixes (including one posted below), an iTunes version, a ring tone, an appearance on the BET Awards, a Halloween costume--including a certificate that one can roll and use as the bus schedule Dodson was flinging around like a light saber during his interview, Comedy Central show for The Gregory brothers, and a T-Mobile commercial starring fellow Alabaman Charles Barkley (love him!) that could have only been inspired by Dodson's performance. Last Friday night while watching a basketball game, I was unintentionally serenaded with "The Bed Intruder" song by agroup of hormonal middle school boys sitting in the bleachers. They used a cell phone on speaker to blast the track.

The alacrity with which Dodson became an internet superstar can only be rivaled by the Dougie or perhaps spread of athlete's foot in a gym locker room. Dodson claims that agents and managers started calling him (he initially had his number posted on his Facebook page) within two days--less than 24 hours, probably. A gazillion downloads and television (cable and local shows) interviews later, Dodson could be the next reality television star. And I'm happy for Antoine Dodson. He's (reality) star material. Seems to have his heart in the right place, as they say. Whenever he's asked what his goal is, he states he wants to help people similar to his sister, who had crimes committed against them, but the perpetrators were not caught.

Still, I can't help but grimace when I realize how quickly this trauma was commodified. What started all of this was that his sister, better known as "victim's brother" was assaulted and nearly raped by someone who, from what I can tell, has yet to be caught. Despite what the song says, I don't think Dodson is looking for him. He's busy and all with this new reality show. Yet, that's not his job. It's the police department's. Despite the alleged criminal's fingerprints, they've yet to find him. Perhaps if he had a Facebook page, it would be easier.

I just want us to be mindful of the wellspring of some of our entertainment, the source of our annoying ring tones. Yes, we remember the lyrics to "The Bed Intruder Song," but how many of us know his sister's name? If you've forgotten, here's a friendly reminder: It's Kelly.

I wonder if those middle school boys know.

The Sweetest Thing

2011-01-24T08:38:00.002-06:00

I cannot quit Lauryn Hill.

Several days ago, if you had asked me what I might entitle my post-Hill Chicago show blog, I would have said something like "Ex-Factor," "Lost One," or "Losing Lauryn." Instead, I sit here, after witnessing my first Lauryn Hill show in years, having named this entry after my favorite Lauryn Hill song.

Like many of you, I saw clips of Hill lecturing a Brooklyn crowd for their lack of Job-like patience, after they had waited hours for her to appear on stage. Even Prince, rumor has it, left a show before the first notes of Hill's set began.So I was ready. Ready to proclaim the end of my Hill fandom. Ready to abandon a fierce loyalty for Hill that began the moment I saw the Fugees' "Nappy Heads" video. Ready to forget how geeked my sister and I were when we both recognized that "the chick from the Fugees" was one Rita Watson in Sister Act 2. I had previously defended the three chords that make up the musical arrangement for Hill's unplugged album. But I wasn't sure if I could rationalize Hill's latest pre-show antics. Sure, I could wait an hour or two--I had already been waiting several years--for Hill to bless me with her presence. But four hours accompanied with a lecture about how much she had sacrificed for me, anonymous member in a crowd of her fans, punctuated with maternal-toned "you understands?" That was the stop where I got off. Yes, I had fortified myself with pessimism.

But she showed up. And, for a superstar, started her show on time. Slated to begin at 11:30, Hill was on stage by 11:55--a remarkably amazing feat, given recent history. Ms. Hill reintroduced herself to the Chicago crowd with an impressive rendition of Bob Marley's "Forever Loving Jah," immediately filling me with the hope that my pessimistic approach to the night was a needless defense mechanism. Hill followed her Marley cover with a string of Fugees' and solo hits: "Lost Ones" (at 4000 BPM); "When it Hurts So Bad/I Used to Love Him"; a semi-decent version of "Ex-Factor" made something a smidgen above tolerable by the participation--and hope--of the crowd and by the fact that it's practically everyone's Ms. Lauryn Hill jam; "Final Hour"; "How Many Mics"; "I Only Have Eyes for You/Zealots"; "Fu-Gee-La"; "Ready or Not"; "Killing Me Softly"; a version of "Turn Your Lights Down Low" that reminded me of why it's one of my favorite love songs ever; and finally "Doo Wop (That Thing)."

Granted, the arrangements for these Fugees and Hill classics were slightly strange--and may foreshadow where Hill intends to explore sonically in the future--but not nearly as bizarre as Youtube clips suggested. Yes, the jacket and the electric blue eye shadow were questionable, but the shoes--Hill has always worn notoriously fierce shoes on stage--from where I could see, were impeccable. Hill has lost some of the vocal clarity and strength that attracted legions of fans, and her flow is not as seemlessly sick as it used to be, but unlike Hill's fellow New Jerseyite Whitney Houston, I was not left with the impression that what she has lost is irretrievable. Moreover, there were glimmers of vintage L-Boogie throughout the night: her good mood, her direct interactions with the crowd, the sporadic and brief paroxysms of trademark L-Boogie dance moves. And instead of humming "The Way We Were" on my way to the car, I waxed enthusiastic about how Ms. Hill gave me enough to still believe--that she's almost back, that she wants to record and perform again.

I understand. Some, many of y'all just don't get it. Just cannot comprehend those of us who ride hard for Ms. Hill through damn near anything--and on the strength of one album. I won't bother to convince you. Is Lauryn Hill the greatest rapper? No. The greatest singer? No. But I do know that the combination, the coalescence of the twomore than likely makes her more formidable and impressive than just about any artist on the tip of your tongue.
In so many ways, I wanted to be like Lauryn Hill. I wanted that thing, her je ne sais quoi. I wanted to go to Columbia. I wanted a "head full of problems and a hand full of nappy roots." Lauryn Hill didn't hang with the boys, she was so much doper than the boys--and that they had to respect. I wanted a flow, the ultimate intelligent vocab like hers. I wanted to be able to articulate my story in a way that would make others feel that it was theirs. I wanted to know I had the strength to leave it all behind should the stakes get too high. I wanted to be okay with the flaws that comprised my humanity. I wanted to know that my survival is always more important than how pleasurable forsaking who I really am may have been to others. I wanted to merge all those iterations of blackness--the rap, the soul, the reggae, the consciousness--into my own art. I wanted to be brown and beautiful.

Seeing Ms. Hill was a reminder. A reminder of all the things she represented to my young self. A reminder of what hip-hop, black music used to be. A reminder of a most beautiful, perhaps the most beautiful moment that was the (black) 90s. A reminder of the cohort of soul singers who have been elusive of late probably, partially because of our harsh demands of them. Indeed, despite its cache as a 90's hip hop mantra, to represent ain't all it's cracked up to be. The Ms. Hill today reminds me of that. Nonetheless, I am glad to have seen her, and to know that through it all she survives. And that, though complicated and flawed, she remains brown and ever beautiful.

Sing, Sing Celebrate

2011-01-17T09:50:00.001-06:00

Today is MLK Day, and if you're lucky, you're chilling in bed reading this on your smartphone. Or perhaps you're not reading this at all. And that's cool. Rosa Parks didn't refuse to give up her seat on a bus for you to be reading blogs on your vacation day.

For those who are reading this, I won't keep you. Last week's Huck Finn entry may qualify as the longest entry ever. Moreover, the only thing I really had to say about MLK, I said last year in an entry you can read here. Since I know you're going to spend your MLK Day taking in an enlightening lecture and/or reflecting on all that Dr. King has done for your life, I've decided to take a more ignorant road. Here's how not to honor the life of Martin Luther (the) King:

If you have to work today, do not curse out your supervisor for reminding you to bring in doughnuts and coffee for the morning meeting. Saying, "Dr. King didn't march so I could bring breakfast to my co-workers," is a thoroughly inappropriate use of his legacy. Besides it was your turn, and Krispy Kreme is on your way to the office, anyway.

Putting a Colored Only sign above the work water cooler is only funny in theory. Trust me on this one. Save it for April Fool's Day.

Do not show up to your King Day of service hungover. Stay in bed; sleep it off. Just wait until next year. Besides, no Head Start wants the person reading Of Thee I Sing to be reeking of alcohol. Seriously, they really don't want your kind. The fact that you thought Kognac and King looked and sounded catchy enough to put on a flier was already appalling. But the fact that you imbibed enough to be in the middle of the dance floor singing "freedom ring on it" instead of "put a ring on it" was just too much. Nah, dog. It wasn't a good look. You need a time out.

Do not participate in a sit-in held at the university president's office door because you heard there weren't enough volumes in your black culture center's library. Why? Because you only know where it is because your fraternity used their basement for step practice. If you're joining the protest to get next to an activist cutie, however, I fully support this move.

Do not tweet or populate your Facebook status with MLK quotes you just Googled. Why? Because it's a lazy thing to do. And the internet lies. "The path to justice and equality can only be illuminated by the light of human kindness and love." - Martin Luther King. Nope. not Martin Luther King. I just made that up. See how the internet lies?

By all means, do watch this video:

And this one:

Happy Martin Luther King Day, kids.

Today in Post-Race History: Nigger x 219

2011-01-10T09:32:00.006-06:00

*Someone please cue my righteous indignation music*

It seems that we have officially reached the end of days. Birds are falling out of the sky; dead fish are coming in with the tide. News outlets are doing their best not to refer to Jared Loughner's acts as ones of terrorism, and simply make efforts to describe him as a crazy person (because white people only do this kind of thing when they are mentally unstable, and we all know how violent mentally unstable people are. Besides, it's only terrorism if you shoot Americans in the name of Allah.). And soon you will be able to read Huck Finn without ever having to set eyes upon the word, nigger.

Why is Will Smith busy being a stage dad when we need him most?

Indeed, the beginning of last week proved ominous. Last Monday, I read that the adorable James Franco (#nohetero) is slated to write and direct a film version of Faulkner's As I Lay Dying. My Twitter feed also informed me that NewSouth Books will be publishing an edition of Twain's 1885 classic, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn sans the words injun and the aformentioned nigger. Upon reading that by next month I could purchase a copy of Huck Finn with nigger expurgated from it, I was so enraged, the only thing that could have possibly upset me more was somebody talking about my mama. Whatever can a non-nigger version of Huck Finn, et. al. portend? Surely some scientist has found a way to give pigs wings.

As was probably expected, the response to NewSouth's choice to replace nigger with slave and injun with Indian compelled a deluge of responses. I need not too lengthily reiterate them here except, perhaps, to express my agreement that readers should encounter the word nigger all 219 times it appears in the novel for all the smart reasons the pundits probably articulated. Yes, if NewSouth can plausibly alter a text in this way, then we should be somewhat concerned about what kind of editing precedents such an act sets. And yes, keeping nigger in the text preserves the realist effort at authenticity. And yes, instead of excising nigger and injun from the novel we should regard Finn's use of such terms as "teachable moments" where we might discuss why Huck speaks that way, and what it means for us to say that our 21st century selves are appalled by such language. Although, as I mentioned in my post on To Kill a Mockingbird, I imagine doing so would be incredibly difficult since we live in a culture that has yet to populate a lexicon to delineate the space between Racist and Not racist. As such, those who might instruct during those "teachable moments" have no rubric to employ, especially if words are removed from the language we already have circulating. One cannot teach what is not there. Alas, classroom discomfort would not be ameliorated with the patience and wisdom of a properly trained teacher.

And yes, what we see in these editorial choices is a kind white privilege, yet again, flexing its occasionally invisible, yet seemingly insurmountable muscle by determining which words, which historical realities are unseemly and therefore worthy of omission. NewSouth implicitly justifies these changes by employing a real life college professor--as opposed to one who just slept at a Holiday Inn Express last night--and Twain scholar, Alan Gribben, to head the project. In his comments about the matter, Gribben conveniently buttresses the decision to remove nigger from Huck Finn by mentioning that not only did he grow up not hearing the word nigger, but his daughter had a black friend who "loathed the book [and therefore presumably] could barely read it," because nigger appears in it 219 times. The underlying meaning of such comments, it seems, is that this exercise is yet another white liberal altruistic endeavor that inevitably contributes to the benefit--and comfort--of black students everywhere, and not one that seeks to era[c]e a piece of history that documents a moment when white people were less polite and/or well-meaning.

In his introduction to this new edition, Gribben writes:

We may applaud Twain’s ability as a prominent American literary realist to record the speech of a particular region during a specific historical era, but abusive racial insults that bear distinct connotations of permanent inferiority nonetheless repulse modern-day readers. [...] As a notoriously commercial writer who watched for every opportunity to enlarge the mass market for his works, he presumably would have been quick to adapt his language if he could have foreseen how today’s audiences recoil at racial slurs in a culturally altered country.

And later:

Through a succession of firsthand experiences, this editor gradually concluded that an epithet-free edition of Twain’s books is necessary today. For nearly forty years I have led college classes, bookstore forums, and library reading groups in detailed discussions of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn in California, Texas, New York, and Alabama, and I always recoiled from uttering the racial slurs spoken by numerous characters, including Tom and Huck. I invariably substituted the word “slave” for Twain’s ubiquitous n-word whenever I read any passages aloud. Students and audience members seemed to prefer this expedient, and I could detect a visible sense of relief each time, as though a nagging problem with the text had been addressed. Indeed, numerous communities currently ban Huckleberry Finn as required reading in public schools owing to its offensive racial language and have quietly moved the title to voluntary reading lists. The American Library Association lists the novel as one of the most frequently challenged books across the nation.

My understanding about this situation crystallized into a definite resolve. Unquestionably both novels can be enjoyed just as deeply and authentically if readers are not obliged to confront the n-word on so many pages. Consequently in this edition I have translated each usage of the n-word to read “slave” instead, since the term “slave” is closest in meaning and implication. Although the text loses some of the caustic sting that the n-word carries, that price seems small compared to the revolting effect that the more offensive word has on contemporary readers. Moreover, slavery is recognized globally as an affront to humanity.

As our collective addiction to prescription pills and S.U.V.s indicates, Americans apparently believe that they need not be uncomfortable in any given situation. And NewSouth Books, it seems, has come up with a literary pill that will ease any pain brought on by reading those aforementioned impolite words uttered by Twain's main character, Huck Finn. But what is most bothersome about the entire situation is not simply what I've outlined above or that it inevitably sanitizes, anachronizes the past, but also that the chosen substitutes, the synonyms employed to ameliorate the presumed unease are, in my mind, thoroughly unacceptable.

First, in a move that seems antithetical to Sherman Alexie's insistence of its use, the replacement of injun with indian in Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn, sadly, appeals to the editors. Despite how blatantly unsatisfactory the substitution is, Gribben shrugs off the obvious issues with the choice, parenthetically noting that "'Indian' itself commemorates a misnomer dating back to Columbus." Sure, the dialect and impoliteness seem no longer an issue, but the term remains rooted in whiteness and colonization and racism and misnaming and... But that's ok, I guess. We want the same Eurocentric taste, but we want it less filling. A similarly alarming set of questions arise with the use of the slave to replace nigger, that can be codified by simply asking: If the editors found slave an acceptable substitute for nigger, what, then does it say about their, our understanding of what it means to be a slave? In other words, why is slave a feasible and preferable replacement for nigger?

Despite the ease with which might transpose the letters, slave, in my mind, is no salve. If one believes slave an ameliorative euphemism for nigger, then both the editors and advocates of this change have either only read Virginia textbooks or categorically shut their eyes to the reality that Huck Finn and Nigger Jim are not floating down the Mississippi on a raft because they cannot afford steamboat tickets or simply for the adventure of it, but in an effort to escape a condition that systemically and systematically attempted to dehumanize a group of people for hundreds of years. Hortense Spillers words it much more eloquently, "It must be conceded that African-Americans, under the press of a hostile and compulsory patriarchal order, bound and determined to destroy them, or to preserve them only in the service and at the behest of the master class, exercised a degree of courage and will to survive that startles the imagination even now." To treat slave as a milder and more agreeable descriptor than nigger is to egregiously misunderstand and/or understate what it meant to be a slave and what it meant to both survive and pursue one's freedom--and humanity--under such conditions.

Finally, suggesting that slave is a more appealing option than nigger inevitably racializes the former term, and therefore further embeds it within the realm of blackness. We accept, with ease, the argument that nigger is a pejorative to describe blacks exclusively, and a term, once suffixes have been exchanged, that at best can only be employed by blacks amongst blacks and not by members of other racial groups. Replacing such a black term with the word slave, then, with a such rhetorical maneuver invites interlocutors to understand blackness, on some level, as a prerequisite for enslavement. Which is to say that even in 2011, despite the fact that slavery has and still does exist without black people, 21st century readers think that nigger = slave = black. Messy math, perhaps, but the ease with which such terms have been interchanged not only indicates how our 21st century selves still cannot fully appreciate all the implications of being on the bondage side of that "peculiar institution" to the extent that we find the word slave more polite than the word nigger, but such efforts also reveal how residual, albeit unspoken and symbolic denials of black people's humanity are still, somehow, acceptable. A most ironic lesson to learn while reading Huck Finn.

And I am reminded, again, why nihilism is so attractive to me.

Chapter 31: A Preface

2011-01-06T11:23:00.000-06:00

I'm going to post about the Huck Finn controversy on Monday, but in the meantime, I wanted to put something on the blog about it as, perhaps, a kind of teaser or preface.

I had read Twain's novel when I was a kid. I didn't return to it again until college, when it was assigned to me by a professor, Bob Lamb--a remarkably nice man from the Bronx who loved the Yankees and rocked cowboy boots to class--in an honors American literature course. These many years later, there are few moments I (fondly) recall in English lectures, but Professor Lamb's discussions were always rewarding, thoughtful, and enlightening; what he he said of Huck Finn, chapter 31 in particular has always stuck with me, and I've carried the memory with me all these years. It's been an incredibly helpful weapon in this battle with graduate school, and a nice reminder of my love for literature and why fiction is so important.

As many of you know, chapter 31 of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is regarded as an especially moral moment. I had heard such arguments before Professor Lamb's class, but I never really *got* it until he lectured, with such zeal, about Huck's dilemma.

I won't attempt to regurgitate what was said that day. Instead, here's that moments, in Huck's words. Just know that Huck is going against everything he was ever taught, and that he believes he is going to Hell--the fire and brimstone version--to burn for eternity. It's something those of us who read Huck today may forget and thus underappreciate. Although we should understand Huck's decision as moral, in the fictional setting of the novel, Huck has fated himself to an eternity of the severest damnation. The prose, it goes without saying, is pitch perfect.

I went to the raft, and set down in the wigwam to think. But I couldn't come to nothing. I thought till I wore my head sore, but I couldn't see no way out of the trouble. After all this long journey, and after all we'd done for them scoundrels, here was it all come to nothing, everything all busted up and ruined, because they could have the heart to serve Jim such a trick as that, and make him a slave again all his life, and amongst strangers, too, for forty dirty dollars.

Once I said to myself it would be a thousand times better for Jim to be a slave at home where his family was, as long as he's got to be a slave, and so I'd better write a letter to Tom Sawyer and tell him to tell Miss Watson where he was. But I soon give up that notion, for two things: she'd be mad and disgusted at his rascality and ungratefulness for leaving her, and so she'd sell him straight down the river again; and if she didn't, everybody naturally despises an ungrateful nigger, and they'd make Jim feel it all the time, and so he'd feel ornery and disgraced. And then think of me! It would get all around, that Huck Finn helped a nigger to get his freedom; and if I was to ever see anybody from that town again, I'd be ready to get down and lick his boots for shame. That's just the way: a person does a low-down thing, and then he don't want to take no consequences of it. Thinks as long as he can hide it, it ain't no disgrace. That was my fix exactly. The more I studied about this, the more my conscience went to grinding me, and the more wicked and low-down and ornery I got to feeling. And at last, when it hit me all of a sudden that here was the plain hand of Providence slapping me in the face and letting me know my wickedness was being watched all the time from up there in heaven, whilst I was stealing a poor old woman's nigger that hadn't ever done me no harm, and now was showing me there's One that's always on the lookout, and ain't agoing to allow no such miserable doings to go only just so fur and no further, I most dropped in my tracks I was so scared. Well, I tried the best I could to kinder soften it up somehow for myself, by saying I was brung up wicked, and so I warn't so much to blame; but something inside of me kept saying, "There was the Sunday school, you could a gone to it; and if you'd a done it they'd a learnt you, there, that people that acts as I'd been acting about that nigger goes to everlasting fire."

It made me shiver. And I about made up my mind to pray; and see if I couldn't try to quit being the kind of a boy I was, and be better. So I kneeled down. But the words wouldn't come. Why wouldn't they? It warn't no use to try and hide it from Him. Nor from me, neither. I knowed very well why they wouldn't come. It was because my heart warn't right; it was because I warn't square; it was because I was playing double. I was letting on to give up sin, but away inside of me I was holding on to the biggest one of all. I was trying to make my mouth say I would do the right thing and the clean thing, and go and write to that nigger's owner and tell where he was; but deep down in me I knowed it was a lie-and He knowed it. You can't pray a lie- I found that out.

So I was full of trouble, full as I could be; and didn't know what to do. At last I had an idea; and I says, I'll go and write the letter- and then see if I can pray. Why, it was astonishing, the way I felt as light as a feather, right straight off, and my troubles all gone. So I got a piece of paper and a pencil, all glad and excited, and set down and wrote:
Miss Watson your runaway nigger Jim is down here two mile below Pikesville and Mr. Phelps has got him and he will give him up for the reward if you send. HUCK FINN
I felt good and all washed clean of sin for the first time I had ever felt so in my life, and I knowed I could pray now. But I didn't do it straight off, but laid the paper down and set there thinking- thinking how good it was all this happened so, and how near I come to being lost and going to hell. And went on thinking. And got to thinking over our trip down the river; and I see Jim before me, all the time; in the day, and in the night-time, sometimes moonlight, sometimes storms, and we a floating along, talking, and singing, and laughing. But somehow I couldn't seem to strike no places to harden me against him, but only the other kind. I'd see him standing my watch on top of his'n, stead of calling me, so I could go on sleeping; and see him how glad he was when I come back out of the fog; and when I come to him agin in the swamp, up there where the feud was; and such-like times; and would always call me honey, and pet me, and do everything he could think of for me, and how good he always was; and at last I struck the time I saved him by telling the men we had smallpox aboard, and he was so grateful, and said I was the best friend old Jim ever had in the world, and the only one he's got now; and then I happened to look around, and see that paper.

It was a close place. I took it up, and held it in my hand. I was a trembling, because I'd got to decide, forever, betwixt two things, and I knowed it. I studied a minute, sort of holding my breath, and then says to myself:

"All right, then, I'll go to hell"- and tore it up.

Summer M.'s Predictions for 2011

2011-01-03T08:03:00.000-06:00

Admittedly, this blog is about a week late. Teena Marie's unfortunate and untimely death caused me to bump my 2011 predictions back a week. I'm not sure if I can technically call the following statements predictions since we are already a few days into the new year. Nonetheless, I prognosticate for you, dear audience. I will try my best not to cheat or be any lazier than I usually am. And by lazy, I mean I won't predict anything (unfortunate) about Tyler Perry or Oprah Winfrey or how I plan to use my fantasy football winnings to adopt a puppy and name him Vick. (Although if you'd like to read what I tweeted during Barbara Walters' interview of the Divine Ms. O, you may see that here.) Instead, I offer the following hopes for the new year:

~~Ms. Lauryn Hill releases an album in 2011.~~ Lauryn Hill stops performing for obsequious-ass sycophants and gets checked for being tardy for the party. I'm sure many of you read the New York Times review of Hill's performance in Brooklyn last week. For those of you who missed it, Hill showed up four hours late for her show, then promptly chastised the audience for giving her DJ and the band a hard time for her lateness. And people cheered her for checking them as if she was their mama and not an artist they had paid $65+ dollars to see perform. I will be the first to confess that I have an irrational love for Lauryn Hill. As soon as I received the email about her upcoming show in Chicago, I hopped in the car, headed downtown, and got my tickets. An eternal pessimist, I have hope for Lauryn Hill. In fact, upon reading the article, I wasn't that mad. I mean, we've been waiting umpteen years for L-Boogie to return, what's another few hours? And personally, I think that Lauryn Hill NOT on stage for four hours > Nikki Minaj's entire life. Obviously, my relationship to Lauryn Hill is dysfunctional and borderline abusive. That said, the group of folks cheering for her as she chastised them was alarming to say the least. This is how dictatorships happen, people! Some folks missed a key afterschool special, The Wave. Damn. Lauryn better not keep trying her luck like that. Otherwise "Ms." might not be the only thing that gets dropped that night.

Some nappy-headed black girl starts beef with Willow Smith with a song entitled, "I Pick My Hair..." or something like that. Perhaps the residue of a Scrooge-like attitude from the holiday season still emanates from my pores, but are there any children more annoying than the spawn of Will and Jada Pinkett Smith? 2010 was like a some twisted version of sibling rivalry between Jaden and Willow--all played out on the pop culture radar. iCANT. Granted, "Whip My Hair" was absurdly catchy, but there are plenty young black girls with neither weave nor relaxer nor press and curl who cannot actually whip their hair back and forth. As such, I predict that--and by predict, I mean I get down on my knees and pray to white Jesus for each and every night--some young black girl takes offense at the implicit "issue" in Willow's jam and claps back. Hard. I will ghostwrite the song if necessary. Anything to terminate that whole Raz-B/Chris Brown twitter conflict.

Some young group of enterprising and musically gifted teenagers starts an internet sensation with a new dance, "The Patti Mayonnaise." God bless The Dougie, but when Matthew Stafford adopts it as a touchdown dance, the shark has been jumped. I have no idea what this dance will look like, perhaps it will resemble the Dougie (Mr. Fresh, I'm happy for you and I'ma let you finish, but Doug Funny was one of the greatest Dougs of all time. Never gets old to me.), or be some sort of weird interpretation of it. I imagine a group of young tomboyish girls would do such a dance.

Those of you who watched any NBA action during the Christmas holiday may have seen ads for the latest installment of the Big Momma's House franchise, Big Mommas. Having caught the commercials myself, I'm hoping that Martin Lawrence gets his butt kicked by a real life Big Mama. I'd predict that black men stop dressing in drag in '011 for a few laughs and a paycheck, but I'm trying to be somewhat realistic here. I just. need. this. to. stop. NOW.

Barack Obama's thought bubble during his entire State of the Union address will pretty much be some iteration of "Fuck all y'all." I typed that for no reason beyond I thought it might be funny. And I needed to predict something "political." Eh.

Phaedra Parks, Esq. gets her own show. For no reason other than I need it in my life.

Happy New Year, all. Make it a great one.

#Innergangsteroprah

2011-01-03T07:58:00.000-06:00

Barbara Walters interviewed Oprah. I tweeted about it, pretending to interpret O's words.

"barbara, if you ask me a fucked up question, i will have the ghost of madame cj walker come burn your scalp." #innergangsteroprah

"ben franklin wants me to replace him on the hundred dollar bill. but i told him my money was too long for that." #innergangsteroprah

"nigga, the mayans couldn't predict me." #innergangsteroprah

"barack obama sold me fort knox. and i got a tax credit for it." #innergangsteroprah

"when i'm done, white people will be asking for 40 acres and a mule." #innergangsteroprah

"i didn't have children because you mere mortals don't deserve to set eyes upon my seed." #innergangsteroprah

"i could impregnate gayle if i wanted to--and she'd have a white baby." #innergangsteroprah

"when i say thyroid, i mean pork chop." #innergangsteroprah

"dr. phil is an octoroon." #innergangsteroprah

"on the low, the theme song i sang--"run on"--is a negro spiritual [subtly giving my people instructions on how to find their way to freedom]." #innergangsteroprah

"frederick douglass is secretly in charge of my book club." #innergangsteroprah

after the last tweet, i should say a few hail marys. i'm not catholic.

"i do favorite things b/c the audience's faces look like their ancestors' during a slave revolt." #innergangsteroprah

"tyler perry is really my son." #innergangsteroprah

"i dress up as jim crow for halloween, barbara." #innergangsteroprah

"michael jackson is chillin' in my santa barbara compound making pancakes for tupac and steadman." #innergangsteroprah

"nigga, i'm recolonizing the world. one 'amaaaazing' at a time. globalize deez nuts!" #innergangsteroprah

"i'm calling the network OWN. to remind you of what you did to my people." #innergangsteroprah

Lovergirl

2010-12-27T08:00:00.003-06:00

I've known my daddy to leave town and stay overnight for three events: 1. His yearly trips to Las Vegas, NV, 2. My sister's wedding, and 3. A Rick James concert in Indianapolis. As my father recalls, I was in utero when he and my mom took that 2-hour drive south for the Rick James show. As a toddler, I rocked my mom's boots to achieve the Street Songs look. I have learned many things from my father. I understood credit default swaps by likening them to craps. Anyone splitting anything higher than a pair eights is stupid, selfish, or both. The musical legacy my father passed on to me was a great love for Morris Day and The Time and the aforementioned Rick James. The latter musical gift meant that I eventually became fluent in all things Teena Marie. I was hanging out in Black Twitter when the news hit my timeline. (It was quite some time before CNN or HuffPo confirmed, by the way.) Our remembrance of Teena Marie's life began right there--electronically, collectively.

Perhaps my mourning leads to more hyperbole than usual, but the term "blue-eyed soul" does not apply to Teena Marie. Hall & Oates? Yes. Lisa Stansfield? Sure. Amy Winehouse? Yep. But Teena Marie? Nope. I'm not the one to deny that 'hood passes have been issued and/or revoked--because they have. But Teena Marie was never issued one. 'Hood passes are for those just passing through, for those appropriating aspects of black culture for a hit or two, in search of some "street cred" and nothing more but a side-eye from the natives. Not Teena Marie. Teena Marie lived there, with us, and she never left. (Which is probably why some of my white readers--if I have any--may have had to employ Google by the end of my first paragraph. There are no hyperlinks to biographies in this entry, you either know or you don't.) Square biz.

I don't want to reduce Teena Marie to the seeming disparity between how she looked and how she sounded or her cultural tastes. This morning I celebrate the life of an incredible singer and musician whose work provided the background music for my childhood. In my mind, there are few more vivid images than me rolling through Fort Weezy in the passenger's seat of Daddy's Seville with Rick and Teena in the tapedeck. I don't pour out a lil liquor for anybody, but you best believe some libations will be spilled in honor of one Miss Lady T. I will find a party somewhere in this great city where the DJ will play a Teena Marie set as I two-step my ass off.

I look forward to seeing how the BET Awards will honor her. Those jokers have a six-month head start. They better get it right. We will miss her terribly.

Ask, Tell

2010-12-20T08:06:00.002-06:00

I opened my eyes and abandoned my nihilist reveries to learn that Christmas came early for many members of the LGBT community. Last weekend, the Senate repealed "Don't Ask Don't Tell," a policy that banned gay and lesbian from openly serving in the Armed Forces. Established in 1993, DADT was a compromise by President Clinton, who had pledged to end the ban on gays and lesbians serving in the military during his first presidential campaign. By signing the bill, President Obama will make good on his own, similar promise. In other words, he won't stop making war, but you best believe that gays and lesbians no longer have to be closeted while fighting it.

As a pacifist who is committed to equal rights for everyone, it is difficult for me to congratulate the folks who worked so hard for this repeal without a tone of equivocation in my words. DADT, to put it mildly, was an incredibly flawed policy. And at this momentous occasion, pats on the back are in order, I suppose. Yet my inner cynic/hater/pacifist won't allow me to ingest this information without pause (no-nohomo). The cynic/hater in me wonders about how the fact that over 13,000 troops had been dismissed from the military since 1993 and countless others who perhaps refused to join because of DADT affected the importance of repealing the policy at this juncture. We are, after all, at war. And there are American troops seemingly everywhere. What Hurricane Katrina showed, among other things, was how thinly servicemen and -women had been spread; fighting two wars left an anemic number of troops to handle such domestic issues. My question becomes, then, how does the repeal of DADT not only satiate certain segments of Obama's supporters, but also address the bodies needed to continue an American neoimperialist agenda? How important is freedom--even the liberty to "defend" that freedom as an openly gay person--if it is contingent upon the marginalization of others?

Above all else, I think about how such victories reify structures of domination we should be working to disrupt. I know, I know. Never want to become a member of a club that would have people like you as a member. Yet, we're celebrating a feat that will allow folks to serve openly in an inherently violent institution instead of attempting to explode it, if you will. To be sure, I am an advocate of equality for everyone, and generally support positions that argue that everyone should have the same access to and be allowed to participate in every institution which constructs our society. Yet I also support the effort of interrogating the structures of which we seemingly wish to become a part. I fear that the desire to belong to cultural bastions that construct our society thwarts efforts that might otherwise amplify how fraught such institutions are. Perhaps instead of fighting for the right to marry we should work to abolish it and/or seriously consider the logic of state sanctioned and recognized compulsory monogamy. And maybe we should think similarly about what it means to serve in the military--openly or not.

So yes, one may now ask and indeed tell about one's sexual orientation without the risk of dismissal from the military. In the end, though, the same bombs and the same wars are waged in the name of a corrupt freedom that bothers neither to ask nor tell its victims' names.

P.S. On a much lighter note, I've decided to nickname Michael Vick, "Fantasy Jesus."

P.P.S. Happy Chrismuhanukwanzakah to you.

All I Want for Christmas -- Celebrity Edition

2010-12-06T08:30:00.006-06:00

Lately, I've been getting mail I'm pretty sure isn't mine. Still, I thought I'd share it. Tis the season.

Dearest Santa,

How are you? Hopefully absolutely phabulous--just like me. I hope you have had a wonderful and restful year. I'm sure you are prepared for yet another phantastic holiday season. I know I am.

I must confess. Frankly, Santa, I have been naughty. (Did I show up on your list?) I'm not sure if you all have digital cable at the North Pole, but it was revealed during an episode of my show, The Real Housewives of Atlanta, that Apollo and I had too much egg nog and got a little carried away under the mistletoe before we were married. Although my uterus is, first and foremost, my business, my mother, the Minister Parks was none too pleased to learn that her daughter, heretofore the apotheosis of southern femininity, had conceived out of wedlock.

Nevertheless, I am so happy to have been phenomenally blessed with a most phashionable and pretty baby to match my pretty husband. My aforementioned naughtiness and blessings notwithstanding, however, I must utter a request or two this holiday season. I would love to wake up Christmas morning and find a nanny under my tree. As an entertainment lawyer, time is simply not my own. It is my primary duty to defend celebrities and look stunning while doing it. Ayden has been hell bent on demanding nearly all of my attention. Ever since the stork left, he has just cried, slept, and pooped around the clock. It's so stressful! As you can surmise, a nanny would significantly ameliorate the situation. One more tiny request: if you can find the room in your sleigh, this crib would be tremendously appreciated. The one Apollo purchased simply will not do. I wish he had consulted one of the personal shoppers, but alas he insists on doing things on his own--much to my detriment.

Warmest holiday greetings to the always amazing Mrs. Claus. Did she get our holiday card and newsletter?

Kindest regards,

Phaedra Parks, Esq.
Atlanta, GA

Dear Santa,

Being as though I wrote the book that tells the story that got this whole Christmas started, King james thought he'd write you. I don't know if you know, but things have been really terrible for myself, King James this past year. Really terrible. So much so that I've been thinking about taking my talents to the North Pole. Miami isn't all it's cracked up to be.

I don't really want gifts or anything. I'm just looking for some advice. Things have gotten better lately, but my team hasn't been doing so well. We can only beat the teams that suck. We're not even the best team in Florida. King James made that big announcement back in July, but now it seems like none of this was that good of an idea. It's like Wade goes 9-32 before aggravating his hamstring, and Chris Bosh is, well, Chris Bosh. I tried to ask for my old team back, but Pat Riley threw me out of his office after mumbling something about Magic and Kareem. So my question is: how do you get all the other seven reindeer to allow Rudolph to guide your sleigh that first Christmas Eve? Because right now, all everyone does is laugh and call us names, saying we would be better if The Golden Girls started for us. And for me myself personally, well, it hurts my feelings.

What should I do?

King James
South Beach, Florida

Deer Santa,

Please send wind masheen. A diva can never have two many. Last won broken during my amazing tour, I am...Sasha Fierce--which was amazing. Sorry we couldn't make it to the South Pole. Jay-Z said know becus all the snow reminded him of his old job.

Love,
~~Beyonsay~~ Beyonce a.k.a. Sasha ~~Fearse~~ Fierce

P.S. I know it's a resession, but a career for my frend, Kelly Rowland would be amazing and also really nice.

Fa la la la Fail

2010-11-29T08:37:00.002-06:00

I've been nursing a lemon pound cake jones by going to Starbucks a bit more often than I'd like. I know it is not a business that I should patronize with my graduate student funds, but a craving is a craving. Anyway, I'm standing at the counter listening to the Starbucks employee recite my order for clarity because 1. N's order is always complicated and leaves me tongue-tied, and 2. I refuse to employ Starbucks' asinine ordering language. I say "small," "medium," and "large." As much as I pay for tea at Starbucks, I pay for that right--or perhaps Starbucks justifies their prices because they have fancy names for sizes on their board. But I digress. As I was standing at the counter waiting for the employee to hand me my luscious and fresh slice of pound cake, I look down and notice that the first mate has its holiday gift cards on display. And, what do you know, but Starbucks has Kwanzaa gift cards.

At that moment precisely, I heard Maulana Karenga say, "Brooklyn, we did it!" all the way from Floss Angeles, California.
Kwanzaa, meaning "first fruits," was first celebrated in December of 1966. A seven-day celebration created by Maulana (nee Ron) Karenga, Kwanzaa's main purpose was to celebrate African culture (because it's monolithic like that) and create a connection among people of the African diaspora. Each day of the holiday coincides with one of seven principles, in no particular order: Nia, ~~Simba,~~ Umoja, Imani, ~~Nala~~, Kuumba, ~~Mufasa,~~ Ujima, Ujamaa, and Kujichagulia. People, so I've heard, can celebrate Kwanzaa by participating in drum circles, pouring out libations to the ancestors, and watching the first disc of Roots. The holiday gained popularity when everyone was black and proud in the 70s. I know approximately zero black people who celebrate Kwanzaa.

All, okay most of my joking aside, I've long been under the impression that part of Kwanzaa's purpose was to help steer folks away from the consumerism of the Christmas holiday, and that hand-made gifts were in order. Well, two stamps and a Starbucks gift card later, Kwanzaa is officially official. Score another one for team capitalism.

It's amazing; nothing gets passed these guys. I can actually go to Target and buy several Kwanzaa cards, place Starbucks gift cards inside of them, stamp the envelopes with Kwanzaa postage, and mail the cards to friends and homies. People will, indeed, do this--and somehow think that their behavior is different, progressive, or I dare say, "conscious." Perhaps we are not what we eat, but what we buy. I'm neither appalled nor surprise by the scenario. Personally, if someone sent me a Kwanzaa card with a Starbucks gift card in it, I'd be excited. I really like gift cards (and sneakers and watches and books, if you're interested in sending me something), and prefer them over hand made gifts with Kwanzaa symbols. Still, I simply think the scenario is worth noting. That said, please know, if you're not sure what to get the black person[s] in your life, Starbucks got you. Nothing says "~~Happy Merry~~ Joyous Kwanzaa" quite like fifty dollars worth of iced venti white mocha frappucino lattes with soy and no whip.

Enjoy your holiday shopping.

'Tis the season.

Forgiving Michael Vick

2010-11-22T10:26:00.000-06:00

Last week in my hodgepodge, I mentioned that I needed Michael Vick to score at least 33 points to win my fantasy match-up (because I know you care). Otherwise, I would look like an idiot for benching Tom Brady, who had already had an impressive day against the Pittsburgh Steelers. Well, Vick came through for me, scoring 54 points in what will probably always be known as "The Michael Vick Game." Vick threw four touchdowns and ran for 2 more, finishing the day with 333 yards passing and another 80 yards rushing. The performance drew comparisons to Steve Young, engendered some MVP talk for Vick, and even warranted a patronizing-ass "I'm prouder of his work off the field," comment from NFL commissioner, Roger Goodell:

"There is a big message in what Michael is doing," Goodell told the newspaper. "He's a superstar athlete who everyone thought had everything in the world. He fell from grace tragically by making some horrific mistakes, paid a significant price, worked his way back in and now he's being successful. It demonstrates to me to get to these young men earlier and work with them and make them understand their responsibility making decisions that will define them for a period of time."

Whatever.

Whatever.

Of course, this response to Vick's amazing performance was not entirely positive. The creator of a fantasy football blog I frequent, for instance, acknowledged the awesomeness of Vick's (fantasy) performance, but not without noting that she would never have Michael Vick on any of her fantasy teams. As if, I suppose, one might express one's moral fiber by what one decides to do within the confines of a game that a bunch of nerds such as myself obsess over. Interestingly, I've never heard mention of the morally deleterious rhetoric of fantasy. Fantasy players love to talk about the athletes they "own." Because, you know, it's ethically acceptable to pretend that you own a person, especially when considering his trade value, but not hardly moral to own a player who supported dog fighting in real life. (For the record, I do not claim to own players. That's wack.) Such acts seem akin to folks who play anti-Monopoly...with a Monopoly board game...that they purchased.

What does it mean to articulate that one hates Michael Vick? What does it mean to find it necessary to hold that opinion still? To be sure, I was not a Michael Vick defender. I am, by all accounts, a dog person. I often find dogs more tolerable than people. I was alarmed and saddened upon hearing the details of what Vick and his associates did those dogs. Yet, I don't hate Michael Vick, and I don't believe--as many do--that he should have never been allowed to play professional football again. In my mind, there aren't many instances where I would think that a person, as abominable as their actions may be, should as a result no longer be allowed to do a thing she is really good at and presumably loves if the crime is unrelated to that vocation. Vick, according to the way this culture runs, paid his debt to society. Vick served his time in prison, declared bankruptcy, was conditionally reinstated, and by all accounts both adequately acknowledges his past mistakes and has worked to ameliorate them. Even St. Tony Dungy (he's a saint because he never cusses and because he led my Colts to a Super Bowl victory.) has become a vocal proponent for this new Michael Vick. Yet there were vehement protests when the Philadelphia Eagles signed Michael Vick as a back-up quarterback, because, I suppose no one should be given a second chance, or allowed to work after they've done a bid. Some of those protesters have yet to give up the fight.

What, in this Christ-loving culture of ours makes some believe that they have the right to "hate" and/or withhold forgiveness, the latter of which implicitly suggests that they have the right to grant it? How asinine is our earnestness when we think our moral compass is pointing in the right direction when we say things like, "I'll never cheer for Michael Vick"? I suppose it's a lot easier to sleep at night when we think about our moral stance on a rich athlete who put dogs to death than it is to examine the ways that our daily actions may endanger the lives of people we'll never know. What would justice for those dogs have looked like? Vick never playing football again? Why? I suppose he could have worked for a company like Dell while in jail, gained some employable skills so we never again had to watch him on Sunday afternoons.

The moral vitriol spewed at Vick, two years after he served his 21-month jail sentence, ensured his position atop Forbes' list of most disliked athletes yet again this year. Meanwhile, Ben Roethlisberger (who looks like Jeff Daniels to me) has settled in at number 3. He was accused of sexual assault--twice.

The Monday Morning Hodgepodge

2010-11-15T09:00:00.000-06:00

Hopped up out the bed, turned my swag on... And realized that I had a list of things I've been meaning to mention here on the blog. Here goes:

Now that I've conjured Soulja Boy, I must admit that "Speakers Going Hammer" makes me rock out a little bit. I might love that song.

Not as much as I love athletes doing The Dougie, though. It's as if they don't realize how "girlie" the dance is and the homosociality it engenders. Or maybe they do. Either way, carry on, lads, carry on.

No, really, I did not see For Colored Girls and I don't plan to, so stop asking me. By the way, I'm glad fewer of you saw it this week. It's the only way to stop Tyler Perry. Trust me. In the meantime, we need to figure out how to get some viable Perry alternatives some shine.

As a black blogger, it is my obligation to inform you of the following: There's a The Color Purple reunion happening on The Oprah Winfrey Show today!!!! Yes, that's right. The entire cast. Apparently, the reunion is part of Oprah's interview with Whoopi Goldberg. Despite our differences, my Whoopi Goldberg love runs deep. It wasn't until I was much older that I realized how improbable it was to see someone who looked like Goldberg in movies and on television screens. She's an enormously interesting figure to me; someone I'd like to learn more about. I don't expect to be enlightened by watching an Oprah interview, but I'm excited, nonetheless. I've always appreciated the fact that Goldberg seems to say and do what she wants--and somehow remain famous. I'm sad she was in For Colored Girls, though.

Kanye West made George Bush sad. Last week, the former president said that Kanye West calling him a racist in the wake of the Hurricane Katrina disaster was the worst moment of his presidency. Yep. Worse than the actual disaster. Worse than W's actual handling of the disaster. Worse than the lies he told the American people. Worse than the wars he waged while president. The terrorists have won.

Mr. Dinkins, would you please be my may-or? Ever since ~~King~~ Mayor Daley decided against running for re-election, a small tribe of the Chicago political who's who have come out and decided for or against taking a crack at Chicago's top job. When rumors swirled that Alexi Giannoulias was considering running--although he has now decided not to run--I thought maybe I should run, too. I mean, heck, he screwed up a bank and a Senate campaign. I've only ruined my 20s by going to graduate school. That makes Alexi and me similarly qualified, no? Maybe I can get BYP blogger, Ed to manage my campaign. My platform would include tarring and feathering corrupt alderman, free jibaritos the first Monday of each month, and a yearly competition to determine which Harold's Chicken Shack is indeed the best in the city. Vote for me, sucka!

I don't normally blog about music, but you should be listening to Coultrain. That is, if you're not already. I'm seriously considering internet stalking this guy. Coultrain's "Mount Zion" is the closest I get to religion these days. Besides, Seymour Liberty is a most awesome sobriquet. Here's a mixtape so you can catch up.

Speaking of Jesus and Chicago, there are several Chick-Fil-A restaurants now open in the Chicagoland area. Not that I'm narcissistic or anything, but I feel like this is God's way of telling me that I haven't been forgotten. Octavia, my trusty little Honda Civic, will be making a trip to the suburbs this coming weekend. I need your orders by Thursday.

I should have started Tom Brady last night. I need Michael Vick to score at least 33 points, or else it's a #fantasyfail for me this week. This does not bode well for the decision-making skills I'd try to tout during my mayoral campaign.

Reading is fundamental. Word on the street is that The Hunger Games trilogy is official. A couple of friends have spoken enthusiastically about Suzanne Collins' trilogy. I've bought the books, but have yet to start them. N and my friend, Maegs seem pretty crunk about them, though. Organ donation notwithstanding, the best gift you can give someone is a book. Speaking of books, I've been contemplating using this space to periodically discuss books. I'm thinking maybe a kind of unofficial Black Youth Project Book Club. If the one person who reads my entries is interested, I'd be willing to do it. Maybe come up with a book list for us to discuss, etc. I'm open to ideas. Holler at me.
Happy Monday.

Roy G. Whiz Redux

2010-11-08T08:38:00.001-06:00

One of the greatest phrases I've learned in graduate school is "not being bound by the text." Essentially, the term serves as a euphemism --and excuse--for not reading the assignment while simultaneously validating whatever jargon-soaked comment(s) one might offer during class discussion, because the folks who read have had their thinking narrowed by the words one was supposed to read. I am not bound by Tyler Perry's cinematic rendering of For Colored Girls.

Early projections indicate that For Colored Girls will finish third in the box office race for the weekend of Nov. 5. I am not one of the people who helped the film earn an estimated $22 million. As a postscript to last week's blog, I stated without a hint of equivocation that I had no intention of paying for a ticket to see Perry's latest movie. Since the only color that counts is green, I understood purchasing a ticket as an act that would be interpreted as one of support for Tyler Perry and his work. How else can we adequately explain Perry's role as director of such a project when nothing in his oeuvre even remotely suggests that he has the capacity to execute Ntozake Shange's phenomenal work with a modicum of respect? Moreover, movie revenues are not reported with asterisks indicating which dollars came from folks who saw the film in question to (negatively) critique it. No scathing blog or movie review can counteract the $9.75 + snacks one spent to see Tyler Perry's latest cinematic ~~disaster~~ effort. I'll put my recession dollars in someone else's pocket.

I've said my fair share about Tyler Perry and the damaging images of black women he forwards. Despite the somewhat humorous entry I wrote over a year ago about what we might expect from Perry's film, the idea of actually seeing the result of him taking charge of a text that centers on the lives of eight black women is more frightening than the idea of Phaedra Parks and Dwight Eubanks planning my graduation party (rhinestones and waltzes, anyone?). So, I've dodged movie trailers and reviews. Still, I hear rumors of Perry's continued war on black women. This time through botched abortions in alleys (in 2010!?) and men on the down low because their women won't let them be men. iCANT. Even without a ticket stub from his latest flick, I offer that Tyler Perry understands neither poetry nor choreopoems and the messages therein. Perry has skated on the thin ice of "black people just wanted to be represented as something other than pimps and hoes" ice long enough. If I must choose between whores and Madea, I choose the former--or nothing at all. I've cheered for enough black people on Jeopardy to earn that right.

Besides, Tyler Perry does not care about black people (George Bush). Or at least regards them as a monolithic group of white Jesus loving sycophants who are okay with a little domestic violence if a well-shaped light skinned dude comes to save the previously insubordinate mahogany damsel. Those of us who aren't fans of his yet see his movies anyway are lumped into that group when the studios start counting the box office returns. How many of his fans would still flock to him with such enthusiasm if there were better, entertaining, well executed alternatives? How many black women would support Perry if we could create a convincing critique offering the argument that Tyler Perry perhaps secretly, subconsciously hates and blames his mother for the abuse he experienced as a child and works that shit out in his films? I'm no psychologist, but just as I think Chris Rock's Good Hair was essentially his way at getting back at all the black girls who called him ashy back in high school, hearing Perry speak of his abuse on The Oprah Winfrey Show just reified my belief that writing, though helpful, is often an inadequate form of therapy and that supplemental help is almost always needed. Otherwise, Perry will continue working out his issues with his mama while simultaneously butchering black life.

Of the above, I can only speculate. What is factually correct about Tyler Perry, however, is that he is not good for (black) Hollywood. His monopoly on black cinematic entertainment means that other black filmmakers with different perspectives are continually silenced and marginalized. If you recall, Nzingha Stewart is the one who initially brought the project to Lion's Gate, but Perry refused to finance the project if he wasn't granted directorial control. Now, the 21st century's The Color Purple is smeared with cork blackened fingerprints--and mostly because we pay to see the films. Perry has made so much money that, for black actresses--and really good ones, mind you--he's the only gig in town. Think about it. Alfre Woodard was in a Tyler Perry movie. Alfre Woodard! I thought about making a list of black actresses who had resisted being in his films. But not everybody is Angela Bassett, so I decided not to do it. Besides, folks gotta eat. And I love black women too much. Way more than Tyler Perry ever could.

The Ballot is no Silver Bullet

2010-11-01T11:02:00.003-05:00

Dear Diddy, I suppose I am choosing death.

In 2008, I voted for the last time. I will not be voting tomorrow. Two years ago, while many were swept up in the whirlwind of hope and change, I cast what will probably be my last ballot. I didn't vote for Obama; I didn't vote for McCain. I voted in an effort to get another party some permanent recognition. It didn't work. So I'm going to use my voter registration card for something else. Like scraping eraser shavings from my desk, because that kind of thing really bothers me.

I am not apathetic. I care about what happens in this world. After all, I live in it. Yet the argument that folks who don't vote don't care neither resonates with nor makes sense to me. It's a terribly large logical leap. I don't have to vote every two years to prove that I have a stake in what happens as the worlds spins. Moreover, not voting doesn't even suggest that I don't have some kind of investment in democracy. What it shows is that I no longer have an investment in this version of democracy. In fact, perhaps to vote is to express a kind of apathy. We could argue that the act of voting, in this country, implicitly advocates for a government that perpetually ignores poor, black, and brown people domestically and sends many of those same folks to wage war on poor, black, and brown people living in other parts of the world, under the guise of protecting "our freedom." Democrat or Republican, politicians drop bombs. Hence, I'm am dropping my ballot and choosing to channel my political energy elsewhere.

I am not disrespecting my elders. When I was a kid, I'd get really excited to go vote with my great-grandparents. This had nothing to do with them exercising the franchise. Rather, I was mostly excited about having them in my school, because that's the kind of thing that eight-year-olds get excited about. It was the same year that I made a Bush sign in class--because I preferred elephants over donkeys. That digression aside, I know that black folks and women fought persistently for the right to vote in this country. Susan B. Anthony, I'm happy for you and I'ma let you finish but...I cannot let that history burden my present decisions. There is a remarkable difference between not being allowed to do something and choosing not to do something. Those who have attempted to use the "black people died so you could vote argument," have heard this retort from me. No, black people and women did not die so that I could vote. Black people and women marched and protested and died so I would have the right to vote. And from now on, I'll be exercising my right not to vote. So someone tell Barack Obama to stop leaving messages on my house phone (yes, I still have a line) telling me how important it is for me to vote on Tuesday. Such acts are only significant if I have interest in which conjoined twin maintains power. I don't.

I am not uninformed. Last week, Tamara posted a link of Waka Flocka Flame on 106 and Park. Apparently the hosts thought they were interviewing someone else, because they asked a non-voting high school drop-out about the importance of staying in school and voting. To some eyes, WFF just looked like a dweeb. Perhaps, but only because his people failed to get a copy of the questions the hosts were going to ask before the show. Still, the hosts did a horrific job of rescuing a guest from looking ignorant because he doesn't see the point in voting. Well, Wacka, I'm with you. In fact, the more informed I am, the less inclined I am to vote. Call me a pessimist, but there is no such thing as a different kind of politician outside of a political advertisement. "Free election of masters does not abolish the masters or the slaves," - Marcuse. Word to Obama.

I am not voting. Sometimes there is more power in not doing something. If I were to vote tomorrow, I would not be honoring the life of James Chaney. I would be explicitly agreeing with the folks who claim to speak for constituents like me. I have no faith in the folks who assert a desire to represent me within this system. In fact, I am suspicious of them. A vote tomorrow, for me, would signal to the government that I want them to continue with duping as usual. I can no longer think and feel the way I do and just vote as symbol of--something. There are no moral ballots, especially if I question the ambitions of every name that appears on them. Besides, I have better stuff to do on Tuesday morning-like watch Oprah.

P.S. I will not be seeing Tyler Perry's for colored girls... adaptation when it's released on Friday. If this film is financially successful, Perry will receive permission to make more films. Personally, I'd rather keep my money. More on this Monday.

Life After Harpo (Run On)

2010-10-25T10:31:00.000-05:00

Many years ago, when I was younger, less pessimistic, and even more obnoxious, the local black newspaper decided that I, along with some other black students in the area, was respectable and scholarly enough to feature in its annual round-up of ostensibly intelligent high school seniors. Someone called a friend and me to the guidance counselor's office and gave a us a form to complete; it featured the typical set a questions one might ask a seventeen-year-old: favorite subject(s), college choice, future aspirations, etc. Outside of one genuinely nice thing about a mentor, Mrs. Patterson, the answers to my questionnaire could have been surmised for what it was: a load of uninspired teenage crap, including the "Oprah Winfrey is my hero," stock answer.

Like any child of parents who worked full-time, I was often babysat by old people and television. As such, Oprah was part of my weekday afternoon ritual. (Yes, I'm continuing with the ritual theme--again). I'd come home from school, plop myself in front of Nannie and Papa's television, and catch the last half-hour of The Young and the Restless while I did my homework. Then, we'd catch Oprah at four.

Once I moved to Chicago I started watching Oprah every morning. As a hater, it's important that I begin each day with a certain degree of disdain for the world, and I find an hour of The Oprah Winfrey Show does the job. Yet lately, the disdain I feel while watching has been replaced by great sadness, because each morning I remember that this is the final season of The Oprah Winfrey Show.
How I will spend the nine o'clock hour next television season is beyond me. I'll face that day when the tears stop. In the meantime, I'd like to present a list: twenty-five reflections inspired by way too many years of watching The Oprah Winfrey Show.

Ain't shit under my chair.
Oprah Winfrey knows the lyrics to zero songs. Therefore, she is terrible at lip-syncing. There are ample clips from various shows to prove this point. I have no idea why the director insisted on cutting to her anyway.
Everything Pras Michel knows about attaching himself to far more talented people and benefiting financially, he learned from Gayle King.
You can't spell god without an O. I'm just sayin'.
Oprah sleeps with a vial of James Dean's blood under her pillow. This is the only way I can adequately explain why white ladies go bonkers when they see her.
Steadman Graham must be in the witness protection program.
The only thing more obnoxious than John Travolta in a movie is John Travolta on the Oprah show.
The same statement holds true for Tom Cruise.
In fact, if you're a dude and want your crappy movie promoted, you should call Oprah.
Just ask Chris Rock.
And Tyler Perry.
Speaking of movies, I'm still really mad about Beloved.
So is Toni Morrison. (This is merely a guess.)
I love it when Oprah acts like she has no idea what drugs are and/or how to use them. In other words, last season's two-part Whitney Houston interview brought me endless amounts of joy.
The word ama[aaaaaaaaa]zing[!!!!] can't wait to get its life back.
If I had to choose between accidentally stepping on Suge Knight's new Jordans and being confronted by Oprah on her show. I'd pick the former every time.
Just ask James Frey.
Oprah: 1, Your entire life : 0
BUT Oprah: 0, Weight loss: 234979124. Can't win 'em all.
All of my Oprah imitations begin with, "My friend Maya Angelou once said..." and then I say something super obnoxious and underwhelming--just like Oprah.
Like a teenager committed to rebellion, I blame Oprah for this stint in graduate school. I refuse to live my best life, just to spite her.
The above logic is absolutely irrational, as irrational as the idea that a black woman could ever rule this friggin' world. But it happened. Oprah Winfrey, FTW!
Note to self: never trust any Oprah expert--except Nate Berkus.
Not that she will, but if Oprah asks, I never wrote any of this mess. Or this. Or...
The only thing that makes me laugh harder than Oprah singing her own theme song is the jheri curl. It's that funny:

More on Football Being Just Like America

2010-10-20T13:14:00.000-05:00

I've said it before; it bears repeating: Football is the apotheosis of America(n). The N.F.L. has decided to start suspending players for excessively violent, helmet-to-helmet hits:

From The Philadelphia Inquirer:

NEW YORK - The NFL will immediately begin suspending players for dangerous and flagrant hits that violate rules, particularly those involving helmets.

Suspensions will be in place for this weekend's games, vice president of football operations Ray Anderson said Tuesday.

In the past, players were either fined or ejected for illegal hits. But after the series of recent flagrant tackles, several of which resulted in concussions, the NFL ramped up the punishment "for egregious and elevated hits," Anderson said.

Any number of violent hits got attention last weekend, including Atlanta's Dunta Robinson knocking out both himself and the Eagles' DeSean Jackson; Patriots' safety Brandon Meriweather nailing Ravens tight end Todd Heap; and a pair of hits dealt out by the Steelers' James Harrison, which sidelined Browns receivers Joshua Cribbs and Mohamed Massaquoi.

Harrison was fined $75,000 on Tuesday but was not suspended. Meriweather and Robinson each were fined $50,000.

This is hypocritical in the most American sense of the word. This game is based on violence and intimidation. Part of the way a player procures the latter is by hitting--not tackling, no one cares about tackling--hard. Hits, not tackles are what comprise the 11 p.m. Sportscenter highlight package. In fact, until recently ESPN's professional football coverage included a Jacked Up! segment featuring the weeks most cringe-worthy hits. They'd air a clip of the play, and then a commentator--usually a retired NFL player, mind you--would say the "tackled" players name followed by, "you just got JACKED! up!" (Think of a cleaner version of Smokey's famous, "You got knocked the fuck out!")

Hits, not good, solid tackles attract the American voyeur. These hits are part of what make the NFL money-- quite literally. Until yesterday, the NFL was selling images of the aforementioned James Harrison hit on the Cleveland Browns' Mohamed Massoquoi. Yes, selling photographs of the hit that they later fined James Harrison $75,000 for.

Bowl for Columbine much?

As boys, these men were socialized, trained to play football in this manner. Now, they participate in the ultimate conundrum: being penalized for doing the very thing they are expected, and in fact are paid to do. Such paradoxes would be extremely befuddling if they weren't so familiar. Isn't being punished for violence we are traditionally taught to execute through our culture the American way? America packages, commodifies, and consumes violence at an alarming rate, yet fines, incarcerates, reproves the same behavior it venerates.

Meanwhile, although there concussions every week, the NFL owners and other powers that be would like to extend the season from 16 to 18 regular season games, but still does not want to adequately compensate current players with guaranteed salaries nor properly care for retired players who weren't famous enough to secure the big four.

I love and loathe this sport in the same way that I love and loathe this country. Is it Sunday yet?

WHIP Season--A Rant (or Something)

2010-10-18T09:25:00.000-05:00

Autumn is my favorite season, but it has it's low points. Last Monday's federal holiday, Columbus Day, is the nation-wide bat signal for America to commence with its annual "We Hate Indigenous People" season. In other words, Columbus Day marks the moment when that United States raises its middle finger to indigenous people, and doesn't put it down for another six weeks, after Thanksgiving. We'd continue the gesture, but but the tryptophan makes us sleepy. Besides, we need our hands for those Black Friday sales.

This WHIP season, I've been thinking a lot about the way that we simultaneously denigrate and romanticize native people. The thought process reminded me of a trip I took to Alburquerque, New Mexico, where I had presented a conference paper. Instead of sitting in on a bunch of panels, N and I decided to act like tourists, so we checked out several spots in the city, including Old Town, the initial Spanish settlement where Alburquerque was "founded."

Old Town is pretty much a touristy spot, full of shops and restaurants and this random white guy on a bike who likes to take people on tours. Old Town is also a space where Native Americans come and sell their handmade jewelry. The hotel representative was sure to tell me that purveyors of Native jewelry in the city of Alburquerque are licensed by the city, ensuring that you don't cop any fake junk during your stay. He seemed to be proud of this fact. Maybe it's just me, but the whole licensing game seemed to be another way of saying, "We took your land and killed your people, but we'll be damned if anyone bootlegs your shit." Who says there's no justice in the world?

At some point during our visit, N started waxing with our native brethren, talking to them about their jewelry and the weather and such. I overheard one of them telling her what certain symbols mean: arrow means this, the bear means that, et cetera. The whole time I'm having this inner dialogue/realization: Is this the first time I've ever seen a Native American in real life? Seriously, did I grow up in Indiana without ever seeing an Indian? I was perplexed by the very idea to the point that it took a minute for my inner cynic to return. I started to think about the spiel one in his position might give to folks who look at his wares. Mostly, I thought about how easy a hustle it would be for him to just put out some jewelry with random animals and shapes, and sell it to unsuspecting tourists. Because we'd believe him. Because Indians are deep and in tune with nature. /sarcasm

It makes perfect sense that the football team representing our nation's capital goes by the moniker Redskins, and that, of course, we watch football every Thanksgiving. As I said in another entry, football is quintessentially American. And what's more American than denigrating indigenous folks to the degree that the football team that represents this nation's capital would reduce them to Redskins? Such a caricature is simultaneously loaded and empty, empty enough to hold the stereotype of some ambiguous Indian warrior fit enough to be stamped on the side of a football helmet.

It's as if the holidays that bracket WHIP season, Columbus Day and Thanksgiving, reify the invisibility at the core of this nation's treatment of indigenous folks. How can they be romanticized if they're always around? How can we justify Columbus Day and Thanksgiving if the folks harmed in the process aren't relegated to reservations in less heavily populated western states? How can some folks--both white (because Indian blood is the only blood that can justifiably make whiteness impure) and black--claim a quarter Cherokee maternal great-great-grandmother if the there's an Indian in your face and not on your baseball cap?

I think about all of that as I engage in these American rituals, in watching the Colts vs. the Redskins last night, in eating turkey on the last Thursday in November. Others will vote. It makes some kind of sense to cast a ballot in the middle of WHIP season, given what such engagement with democracy is contingent upon. I wonder if the indigenous folks could appropriate the resounding "Take America Back!" we hear during election time. I'd get behind that; in fact, I would probably stop monitoring my fantasy football team long enough to vote for something like that. In fact, I'd permanently stop filling this space with non-sensical rants for that. /nihilism

Iron(y) Mike

2010-10-04T08:15:00.002-05:00

Last week, one of the ways I distracted myself from writing my dissertation was by watching a Funny or Die video of Wayne Brady and Mike Tyson reenacting Bobby Brown's "Every Little Step." It's no Drunk History, but I suppose the video, the latest incarnation of the "Mike Tyson being funny" genre, is worth a chuckle or two.

Every Little Step with Mike Tyson & Wayne Brady from Mike Tyson

Forget skinny jeans. Mike Tyson is having the best comeback ever. He has been the subject of several recent documentaries, including the gripping, Tyson and ESPN 30 for 30's One Night in Vegas. He was on The Oprah Winfrey Show last season--twice. Of course, his comeback of sorts was solidified with his cameo appearance in The Hangover. And now, he's acting silly in a Wayne Brady clip.

This is probably not the most popular position I may take, especially amongst my feminist friends, but I think I've always had some kind of compassion for Mike Tyson, even before boxing became infinitely interesting to me. Yet Tyson has also been really, really scary to me. I remember how nervous and tense I felt just watching him on Oprah. And he wasn't doing anything; he was just sitting there, answering questions in the soft voice the folks over at In Living Color used to occasionally joke about. Yet I think the viciousness he showed during those boxing matches I watched on HBO as a kid was just hardwired in my brain. I can't seem to comfort myself with the idea that his rage can be contained by a boxing ring. I don't think I'm the only one who thinks about Tyson like this. So this latest manifestation and public obsession with Tyson have me wondering: What are the set of conditions that allow us, the audience to laugh at Mike Tyson?

This Wayne Brady "Every Little Step" bit is supposed to be ironic, I guess. I mean, there's irony all up in the video: Wayne Brady, after all, is going to bed in a wave cap and his wife is black. Despite my "credentials," though, I get all kinds of confused when irony is inserted into a conversation. It's a term employed incorrectly so often that I have to look it up any time someone uses it. Perhaps I should blame Alanis Morrissette for this issue. I say that simply to forewarn you: I may have this Tyson bit all wrong. Still, my quasi-educated guess is that Tyson's cameos work as a kind of situational irony: wherein the outcome is different from what is expected. When Mike Tyson is on screen, my initial expectation is a feeling of fear. In fact, I actually feel the fear. Then, when Tyson does something silly, that fear is supposed to be replaced with a kind of ease. The feeling I'm supposed to get from watching Mike Tyson doing The Running Man or singing "In the Air Tonight" is similar to the one you feel when your mom or dad comes into your bedroom, turns on the lights, and proves that there are no monsters in the closet. (Of course, the ironic thing would be if your parent opened the closet and a monster did, indeed, jump out of it. But I digress.) I suppose this irony, this fear turned to humor is part of what makes a Mike Tyson appearance funny.

Yet, I don't think the fact that I can't shake how scary Mike Tyson can be is the only reason why I don't laugh as hard as the next person. I think I worry that the line between irony and, well, reality will become increasingly thin, that there will be a point when we cease to remember that we were scared of Iron Mike. And if the public forgets--short as our memory is--that fear, what then becomes of the irony? Does it become tragic? And does Tyson in turn become a tragedy? Will he become a caricature? A buffoon? If we are to believe Tyson's claims that he has no money, is the possibility that he becomes cartoonish almost inevitable? Most importantly, how strikingly similar will the reasons that we laugh at him in the future be to the reason(s) we laugh at him now?

Collateral Damage

2010-09-27T08:46:00.006-05:00

I don't know if Eddie Long is gay; I don't know if these allegations of sexual abuse are true. I suspect, however, that on some level they are, and that Eddie Long, again on some level, probably enjoys the (sexual) company of men. As a rule, I think just about everybody is a little bit gay, especially those who shout their homophobia the loudest. That said, there are plenty of internet sites and Twitter accounts blabbing on and on about either issue, so I won't belabor either point here. Yet I would like to make--or perhaps simply echo--something that may or may not be receiving as much attention as the speculation about Long's sexuality and the validity of the claims made in the lawsuits against him.

What continues to baffle me about these kinds of stories is the level of damage that is inevitably unearthed as these men are exposed. Let me explain. As a general rule, I do not believe that anyone should have to come out. Even as a someone who conjectures openly about the sexuality of certain celebrities, I am not an advocate of goading folks out of the closet. There is safety there. And the risk of coming out, for many, is simply too dangerous. I understand that. Sometimes the monsters in the closet are less frightening than the ones outside of it.

I also know that being and remaining closeted can be taxing on a person, and that the emotional toll one must pay not to live a certain kind of truth is sometimes unbearable, resulting in various forms of self-hate and -abuse that occasionally make living a task. I get that. Yet what I simply cannot understand, what I find intolerable are those who choose--consciously or not-- to project their self-hatred onto others, thereby destroying so much more than themselves. I just can't go for that. (Hall and Oates.)

For me, it's not enough to discuss the sexuality of Eddie Long or the abuse allegations. There's a third part of this story, one that often gets obscured. What I find most infuriating are the number of folks he hurt in order to maintain a lie. Let's suppose, for the moment, that Eddie Long is indeed a gay man, one who, for perhaps a myriad of legitimate reasons does not want to openly express his sexuality. He would not be alone. Yet as my friend said as we discussed this over dinner, "Fine. Don't be openly gay, but why do you have to get married? Have kids?" Exactly. I hope I'm echoing my friend properly here when I repeat her point that folks like Eddie Long should just be gay by themselves without hurting other people in the process. But they don't. Instead, their repression--or whatever it is--compels them to engage in sexual behavior that more than likely endangers the women in their lives, and the words they spew from their soap boxes not only push those like them deeper into the closet but also engender homophobia-inspired violence.

The desire to live dishonestly enables such terrible things. Like, for example, choosing to wear a jheri curl wig on the day you decide to "confront" the allegations that you are sexually abusive. Seriously, Eddie? I wanted to be sad for and extend some compassion to the folks in the congregation and perhaps his wife. Then I realized they were supporting a man who rocked a lace front while he was trying to be serious, and I just couldn't do it. I tell my students not to generalize, but I'm convinced these folks are voluntarily being duped, allowing this man to press their emotional buttons while pressing mute on the logical ones--you know, assuming they exist. How else could they explain cheering as the man conjured major gayness in front of them? First, the aforementioned jheri curl wig in combination with dropping the microphone after he spoke indicated that clearly Long had not been reading the Bible but rather watching Coming to America before church service. Apparently, Long draws inspiration from Randy Watson, who isn't the manliest of men. Secondly--cue my serious tone--Long likened himself to David, saying "I feel like David against Goliath. But I got five rocks, and I haven't thrown one yet," and then left the stage. (In my head, Beyonce's "Diva" started playing as he walked away from the pulpit.) Although I am a heathen, I've read the Bible from Genesis to Revelations and am well aware of the myriad characters Long could have chosen. Yet he picked David, an Old Testament favorite. Many Christians love the story of David and Goliath. They don't seem to love the story of David and Jonathan as much, though, despite the fact that it has to be one of the most eloquent love stories I've ever read. It's too gay, I suppose. As I watched the internet stream of the sermon, I wondered how many congregants thought of Jonathan as they cheered their pastor off the stage. I thought how many, if any, knew the story at all.

But I digress. (Sophia Petrillo.) Eddie Long may not be a perfect man, but he has more than likely made a tremendous mess. And even if he is found guilty, I seriously doubt he'll have to contend with the level of damage he has probably caused. Neither will the folks who probably enabled him. Because if the charges are true, and my instincts tell me they probably are, some of the same folks in that church house on Sunday kept those secrets and further enabled a situation that was incredibly damaging to the young men who trusted Long and people who had never set foot in New Birth. Such behavior is un-Christian like. Unfortunately for white Jesus and others who believe in him, that's exactly what many of us have come to expect from that ilk. Perhaps the thing one should hope for is not a guilty verdict but for those who choose to behave similarly to somehow find the strength to only damage themselves.