#projectsIwantoseebecomemovies

My fingers started snapping of their own accord at "Can we get a movie with characters in it, rather than stereotypes wrapped up in Christian dogma?" By "There's no need for a 'Dear Black People.' Cops, reality tv, and Fox News already let us know what you think of us," I was metaphorically on. the. floor. I love this. I love everything about it. 

Is it problematic? Maybe a little. Sure. But life as a Black student at a PWI is pretty damn problematic sometimes, and that's something I want to see addressed in things other than scholarly journals and weird corners of the internet like this. This film, if it goes to full production, will address issues like tokenism, hair, Greek life, "being Black enough," "ways to be Black," and whether Black people can be racist (answer: for damn sure), among others. And it'll piss off some White ignorant blissfully-uninformed-due-to-the-privileges-of-their-identity-categories people in the process. It will call attention to these issues in a public platform, whether it reaches only indie fame (a la Pariah) or national fame (a la Precious).

One of the white frat guys calls Sam, the main character, "Spike Lee and Angela Davis's pissed off baby." First off, I muthafuckin wish Spike Lee and Angela Davis had a kid, because that kid would run shit. That kid would be the Blue Ivy of and for the people. That kid would come out of the womb with its fist raised high and a full fro. But more importantly, we need Spike Lee and Angela Davis again. (Yes I'm fully aware they're both still alive and kicking, but go with me here.) We need the era when Do the Right Thing and Bamboozled were blockbusters, not just Black cult classics. (Confession: I've still never seen Bamboozled or She's Gotta Have It. They're on my to-do list.) Yes we are living in a time when Blackness is being re-examined (a la Toure, Baratunde Thurston, Issa Rae, and others), and I LOVE IT, but when my 21 year old cousin who's a student at Rutgers has never heard of Awkward Black Girl, we need to be doing more. 

Dear White People could be it, if it has the chance to come to fruition.    

"In the White racist imagination, “a nigger is a nigger is a nigger.” White supremacy took different types of Africans and reduced them to “the nigger.” I’m not chasing that kind of thinking. We are diverse!  I refuse to embrace that sameness. I know my people are diverse. Black rigidity, and not Black diversity, is the real threat to Black people. When we buy into notions of Black sameness, we begin to lose. I don’t want, nor do I need, all Black people to be the same. Some of us are straight, some are gay, some are masculine, some are feminine, some of us are rich, some of us are poor, some of us are college educated, some of us are trade educated, some of us outspoken, some of us are quiet. Respect our diversity. How can you claim to love Blackness, want to fight for it, when you see us the same way White supremacist do? We are not a pool of sameness."

--antiintellect

Questions Raised at the Black Solidarity Conference

(by myself and others)

1. What does it mean to be a Black sexual being? 
2. How are people given the opportunity to be engaged in their sexuality?
3. Do people engage in sexuality differently according to access to various resources?
4. Why are today's young people, especially young women, being so miseducated about their own bodies?
5. Why is abortion what we leap to when talking about sexuality? Why single-motherhood? Why monogamy and marriage? What narratives are being ignored when our conversation centers itself around these topics? How can we refrain from institutionalizing sexuality?  
6. What is the difference between talking about sexual practices and talking about sexuality?
7. What are the everyday ethics of Blackness that determine who can or can not be in the community?
8. What is the impact of geographic region on gender presentation?
9. How do we work against the sociohistorical pathologization of Black bodies?
10. If Black women have never really fit into the definition of womanhood presented by dominant (White) society, what are our goals in the redefining of gender roles? What does that redefinition mean for us?
11. Why can't Brothers see themselves in women the way Sisters can see themselves in men?
12. How do we disaggregate criticism from "haterism"?
13. Why is the "walk of shame" a female-specific term?
14. Why are Black communities so obsessed with "presentability"? Why is who we are not enough? What are we overcompensating for?
15. How much experimentation with gender presentation is internal, having fun, and expressing ourselves, and how much is in response to our expectations of others' reactions to our presented selves?
16. How do we get rid of the idea that to participate in Blackness, we have to debase ourselves?
17. How do we reconcile promoting cultural criticism with promoting solidarity and/or the presentation of a unified front?
18. How does harkening back to our African past influence, isolate, and/or negate the experiences of people living in Africa today or who came to America from Africa recently? 
19. What does the phrase "I see you" signify in Black communities?
20. When can we, as Black peoples, OWN our sexuality?

 Despite all the "rachetness" and the existence of Travis Porter in my personal space and the heteronormativity I had to deal with and the freshwomen crashing in my room and not letting an old person like me sleep and all the other minor annoyances, this is why I go to the Black Solidarity Conference every year. Questions like this. The conference makes me think. The things I don't like about the conference make me think even harder. 

...New Haven also has some great places to shop. I'm not gonna lie. 

I don't know how to handle the term "mixed"

Specifically in the context of persons who usually are not close to me in any way who feel the need to ask me,

"Are you mixed?"

or are so audacious as to presume a mixed racial background and bust right out with,

"What are you mixed with?" 

I'm sincerely unsure whether the sirs and madams who ask these questions understand how problematic they are. 

First off, dogs are mixed. I am not mixed. Nor am I a mulatto, a mudblood, a mutt, a half-breed, a quadroon, or an octaroon. (Click here if you're confused by any of these names.) If you phrased the question as, "Do you come from a multiracial background?" I suppose that the truthful answer is yes. If you were to move backwards through my family tree, you would discover multiple people of non-African descent. At the very least, you would discover German, Portuguese, and American-Indian ancestry. There's a good chance you'd find some White guy from Canada in the not too distant past (my dad's dad's dad), though I don't know for a fact that this person was White or what his nationality was, and will never know because no one living knows. No matter which side you go up or what branches you go off exploring, all over my family tree you will run into question marks. Things no one knows and no one can know. 

So, am I mixed? Technically, yes, I suppose. Historically speaking. Not recently. Not primarily through choice. I only know that the German (my dad's mom's mom) was an un-forced mixture. Thus I will claim that, if pressured, but I feel no obligation to recognize small percentages of my racial make-up formed through slavery, oppression, or other relations I am not sure were consensual. I feel especially unobligated to do so because the overwhelming majority of multigenerational African-Americans--Imani Perry's term for those of us who descended from slaves--share a similar history. Rather ironically, Blackness constitutes "otherness" to White America, while simultaneously containing Whiteness nearly definitionally. The question marks in my family tree are a trademark of life as a descendant of an enslaved population: if you wanted to say that the only Black persons allowed to identify as such are those with nary a White face on their family tree, the only Black people in America would be recent African immigrants. My mom's mom's mom was a dark-skinned woman with blonde hair and blue eyes. This is our history. So to those people who claim that I'm doing a disservice to American history and my ancestors' legacies by not identifying as multiracial, I say that you're doing the same disservice to American history and adding injury to current Black populations by not allowing us to incorporate our complicated racial histories into one story of preservation, rather than of domination and dissipation.

Am I mixed? Technically, yes, I suppose. Historically speaking. Not recently. Not primarily through choice. But I will never ever check that on a box. I will never say this of myself. I identify as a Black person. I interpret my Blackness as inherently containing elements that aren't Black, and I would appreciate it if you, people who question my monoracial identity, would accept my interpretation. How dare you seem incredulous when I respond that I'm "just Black"? How dare you try to say, "No you must be ________"? You don't know me like that, and I am allowed to identify however I please. If I screw up your schema of what a "just Black" person "should" look like (or act like or feel like or be like), then well, I'm not sorry. 


Also, my friend @iribobiri came up with the best response ever to the second question. I promise this will play out in my life at least once:

Ignorant person I've recently met: What are you mixed with?

Me: A wire whisk.

 

I do research for quotes like this:

"...the people of the African Diaspora are a biogenetically diverse category of people who have an identity derived from common experiences of exploitation and racism. It is far more accurate and more fruitful to scholarship, and possibly to the future of humankind, to define African American people by their sense of community, consciousness, and commitment than by some mystical 'racial' essence. It is the Community into which they were born and reared, a Consciousness of the historical realities and shared experiences of their ancestors, and a Commitment to the perspectives of their 'blackness' and to the diminishing of racism that is critical to the identities of the Thurgood Marshalls and Hazel O'Learys of our society."

--Audrey Smedley, "'Race' and the Construction of Human Identity"

How I Feel About: The Term "Bougie"

I get called bougie sometimes, or stuck up, or whatever. My little sister was telling me when I was home for Christmas that "I think that just because I go to Princeton, I think I'm better than everybody else." I tried to explain that no, because I go to Princeton, I'm realizing that things I never thought were possible are within reach, and I want other people to have the same epiphany, but I'm getting off topic...

I get called bougie. It used to bother me, but this semester I had a professor (Imani Perry) tell me that no matter how much we (Black Princeton students from humble backgrounds) try to distance ourselves from the Black elite, just by virtue of being here and eventually being in the places being here will bring us, we have become the Black elite. And that kind of rocked my entire worldview.

But even if I don't let professors (even really cool ones I want to be like when I grow up) dictate my life, I have observed that people usually throw around the term bougie (and its synonyms) when they want to address the fact that you're not living like they're living, not in the same mindset or coming from the same place. So that's all I take it to mean, because it's usually true (even if only with regard to the specific context you're dealing with at that moment), and I let whatever insult they were trying to throw at me roll right off.


(In response to this post from Clutch Magazine)

"I am a feminist, and what that means to me is much the same as the meaning of the fact that I am Black: it means that I must undertake to love myself and to respect myself as though my very life depends upon self-love and self-respect." -- June Jordan

Our lives DO depend on self-love and self-respect, though. If we do not love ourselves, how do we take care of ourselves? How do we sacrifice and strive for ourselves without respecting ourselves? But the imperative nature of self-love and self-respect don't describe Blackness or a feminist identity to me...they describe the human condition. We need to love and respect ourselves like we need to breathe and eat and think. 

I'm finally reading Toure's "Who's Afraid of Post-Blackness"

partially for pleasure and partially for a paper I'm writing about Awkward Black Girl, because let's be real, I don't have time to read for pleasure until April 14th.

And I'm following him on Twitter and have to fight myself hard not to tweet everything I find profound and tag him in every single tweet. I'm considering it an exercise in self-control.

But I have to share this, his writings on another Black student telling him he wasn't Black:

"Why was I working to reject being defined by the white gaze but not also working to reject definition by the Black gaze?...Who gave him the right to determine what is and is not Blackness for me? Who made him the judge of Blackness? To say I'm not Black is to accuse me of apostasy as if Blackness were a religion that could be escaped. But we cannot abandon Blackness even if we commit treason against it. It's permanent. Even an Uncle Tom must suffer beneath the boot of white supremacy. And I'm not a Tom just because you don't understand me. I may be a work in progress but I will always be Black. The only things in life that I am obligated to do are pay taxes, be Black, and die." 

--Toure, Who's Afraid of Post-Blackness? What It Means to Be Black Now, pg. 97

I wanted to tweet this, but it's too long,

and editing it in any way would be doing VIOLENCE.

"I'm so SICK of being made invisible by people. Can't be black and queer. Can't be black and female. Can't be black and non-religious. Like, what the fuck? I need some of y'all to have a fucking seat." 

--A commenter on this post

Reblogged from  Quirky Black Girls  

I would like to find the person who wrote this and hug them. Repeatedly. (But only with their consent, of course.) 

Yo, but actually

I have heard these things in real life, I swear. And not just from White girls, but people of various non-Black-woman race/gender combinations. "It's almost like you're not Black" is actually too close to home; I'm writing about times that has been said to me in my personal memoir on Blackness for my Comparative Literature class. Fuck other people feeling like they have some sort of authority to tell me what I'm supposed to be as a Black woman. Hell, even as a person. 

But to go along with the theme of the video, I shall reveal what I believe is the most ridiculous thing a white girl has ever said to me:

"It's like I'm a big Black woman trapped inside a skinny white girl's body!"

She later became a dear friend of mine, but saying this like the second time we'd ever met? The opposite of cool. 

Today is the first day of Kwanzaa

and while I don't officially celebrate Kwanzaa, I respect it as an entity, and feel the need to defend it from haters like my bestie K. Hence, this post. 

A little background: Kwanzaa is a week-long holiday created by Dr. Maulana Karenga, a major figure in the Black Power Movement of the 60s and 70s, to "give Blacks an alternative to the existing holiday and give Blacks an opportunity to celebrate themselves and history, rather than simply imitate the practice of the dominant society." There are seven principles, each with a day devoted to it and represented by a red, green, or black candle that goes into a specific place in the kinara, a special candleholder. You're supposed to spend each day reflecting and talking about the principle with your family and friends, and each night feasting and exchanging gifts (which may or may not be supposed to be handmade as a rebellion against American consumer culture.) And that's a little much even for a self-righteous Black woman like myself, because I have no problems with Santa (who was Black in my house anyway, but that's another story for another time), and I hit up the after-Christmas sales LIKE A BOSS today, but I like the spirit of the celebration nonetheless. I like that it's something created by and for our peoples as a way of celebrating whatever it is that connects all of us Diasporic individuals.
Growing up, my family usually lit the candles, and my dad usually mailed me a Kwanzaa card, but I wouldn’t go so far as to say we legitimately celebrated Kwanzaa. As I’ve gotten older and have to start thinking about which traditions from my childhood to keep and which to let go of, I’ve decided that I want to start taking Kwanzaa more seriously. I don’t know if I’ll go so far as to make and exchange gifts for each of the days, but I want to get a kinara, light the candles on each day, and spend some time at the very least seriously reflecting on each of the principles, hopefully engaging in discussion with friends and family about them.
I don’t understand people who criticize it for being “made up;” how is it any more made up than the secular version of Christmas or Easter or any other (even non-religious) holiday? All holidays are social constructions, and I like the principles and values this particular holiday tries to construct us around. Maybe people who dress in “traditional African clothing” or go around speaking languages that originated in Africa or cooking foods from various African countries for this week ONLY every year might be “faking it” or “making it up,” but I think that just by being a socially conscious person of African descent in this world, I am living my culture every single day–on these particular days, I’m just reflecting on specific principles that may add strength and depth to my own understanding of that very culture. And I see no problems with that.


That being said, today's principle is Umoja, which means "unity" in Swahili. It is a day for reuniting with friends and family, and more broadly, for thinking about ties that bind. I spent this whole semester taking "Diversity in Black America," and after 12 weeks I say "Black peoples" and "Black cultures" and "Black identities," yet I don't believe it's possible to walk away from this concept of "out of many, one." Sure we may come from as many different backgrounds as you can possibly imagine and go through quite a range of experiences and have diverse interests and have been raised in cultures that are nothing like one another's and have different languages, vocabularies, styles, and tastes...but there is something that keeps "the Black head nod" and the either gravitation towards or strict avoidance of the other Black person in the room when you're few and far between in some social setting. Maybe that something is nothing more than the legacy of racism in this country, which has molded us all within a racialized understanding of the world, and maybe it's something more, but whatever it is, it is, and that is fine as long as we can still come together in our difference.
Unity is not casting out members of our communities for being different. It's accepting those who are Black and Women, who are Black and LGBTQQIA, who are Black and nerdy/awkward, and even who are Black and Republican. It's recognizing the "Black card" and terms like "oreo" and "sell-out" as ridiculous entities that no one has the authority to project onto anyone else. I think the truest form of solidarity to which we can strive as Black peoples, or even as human beings on this great green earth, is just to accept each other for that which we are without trying to quantify the authenticity or validity of anyone's sense of self. Recognizing that I am what I am, you are what you are, and we are what we are...that is being united.

If SHE's Black, then I'm...?

This is Danzy Senna. She wrote the book I'm reading in Diversity in Black America this week, Where Did You Sleep Last Night? She is the daughter of a White mother and a dark-skinned Black father, but the interesting roulette wheel of genetics bestowed her with phenotypical Whiteness. But get this--she identifies SOLELY as Black.

And okay, let me start this by saying that on an intellectual level, I recognize and applaud every individual's ability to adopt whatever identity best suits them, whatever fulfills them spiritually and emotionally and feels like it "fits". I applaud those who are brave enough to behave unexpectedly and go against the status quo. I am a strong proponent of the idea that everyone should be who and what they are, wholly and truly and shamelessly and unapologetically.

But for all my fancy talk, I find it...difficult to accept this woman as a Black woman. Hell, even as a woman of color. People are going to look at her and SEE White, and while it isn't fair to expect her to be defined solely by the identity others impose on her...I am struggling to find a way to look at her and see that we are members of the same group (well, more than just being American women). If we are both Black women, then...

what do all Black people possibly share?


Part of me is firmly invested in this idea that we must all share something. There must be something that binds us all together. I know that race is a social construction--trust me, NOTHING proves that to me as much as the very existence of this woman--but it's still IMPORTANT to me. But, as a friend pointed out to me today, it's only important to me BECAUSE of the history of discrimination and racism that has plagued my people and other racialized groups. Had there never been racism, there would likely be no concept of race. (Which came first, the chicken or the egg?) So is caring about race just validating the historical White man's claims? Am I hurting us with my pride? Holding myself back with my self-identification? 


No, I can't believe any of that. It would label Blackness as problematic, and that's something I'll never ever co-sign. But a bandwagon I may have to get on is that Blackness is, above all else, a mentality. I think that for my sanity and so that everybody can't just go around claiming it, it is a mentality informed and passed on by at least some genealogical and familial background--you can't just pick up a book about Black peoples and start to identify with any sort of validity. But as I already believe that people of color are generally more likely to understand the world in certain ways, it's not an impossibly far leap from there to Blackness is a state of being. 


The problem, though, is states of being can't be objectively measured or quantified. You won't recognize someone's state of being as they walk down the street. You will recognize the color of a person's skin and try to typify them as such, but I think I need to accept that race runs a whole lot deeper than that. (I had a similar such moment a few weeks ago where I counted one more Black person than I thought was on the Sprint Football team, and he turned out to be Indian.) Because she identifies entirely as a Black woman and associates most dominantly with Black communities, is she not in some ways "more Black" than many Blacks (not that I really like to put Blackness on a spectrum, but for the purposes of this thought experiment...)?

So as I embark on a small journey to acceptance, I will say this: Danzy Senna is a Black woman. I am a Black woman. My African friends on campus may or may not be Black women, depending on how global your definition of Blackness is and how they self-identify. There is diversity in Black America.

"One way I combat racism is by claiming my blackness as positive and in no need of justification." -- Malcolm Shanks, student at Brown University

His article addressing White people in classes that discuss identity who are uncomfortable talking about race is pretty bad-ass. 

(1)ne Drop: A project i'm DEFINITELY interested in:

You know anything that touches upon what it means to be Black today will find its way onto my radar sooner or later. When academics and artists join forces, what can result but beauty and a sense of the profound? This project aims not only to challenge people's understandings of Blackness, but also to challenge the way we expect understandings to be challenged, and that in and of itself is beautiful. Watch the promotional video:

I have a confession.

This is something I usually don't tell people, because it's, well, embarrassing. It kind of goes against everything I stand for. But enough sweeping this little problem under the rug and pretending it doesn't exist, I am reclining on this couch figuratively standing up to admit, here and now, that I am a black woman who doesn't know how to braid hair. And I would very much like it if someone taught me, because there are a lot of cute hairstyles I could do if I knew how to add a cornrow or two.

*begs you not to take her Black card*

So I'm Taking this Class Called Diversity in Black America

And any of you who has been paying attention knows that recognizing and celebrating diversity within the nebulous group of peoples labeled "Black" in this country is a matter of utmost importance to me. We come from different places (or kind of from nowhere/everywhere), different socioeconomic backgrounds, we have different cultures, we have myriad interests and tastes--we're just as multifarious as any other groups of people. ["Multifarious": adj. meaning "having many different parts, forms, elements, etc. Studying for the GRE is a bitch.] Monolithic representations of our peoples are so last season, you know? 

[Related reading if you're not a regular reader: Tyler Perry brand monolithism, on being black and different, why Awkward Black Girl is awesome, on colorism, on others' perceptions of my blackness, on identity v. solidarity, on being Black and Woman simultaneously, on being Black and non-Christian] 

So when I saw that Imani Perry, who is kind of my academic idol (young, hip, studies fabulously interesting things, gorgeous, fashionable, curly-hair-wearing, social-networking-like-a-boss), was teacing a class this semester called "Diversity in Black America," you know I signed up for that with a quickness expeditiously. I'm more excited by this class than I have been by a class in a long time, and I'm hoping I'm not let down by it. 

I really really wish we were reading this, but as it doesn't come out until two days before the semester starts, I doubt we will be. Whatever, I'm going to read it. Yes, I've become one of those people that reads scholarly works for/by/about Black people out of pure interest/for the fun of it. bell hooks is up next on my reading list, and this will be after that: 

 “If there are thirty-five million Black Americans then there are thirty-five million ways to be Black. There are ten billion cultural artifacts of Blackness and if you add them up and put them in a pot and stew it, that’s what Black culture is. Not one of those things is more authentic than the other.” ~ Touré, Who’s Afraid of Post-Blackness: What It Means to Be Black Now  

"Post-Black" as a term doesn't sit well with me, but from that tiny glimpse it seems as though he's referring to Post-narrow-conceptions-of-what-it-means-to-be-Black, which I plan to spend every day of the rest of my life fighting for. And Michael Eric Dyson is an incredible orator, very orotund and impetuous (loud, clear, and passionate), as I learned at Yale's 2010 Black Solidarity Conference. Maybe I'll love it, maybe I'll get pissed the fuck off become livid, but either way I'm excited to read this.

I Co-Sign this with the biggest pen I can find:

"I am past the point where I have any patience for people telling me how I should feel about how black women are presented in the media. Especially people who have never walked a moment, much less a mile in the shoes of black women in America. And before someone decides to break out the face paint & do a documentary? Let me tell you right now that a day or a week or even a month in makeup won’t touch what it’s like to hear from birth that you are worth less than every body else because of you hair, your skin, your culture, your history, & your gender. You know, all those things that make you human? Yeah, the message we get is that we’re not really human. We’re beasts, we’re Mammy, we’re bedwarmers, we’re everything under the Sun but people who are valued & valuable. Well, we’re valuable when we can be exploited by someone else, but pearl clutching ensues when we want to profit from our own labor.
Black women have a reputation for being strong that is sometimes helpful & sometimes harmful. We do our best to survive everything that gets thrown at us. We fight the messages, we teach our kids to fight the messages, but it is 2011 & I am still seeing books, movies, TV shows, & articles lauded for explaining exactly how much less we are worth than everyone else. We can’t even tell our own stories without having to argue over whether or not we’re qualified to speak. If we’re silent others speak at top volume until we are rendered down to Mammy, Jezebel, or Sapphire with no room for reality. When we do speak up suddenly we are too loud, too angry, too confrontational, simply too much. Even when we whisper, we are doing it wrong, but trust & believe we will be heard whether anyone else likes it or not. We are women. We are black. We will not stop speaking for ourselves. Get used to it or get the fuck out of our way."

A PSA From A Loud Angry Black Woman -- Originally posted at The Angry Black Woman

I'm so conflicted about whether or not to see 'The Help'

On the one hand, sisterhood! friendship! standing up for what you believe in! stories that haven't been told! a movie about Black women! 
On the other hand, though, yet another tired old film about Black people whose lives really are interesting and meaningful, but made so only through the intervention of a benevolent White woman! (The Blind Side, anybody?) celebration of Black women's stories as long as they're told from a White woman's perspective! making people feel like the conditions of 
oppressed minorities weren't (aren't) so bad!


Some people are telling me I'm making too big a deal about this. That there are [much less successful] movies and books about Black persons who stand up and tell their own stories. That I shouldn't look at these things as Black v. White, but in terms of other divisions, like religion or class. That I should see the patronizing White female savior as really just a friend like any other friend, and not pay attention at all to all the privileges she has over her Black female domestics "friends". That I should validate her for working against societal expectations by caring about these Black women. Or, my fucking favorite, that Hollywood isn't about historical accuracy or truth-telling, but rather is for entertainment purposes only, and presumably has absolutely no societal responsibility to speak of. That it somehow shouldn't bother me that, with few exceptions, the most widely popular films that feature or are about Black people offer those characters little more than belittlement and backhanded compliments. Self-sufficiency and positive narratives are few and far between.


I'm terrified that this will someday get shown/read in history classes in high school, and be taken as an accurate representation of what life was like for these women. NOTHING GOOD can come of members of a dominant group writing the history of members of a marginalized group. Nothing. So when someone asks me what I expected from a White woman's telling of the story, I say this: that I expect White people to finally learn that maybe they shouldn't be trying to tell the narratives of Black experiences. But alas, they will never learn this, because this book was wildly successful, and the film most likely will be too, because unlike when a Black person tries to talk about a Black experience, this appeals to White audiences [sugar-coating history has a tendency to do that]. 


The friend I'm arguing with on Facebook [I hate Facebook arguments] raises the incredibly valid point that the representations of Blackness coming from within our community are arguably worse. I agree 100%, a la the post immediately prior to this one, but that just means I'm not going to stand for either one.


My friend says the only way to change this is to go out and do something about it, instead of just bitching about what's wrong with the images we're being presented with. Again, I agree 100%, but we have to recognize that if a Black woman had written a novel about Black women's experiences as maids in the South, it would be relegated to the huge pile of "African-American literature to be ignored by the general public unless one has a very progressive high school English teacher" and the idea of a movie deal would be laughable. So, as I am not a filmmaker or a screenwriter, but an academic, all I can do is talk about why I don't think these images are acceptable, why I don't think these movies will do anything good for anyone (except put money in the hands of the people who made them, and making wealthy White people feel less guilty--which I'm pretty sure is only beneficial to them, not to the people of color and/or in poverty who could use a program or two that might be created [or, at the very least, not ripped to shreds] by people who have stopped recognizing that guilt is entirely appropriate). Maybe wanting to hold Hollywood to some level of social responsibility is naive of me, but how can we change the dominant cultural perceptions of a community if only narratives that perpetuate those perceptions are allowed to be seen/heard?


I suppose I have to see it now that I've talked so much shit about it though, huh? Damn.

SOMEBODY PLEASE TELL ME WHY

Tyler Perry is getting his own television station. WHO THINKS THIS IS A GOOD IDEA?! WHO?!?! I would like to know so I can go personally slap them, on behalf of advocates of social change everywhere. Because tell me, please, I beg you, tell me one good thing Tyler Perry has done for a Black person anywhere (his-worth-$350-million-self not included)?

Some of you are going to say he's funny. Some of you are going to say he's funny because he exaggerates the truth. Some of you are going to say he's funny because he tells the truth. I say he tells stories that he wants y'all to think are funny because y'all think they're true. Because okay, sure, I'm sure people like pistol-in-one-hand-Bible-in-the-other Madea exist out there in the world somewhere. I know that there are cracked out mothers and histories of abuse and family members who will tell you to sit there and take it. I have experienced black churches like the ones he depicts. Scenes that have taken place in the living room on House of Payne have taken place in real people's living rooms, I know. I KNOW.

But what I know more than any of those things is that there are MILLIONS of Black peoples who are nothing like this, and I am SICK AND FUCKING TIRED of this same monolithic image of the Black community being shoved down our throats and the community responding by placing the shover on a pedestal! He's like the new millenium's version of shucking and jiving, and I'll be damned if I sit back while we let him portray this slice of Blackness as THE truth rather than A truth. I'm going to try to list all the vicious stereotypes that I think he's perpetrating and, even worse, getting Black folks to identify with and internalize.

1. The class war between African-Americans is real, and middle/upper-class Blacks should be demonized. 
2. Relatedly, all middle/upper-class Black women should realize that men of their own social/educational status aren't "real men", and should fall in love with/marry blue-collar men.
3. A Black woman cannot be strong without being angry/violent. 
4. Relatedly, Black women are consistently in trouble with the law. 
5. Light-skinned Black women represent all that is good and right with the world, and dark-skinned Black women are inherently problematic. 
6. Dark-skinned Black women are inherently unattractive and sexually undesirable.
7. Thin, White, blonde womanhood is the ideal standard of beauty/femininity/desirability that all women must imagine themselves as exemplifying to have any sort of self-respect.
8. Womanhood is a role that can be appropriated, belittled, and dramatically over-emphasized by men for the enjoyment of the masses.
9. There is no such thing as a traditional family amongst Black peoples.
10. African-Americans who are not practicing Christians should be ostracized.
11. Known history of a criminal past or past dependence on drug abuse should have zero effect on whether you choose to let someone [back] into your or your children's lives.
12. Dark-skinned Black men are liars, while light-skinned Black men are saviors. 
13. Gay Black men are "on the down low," having unprotected sex, and spreading HIV to Black females.
14. Physical, psychological, emotional, and sexual abuse are normal, standard elements of life as a Black woman. 
15. Black men are the greatest threat to Black women's health/lives, but also our only possible saviors.
16. Black peoples should leave all their problems to divine intervention.

That's what I came up with off the top of my head. I could probably keep going, but I have more posts to write. 

I will admit that there is most likely a grain of truth to each of these statements, but only in so far as you add "some" to every mention of Black peoples or any subset of Black peoples, and that you recognize that those same such "some _____" statements can be filled in by members of ANY SOCIAL GROUP IMAGINABLE. But no. We are presented with these ideas solely in terms of Blackness, and very specific "types" of Blackness at that, types which are marketed as being the end-all-be-alls of Blackness. There is no counter-narrative here. Awkward Black Girl ain't got a TV show. 

So let's go back to the question, what good has come out of this for Black peoples? Maybe a few more Black women got tested for HIV. Maybe someone somewhere got the courage to leave her abusive relationship. Those are good things, yes, but do they have to come at the expense of demonizing and even-further-marginalizing subsets of an already marginalized people, widening gaps and strengthening tensions that already existed within the Black community, and silencing the voices of other sections of Blackness? I think not. Are any of the SIXTEEN DAMAGING IDEAS I just listed doing any good for anybody? I think not. IS. HE. FUNNY? I think not. I think he one of the most problematic Black men in the country, and at a time when I was just bemoaning the death of the Black sitcom/Black family show...this is THE OPPOSITE of what we need. I am thoroughly unconvinced any good will come from this endeavor. Someone stop the madness, please! 

Black and Different Unite!

So y'all know that my blackness relationship to the dominant cultural narrative about what blackness is is something I struggle with. And while the Black Princetonian community definitely makes me feel less jarringly out of place than do/did most of the other interactions I've ever had with peoples of African descent--let it be known that I LOVE my fellow Black Princetonians, even when I don't feel like I mesh well with the group--I've never really totally been able to shake that puzzle-piece-that-got-wet-and-now-just-won't-fit-no-matter-how-hard-you-try feeling. (Something along the lines of I can stand strong with the group in a discussion forum like a BSU or PABW meeting, but Idgaf how popular the dance is, I will never portray any part of my body as "stanky". I can seek/give advice to fellow naturalistas on campus, but I don't believe in God. I feel like parts of me are both the thesis and the antithesis of the norms of our community, and so I've come to a happy medium with one foot in and one foot out.) So after getting internally frustrated trying to totally Black-ify my life for two years, I joined an eating club and Sustained Dialogue and have finally started to have the rainbow coalition of friends I'd always wanted. Again, nothing new here--I've talked about this before. 

What I really really love discovering, though, as I brought up yesterday in my post about Awkward Black Girl, is that out there in the interwebz world exist lots of other people who feel just as torn between their true selves and what the world wants their "Black" selves to be, people who want to change the narrative, people who get the vibe from other people, both Black and non-Black, that their racial validity is being questioned. Part of me wants to call this the rise of those who get called "Oreo," but I'm positive it's broader than that. [Side note: it wasn't until Sustained Dialogue this year that I heard the terms Banana and Apple (see definition six). Blew my mind. Also part of the reason I really don't want to limit my thesis about racial identity on campus to Black students--there are all kinds of tensions and derogatory in-group names I was entirely unaware of.] Some call us "awkward". Some call us "nerds". Some call us "bougie". Maybe we're all of those things. Maybe we're none. What we definitely are, though, is Black. And here, in large numbers. 

These two articles on the subject made me smile today:

Excerpt One (though I don't support other Black Americans trying to threaten my race card either--if anyone should recognize a broader interpretation of Blackness, it's us): 

"It's one thing when other African-Americans try to threaten my race card, but when people outside of my ethnicity have the audacity to question how "down" I am because of the bleak, stereotypical picture pop culture has painted for me, as a Black woman? Unacceptable."  -- Issa Rae (aka AWKWARD BLACK GIRL HERSELF), from The Huffington Post

Excerpt Two:

"My experience of surprising White folks has continued my whole life....the near-hostility from non-nerdy Black folks has been the most painful....So, I have tried to be Black in stereotypically recognizable ways....American people of all races have a hard time acknowledging the complicated ways that blackness exists...Some of us just want to be free to be our complicated Black selves and kick it however the wind blows." -- PhyllisRemastered

Another thing that made me smile: a black staff member here at Lewis, who I met at a Fields Center event and is leaving Princeton for Northwestern, called me "Sista" when he was saying his goodbyes. I love getting called Sista. Makes me feel like the person addressing me recognizes that I fit despite all the ways in which I am not normative.