Evil Tongue

Melancholia Needs (white) Women

2011-12-31T15:43:00.001-05:00

I am not a film studies type, althoughI was once married to one. I also was once best friends with someone(a different type of “ex,” I suppose) in graduate school. When she got her Ph.D., it was not awarded in cinema studies, but it probably couldhave been. She read the journals and books of that field for "fun." Both of them introduced me to ways of thinking about movies while taking me to films that I probably never would have known about, let alone viewed.

I do believe that I learned enoughfrom them both to know that I should be impressed with Melancholia.I know just enough to know that I understand why Lars von Trier'slatest can be called “hauntingly beautiful.” I know enough toknow why his visuals and characters have film critics/cinema studiestypes all atwitter...um, I mean all aflutter. I have been taughtenough to understand that the film has multiple and complex layers ofmeaning and insider “wink, wink” references (most of which Idon't know, but know are there. They always are in this type of work)to those who are the “real film people.” And I also read enoughartistic crowd gossip rags to know that von Trier is considered bysome to be “a hot mess” (to be catty) and/or a long sufferingbrilliant depressive (to be hagiographic). And yes, I know thatserious cinema studies folks would never use the term “hot mess,”that is unless they were writing reviews for Gawker,I suppose.

I amnot going to recount the story nor the filmic wonderment thatsurrounds the film here because there are professionals that do itmuch better than I can or ever really want to. So dear reader, if youwant to know more about the details, you know what to do...

This one is forthe lovers (and the haters)

So itis with this acknowledgement and recognition of what the film and thedirector himself must certainly mean for those who love themselves an irreverently glorious cinematic production, I offer up that vonTrier's Melancholia is perhaps one of the smuggest, foulest, but emblematic films of theearly 21^stcentury. I say this because what it represents, what it “does,”and perhaps most maddening, in the unspoken assumptions that it makesabout the nature of human beings by offering up filthy rich whitefolk, and white women of that class, in particular. Given that Melancholia follows his extremely controversial Anti-Christ (genital mutilation!!!!! of/by a white woman!!!!) or even his other "misogyny-laden" films is extremely important. Melancholia may be lower on the "educated white people offendo-meter"scale, even if the director himself is not. But this dynamic actually makes me even more convinced of the total ignorance that viewers have about how offensive this film and their reaction to it is to those of us who are not in the educated white people category of viewers.

Just as those who have asked, "Why does von Trier hate women so much?,"or "Can you believe that von Trier is so racist that he was banned from CANNES!," I cannot put my views aside, as I think about the film and how it is being reviewed both by lovers and haters, and just let its“beauty” wash over me. Because I do not see it as beautiful. I cannot. What others see as beauty, I see as threat. To embrace the film's cinematic glory would be in some sense what the maincharacter, Justine does at the end of the movie, when she goesoutside at night and basks in the Melancholic blue light with her alabasterskin, rosy, perky nipples, flattened white stomach, and blond hair. She is taking pleasure in that which has plunged her into the deepest, debilitating depression and that will kill her and every living thingon earth. Yeah, I get it. It is supposed to be some kind of reference to some kind of Germanic visual style. Yet for me, I cannot bask in that which torments me, asJustine does.This is the ultimate bourgeois privilege and strategy.

In my case, my big teal planet is the painful never-ending self-denial of the love and dependence onwhiteness as “normalcy” from those who would be the first toargue that they do not personally base their sense of themselves and the world in such beliefs. It is not even hypocrisy, it is something that I have yet to find the proper name for. And so, my personal "melancholia" is born from the symptomatic assumptions at the heartof Melancholia the movie thatgo unmentioned and unnamed, as the film works its magic on its audiences. I have come to believe that Melancholia may be one of the best examples to date of theanti-revolutionary nature of quality “film making” today. Its subliminal hidden message is not intentional. In fact it is not that it is pretentious, but that it instead offers up what seems to be a critique of all that is white, privileged and smugly 1%ish. Yet what it really is, is a testimony, to the very narrow understanding of how educated white people today are continually seduced by their own "new" allegedly self-reflexive whiteness.

BeforeI started writing this, I tried to find some reviewer who was makingthe argument that I want to make here. And so despite lacking the“proper credentials,” I decided to write this so that any otherperson searching for a discussion of the horrible gendered racialpolitics at the heart of Melancholiawill find something. And the lack of any discussion of this is whatis so striking to me. How can it be that a film that is receiving somuch review/discussion/buzz really not be read in any kind of waythat even begins to mention race beyond von Trier's alleged sorta self-hating anti-Jewish racism? Why is it that in all of thereviews I have looked at and conversations I have heard thatabsolutely nobody has suggested that this film is indeed the ultimateode to idealized white womanhood, albeit in "undercover form," thatcontinues today despite what many believe to be the post-racial era?

Try to imagine Serena Williams, postor pre cosmetic surgery in the role of Justine. It wouldn't work. It can't work. It can only work because of the assumed "beauty" that Kirsten Dunst's body and her fine "acting" gives us. Melancholia at itsheart is embedded in the unquestioning contemporary hot, sexy, frail,crazy ass bitch white womanhood of privilege (and her mirror image,the protective, competent sexless white mother...) construct thatdespite Brazilian Buttlifts, Maya Angelou poetry lovers, or CLR Jamesspecialists, is still taken as the marker for universal humanity and beauty. Or at least when it comes to THAT kind of beauty. I am thinking of the ways that the film Precious was reviewed as being lushly, hautingly beautiful as well. But we all know that is a DIFFERENT type of beauty, right?

That this aspect of the film has not been even casually mentioned, let alone bluntly put in thoseterms, is telling. Instead, many a piece has been writtenlooking at the film and its two parts as being both women's film and critique of bourgeois realities ANDscience fiction (whee together at last!). No need to ask about whichwomen this film is supposed to be appealing to and no need toaddress the critiques of race in science fiction narratives, such asthose that have come out of the Afrofuturism Movement. I imagine thethought bubbles: Yeah, that stuff is important, but von Trier'sMelancholia is ART,dammit.

Muchlike the psychoanalysis that is invoked/contested in much of filmtheory, the reviews and discussions of Melancholia that I have encountered are pretty much blind to, or ambivalent about, matters of dominant acceptance of white privilege as normal. Blind to the fact that afilm, about what happens when 1%er white women and their men deal with living in non-religious end times, is so firmly rootedin white privilege that it is simply... “bourgeois.” But is itthen, bourgeois is simply whiteness? I think it is much morecomplicated than that, as would most who love the film would argue intheory, I would imagine. In fact, von Trier himself admits that the whole thing issupposed to be a “little cheesy” with regards to the wedding andthe wealthy lifestyle that is presented. Shooting fish in the critique of bourgeois barrel, I suppose. Thus easy enough for audiences and reviewers totake pleasure in that bit of knowledge and observation that they know. It is a critique, but not too much to make it obvious. Enough to allow for wonderful intricate subtleties and frame-by- frame analysis to link the critique of privilege to the state of the world, and probably in many cases the quotidian life of the viewer albeit on a less wealthier scale.

But inpractice, as is seen in the blatant lack of discussion of race withregards to the film, whiteness and the bourgeois, the ability to truly address and rattle the audience with a study of the desire and fear that must be at the heart of the depression of the privileged white class is not such an easy thing to do. And not even bad boy von Trier can do it, that is even if he wants to, which I do not believe he does because he is blind as well. I wonder if von Trier'sstory instead involved slighty cheesy white privilege beingdestroyed by angry non-whites and the ensuing madness (as in “crazy”and as in “angry”, but I also know that the two often areintertwined with no hope of detangling) of white women, men, andchildren of the privileged classes, if the beauty of it all would beso haunting or beautiful to the audience?

I could go all culturalstudies and write about the blue planet and the melancholia that isso much very a mental disorder of the privileged white woman of thebourgeios class, but I won't. I will offer that the reviews thatdo not address the racial politics of the film are themselvesdelusional or rather reflecting the denial that pervades bourgeois/white (whatever the hell you want to call it) society today. What we get in some sense, are reviews and analysis that is much likelooking through a telescope focused on the moon in all of itsglorious detail while the rest of the universe (and any rogue planetthat has hidden behind the sun and is coming straight at us) is outof sight and out of mind. Or rather you know it is there,threatening and menacing. "Hey! Look at those craters! No need toreally pay attention to this larger thing because you are entranced by the moon. The focus is on the moon. Don't you get it? because the focus is on the moon afterall."

Yes. I get it.

Grownass intelligent humans taught in Western traditions know very wellthat this type of “part for whole” thinking is problematic, but it is of no matter when it comes to movies like Melancholia.And this is why the film is anti-revolutionary. It is the filmicequivalent of the “I am not racist, but...” qualifier that thesedays is never said quite like that among the educated artisticcrowds, but is instead implied in various versions of philia andphobia that are seen with the naked eye of just about any non-whiteperson with an ounce of observational skills. And so for someone likeme, who understands why “people” are beguiled and moved by thefilm, I continue to find myself cringing days after seeing thefilm and watching the gushing (or even harsh critiques that actually make mention of gender and privilege) go on all about me.

Sometimes I hate you so much

I knowI am NOT the target audience for the film and so what I write abouthere is not the standard take. I know this. But it is exactly becauseI can recognize what the film is to those who are the target audiencethat I do not call it boring or the worst film ever. In fact, I wouldsay that the film and the reactions to it, created a visceralreaction and revelation about contemporary whiteness andthe cultural politics of race more than just about any other film I have ever seen. I said ever. I thus put Melancholia in the same extremely significant category of films as TheHelp. Not because both might beconsidered “women's films,” but becausereactions to both are moretelling about the state of race politics than perhaps the filmsthemselves. (I am working on a larger piece about TheHelp, so I only mention ithere).

Becauseall of the focus surrounding the director's words at Cannes earlierthis year in which he made comments about being sympathetic toHitler and also being a Nazi (awkward, juvenile humor with theadded twist of coming from a non-native speaker of English speakingin English and ultimately characteristic of the little boys thatgrow up to be brilliant depressives/”bad boy geniuses”...I canmake politically incorrect statements too), I believe few, if any, have looked at the complicated racism that von Trier's obvious and ongoing treatment/critiqueof bourgeois 1% life thrives upon.

Somuch of what I have seen with regards to the film in the context ofany kind of obvious “racial” light has been in the context of theCannes incident and not the film's melancholic 21^stcentury 1% er white women depressives. And again, this focus explicitly and implicitly takes on particular meaning and culturalform because the overwhelming majority of those who will see thefilm are white or “near white” people of relative privilege—thetarget audience. I loved watching the footage of the Cannes gaffebecause of the way that the “brilliant” Kirsten Dunst is seen squirming as she knowsthat von Trier is committing brilliant genius creative "white person in the public eye" suicide of the highestorder. It is perhaps fitting that this white woman cum lust objectwith the palest skin of just about any actor today, is visiblydisturbed as the Jewish (well sorta) director does not do the “Hitler was thevilest person on earth” thing. Perhaps the brilliant Dunst sittingthere does not realize that her “career breakthrough acting” (Iwould offer that I am not sure she was really acting in the film, butinstead basically playing herself) is not so far removed from theglory of whiteness that she seems to think she is so far removedfrom. And again this is why I label the film, anti-revolutionary. Itdoes not challenge white supremacy. It emboldens it. What the filmreveals more than anything to me, and the praise the Dunst herselfhas been receiving for her acting, are the cringeworthy desires andfears of the white bourgeois classes that are at the heart ofmelancholia, both in the movie and in the contemporary realities of the“disease” itself.

Madat Manderlay....um I mean... Melancholia

Themuch discussed and beloved/hated dream vision sequence opening is an excellent place to start totry to explain in more detail what I mean. After I learned later on in the film the Justine was an ad woman, I knew that my very first reaction was probably an intentional one on the part of von Trier. To my jaded eye. at least at first, the opening seemed like the kind of ad campaign that Justine would assuredlyhave developed. The reference to advertising and the backdrop of the "European castle," that any casual reader of WWD or Vogue is well-conditioned to expect in high fashion willmost assuredly be part of larger film studies journal articles of the film. But for me, while others have written about being movedor experiencing a kind of stunning uneasiness in the opening scenes, at first I kept thinking that it alllooked like a mid-1980s Ralph Lauren ad that had suddenly gonehorribly goth.

Yet the longer it went on, the more my amusement began to turn into a more sickening feeling. I will admit that I felt asif I was becoming violently ill, physically and mentally. This is not anexaggeration. As I sat in the darkness, as a black woman of “somebourgieness,” I felt an assault on my very existence. This is not hyperbole. How many moretimes, I thought, must I be asked to sit and suspend my ownself in order to ignore the feeling thatdarkness is evil and light is beauty, as I stared down at my owndark skin. This was no Mulvey-esque female gaze. I have seen throughout my entire life countless numbers of films in which the subject matter did not include black women and been irritated or even outraged.

This was and is something totally different. Melancholia at this moment in history had the power to make me ill, literally. I thought to myself: How can I look at the thin bodies of these women, Claire and Justine, andDunst's milky white breasts in particular (offered up as lust objectsfor the “thinkers” in the audience who would never admit that they are mesmerized by them throughout Part 1, else they will be committing a sin equivalent to von Trier's Nazi gaffe) and not want to scream: “Don't you realize how fucked up you are and how fucked up you continue to make all of uswith your obsession with “whiteness” as beauty and darkness asevil?

Those moments for me were indeed that simplistic, that complex, and thatviscerally strong. What I was being bathed in in that theater was notmelancholia or depression. Or perhaps it was, as I sat there watching as everything that I imagine myself to be, both physicallyand mentally, was being villified. Now even days later, I imaginethat my reaction to the scene and the rest of the film was similar tohow black folks viewed Birth of a Nation,Parts 1 and 2. It is funny that as the film continued and I saw Justine's further descent into "melancholic" depression that my own emotional reaction continued throughout the film. I was uncomfortable physically the entire time. My head ached. My breathing was labored. I felt ill.

Forsome readers, this may seem like an overblown reaction to scenes thatare not supposed to be at least on the surface about race or whiteness, and you may believethat if you must. But know that this feeling was quite real and verydisturbing. This was an experience that I have never felt with anymovie, or at least not with this intensity. I believe that this was indeed in part because Iknew the larger multiple contexts in which the film and the director are embedded, but it was also because I realized that I was reacting to the layered worshipof whiteness in that opening, that continued throughout the film. As I think about it now, I believe I reacted in ways that I know were embedded in centuries of collective memoryand struggle--a non-melancholic approach of dealing with that whichwould kill you/drive you mad, if you let it. And the going mad bit would never really take the form of being allowed by society (or yourself) to become a helpless depressive.

Where is the review by the film professional that will help me out here? Where? Dammit, where?

“Is everyone in your family starkraving mad?”

If there was athought bubble (instead of a feeling bubble) over MY head throughoutthe rest of the film, it was this: I am supposed to feel sorry forthis spoiled white woman who cannot bear to go on? For real?

As I noted above,it is hard for someone like me to take the film as beautiful cinema, birds falling from the sky, insects crawling out of the ground, and electricity being zapped from fingers aside. And againin this sense perhaps von Trier's comment about being able tosympathize with Hitler needs to be mentioned again here. People werestunned and outraged. I am outraged that I am supposed to not find Justine, in particular, both laughable andoffensive.

I believe that whatwe are seeing play out in both the first and second parts of the film, Justine's and Claire's stories alike, are representations of collective abstract and concrete realities ofwhite womanhood and privilege that are simultaneously beingchallenged, and championed, throughout the film. But the ways thatthey are being challenged do not go far enough to unsettle theaudience, but instead work to bolster the dominant psychological“preference” for whiteness and white womanhood in particular. Formany viewers (the target audiences) they most certainly can identifywith and/or want to fuck the principal characters. For many viewers, I would imagine that they are able to identify/see themselves orloved ones in the film. I think it is probably easy for them toimagine the horrors of the situation of knowing that the world, as youknow it, is about to end. But in this case it is the unimaginable planet crashing into earth scenario and not nuclear holocaust or the very probable reality that we humans are self-destructing with no intent of stopping until the earth is dead.

In that sense the “novelty” of thinking in theseterms of the “what would I do in that situation” kind of thingadds to the praise the film is getting, I am sure. But I also find itstrange at this moment in time when there is much talk and resentment about the increasing divisions between thewealthy and the rest of us that the brand of whiteness offered up inthe film is most certainly beyond that of all but the less than 1% ofpeople that will see Melancholia. And this again is where Ifind the gushing over the film cringeworthy. Justine is seen as aheroine in some reviews because she dares to question her life as amarried woman and seems disgusted or at least uninterested in theover the top expensive wedding that her brother-in-law (whose sourceof wealth we never quite learn) has paid for. But her intense helpless depression and eventual spiritual acceptance and detached strength are just as characteristic of the tropes of white womanhood of the privileged class, but seemingly are seen as "positive" in the film and in reviews.

What goesunspoken is that the film “works” because Dunst's pale, thin whitebody and pushed up bosom (allegedly huge according to the actress),blond hair (mysteriously short after her wedding and the first horseride--a true sign of “madness” in films is always the infamouscutting of the woman's long hair), and simultaneously perky, lusty, cheeky,crazy, brilliant, frail, needy selves are showcased throughout thefilm. And it works because we see her “perfect” life and“perfect” body fail as she falls into deep depression. And itworks because her “uptight” dark-haired sister who has been“bewitched” by her husband's wealth, according to their yogaloving mother, is so angular, wrinkled, and lacking of vitality. So frigid and anxiety-ridden, and thus so capable in handlingeverything, including her sister and her own husband until almost thevery end. And so ultimately for the film to REALLY work, you as the viewer have to buy into the idea that no matter what your take on Justine's life and behavior, herbody and life are “ picture perfect” or at least "could havebeen," if it wasn't for that pesky Melancholia.

Poor Justine.

The whiteness of itall is there to be analyzed, but again, not enough. And so viewers of both the skilled and unskilled categories can deconstruct, read, andreread the film and its meanings without ever really addressing orconfronting their own beliefs and desires which are embedded in thenotion that whiteness and its pointless destruction really are primary to the universal nature of humanity. Despite Justine's final burst of “emotionalstrength, ” it does matter that Dunst and her body and herpersonality throughout, from depressive to wise calm AuntySteelbreaker are the lust objects of geeky white men and the envy ofthe cigarette and skinny latte women in the audience. And speaking ofaudiences' expectations, can I just add that I kept waiting forJustine to be glamoured (which does not bode well for the man who plays my favoritevampire from True Blood)?

Could non-whitewomen of little privilege act like Justine and Claire do? I thinknot. But could von Trier make a “beautiful film” about such womenand make it “beautiful?” I think not to that, as well. And thisis interesting given the “breaking news!!!!!” (like somebody needed to write this) in The Daily Beast just this week about the sad state of roles forblack women in film. I would argue, as have others, that given this ongoing quality cinema focus on whiteness (and whiteness of the wealthiest persuasions in particular) as the perfect “neutral” backdrop for “hauntingly beautiful”or “threateningly ugly” cinema, that it should come as no surprisehow dramatic roles that don't involve being a maid, prostitute,welfare mother, or BBF (best black friend cum magical negress) for non-white actresses arefew and far between.

And so those whohave history of depression, melancholia, or anxiety in the audience (including the infamous white women on Prozac who make up themajority of those who use the drug and its cheap generics) are leftto identify with Justine when she offers up that “I smile and Ismile and I smile.” Or they are able to see themselves in Claire'sfinal wish for things to be “perfect” at the end and imagine that they would want to drink white wine on the terrace, as the planet crashesinto the earth (The magic cave cum Arts and Crafts naturalistic“wigwam” that Justine creates instead after calling her sister's idea bull shit to “protect them” deserves itsown blog entry with regards to the assumptions made by von Trier andhis audiences about its more noble savage primitivism). The critique of Claire is indeed supposed to be the final blow to thewhiteness that has been allegedly going on throughout, I believe. The film by this point is supposedly a critiqueof the wealth from a series of one, two punches that are far too easyand blatant at the end of the film to be truly effective or even believable. But I honestly believe that vonTrier has no clue as to just how offensive this is in thefinal part of the film. If he did, I don't think he would care. But I don't think he or his audience really understands.

To be honest, Iprefer the poor, little, rich, white girl version of Sandra Dee'sSusie in Imitation of Life to what is presented inMelancholia. And speaking of which, may I also add that it isinteresting that when a white man, Little Father, instead of a strongmaternal woman of color, is portrayed as competent hired help that the dimensions and expectations of what the help should be providing to the protagonists changes tremendously. He is not anything more than a mindless worker and not a fount of spiritual guidance or knowing eye-rolling. And again I am reminded of Sirk's Imitation of Life when Claire, right before the destruction of earth, is concerned becausethat Little Father has not come to work for the first time and isuncertain if he has family or not. This is another one of thoseheavy-handed, "Oh, my God! Rich white women are so self-centered”feel-smug moments in the film. And again, quite similar to anotherrich white woman in Imitation of Life (one of the finest "women's films" ever, in my estimation), Miss Lora, who is shocked to know that herlongtime black maid actually has FRIENDS. Does von Trier know thisline? Perhaps it is one of those nods to melodrama thateven I, the non-specialist, but lover of Imitation of Life is able to see the knowing wink, wink. Maybe. But here too, I prefer MissLora's version of troubled white womanhood to that of the women ofMelancholia and that includes the aforementioned causticmother/mother-in-law.

Lars von Trier is nobody's Douglas Sirk. That is for sure.

In the end, I, asthe infamous strong black woman, am the most sympathetic to John, the wealthyhusband. Up until the very end, he is the one that must make surethat everybody is okay, in monetary and emotional terms. He has expectations that what he does will be appreciated, but secretly inside knows that it will not. I know thathe is not supposed to be somebody that we sympathize with. And so perhaps this is more than just amatter of personal preference and “placing oneself” in the film on my part. If I play the "how would I react in this situation" game, I imagine that I would react like him, as someoneraised with a strong sense of how black women must always hold ittogether while dealing with tough situations. I would act a great deal like John. I was taught that there are ones that will hold it all together, even whenit all seems pointless and hopeless and there are ones that won't or can't. But for a black woman there is not going to be a wealthy sister and her butler or agitated but permissive wealthy husband and understanding nephew to have your back as you have your breakdown. There simply is no other choice,even when faced with the “blues”while your world crumbles around you.

"All that is for white women," I was told and continue to be told. Wedon't have time for that.

And so we, non-white, non-privileged, learn to deal with our lack ofbutlers and huckleberry jam gobbled straight from the jar, by finding comfort in food or devoting ourselves to spiritual beliefsystems that were taught to us during slavery. Or we hold it all in and continue tohold it down as best we can and continue to keep everybody, including ourselves, from falling apart, with love andwith “toughness.”

Those of us who look at these emotional performances and responses to the unimaginable in Melancholia with this perspective cannot help but to wonder to ourselves (and me to you, dear reader) if what we see the white women of the film doing is indeed a luxury or a curse that we will never quite understand (but never ever take as "neutral").

And so in thatsense, perhaps it is not ironic, that the one character in the film that I have the least trouble with is the same one who commits what is portrayed as a“cowardly”ultimately selfish act of committing suicide in the barn with his horses (who themselves have come to accept and not fight the inevitable). When we see him, the barn is full of light and he is almost in the fetal position there on the hay. He has not died a pretty or noble death. He is not hauntingly beautiful. The throbbing sound of the approaching planet seems muted for a moment. He will not die in a earthy wood structure of magic. He looks pathetic, but not pitiable. He did not linger and suffer. He does not even stick around to try and be there as the pillar of strength for others. As the man of science and capital, he does not come to some kind of spiritual enlightened self-reflective, but detached acceptance nor does he try to figure out what Luxury Home Magazine would suggest is the right way to die as Melancholia annihilates the planet. He in some sense did both the unthinkable and the predictable from the perspective of today's "self-reflective/self-reflexive" white audiences of privilege.

As audiences and critics alike continue to rave about the glories (or not) of von Trier's latest work, I truly wonder about the state of cinema today. Separate but not equal does not even come close to describing how projections about the true nature of humanity and the possibilities for our collective future are played out and seen in our cultural productions of the "highest order." I am reminded and given some comfort by the words of Lena Horne who assuredly would have some choice words for Lars von Trier and his audiences:

"It's not the load that breaks you down, it's the way that you carry it."

Down with Polly(w)anna

2011-11-26T20:44:00.001-05:00

“What you’ve got is basically the reluctance of white Americans to date and to contact members of other ethnicities, particularly African-Americans,” he said. “We are nowhere near the post-racial age.”

"Love, Lies, and What They Learned ," NYT , 11/13/11

The opening line of the article seduced me with that perpetual, anthropology as, "yuck it up factor" --that is used all too often in the NYT. Yet another use of the trope of "contemporary Margaret Meads" studying the primitive ways of the exotic others known as us. It of course caught my eye and so I kept reading, waiting for all the other things that I have learned to smugly think, "I just KNEW it" to myself when I read these types of articles.

So I slogged my way through. I know that the culture and personality school of anthropology that Mead helped to make central to American culture (despite the majority of work being outlined in the article was coming from psychologists) is often used to ground work about sexuality, "mating," and "dating" for "Barnes and Noble Savages" like those that read the Sunday NYT. The usual arguments and research methods that I would expect about this kind of research were indeed there. I actually wasn't even having much fun, tearing it apart. There was however the interesting stat that almost 70% of same sex couples had met online between 2007 and 2009, compared to 21% of het couples. I was thinking about that as I made my way through the usual suspects/conclusions. And then as I kept reading, I got to the middle of the piece...

I came to the section "Guess Who's Not Coming to Dinner." The quote above is from that part of the article.

A quick note about the other parts of the article: Each of the subsections come from popular culture cutesy references. So "Truthiness" (from the sardonic The Colbert Report) and He, Said, She Said (a "cute" romantic comedy chick flick from 1991) are on either side of the section about race. Those sections of course are about "lying" and differences between what men and women (het again) look for in their online dating choices.

Those sections are a bit comical. And so I continue to think it strange that this very nasty truth about the way race works in the world of online dating, in which white people as a category don't come out looking so good, was treated so seriously in the text, despite the "fun" of the rest of the piece. But the more I thought about it, the section was operating much like any other discussion of race in polite white society. Race is always seen as a bit of sobering downer from all the "fun" of not thinking about race. I know this all too well from personal experience. I have imagined the thought bubbles that should match the conversations that I have been in over the years: "Will I /Did I say something that makes me look racist? " "Hey, why can't I just ignore race and have a good time?" ****Which ironically, may be part of the reason why white online daters avoid black people online, but I am getting ahead of myself.

And of course the original 1967 film from which "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner" comes, was a blend of comedy and serious interracial love/marriage discussion that still can make audiences uncomfortable. And I know this because I have shown it for years in various classes of mine. In case you are not familiar with the Stanley Kramer "gem"/classic, Spencer Tracey and Katherine Hepburn play the earnest liberal West Coast white folk whose daughter ends up bringing home her saintly black doctor fiancé, played by the strategically nonthreatening Sidney Poitier. Hilarity ensues with plenty of touching moments about the bright new future of racial harmony in the USA. It is useful to point out that there have been various remakes, including the 2005 film in which Bernie Mac and Ashton Kutcher turn the upset father and earnest fiancé race roles upside down.

But in this written version of the title, as subtitle, in the article on academic studies of online dating patterns, there is nothing funny for the author to even try to make use of. The irony of the comical tone of the rest of the piece seems lost on her. In six paragraphs we learn that despite the earnest beliefs of many, race still very much matters online when it comes to dating. So for instance, 80% of the time, white people initiate contact with other white people and that only 3% of the time do they initiate contact with black folks. We also learn that despite all their open-mindedness that they report to others and may actually believe themselves, white people just aren't into black people when it comes to online dating contact (I can steal lines from romantic comedies too). We are not talking going on dates yet even. This is just responding to others online.

And what about black people?

Black members were less rigid: they were 10 times more likely to contact whites than whites were to contact blacks.

What to make of all of this?

My first thought was: So much for that $$$$ making argument about black women being rescued from their collective plight by marrying white men. I joked on Facebook that I was tempted to write a grant (NSF-funded just like one of the dudes profiled in the article) to subsidize research among all these white men that are being called upon to rescue black women like me, but who won't even respond to a "wink" on an online dating service.

It was tongue-in-cheek, but it is a serious question that I unfortunately have plenty of personal experience with. Not with the online component, but actually the real life versions of white men and "me," as a black woman.

Despite that fact that I married a white man and before that "went out with" white men, it was not nearly as many times as one would expect, given my background. I am one of "THOSE" types of black women. Comfortable enough, knowledgeable enough, "presentable enough" for polite white society that if there was to be any type of chance for dating across the color line, I have been an excellent candidate for the new "race doesn't matter" America. I was just a young preschooler in the late 1960s. I was perhaps the first generation of American children in which we were explicitly told that race didn't matter anymore. You don't get from The Civil Rights Act to President Obama overnight. I grew up/came of age during those almost 50 years. In primary, junior and senior high school, I knew that on top of all the various struggles to be popular and attractive that girls were learning to participate in and deal with, I had that added extra bonus of almost always being the only or one of two black girls in my grade or as was the case in high school, one of only two girls the entire four years. I learned how to operate in white culture, but I also learned that despite the older black football star and his white girlfriend who he eventually married, things were not quite the same for the smart black girl when it came to "boys."

Given my time at Arizona State, expat life in Japan, and being a doctoral student at Northwestern, you would imagine that I would have been the queen of interracial dating, especially with regards to grown up and educated white men. But guess what? Nope. Now you can blame this on "MY" personality, but I am pretty sure that what was outlined in the "research" above was just as true in real life as it is online.

I have always had lots of white male friends. In fact, I would guess that I have had more white male friends, both long and short term, than any other "demographic." But these friends and acquaintances, despite many charged moments through the years and often before they became good friends, have given me a glimpse into the truth that the research about online dating indicates.

Straight white men, and I think this still is true across every age demographic, just are not "that into" black women. Or let me say that for me at least, there have been plenty that were curious if the darker the berry adage held true, but even then, it was done in a kind of hush, hush way. It is as if most white men, who have the most privilege of any group of men in the U.S., will not allow themselves to be connected to a black woman as anything more than a "Friend" out in a group or a "good friend" to hang out with. It is I think because for many of them, unconsciously, the thought of losing that privilege is something difficult to face or perhaps even acknowledge to oneself.

I sadly have more than one story of things getting very, very close to "moving to the next level" and then BAM, the white male friend coming up with a very heartfelt and logical explanation for why "we" could not be more than friends. Some of the times it was said without any prompting by me. Other times I raised the question, speaking frankly about what I knew to be true, that there was a level of attraction between us that we could no longer deny. Not that I wanted to marry these men or have their children when this moment would arrive, although a couple of times the white men in question mentioned the "what about the children" in the context of interracial dating without any prompting from me. It was as if their minds were fast-forwarding to their future as husband/life partner of a black woman with black children (or mixed as they often liked to say) and any lust and attraction left as quickly as you can say, "Imitation of Life."

Some of these friends are still my friends. We all have moved "on" and I don't begrudge them anything. Was it "me" or was it ME being black? I do think though that I was always open to the possibilities in ways that they never were, even though any black woman who has dated/married a white man knows just how hard that can be as the black woman who is the "traitor." And as the black woman who must face the sisters and mothers of the white man. Those are always the hardest. The sisters and the mothers.

And so this may be the reason why both online and in real life the majority of white men (who make up the majority of online daters) are hesitant at best and vehement at worst. They have no experience with the stares, the explaining, the ostracizing, the needed daily strength to ignore and keep on keeping on that will come from being the salt in the salt and pepper love team. Or perhaps they don't just find black women attractive, either physically or "culturally." Although we all know that "blackness" is as wide in phenotypes as the day is long. And I wonder too about the specialty dating sites for white men interested in dating only black women. Did somebody say, creepy? What exactly are you looking for and expecting if you limit your dating choices in such ways? "I just love BLACK WOMEN!!!!" I would run like there was no tomorrow (to continue the use of time metaphors) if I ever encountered, which I unfortunately actually have, a man who said something like that at any time that I knew him. It may be very well true that "once you go black, you never go back." But that is not flattery, it is fetishization.

For those white men who do cross the color line and who take on a more "I don't care what people think" attitude or perhaps have no clue what they are signing up for, good for them. However, just as I have run from the I LOVE BLACK WOMEN, I have also run from the "I DON'T SEE YOU AS BLACK. YOU ARE JUST A HUMAN" as well. It all does indeed look and feel the same (sorta) in the dark, but unless it is a sex/booty call thang, then race will always matter, but will not and should not be the definition of a happy colorline busting relationship.

Which again brings me back to the idea so popular now that black women are foolish to not be pursuing non-black men, but especially white men, for their dates/mates. Despite the universal one or two successful black woman/white man interracial couples that everybody seems to know or know about, and the various famous white men/black woman couples that every black woman can list, I imagine, they really aren't that numerous. As a former beacon of hope for the white man/black woman couple, I can say without hesitation that we are few and far between and that to assume that it does not come with problems that are inherent to the white man/black woman rarity is naive. I read some statistic somewhere or the other that interracial marriages have a lower divorce rate than same race marriages. I am not sure why that might be, but I don't think it is because things are "easier" for those in interracial relationships.

And to keep saying, that it is black women that need to open up to the prospect without addressing the truth that the white men who are allegedly just waiting for us to finally become more open-minded and receptive (like them?) really aren't interested, perpetuates the "blame the pathetic black woman" trope that is offered up by such a wide variety of interests today. Much of this is indicative of the problem of racialized sexual politics that was woven into the fabric of this country from the very beginning (and anywhere that Europeans ever sailed to and planted their flags and oh yeah... spread their seed, most usually in the form of forced sex with native and non-white women).

This is not to say that white men are to blame in all of this, although it takes a better person than I, to not at least want to know what an earnest white man would say in lame defense of these statistics and my personal accounts.

It is to say that despite all the talk of the glorious post-racial world that the U.S. is supposedly becoming (still using "dating and mating" as a primary marker of the status of race relations... Could I suggest that we seriously address the voyeuristic nature of interracial dating/sex that just is plain more "sexy" and interesting to folks than other markers of race mattering...like say income/wealth, education, crime, environmental issues, prison sentencing, and health--both mental and physical? ), the issue of "sticking to one's own" remains very much on the white man's plate. This is especially the case when it comes to white men/black women relationships. Not every black woman wants to date/marry a white man for sure, but it is clear that we aren't going to be encountering too many "takers" if we do, online or not. Although Ashton will soon be "free," I have heard.

Eat up.

Out of the evil came something of good

2011-11-21T12:36:00.001-05:00

Nevertheless, out of the evil came something of good,—the more careful adjustment of education to real life, the clearer perception of the Negroes’ social responsibilities, and the sobering realization of the meaning of progress (W.E.B. DuBois, The Souls of Black Folks)

If you are my FB "friend," you already know that I have been going back to DuBois a great deal over the past few weeks. The reasons why are, as is often the case with me, both professional and personal. And that kind of artificial dichotomy's existence really is, to an anthropologist of my ilk, a complete joke. And if you aren't my FB friend you may wonder why I write so much about race. If you are reading this and thinking.... "man that is ONE angry black woman who won't let race go" this may explain or at least give you a reason that probably won't change your mind, but will tell you why I agree with you that I am angry, but don't probably agree with what you think about losing some of that anger.

I suppose I wanted to explain why the DuBois fest is going on and why I am "so angry" and won't let it rest. It was DuBois and then Malcolm X that helped me make it through my high school days when I was the lone spot of color and then also my undergraduate days when I was one in a sea of many spots of color. I have mentioned this before here. I always had issues with the gender in both of these men's texts, and alas FAMU had no critical black feminists or such courses for me to take. So I made my own way through the classic economic texts that I needed for my major. DuBois and Malcolm were under my pillow night after night. My secret lovers. Soothing my soul. Since those days, I have read countless numbers of articles and books, heard hundreds of lectures and keynotes, and even contributed to the study of race in America my own damnedself. But I have come back to DuBois at this moment in my life, as he seems in all of his incarnations, the elder that whispers to me in my ear. Not that it will be okay, but that it is right to continue to see truth in what I see and feel. And also, in how I imagine how I think about my future as human and as "intellectual." I read him now from this position in my life and many of the things that moved me to tears and intellectual action when I was a young woman still do, but there are others that strike me in ways today that I could not have imagined back then.

It is DuBois' Darkwater that is most powerful right now. It is a beautifully written book. No matter what others may say, for me it is his masterwork. There is no Tyler Perryesque or even Spike Leeesque black manhood's take on the current state and future of the race. There is discussion of his career, his marriage, of beauty, of the universality of the promise in young children's future. There is even discussion of the realities that white slave masters in the U.S. were the only ones during slavery that without batting an eye sold their own children, women they "played house with," and their own half-brothers and sisters time and time again into what they knew was pure hell. It is not enough to say that that was back then and times have changed. It was only two generations removed from me and now three generations removed from my own children.

I have read this soul-shaking book over and over again in the past few weeks: a guide for what type of production of knowledge that I, without apology, say matters most to me right now. The imagery and detail moves me deeply as I think about my own ancestors and the world in which they lived as depicted through DuBois' lens. I can read it and see much of myself, or rather see much of my cultural intellectual heritage and where my critical thinking ability comes from. Unlike DuBois and more like Malcolm and Booker T. Washington, I and my people were "up from slavery." But no matter. Although the quote above is from the more famous Souls of Black Folks, I want to point out some of the reasons why DuBois and especially Darkwater is back with a vengeance in how I look at both my own and "my people's" future. But why now?

In Darkwater: Voices from Within the Veil. DuBois shows a great deal of disgust and disappointment in the society which for his entire life he is rightfully critical. It might very well be called autoethnography today, but what strikes me so much now is that he wanted to show white people what black people across a wide spectrum were thinking and experiencing "behind the veil." Granted this is through his lens, which he notes throughout his work (what social scientists would do what he did at the time in which he wrote?). He writes about his own privilege as a young black man (may I add here perhaps inappropriately that it is the pictures of DuBois during this time that I girlishly gaze at him and dream romantically) and then returning to the U.S. after traveling in Europe:

And then—the Veil. It drops as drops the night on southern seas—vast, sudden, unanswering. There is Hate behind it, and Cruelty and Tears. As one peers through its intricate, unfathomable pattern of ancient, old, old design, one sees blood and guilt and misunderstanding. And yet it hangs there, this Veil, between Then and Now, between Pale and Colored and Black and White—between You and Me. Surely it is a thought-thing, tenuous, intangible; yet just as surely is it true and terrible and not in our little day may you and I lift it. We may feverishly unravel its edges and even climb slow with giant shears to where its ringed and gilded top nestles close to the throne of God. But as we work and climb we shall see through streaming eyes and hear with aching ears, lynching and murder, cheating and despising, degrading and lying, so flashed and fleshed through this vast hanging darkness that the Doer never sees the Deed and the Victim knows not the Victor and Each hates All in wild and bitter ignorance. Listen, O Isles, to these Voices from within the Veil, for they portray the most human hurt of the Twentieth Cycle of that poor Jesus who was called the Christ!

This is still relevant to me right now in 2011 as my own life on this earth is certainly more than half over. Is that the good that came out of the evil of which DuBois wrote about from personal experience and intellectual vantage point in Darkwater? Is it that DuBois' writing still gives me comfort and hope, just as do the unspoken and unwritten collective tools of survival that black folks in this country passed on and that I pass on to my own daughters. Even though there are numbers, many of whom I share a "skinship" with that say that I am wrong for still finding comfort in and sharing such life lessons with my own children?

At this point in my life, I have realized that this is what I too have been trying to do academically and personally. Stupidly, clumsily, with lots and lots of mistakes made along the way. But never ever with any regrets about speaking the truth from behind the veil, as I see it. This desire to be a voice that makes a variety of white people uncomfortable is not "ME," as I selfishly thought for some time. It is me channeling a long history of "US."

It is what I believe drew me to both DuBois and Malcolm X and continues to bring me back to them. These men who I do not necessarily fall in love with when it comes to gender and sexual politics still resonate. But it is their struggle to give their true and richly textured examples of what the voices are like behind the veil that I loved so much, then and now. It is the "gift" that those of us colored non-white, but who grow up as the spot of color among whites as children, are forced to learn in order to survive. Or rather it is, to build upon DuBois' famous Double-Consciousness concept, only one of the many strategies that those of us most intimately familiar with polite (or not so polite) white society can choose, as our way to live our lives. Other voices from behind the veil exist most assuredly, then and now. But I read DuBois now and know that what he writes still unfortunately, but luckily for my mental health, still is terribly true.

The question as to why race matters so much to those of us, across a wide variety of historical, class, and geographical contexts (not to mention gendered) is still relevant at the end of 2011. Especially when today, so many others of "us" ignore, downplay, or outright believe that it should not be paid attention to because it only serves to bring "us" (or rather them as "individuals") down. On the surface it would seem that many of us have made it, thus bringing to life DuBois' other most oft quoted talented tenth. And this is of course where the elitism that DuBois has so often also been criticized for comes to light.

Yes. Being Black in America (CNN's vomit inducing series of the same name must be noted here too) today is no longer about blacks with or without college degrees being relegated to domestic service. Yes. Being black in America is still very much about the wholesale waste of an almost entire race of people in this country. The blame once again (or still?) as was the case when DuBois wrote Darkwater has shifted back to the people and not the system that now capitalizes (literally making money AND/or academic careers) on the real suffering of an entire race of people.

So again for those of us who have seemingly been able to make it to the ranks/class of being black in America in which white Americans can point to us and say, "See! Things HAVE changed", at this moment of tremendous change and shift in the economic, cultural, and political symbols (and lived realities) of the U.S., we are collectively standing at a crossroads for our people.

Do we believe the veil is no more or do we follow DuBois' lead from almost a century ago and to let our voices from behind the veil be heard? Do we tell through a blend of personal and theoretical pain and love for our people (yes OUR people, not YOURS, despite the knowledge that we really are all one race) what we really and truly think and experience? Or do we do it in the terms that are expected and accepted, critiqued and studied by white people: music, THE black church (whatever that is), black nationalism, spoken word, dress? Even when black writers/intellectuals speak from behind the veil it too seems to conform to the expectations and never ever makes white people uncomfortable--or at least not in the ways that DuBois was able to do in Darkwater.

Reading it now, I still shake my head at how he does not hold back, and even by today's standards, not many black writers/intellectuals would be "allowed" to write as he does, and remain "respected" and not considered a fringe divider instead of a "we are the world hopeful uniter." Cue up Michael Jackson or Rhianna for the masses and Miles Davis or Monk for the sophisticated (or both for the cultural studies types). In the form of extreme black nationalism, such writing would be acceptable and even studied and written about with detached analysis or lots of "not too much" self-deprecation. Television series for the PBS crowd and documentaries for the film festival crowds would be made about those especially angry (just like white supremacists!) with such public displays. Such voices are indeed only really permisible from "extremists" or "comedians" today. And I would add that the best case of this may still be the classic SNL episode from over 20 years ago that features white people calling and paying for being yelled at by a black man. The white married heterosexual couple seemingly is getting off by being told (for pay) just how racist they are. This is of course something that is comical for many of us "friends of the white race" exactly because of what our shared cultural history tells us and what our own present life histories have shown us.

Yes. The voices that are the most unsettling today are usually comical or "artistic" social commentary. But what about non-comical/non-artistic social commentary? Perhaps it's relative absence is a result of the success, if you will, of the fetishization of blackness and its profitability for everyone who is able to use their own positions of power and influence (or shrewd business sense), no matter what their color, to make their claims, big and small to channeling the voices of blackness behind the veil. And thus this does make it harder to be as critical and honest as you might like to, as someone from behind the veil, because you are seen as just being plain angry... because there are so many blacks and non-blacks offering up interpretations of the voices from behind the veil. And yes, I believe that this is even perhaps more difficult today than in DuBois' time exactly because of the commodification of "black" culture and "black" voices. And again to underscore this is not to say that it is limited to large scale capitalistic endeavors, from professional sports, to artwork, to world famous scholars. But take exhibit A:

There is a white boss lady character in one of my favorite web series right now, The Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl. The episode that I link to begins with a few painfully funny contemporary seconds of the view of what is behind the veil of many of us who are no longer limited to being cooks and domestics, porters and shoe shine boys.The BL as she is called, is proof to me that there is indeed a way to blend comedy and creativity in ways that move beyond buffoonery and that still speak to those who may be the children of DuBois and not yet realize it or lay claim to such a heritage.

Yet what room is there in this new lifting of the veil for old skool folk like me? Not quite hip and funky anymore, but not ready or willing to become the go to negro who can tell it like it is, in the terms that make white people (and an increasing number of blacks and other non-whites) comfortably outraged? Quaintly angry? Increasingly falling into the role of the crazy old soldier that refuses to let it go.... Can we not just keep alive, but push forward the notion that there is still a need to recognize the ongoing evil and the hope that we can raise our collective voices for 1) more careful adjustment of education to real life; 2) the clearer perception of the Negroes' social responsibiilties; and 3) the sobering realization of the meaning of progress? Number 3 is probably the good out of evil that society struggles with right now, while I believe living in Detroit at this stage in my personal life it is Numbers 1 and 2.

Yes, we have come a long way and much of what DuBois writes about in particulars is no longer true. But far too many of the particulars, especially with regards to the education of black children and young adults, still exist and in some cases may even be worse. Worse because of the general worsening of the U.S. economy and the continued exploitation of black people for the creation of wealth and status for a wider range of "everyday people" today. All while we are told to stop being so dammed angry and let the grudges go. Or to make money out of it by becoming entrepreneurs.

Those of us who want to write our true take, which is in this moment seen as being too mean, critical, with an axe to grind, ANGRY, and "uncivilized" (all of which have been said to me or about my work either directly or indirectly over the years) is more of a problem perhaps than at the time of Souls and Darkwater. The unspoken truth for us behind the veil who dare to say what we see, observe, and feel, when we of all people are supposed to be happy for what we have been allowed to achieve, is that we are seen as the uppity negroes of yesteryear revamped. Psychologically disturbed. Not healthy. Not healthy. The cranks. I would add that DuBois lived far longer than any of us today ever will. This is not to say that being angry and vocal will not take a toll on you, but it does say that it does not mean that you won't live a long life either.

We all are obviously caught in some sense between DuBois' era and this new one in which being black and writing about black people OR being white and writing/making a living from black people, black struggles, black poverty, blackness itself (oftentimes with the help of real live black people that will never ever be given their proper due) is a strategically smart thing to do careerswise. I would go so far as to speak frankly from behind the veil and point to the ghetto pass that comes from dating, marrying, or reproducing blackness, as well. The pass comes not just from other whites, but oftentimes given the nature of sexual politics and multicultural identity as proof of "being down" also from blacks themselves. Go on with your bad self, Kid Rock. But this is not a diss at interracial relationships, obviously, and especially since other "voices" have "bravely" written that today black women (and by definition their children and the future of marriage for all black people) can save their souls by actively dating white men. As I have not only dated, but married across the color line, I am perhaps hyper sensitive about the power of the ghetto pass for whites (and the idea that I am supposed to be less angry, instead of a more angry black woman, given my personal lived sexual politics and life history). But I truly believe all of this is oftentimes done with the most sincerity that any white person can have. But I also believe that it is the rare white person that can do any of this and transcend the reality of the "souls of white folks." I encourage you to go back and read any part of Darkwater and you will see, dear reader of the evil tongue, that DuBois himself reads as "too black, too strong, " still today.

I hate them, Oh!I hate them well,I hate them, Christ!As I hate hell!If I were God,I'd sound their knellThis day!

Is there a way to bridge the gap between these two ways of thinking about what is behind the veil (or even better yet, still arguing that the veil exists)? Will the misty eyes that look at DuBois' brave attempt to speak truthfully and most assuredly painfully to white people and American society (and most thankfully to be a voice that was in hypercritical dialogue and direct opposition with that of Booker T. Washington's?) die out with my generation? The question as to why DuBois was so angry then seems easier to answer than to understand why somebody like me should be so angry today. But I would argue that angry black men and women today continue the legacy (and by no means do you have to be a so-called public intellectual to be "angry") because like DuBois we want to rattle those that so smugly imagined themselves to be "friends of the Negro" and who dared to try to "understand" the Negro. Not because we are evil, but because we are still justifiably very angry on behalf of our people. And we know that DuBois believed that blackness was just one version of colored/non-whiteness. DuBois mastered the accepted ways of writing and behaving for polite white society, but he threw that mastery back in the form of beautifully written, not at all funny, not at all expected, and terribly unpretty critiques of evil.

The realities of the effects of that evil (and its continuation) are still here. We know this because grants are awarded, careers are made, and art is created on the premise that blackness is a "problem" (how could I not mention the problem in a post about DuBois?). This is of course a joke that DuBois himself, I hope would approve of. His political life especially at the end of his life aside, I would hope that I will reach the end of my own life and be able to feel that out of the evil something of good came from not only what DuBois saw, but how I can say as did he:

Here the absurdity ends.

I blame Joe Tex

2011-09-13T03:11:00.001-04:00

I know a lot of men are gonna be mad at me for sayin' that

But I got to say it again

I said, A woman's hands

Just weren't made to work hard

All the time

Spotify has changed my (working) life. The soundtrack of my past is quickly becoming, through the wonders of early 21st century online music listening, the soundtrack of my here and now. And thanks to Spotify's deep deep vaults of music "on demand," I heard a song that I had not heard in years. It was an important one and I never really knew it until a few days ago.

Since I got my Spotify invite earlier this summer, for the most part, I have been listening to the songs of my twisted 20s and 30s. Songs and artists that I had long forgotten and did not realize until recently how they perhaps pitifully helped me to define "me" when they (and I) were fresh, young, and... FINE.

But long before Spotify, when I was in my mid/late 20s, I went through an earlier version of reliving. Back then I "borrowed" a lot of my father's huge collection of LPs. I stole some of his classic clothes too... (a leather jacket that I wore throughout my grad days... nobody ever knew it was my dad's classic 60s power coat). He was too busy working to even really notice they were gone. When I left for Seattle, I snuck them back into his collection. I don't think he ever noticed. For real. But during that time, I was rediscovering/ remembering the songs from my very young childhood. The disks and tapes (8 track.. yes... 8 track) of Etta, Ella, Nat, Marvin, Sam, Peaches and Herb, Al Green, Curtis, and just about every artist that EVER put out any music under the Motown label, and tons of ones that I never had heard of too. A phase perhaps?

Note: The next retro phase I went through was actually an obsession with Billie Holliday. But how many moody/surly/hip graduate students DON'T develop at least a momentary obsession with Ms. Billie? I would crank up my turntable in an era of compact disks (but as anyone who knew me then knows, I was also spending too much of my little money on the latest stuff too) and bemoan my tortured intellectual existence.

As is clear from my last few entries, I have been thinking a great deal about my mother over the past year, although she has been dead for 6 years. And since the last entry about her thoughts on living with racism was just a few days ago, I suppose I kind of naturally wondered to myself what music she liked back when she was much younger than I am now, when she was in her in her late 20s or early 30s, Fresh, young, and ... FINE.

The most beautiful woman in the world to 8, 9, 10 year old me. Before the stress of her "good life" began to be truly visible on her body and in her face. Looking back at her life, I realize that while she was being the most beautiful, smart, and open-minded mommy in the world, she was also playing the role of Strong Black CAN DO ALL Superwoman then, especially then. This was the time before my grandmother came to live with us and helped to lighten my mother's load. Today, I look back at all those times that she came home, prepared dinner (or ate what I prepared as I got older and was expected to cook), and collapsed on the couch. I know as "feminist" that she was tired and worn out from the struggles of being a working mom in the 1970s.

She had a long commute from our "American Dream House" to her job and worked many long hours of overtime, so that we could have a "good life." It meant lots of stuff and opportunities/experiences that I was grateful for, but in true spoiled kid fashion, that I took for granted. The times when I didn't were when we would travel to Detroit. I was always so happy when our car passed the Big Tire as we headed West. Detroit in the 1970s was well, Detroit in the 1970s. I will also admit that I was resentful during those "middle years." I wanted a mother that was full of vim and vigor like all those TV moms and the more common stay at home mothers of my classmates (whose fathers' professional salaries must assuredly have been more than my two parents' combined).

But now I get it. Granted, I got it when I got older and started thinking in terms of sexual politics and household economies. But now, personally, I really get it. I know why I spent way too many nights trying to get her to move from the couch to her bed night after night. She looked so uncomfortable. She would wake up a little to tell us to go to bed and then we would get ready and I would turn off the television, straighten things up and go to bed. I wonder today if she was waiting for my father who would get home at midnight, on top of just being dead tired. My mother would have been 29 when I was in 4th grade. I look back at 29 and think how young. But back then even though my mother was always upbeat and full of energy during the day, her daily life was wearing her down. I look back and I know that she was worn out, with my father working 2nd and/or 3rd shift, my brother being my brother, and with her working as the hard working spot of color, but least educated woman in her position. There weren't many black women working in that job and still aren't today. I never saw my father cook, wash, clean, or do any domestic/reproductive labor. Granted he worked as hard as she did at his job, but there was no double-shift for him. Even as it was happening, I promised myself back then, that I would never cause her trouble. Good student, no trouble. Good daughter. Never any trouble at all. And I would learn to be upbeat and energy-filled too.

Unlike my father, my mother was not an audiophile. She liked music, but could not sing. I mean really could not sing. She was probably the worst singer I have ever heard. But she always sang loudly in church..." God gave me this voice, so I am going to let him hear it."But with Spotify at my fingertips, I started thinking... What was her favorite song back then, when she and my uncle would have been debating about the north vs. the south. And it came to me. "A Woman's Hands."

Joe Tex. "A Woman's Hands"(1965)

I heard this song a million times as a little girl of 4, 5, 6, 7, 8...faint memories that have now, thanks to Spotify, been magnified to a level that is surprising in its power. I am sure I heard it a ton of times on an 8 track tape for our many car trips from Illinois to Detroit, but I would imagine that it was also on an LP that my father would put on at home when I was a little girl. It is a song that is far too ingrained in my head today for it NOT to have been played a great deal. I remember my mother's horrible voice singing along to the song. I can hear it now, if I close my eyes. I can see her in the front seat of the brand new fancy car that my father always had to have (3 years and it was too old) and that her money helped to buy. I can see her "good hair" smoothed into a chignon. I can see the back of her neck and a white dress that may or may not have been the one that she is wearing in my favorite family picture of my mother, my father and me at age 3, almost 4. I can smell her perfume/ cigarette/coffee blend that was the scent that I came to associate with being loved. I can see her singing and weepy in the front seat, as "her song" plays. "A Woman's Hands" was a song that I guess I always associated with sadness. And I am sure it was before I even understood what it was about. I had seen my mother cry more than once when it came on.

Actually it was when my mother came for a few days, right after I had Roxanne, and she did not yet know, that she would be dead in a year, that she told me, "You know, I always loved that song, "A Woman's Hands. The first time that I heard it, I always thought of your grandmother (her mother). She worked so hard and every time I heard it, the song made me cry." (I remembered. But I didn't say anything to her then). She was talking to me as she was getting ready to drive back to Chicago with a promise to return after she retired in a few weeks. She was telling me that she hoped that I would not have to keep sacrificing and working hard so much. She said that it hurt her to think of me as working too hard, just like it had hurt her to think about my grandmother working too hard. "Sacrifice." I just looked at her. I had learned from the great master.

So with Spotify to help me, I tracked down the song a few days ago. I played it and immediately was floored and not for the reasons I had imagined. The song both offended and explained a lot to me. And in doing so, it made me wonder about its effects on young evil tongue, just as I wonder about the effects of the songs and programs that my own daughters encounter again and again during these years when they are learning gradually how to see their place as young black women in the world.

Joe Tex was probably a major league narcissistic sexist, if you look at his list of titles and personal history. He is the Joe Tex of James Brown feud (over an ex-wife) fame, of "I ain't gonna bump no more with no big fat woman" and "Skinny Legs and All" fame. Both songs are fine examples of how old-fashioned soul was not exactly looking to rework "traditional" gender tropes. And so, although his song might seem to be an ode to the struggles of all working class women in both the paid and unpaid labor sectors, it was not. It was really a proto-rap song in the tradition of what women should do for men, while the men make sure that they want for nothing. Men show love through providing. Women show love by "loving" and pure selfless devotedness in the home. This is what they were made for. Tex was modeling the perfect heterosexual relationship for my mother and her generation, and their children (my generation). And so women weren't made to work hard or "worry their minds" but instead were made to spoil their men, take care of their men's children, fix them food, be their servants. They were made to use their brains to entertain their men, and try to keep them smiling. This is the song that made my mother cry and that she mentioned to me when she thought I was doing too much.

And so it came back to me. I now actually remember growing to detest that song at some point in my childhood. I had forgotten how much I had not liked it as I got older, as it still kept playing in our home and car, but less, thankfully. The oldies replaced by the music that I wanted to hear. With my ability to remember lyrics for tons of songs (I could always provide entertainment for grownups who marveled at how I knew the lyrics to so many songs... unlike my mother and like my father I can sing quite well), I soon had my own songs that could make me cry. But they weren't about working hard. They were more about fitting in and being the outsider looking in. I forgot that I had grown to hate "A Woman's Hands," but it could not leave my memory at all, as I always remembered that it was one of my mother's favorite songs. Yet I didn't remember anything but the "working hard hands." Funny.

And so as I listened to it the other night, these memories came back. And with them, the question of HOW could my beloved mother have loved this song? But as I thought about her life, working hard and coming home and doing all of the work of "love" for us, I realized that she identified with it in ways that I still don't totally understand, perhaps because I am too much in it, and have been from the day I was born.

My mother and many other black women like her, before and after, longed for an existence in which the things that Joe Tex sings about could take place. Tex starts off the song talking as a man who has learned from a sage elder woman and is remembering her words to take good care of his "own woman." He wants to take care of her because they have been through a long haul together. He says he doesn't want her to want for anything. And so from the very beginning, the materiality of my parents' generation is clearly visible. That generation of black folks, who may have been the first and last generation to truly experience the American Dream, worked hard with next to nothing in a racist world and was able to create a middle class from which people like me (first generation thises and thats) rose to places that their grandparents would never have imagined.

But it was not the total "Dream," as women from my mother's generation were still "behind" the white middle class of their time. Even moving out of the tradition of "domestic work," (my mother started off as a stenographer/secretary and worked her way up, up , up) black women without 4 year degrees still worked very hard. As white women stayed home, black women continued to work throughout their lives in much higher numbers/percentages. Racial inequality with regards to pay alone meant that two black paychecks were worth about one white paycheck during the 1960s and 1970s. Yet many of these women, like my mother, must have certainly longed to be free from having to worry about money or losing of jobs or the lights being cut off or somebody not coming home from the factory or the mine. They wanted to be with a "man" that would let them "just" do the taking care of men and children with no "manly worries."And so as white women were calling for independence, women like my mother just wanted to stay home, rest, and show their love to their families. Or not. MY mother told me once when I was in first grade, I remember it clearly: "I WISH somebody would let ME stay home." This was in response to my nascent feminist calls for women's equality. I had started to cause trouble, I just didn't know it yet. Women like my mother wanted to be taken care of and treated like "ladies" (or in today's parlance, "queens."). Yet my mother, more than anybody in my family I believe, took immense pride in her smart daughter. She never once told me that I would grow up and have a career or go to college. Not one time. It didn't need to be said.

And so my mother heard "A Woman's Hand's" time after time throughout her life and thought about her own mother (and probably her own self, I am sure) who worked so hard outside of the home and then came back home so tired that she didn't have the strength to do the "loving work." I never heard exactly what my mother did to help my grandmother out when SHE was the eldest daughter of a working mother married to a hardworking man (my paternal grandfather who died of Black Lung disease before I was born). But I do know my grandmother came to live with us to "payback" my mother for all that she had done as a girl in my grandmother's household. And so my mother probably also thought about that song as she saw her own eldest and only daughter. She mentioned it to me that one time and never again.

But I don't think my mother, nor I, realized how much that song or rather the sentiment that it put forth affected me growing up. I had not thought about it at all until I listened to it a few days ago. It explains a great deal to me about how many women, and not just me, are haunted by what Joe Tex sings about and promises on behalf of "all the men out there." The allure of being taken care of materially, so that you can do the work of the hearth and serve your family. For many women today that is both a dream and a nightmare that they are caught between, as not just expectations have changed, but the major necessity for women to work in order to maintain a middle class existence, especially when neither of the couple has a college degree. Yet the young me who was growing up in a time period of very public calls for gender equality knew that there was something not quite right about what Tex was singing about, in that song or any of his others. But how could what he sings about not have affected me, as I saw my mother continue to do what her mother had done? And I believe that my mother was crying for herself some of those times too... and not just her mother. And they weren't just tears about wanting to be taken care of. She was not a feminist, but she raised one. She knew. She knew. And so the question is: Where do we learn to make such choices and priorities and have such desires in our lives? It is most assuredly in blurry, yet distinct, memories (remembered consciously or not) of songs, images, smells, experiences, and the times in which they are embedded that fuel our own realities and conceptions, especially as women of my generation. The historical contexualization for our childhood was race, class, age, and sexual politics in an age of potential revolution and change.

So bring on the madelines.

And shows like Pan Am, Charlie's Angels, and The Playboy Club for Fall 2011. Shows that follow Mad Men and other Remembrances of Things Past.

As much as I can make analytical sense of the song (and its interesting place in the traditions of black music in America, black women's culture, and contemporary struggles to maintain a semblance of middle class existence for so many heterosexual households...somebody could write a bad ass article, but not me), it is more difficult to face the realities that the song magnifies for me personally.

And that's what a woman's mind is made for.

Unspoken Sorry Ass Truths

2011-09-10T00:39:00.000-04:00

What I am about to write is not pretty. Not pretty at all.

When I was growing up, and probably like many children of my generation/demographic (growing up as the only spot of color in the urban north), I heard my parents, my relatives, and their friends periodically discussing the differences between being black and living in the north versus being black and living in the south. I remember one such conversation between my mother and my uncle (her brother)-neither lived to see the first black POTUS (with a black father and a white mother... never ever forget that he had a white mother... to say that he had a white mother did not matter subconsciously to white voters of the most earnestly open-minded classes is foolish beyond belief).

My uncle argued that he was so glad that he didn't live down south. He would never live there. Up north, you could work hard and although there were people that didn't like you very much, they basically left you alone. He said this from his position as a man who had, like all of my maternal relatives for the most part, worked his way up from nobody to somebody in 1970s corporate America.

My mother countered that she was torn. Was it better to live where at least the "issues" that white folks had with you and the structural impediments (my fancy pants doctorate words now replace whatever words she actually used) were upfront and there were no apologies or excuses made? Or was it better to live where they smiled in your face and imagined themselves to be above all that nasty race stuff, yet their ignorance of how their behavior reeked of disgust, agitation, fear, exploitation, and/or resentment would be comical, if it wasn't for the fact that you lived with it everyday.

These types of discussions seem so obviously dated now. This is the new America after all. Where we ALL suffer along class lines, no matter what our race, creed, or color. And this is so even with the Tea Party types (who permit all earnest white people to breathe a sigh of relief... Now THOSE are white people with race issues!) who claim to not have race issues and the sizable numbers of black folks of my generation and younger leaving their parents' promised land of the north and going down south because life is better down there than up here now. Come to think of it, I remember my mother remarking to me when my parents drove me to Tallahassee when I left for FAMU, about how the "new South" actually might be better than the "old North" because the white folks down there just seemed to be more comfortable with black folks. I think she was right to some extent. The anthropologist in me can see that we share a lot, urban northern blacks and southern white folks. But really I began with this childhood memory to try to make sense of something that I have been trying to figure out on both the theoretical and personal levels lately.

I do not wonder what it would be like to have a penis. I have no memories of ever wondering, except the logistics of how you stand up to pee. Sorry psychoanalysts, although they would probably counter that I am repressed and therefore have not conscious memory of such lust/envy/fascination. I will admit that I have wondered many, many, many times what it would be like to be white. Not to pass for white. But to be born white. And not just to be born white, but to develop into the type of white person that is so so common in the world in which I operate, but is in such denial of just how uncomfortable he/she is with and around black people (and people of color in general, but especially black folk in all of our varieties). Despite Fanon's falling out of favor with many black feminists, I will confess that I continue to secretly wish for somebody's White Skin, Delusional Mask that would deal with the complicated psychological realities of well-intended (and/or politically afraid) white people in the 21st Century. A book that would include a chapter or two devoted to the thin line between negrophilia and negrophobia, fetish and aversion, appreciation and disregard, love and hate.

What I am describing here is not new. Black folks in America collectively have developed a sophisticated ability that indeed becomes second nature to many of us, no matter where we or "our people" have lived. North, South, East, West. It is a heritage that is at the heart of the trope of THE black experience in America. The "how does it feel to be a problem factor" meets "this bridge called my back" meets " Cassius Clay" meets "Raisin in the Sun" meets " Fear of a Black Planet." But some people (and some of our "own") think that many of us today pay too much attention to the lessons of the ancestors. We are too sensitive. We are too angry. We are illogical. We don't trust enough. We are the problem and not the solution. This is what they say. And the they are sometimes white people who don't have a racist bone in their body... they say... And some of them have doctorates with specialties in and appreciations of African American this, gendered that, and cultural critique that.

Thus the very ability to see things that are indeed there stands in opposition to the denial of those who are at the heart of what we are forced to contend with every day. We deal with these unspoken sorry ass truths by taking offense in silence or even making our disgust known, both of which come with numerous emotional and physical costs in the long term. But I believe that the most soul-crushing and damaging way to deal with this ability is to turn our disappointment and anger back on ourselves, as somebody we thought was "down" and that we may have grown to love says or does something (or a series of somethings) that finally and painfully sets the alarms off. And not just that they do it, but that they deny it. It is the "you've got me all wrong" that makes it so sorry ass, I truly believe. And so no matter what, this awareness born out of and nurtured by the horrors of living as a black person in America remains OUR problem and not theirs. And waiting for the inevitable other shoe to drop or learning to turn a blind eye and say to yourself, "oh, nobody's perfect" takes a toll on us. A toll today, in the tradition of the strong black whatever iconography, that we must pay or ignore, but still deal with. A reality and a truth that means that who and what we are, whether we want it to be the case or not, is still intertwined with having to make sense of a large and varied group of people who say and believe one thing about themselves and are quite proud of it, but whose behaviors, oftentimes done in the name of trying to "help" us, make us question their humanity and their sanity (as well as our own).

I believe that every black adult in America today has such radar (Not gaydar... "earnest bad faith" dar?) which indeed was not needed as much in the down south past of my parent's generation as it is nurtured everywhere in the so-called post racial America of my children's generation perhaps.... Yes. Perhaps. But the varieties of strategies of how we learn to deal with that "sensitivity"(taught by both our elders and through our lived realities) are as numerous as the many permutations of skin tone and hair "grade" that my people also have developed a "dar" for. Whether they get angry, ignore, lose their minds, and/or think that they will be/are that special kind of black person that white people will GENUINELY love and appreciate.

What I write here is certainly true for many of "us"who are not ready to yell to the sky, mouths wrenched and full of disgust: "WHITE PEOPLE!!!!" while beating our breasts and gnashing our teeth. There are so many of us that hope everyday that the alarms won't go off today, but we know better.

Hear me well-intended white people: We work with you, we live next door to you, we push shopping carts next to you, we take our children to your houses to play, we eat your food, we care about you... or not. Yet we are always calculating the risk to our friendships, our careers, our souls, if we speak the truth that you don't want to hear... our version of you that inevitably confirms our suspicions, if we had any remaining doubts, and that turns you quickly into an even more in-your-face version of what you are denying. And we watch carefully, because if and when we do eventually reveal the unspoken sorry ass truth, we look to see how you will show that you are offended and struggle to prove how we got you all wrong. We watch as you conclude that we have no right or basis upon which to suggest that you aren't as "cool," self-reflexive/deprecating, or smart as you think you are, when it comes to matters of race, at minimum.

I am not writing here in the tradition of Cose's Rage of a Privileged Class, nor is it his End of Anger. What I am pointing to is something that is much more like that hideous The Help. A movie in which the plot, while outrageously offensive, hints at the logical reality that black slaves and later as emancipated blacks developed sophisticated toolkits (that radar again or even perhaps a form of DuBois' double consciousness) that allowed them, and which they passed on to their descendants, to see beyond the self-congratulatory bullshit and know to expect angry denial, and oftentimes punishment, for being that uppity negro that dares to "call a spade a spade."

Yes, this ability to see the unspoken sorry ass truth continues to protect and torture us. I wonder. What would it be like to not have to pay attention to this? Or to not even have to make a conscious decision to ignore it? To have no "sense" of it? This would be a freedom that is so foreign to me that I cannot even begin to imagine what it would be like. But would this also mean a lessening of what makes many of us continue to refer with love and pride to those with whom we share a skinship, as our brothers and sisters? And dear reader, if you say, well then don't pay attention to it, and just live your life, (like I do) well... guess what? Your earnest bad faith is showing. This is not a matter for black people to work out alone. You are in this too. You may think you aren't in this, but trust me, you are. Does what I argue here apply to all those other others, racial or otherwise? Anthropologist me says, "Yes, of course." Stratifications intersect. But this is a matter where personal experience, what it feels like, the "psychology" of it, matters a great deal. And I can only write about what I have personally felt.

In the end, I can also only give witness to my own almost 50 years of radar construction, but I know in my heart and from my conversations and relationships with others "like me" that I am by no means even close to being alone. It is obvious that the way I think about my gift/curse is indeed my own pain-filled intellectual and personal journey.

But I still continue to believe that the truth shall (or has the potential to) set you free.

Mama Luna

2011-07-15T11:56:00.003-04:00

I never thought about myself in terms of being a "Moon Child." I always knew that I was supposed to be born in August (those damned Winstons are surely to blame in part for my preterm birth and birth weight of just under 4 lbs). So I always just knew that I should have been and felt more like a "Lion," if I were to believe in astrological "stuff." Me? A crab/moon child? Yeah, I liked to travel, but that was it. The nurturing/motherly/domestic stuff? Oh, no way!

But ironically, since I have become a mother, I have increasingly paid more and more attention to the moon's comings and goings. Shining in on me in full moon glory every month. A sliver in the dark cool sky. Peeking out from behind rolling wispy clouds.

Perhaps it was all of those late night/early morning feedings and diaper changings. All those nights sitting and looking out at the moon, as you tried to quiet a crying baby or looked down at her with motherly love (and hoped that she would stay asleep so that YOU could go back and get a few more hours). You, the moon, and the baby. But even though my babies are now "big girls" and very rarely need me in the middle of the night, I still look out at the moon from the window. Now I am usually at the computer and happen to glance out and see the moon shining through the trees. And our special time together is usually much earlier in the night, but not always. And even when it isn't in its full glory (in all those other phases besides crescent that I learned and promptly forgot in school... bad moon child!), it comforts me in ways that I am sure are no longer just about the many times I sat watching it with a tiny child in my arms.

So it is fitting that I looked out last night and saw it shining gloriously and it seemed especially so lovely. It was simply beautiful. It was in shades of gray and blue that defy description, but certainly not the colors that we stereotypically think of as "glorious moon colors." And last night it didn't even look like that out of scale moon that can oftentimes hypnotise and mesmerize. Yet I remember thinking that it was one amazing moon and staring at it for longer than I usually do. I wondered if we "Moon Children" get the especially great moon during our birth month. But I found out today that it wasn't even full last night. Last night and tonight are a "double treat" because the moon will look about the same on both nights, although tonight is technically the full moon. (Full Buck Moon. Full Thunder Moon.)

So here I sit looking out at the hazy clouds this morning... still hanging around from the early morning rain. And here I also am hoping that they will burn off by tonight.

Maybe I am a Moon Child, after all.

Memories of Independence Day

2011-07-06T14:10:00.010-04:00

When I was about 10 or 11, I asked my mother if having a baby hurt. She sighed and said, "Well, Yes, it does. But God made it so that you don't remember how badly it hurts, because if you did, then women would refuse to have babies and that would be the end of that. You don't remember because the memories need to be softened so that you aren't walking around in shock for the rest of your life. And if you really remembered, nobody would ever do it again."

Spoken like a woman who did not believe in "natural childbirth," but who actually had much shorter labors than I did. She marveled at my ability to "bounce back so quickly." But going back to work 3 days after you had given birth (me) was certainly not the 6 weeks that she had for maternity leave back in the 60s. Welcome to the corporate college campus.

But this week, I was weirdly reminded of that conversation from so many years ago in an entirely different context. I remembered my mother's words about memory and walking around in shock, as I was reading about Tristane Banon's decision to file a law suit against the notorious DSK (his initials like Biggie's are all that are needed now). Was it just a coincidence that her civil case was filed just hours after DSK was released from his house arrest on the other side of that Atlantic? Now it all seemed to make SENSE. He was really just a womanizer and his accuser, a black immigrant hotel maid in NYC, was well... a black immigrant hotel maid (read: scammer, prostitute, here under false pretenses, and hooked up with black drug dealers in prison across the country).

And so Banon self- admittedly watched as DSK smirked on global television feeds, as rumors that the rape charges against him will be thrown out because his accuser is a BAD WOMAN. And Banon also admits that as she was there in France watching and seeing politicians and various pundits claim that DSK was the real victim (at the hands of those horrible Americans) she knew it was time. And that very day, July 4th, Banon, a French journalist much younger than DSK, instructed her attorney to file the papers charging DSK with Attempted Rape back in 2002. Banon had years before reported on television that he had tried to rape her. It had been bleeped out. And at the time of the incident, she had been convinced by her mother to not report it. Yet it is clear that as she sat there watching it all and still going against all good advice it would seem, she decided to do it. And DSK immediately and swiftly countered back with a suit that says that Banon's account is imaginary.

And so my mother's conversation came back to me.

Always there, but never truly gone. Pushed way back, as other painful events replaced it (yes, events like childbirth). But 20 years later, I also realized this week that Banon and I, share something as women that has nothing to do with childbirth, but everything to do with what many women are forced to struggle with days, months, or even years after the fact. I had not thought about my own version of this sad story in a very very very long time. But the memories of it came rushing back, not because of the maid's accusations against DSK, but because of Banon's.

I remembered the debate that young feminist me ran through my mind for a whole summer. I remember the conversations that I had with others that I trusted and that I imagined shared my convictions. It went something like this: Do you report the attempted rape by the powerful man, especially after you learn afterwards that he has a long ignored history of "Bad Behavior?" Do you come forward and state your case, although you know there is no concrete evidence... his word against yours... fearing that he will do it again and learning that he is continuing to do it after he did it to you? Knowing that you have a bit more power and status than his other victims, but even that is not saying much. Understanding that he is a powerful man and as much as people would like to see him fall, most have a lot invested in him and what he represents, and thus also want to continue to see him as a powerful MAN.

Evil Tongue and Tristane Banon?

I have watched the video of Banon on the BBC site repeatedly. I wonder about her American Flag tote bag that I would never carry (Aren't the French supposed to "hate" America and all things hokey like that?) I wonder about her dog which looks large, untrained and exactly what you would expect of a ginormous city dog raised by a woman of privilege. She is blond and skinny in that universal chic white woman of privilege kind of way. She is a journalist/writer. Okay. So I could sorta say we have that in common.

But what we really have in common, I think is this: We both know what it is like to reach a point when you know that despite what everyone says (and probably what you have told yourself as an intelligent woman of some "attractiveness" about how you will survive and thrive) that somebody has to come forward. Not like the Erin Brokovitch kind of come forward. Or even the Norma Rae kind of come forward (Thank Goodness for Hollywood to give us a common understanding of the woman coming forward , albeit in the workplace).

No. This come forward moment, that I think Banon and I share, is based in the anger of knowing that what a man of power and respect did to you was horribly wrong and was more than "just bad behavior."And knowing in your soul that YOU will not ever come close to "lessened pain" until you do what you know you have to, but have been convincing yourself that you shouldn't... for the good of everyone considered.

And yes, that means coming to grips with the memories that get pushed to the inner part of your being, but never ever leave.

Not only can one come to see the ripples that one casts out upon the cosmic waters, one can come to feel them also, sensing the dimensions of self that one cannot see. But out of sight is not out of mind, just much deeper in, submerged within the memories that one chose to put on hold, and as the secret chambers unfold one is reconnected with oneself.

That FB posting from The Floascist appeared yesterday, as I was thinking about all of this. A cosmic signal of some sort? But no matter what the explanation, it pushed me to write this blog entry after so many months of Evil Tongue being cleaved to the roof of my mouth, I suppose.

Truly, I can only speak about myself at this point. Who knows if Banon would read The Floascist's FB post and feel the way that I did?

So few people, even those that know me quite well, know about what happened to me back then, but in re-remembering this week, I now can imagine that Banon's "motives" right now are quite similar to what mine were 20 years ago when I had my own come forward moment.

My moment took place when I was a student. A summer job that I desperately needed and rejoiced at getting. If I lived even more frugally than I did during the regular school year when my graduate stipend was in effect, the job would mean that I could pay the rent and eat. Literally. A job working with materials that I would never have been able to touch, but was assigned to "Hippo" every day. Hippoing sounded fun when it was described to me. In the cool closed basement stacks, and away from the noise of the rest of the library, I was to use a special piece of equipment to suction away the dust and dirt from precious old documents. A huge Feminista collection. Political Pamphlets. Original collections of famous authors... making photocopies for the faxed (yes, faxed!) requests from around the world. It was an egghead's (and especially an egghead with my interests) dream.

But as the trite saying goes, It soon turned into a nightmare. It doesn't take much to imagine the man who would "go too far." He was respected in the library and on campus, in charge of many of the materials that scholars made their academic marks by using. He was a smart knowledeable gatekeeper. He had 4 permantent women working under him. Two of them were his loyal minions who seemed to cower while at the same time cherish his very existence. Two of them were hip lesbians who reflected his disgust at them (covered in a nasty frosting of earnest bad faith) right back at him. All of them white and in some sense unprepared for what would happen when grad student evil tongue arrived that summer.

There was no need for the "master" to come to the cool underground basement to check up on me. There was no need for him to continue to do this, but he did. What he did is something that I won't even begin to explain here. The memories are vivid once more, now that I have rediscovered them. Looking back now, I realize that it all was actually much worse than I knew at the time. But I was younger. Just as angry, but not as wise in understanding just how evil it all was.

I made my decision to "make a formal report" after I learned that the same shit had been going on for years, but nobody had ever come forward to report it. Many of his previous victims (and future ones as well, I imagine) were much younger than I was. He chose his victims wisely. I know this now. I imagine that I was thought to be a good victim, because I had something to lose by reporting him for different reasons than his usual victims. Perhaps he was right, because although I did report it, I lost my naive faith that if somebody said something and came forward that something (perhaps not losing his job, but something) would be done.

I had forgotten the looks from his minions after I reported it. I had forgotten the meeting with his top boss and his condescending "discussion" of the matter. I had forgotten the words of concern and advice from so-called feminist faculty members who asked me, "Are you sure you want to do this, since the summer is almost over and you never have to see him again?" I had pushed all these memories away, but most off all I had pushed away the reason why I did come forward and that I think Banon and I share.

It is based in the anger of knowing that others in power (either as powerful as the man that did it to you...or even more powerful) suspect or even know of his patterns of sexual violation and continue to turn a blind eye, for whatever reasons. Or perhaps he is shrewd enough to know just how far to go and with whom to avoid ever really being "caught." It is based in the collective, but unspoken public memory of all of the others that he has done this (or worse) to and that for whatever reasons they did not come forward. Or perhaps they did and just like your coming forward their "accusations" have been pushed aside for the good of all considered. And this come forward moment is also one in which you realize that you do not even have the "proof" in torn clothing, DNA swabs, or blackened eyes that society expects from its sexual crime victims. And so it is his word against yours. There aren't even the sympathetic police detectives and nurses. Just eyes looking at you and imagining what your unsavory vindictive motives are for accusing this powerful man of something so vile.

A few years ago, I got an email. I had been tracked down. Apparently he was retiring. The email outlined how there was going to be a glorious retirement bash when all of the various students who had worked "under him" were being asked to come back and attend this major blowout party. It was signed by one of his still faithful minions. I stared at her name and knew that she must know who I was, but perhaps had assigned this task to some current student minion. Always young women. Always young women. Or maybe she did it out of spite with full knowledge.

I should have thrown up on the spot. But I didn't. I was sad, but the memories of it all STILL did not come flooding back then. The true pain suppressed to keep you from going into shock. It took the bravery of a French woman that I think I wouldn't like very much and don't have very much in common with on the surface to bring them back.

Happy Independence Day, Dearest Tristane.

("Water Fireworks" courtesy of Jon Rawlingson)

Born of Fire/Imported From Detroit

2011-02-06T23:01:00.006-05:00

And in heaven's name, who are the public enemies, exclaimed Dr. Leerte? Are they France, England, Germany, or hunger, cold and nakedness?

I got a question for ya:

If you don't live in the city of Detroit right now... if you don't park your vehicle at a Detroit address and pay for its insurance at that Detroit address... if you have a ton of reasons (or maybe just one) ready at the drop of a hat for NOT living here in this city...

Do you get to gush over how much you love Detroit, or rather the Detroit that was depicted in the Chrysler 200/Eminem ad shown during tonight's Super Bowl broadcast?

Already "folks" with a personal connection to the city are gushing.

But do they live here? Will they move here and be my neighbors? Bring their partners, children, tax dollars here?

Here is an answer for ya:

I live here and have since we moved here 6.5 years ago. Taxes are unbelievable and the municipal services and the schools...well... Crime. Yeah it is here. To lie and say it is like suburbia is crazy. But that is exactly why we don't live in the suburbs.

Yes. It is a choice. It comes with costs not just financial, but also in how my daughters make sense of their extreme privilege in a city of extreme poverty in a region where the stark differences between the central city and its suburbs defy description, but not explanation. Or should I say, "reasons."

I have to hand it to the folks at BBDO though. The commercial reminds me a great deal of Bellamy's Looking Backward, except turned on its head. A future tinged with imagery of the Detroit of yesteryear. The Detroit that "lifelong residents" remember and pine for. Generations deep. But see my previous entry about why this nostalgic view of Detroit is problematic for many black folks who live here or have connections to this city. Generations Deep for them too. As my parents both graduated from high school here and bolted as soon as they could, I suppose I also can lay claim to the generations deep population, if I wanted to. But I won't.

Generations Deep. Code. Code. Code.

The good ad men know their business. And they know that to be credible, the ad must hint at race, poverty, and THE CITY in all of its contemporary horror. Yet it also must reassure viewers that this new Detroit, that this new Chrysler (really is it the Sebring in hip sheep's clothing, as I have been reading about?) is a product of, is really much more like the OLD Detroit.

And so Born of Fire is narrated by a Grand Rapids, MI man. A comforting voice of baby boomer whiteness. From the old Detroit. And Emimen acts as the viewer's tour guide/driver. The new voice of whiteness in Detroit. Not the Eminem of 8 Mile, but the Marshall Mathers of the "concerned young white man committed to the city."

But the ad could not work if it didn't address the obvious. Detroit the city is predominately black. And it is perhaps ironic that the theme of the commercial is about Detroit knowing luxury— when it is black folks in America that as a group have been targeted and thus respond to the allure of overpriced high ticket "luxury items." Yes. We continue to be convinced to spend too much of our income (since most of us don't have wealth) on status items, cars, liquor, furs, jewelry, clothing, shoes, makeup. In the words of Kanye, "Addicted to Retail." We love luxury, I offer, because we want to show the world that we are not only as good, but better at living the American Dream (which is defined of course by consumption of the most conspicuous type). So where do black folks come in? That had to be the question when the storyboards were being created for this commercial that ends with the line (which has already come to be the tag line for the ad and not "born of fire"): Imported from Detroit.

But behind the tag lines (official and unofficial), the question of how to make reference to the realities of Detroit (the reasons why all those gushers say they don't want to live here) was perhaps the shrewdest, yet predictable, aspect of the commercial.

Black Detroit shows up in four ways. First, The Black Fist. Joe Louis'. But yes. THE BLACK FIST. It is not just as a backdrop, but is shown from multiple angles, while the narrator is giving us a metallurgical lesson/analogy about hot fire and hard steel. He is not afraid. He is in fact telling us this symbol that was painted white as a "prank" by some white suburbanites a few years ago ... and that is a source of pride for many black folks in the metropolitan area... is everybody's pride. Damn. And thus black Detroit is in your face. Turned on its head? Or reread to make it palatable to those who clutch their bags and never leave their cars when they come downtown for an "event."

BAM!

Kind of like getting to the top of the first big incline on a pants-wetting 9 million dollar roller coaster ride. The intake of breath. Then WHOOSH. As the 200 tours downtown, you see a "Friendly Doorman." I am sure he was called that in the script. Then WHOOSH again. "Sexy metrosexual professional man." (Is it just me or doesn't he look like the Love Child of Maxwell and Ne-yo?) Then finally, at the end of the commercial, as Eminem is telling you this is what we do... the emotion/tension filled choir of robed men and women of formidable stature. Is it no wonder that some locals are posting all over the place that there are tears flowing, as they watch this ad? And yes, I am angry/bitter that neither my daughters nor I were asked to appear in this ad. Ain't we magical?

And one more thing, am I the only one that wonders about the official title of the commercial?

Fire?

Long hot summer riots meet Devil's Night meet The new Chrysler 200?

The ad certainly will live on here in the city. Who knows what else we will be treated to as this particular offering is the first in a series of "rebranding Detroit and/or Chrysler."

Somebody earned their 9 million dollars earlier this year when the commercial was shot here with all local talent, as the Chrysler official PR announcement proudly informs us. Somehow, I don't think it included any of the dudes who continue to ring our doorbell at all hours of the night this winter, begging to shovel our sidewalks and/or be given some bottles/cans to redeem at 10 cents a pop.

I wonder where they park THEIR cars at night?

Nightmare Cruise

2010-08-20T22:06:00.010-04:00

Tomorrow is the big day for "car enthusiasts." It is the Saturday of the Weekend of the "Dream Cruise." This event is a big deal. It closes down Woodward Avenue basically (which is the main North/South drag from downtown to way way out beyond "civilization"). And of course, the further north you drive on Woodward Avenue, the whiter it gets. That is all the time. But this week/weekend, Woodward Avenue becomes one long slowly moving parking lot for folks who bring out their classic cars and recreate the "cruising culture" that made Detroit so great in the 1950s. Great for some. Always great for some and not for others.

Some businesses make tons of money from the cruise and the hordes of people who flock to the cruise and related events up and down the "drag." People have cruise parties in their homes. Yet tons of businesses close up shop entirely for the duration. Even the medical facilities along that route shut down except for the emergencies that assuredly come from the hijinks of liquor and "old age" trying to relive its youth. Many folks that live in the area of the cruise go on vacation. Loads of people love it. The fact that the cruise gathers tons of white people to drive cars and recreate their tender youths in the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s, when black folks didn't dare be caught on the city streets north of 8 mile, let alone in cool cars, is not lost on some. But to question the whiteness of the event and it not extending into Detroit proper is well... you just being another one of "those."

Mr. Michaels, the Dream Cruise director, said he had heard no complaints about a lack of diversity. “The magic of the Dream Cruise is that it’s all about everybody,” he said. “It’s an absolutely welcoming event.”

So I had to run up to those parts today to get Adah's birthday cake a day early. There is no way that I would even think of venturing up there during the big event. Even still there were still a few folks driving up and down Woodward at 10 AM this Friday morning. It is a family tradition to get our birthday cakes at Holiday Market in Royal Oak and even the Dream Cruise could not keep me away from my motherly duties. I got the cake and so my traitorous Nissan Murano and I started south on Woodward. Just as I got to the zoo, I saw it.

It was a turquoise blue Lincoln, like the one pictured above. Two white men were in it. The driver looked to be in his 50s and the passenger was probably in his 70s. As many times as I have seen "classic cars," I have never had the reaction that I did when I pulled up next to this one at the stop light. Maybe it was the fact that this summer I have been reading a lot about the racism of 1940s and 1950s Oakland County (the heart of the dream cruise). Or maybe it was the fact that the two men looked like Central Casting had chosen them for their roles in the movie: Detroit, The origins of the angry white man. Or maybe it was the way that these men looked over at me in my demon Japanese car and sneered. Who knows? But I suddenly realized that seeing those folks in that car frightened me.

I was frightened because I share the collective memory (even if not your own personal memory) of what life was like for black folks in Detroit during the time that the Dream Cruise seems to be trying to glamorize and relive. Personally and professionally, I know that postwar Detroit and its Oakland County suburbs especially were not anything near dreamy for black folks who wanted to work, live, procreate, shop. The dream cruise is intentionally or not (and I think for many they don't even realize that they are doing so) an attempt to relive the time when Detroit was a better place. This means that blacks were nowhere to be seen and the white privilege that has always been inherent to being "white" in Detroit was nothing to be ashamed of--ever.

Whenever I "go up there," I get the distinct feeling that I am not welcome. Years after the covenants are gone, but there is no mistaking or overreacting to the "why the hell are you up here in OUR territory vibe" that permeates Oakland County. In some ways you have to respect those folks who don't even try to be civil and openly treat and look at you like an uppity nigger. And every time I see those wrinkled old men and women or their middle-aged children (the people my age), I know that they either did everything in their collective and individual power to keep black folks away from their neighborhoods and shops or did nothing in protest, if they were not directly involved.

Those men in that car were not a dream to me, but instead a nightmare of a history that today is supposed to be so far away that I should not even mention it or think it still matters.

Have fun and tons of it, Dream Cruisers.

Enjoy your turquoise 1956 Lincoln and may it bring you great joy and help you relive your memories and create new ones.

Enjoy.

But thanks to my auto panic attack, I think I understand why a good chunk of "my people" don't go anywhere near your dream.

Look at her with a smile like a flame

2010-07-19T13:12:00.005-04:00

I'm closer to 50 than 40 today. Happy Birthday to me. I have NEVER been one to obsess over the numbers (except 16 and 21 for obvious reasons) of birthdays. But this one for some reason has me wondering. I often joke about being an old lady and play it up to the hilt when I teach. Students (undergrad and grad) just don't believe it when I tell them that I am whatever age I am. "46? No way"

Yes. Way.

I have always reveled in looking younger than I really am. I know a whole lot of it is due to genetics (thanks melanin/black don't crack), but I will gloatingly admit that some of it has to be due to "personal irresponsibility. " Tofu meets thigh high socks meets that damned Precor AMT machine.

So folks seem to think that I am in my mid 30s. With junior divas in tow, calling me Mommy, most folks just assume that I am at least a decade younger than I am. I have always proudly told them how old I really am.

But this birthday is different. The "looking younger" still must be true, as I had a mouth dropper incident a few weeks ago. So is this birthday one of those infamous midlifers?

I think I have an explanation. Two things stick out in my mind from this past week, my last week of being closer to 40 than to 50. They may indeed be indicators of a notorious midlifer birthday (but in full honesty, I have been wanting a Ducati Monster --diamond black silk for anyone looking for a last minute gift idea--for awhile). But maybe they are just what they are. Or not.

Venti Iced Green Tea Latte

Last Friday, I continued my summer tradition of taking my writing to Starbucks for a couple of hours before getting the kids from day camp. And since I have tried to keep things fun and fresh (and not be one of those regulars that even *I* know what there same tired drink is always going to be), I switched this summer from iced soy lattes to iced green tea (with cow's milk... OMG!!!) lattes.

Yes this is all very banal. But here is the reason why this is important. I am sitting there at the table with my back to the goings on at the "barista bar." I have my personal cup of green tea latte and I am working in the very busy store. All of a sudden a customer (actually the young man who hawks his cds almost every day at the store) hands me a Venti Iced Green Tea Latte (TM). I take off my earphones and he says, "I am supposed to give this to you." I look at him and he points to the barista. He then just says, "Somebody asked what you were drinking and bought you another."

Hah. I look around. Looking for the person that has done this. It is quite strange in that, dear readers, this has not happened in my life before. Yes, there was that one time that the dude in the white Mercedes coupe in front of me paid my toll and told the toll taker to tell me that I was fine (!). But even in my genuine "attractive youth," nobody ever pulled the old, buy you a drink mystery game.

I began to wonder as it sat dripping sweat and with waaaay too much green tea powder settling at the bottom. What and who? Why? Was it a simple gesture of kindness? Or somebody who wanted a piece of the dewy skinned 30 year old, sitting there admittedly with legs crossed in a pair of comely shorts and strappy sandals all in that Marilyn Monroe/Diana Ross style (all those miles of gym time MUST be shown off, dammit)? I realized that my not too hard to find vanity had been given a major boost from that damned gift of a drink. Had it really come to this? How pathetic. You might look 30, but your head is truly classic "aging beauty queen."

Coo coo ka choo, Mrs. Robinson?

The truth is I loved the camera

But a couple of days before I got my free drink, I was watching my favorite TV show. I love True Blood. My brain/life really can only take one show that I watch every week faithfully. True Blood is it. It is indeed a soap opera and I feel manipulated every time I watch it. But that is part of what makes it so good.

Last week's episode was particularly good, as the "good vampire Bill" shows us his really ugly side. I love the notion that he is really evil underneath all of that gentlemanly southern stuff. Without going into full plot detail, the episode ends with him "procuring" a stripper for a vampire night on the town dinner. The scene where she is "consumed" in the back of an expensive limo is pretty gory, as is usually the case when vampires feed/gorge themselves in the show.

But for me, in the final throws of being closer to 40 than 50, the music that the stripper dances to as she is "chosen" by Bill and the dialogue that they have while she is entertaining him in the "champagne room" took my breath away. Bill asks her , sussing her out, not for a free green tea latte, but to be consumed later, "Do you have any family?"

Ann (Stripper): “Told me I wasn’t worth nothing, I figured they ain’t worth knowin”
Bill: “Perhaps you’re right about that.”
Ann: “No point anyway.”
Bill: “What?”
Ann: “Lovin’ anyone. Anything. Feels good at first, but it always turns to crap. I know the truth about life. It’s a hell I’ll never get out of alive.”
Bill: “No one does.“

He reads her accurately. He can see it in her skin, in her movement. In her vacant look as she performs her job. I might add that Bill passes up other women. He sees her as a good choice. A human not happy with life and who nobody will miss. Does he read her accurately? Not sure, as she doesn't look too happy when she is being literally devoured in the back of the limo.

But more than thinking about yet again that trope of the stripper with the words of wisdom, even though she will ultimately die for her insight, I was struck by Gary Calamar 's (the music supervisor for True Blood) choice of background music for the stripper scene: Massive Attack's "Paradise Circus." Or rather it is because I remembered the video for the song from earlier this year. For those who are faint of heart, do not watch the video which can be found here with a bit of background about the song and the video. The video centers on Georgina Spelvin (73 years old at the time) talking about her starring role in the porn classic Devil in Miss Jones in the early 1970s. It was an amazing music video for me then and even more so now after I was reminded of it when I was watching True Blood last week.

Spelvin's, the former porn star's , words of wisdom aren't so contrived as Ann's , the stripper's. She gives some of the most frank descriptions of human sexuality, pleasure, and orgasm that I, the sexologist, have encountered. But she also speaks openly about her own vanity. This is what she says: She was able to do the scenes, but not because she loved the sex in a "fuck film" ( although she clearly enjoys sex when not in front of the camera, as she describes in detail what her body feels like when she is aroused and the "narrative of sex'). And this doesn't seem surprising since the drudgery of sex work is not a new revelation for those of us either doing sex work and/or with professional degrees trying to make sense of it.

I learned long ago to be cautious about romanticising any job, even if it seemed tempting to do so with regards to women's sexuality. But as I learned when I did my interviews for my fud with Japanese American activists in their 70s, one of my "weaknesses" is really smart, sassy, introspective folks in their 70s.

Something about this woman (with almost 30 years on me) just made me say, then and now, Damn. I want to be able to look back and forward with that kind of understanding of self. Even if her analysis of herself (and sexuality) is not "true," and she is still performing for the camera, this time the interviewer's lenses, it speaks to "midlife me."

So thanks to director Toby Dye,

it is of course Spelvin's last words that I continue to think about today, as I sit closer to 50 than 40 on this 46th birthday of mine:

"We are our own Devil" [and there is nothing wrong for admitting to more than a healthy helping of vanity --in front of and/or behind the camera].

Return of the Angst/Out of my mind, Just in time

2010-03-30T13:11:00.004-04:00

Twenty feet up out of ashes
I can rise
Just like birds and children
I can fly
And I'll take my phoenix flight
And you can't take mine
But you can try

New Amerykah, Part Two: Return of the Ankh

The reviews are starting to trickle in. Reviews of the video. Reviews of the music. Revisiting the career of Ms. Baduism.

Although I rarely write about music/musicians, I have written at least a million album/concert reviews in my mind--not very different from the million blog entries that I craft in my mind, but never write.

As I write this, the internets are bubbling with discussion about Erykah Badu's video for Window Seat. Art or sistah gone too far? Buzz generated to boost sales? (<-----representative tweets). Shot in Dallas at Dealey Plaza, butt naked, right there in the location where JFK was shot would have been enough to get people talking. Irreverent. I know enough about production to appreciate the hand held camera hand wave to the footage of that national memory. I was born a year after JFK's assassination, but my memories and knowledge, like many folks alive today, comes from those amateur videographers, whose "hobby" and interests in the latest fad back then (Dad and his video camera... not to be confused with Dad and his camcorder decades later) are at the center of my "memories" of the event. I know enough about film theory and cultural criticism to appreciate the reworking/rethinking of American history and cultural memory. I can see, as other writers and fans seem to be focusing on, the artistic/cultural critique the video and its message --as Badu makes clear in her voice over at the end as her form is sprawled out and "bleeding" on the pavement.

They who play it safe, are quick to assassinate what they don’t understand. They move in packs, ingesting more and more fear with every act of hate on one another.They feel more comfortable in groups, less guilt to swallow. They are us. This is what we have become, afraid to respect the individual.

Social psychology 101. Yet, I am particularly fond of the planned or not irony of the location. The Texas School Book Depository... what kind of statement is that, given the recent stink over the political economy of U.S. textbook production and the cultural politics that influence public education--from textbooks to per/pupil funding? Ideology and material culture. Get it, Badu.

All of this is proof that Badu is still able to stir it up after all of these years. I say this with a bit of begrudging respect.

I am not one of those who can easily dismiss the music from the mind it comes from. I know those who can... those who look, listen, feel artistic work without prejudice (as that glorious musical philosopher/deep thinker, Wham front man, George Michael put it...). Not the evil tongue ever. Just as I tell students on the first day of every class that I teach, via Thomas Jefferson as perfect example, a person's "greatness" must always be put into context. I might not make their work any less "great" but learning to put the work into context makes you appreciate (or not) their offerings with the prejudice that is intrinsic to being human. I came to think this way early on, not in Intro to Anthro--as teacher or as student-- but by growing up as the pet negro from an "undereducated" family among wealthy white children and their parents. It was a necessity. A survival mechanism.

I have had a love/hate relationship with Ms. Badu since I first heard Bag Lady. Not exactly my version of how to view gender politics, but not so offensive to turn me off. Cosmic 5 percenter? Not quite sure how true that was/is. From what I read about her and oftentimes heard in a line here and there in her lyrics, I know we aren't exactly on the same page, Ms. Badu and I. Yet still, I bought and listened.

Call Tyrone, Booty, Green Eyes, Telephone (Not yours, GAGA. Gaga me), Magic, and Orange Moon....

Save my soul countless times.

So what about this new release-The Return of the Ankh? Strip away (hah) the controversy about the Window Seat video (inspired by Matt and Kim?---had to google that I will admit... ) and the album seems to be her return to "Love Songs." And I would agree with those that are spinning it in this way, despite the obvious political controversy entrance Badu is choosing for the album.

And because of that obvious theme, I am already in love with it. I have only listened to it a few times, but it is beautiful, funny, sad, smart, and reminds me so much of my past (as child and adult). Projectability to the nth degree. Songs about falling in love, falling out of love, "gold diggin"," wanting to be respected, sexual pleasure (although... I would say that Badu works hard--on purpose?-- to downplay the erotic nature of love), coming back foolishly for more and more heart ache and finally saying, enough is enough.

Samples on top of samples. Sound fragments that evoke long ago buried memories of everyday life. A voice that is unmistakable (which Adah and Roxanne both swear is the same voice of Ms. Ebony... a teacher's assistant at their school) and unmistakably soothing, irritating, probing, and sympathetic all at once. Reflecting a soul on the other end of what I am listening to that has me in awe of the intelligence, analytical skills, resilience, strength, vulnerability--humanity. A sistah for sure (sans the fist, power afro, and earth mother imagery)

And guess what, there is not ONE line that gives me pause. There is nothing that makes me want to give Badu the old TJ treatment in Return of the Ankh (well...okay, except for the ankh). How can this be?

Guess it's time to grab my coat
Evolution time to grow
Ego tryin' to block the door
Might not have no where to go
But finally got a leading role
Introducing Superthroat
Starring in her episode
Hello New World
Out my mind

Somebody is getting soft. Is it her or me?

Hey Skip Gates...

2009-07-21T18:54:00.004-04:00

Now that charges have been dropped and you are planning on doing yet another PBS series on Race in America... as the WaPo is reporting today. I invite you to come to Detroit and mix it up a bit. I will even let you interview and use Adah... as an interesting contradiction to the mother as anthropologist and product of an interracial family kumbayah "only in America" story that people love to throw around so much these days.

Priorities and Responses

2009-07-20T23:59:00.004-04:00

Wonder if Angelina would be protected or harassed by the Detroit cops if she came to town with Zahara in tow?
Note: Question only posed for rhetorical effect. I can't stand Angelina, for the record.

The growing homicide rate -- already nearly 20 percent higher in 2009 than even revised totals from last year -- and the disturbing revelation that perhaps as many as 20 percent of violent crimes are not logged by the Detroit Police Department are his top priorities, said Evans, who took command two weeks ago.
"It's the Wild West out there," said Evans in an interview with The Detroit News about the city's violent crime problem.

Detroit Murders up, police chief says

If I really had been queen for a day yesterday on my birthday, I would have waved my magic wand and requested a meeting with Detroit's newest police chief. Warren C. Evans, appointed by the sports star cum new mayor just a few weeks ago, is allegedly one tough SOB when it comes to crime. I would have asked him yesterday, if he could explain why Detroit police officers stop my white husband and black child at least 2 times per year.

I mean, I know the reasons that they give. The reason why it is necessary to separate a young girl from her father and ask her who that man is over there. The reason to ask the man to explain his relationship to the little girl who is with him, holding his hand, out for an outing to a museum or to a cafe. I guess, I know the reason that could be conjured up for why following the lead of a "concerned citizen" that they pulled up to Avalon Bakery in midtown Detroit (a spot where the hip and funky go for baked goods and the Detroit "big city" feel), walked in and asked Steve and Adah to step out of the cafe and be subjected to questioning. I even know what the "officer in charge" said to Steve when he called to complain, after my badgering of him. "We won't change departmental policy."

But that was yesterday. In today's Detroit News, as you may recall... the more conservative paper for the suburban audience, Evans answers questions not about the constant stopping of a father and child combo , but about Detroit's skyrocketing murder rate this year.

As most people know, on top of all the other problems plaguing the city, a very poor lack of police response makes it a joke to think that the police will come anytime that you need them. Sad, but true. So you've got drive bys, murders of young children in their beds, carjackings, serial rapists... all manner of violent crimes to contend with and very few police to deal with this horrible reality of living in Detroit for so many people....It is also to be noted that the Detroit Police Department has also been under federal supervision for YEARS because of the horrible, horrible realities of policing in the city.

It isn't pretty. It is beyond sad.

I was hit by a drunk driver with the kids in the car. The police never came. I am pretty sure the driver was well over the legal limit. Oh, well. Didn't matter to the 911 folk. No police to send. Sorry. No this was not death and dying, but it illustrates the point when it was just blocks from the downtown stadiums (but not on a game night for either team). When it is game night it is just sickening seeing all the Detroit police downtown to make sure that the overwhelmingly white suburban fans stay "safe" on their 2 -3 block walks from where their cars are parked to the stadiums. Cops on top of cops. Just this past weekend, the Kid Rock 2-day "hometown" concert brought what seemed like every working class white person from the suburbs into the city. I lost count of how many cops I saw in about a 3 block radius.

And yet my husband and child are stopped constantly by the police after some citizen (or perhaps the police themselves) dials 911 to report "something not looking quite right."

The state of race in Detroit (and of gendered expectations--it may not be just the race thing, but also the fact that you rarely see men of any hue with children on the streets here--for whatever reasons) is so difficult to make sense of. And this is especially the case given what the police are expected (or desire) to do on this force. The police who have stopped Steve and Adah though, have always been black, except the one salt and pepper team. The white cop talked to Adah while the black cop pulled Adah off to the side to interrogate her. And I am not joking about the interrogation. Can you imagine what that must have been like for the precocious girl child of academics...at 4 years of age? And for the record, there is a good number of white Detroit police officers.

But even with my ability to look at things like a social scientist, as a black woman professional, as a mother, who chose to live in the city, in a neighborhood in which I wanted my children of relative privilege to feel, for good and for bad , the benefits of living in a black city like Detroit, I say this with all sincerity to the new chief:

"Get a fucking clue."

Which is also exactly what I am going to start telling 6 year old Adah to say back to the officers that are out just "doing their jobs," the next time the police "respond."

Pick your poison/sin

2009-06-25T01:51:00.011-04:00

By acknowledging the importance of personal accountability in our lifestyle choices, we can reduce the incidence and mortality of many chronic diseases currently impacting individuals and families in our state.

-Jenny Sanford, Faithful First Lady of SC

Adulterous sex with a Jewish Woman on Easter
Adulterous sex with Miss Argentina on Father's Day
Connubial sex with your "faithful first lady" wife, born and raised in Suburban Chicago (evil tongue does her homework!)
Actually ingesting more than a can of TAB and a half-bite from the "Buttermilk Fried Chicken, Shrimp and Grits, Fried Oysters, Sweet Potato Pone" Low Country Platter

Which would you chose?

In case anyone is wondering why I am being so hard on the aggrieved Mrs. Sanford.. take yourself to the Healthy South Carolina Challenge web page immediately (who was first interested in childhood obesity, btw? Jenny or Michelle?). It is here that the first lady offers up the following:

Swimsuit season is here and the pressure to go sleeveless is rising faster than record high temperatures. So what can the average American, who does not have a personal trainer on standby or daily healthy meals cooked by a professional chef, do to get toned arms and a tighter midriff section? The answer: Take it outdoors for some fun and free summer activities that will have you burning calories just in time for bikini season. Here are eight workout ideas to do on your own or with the entire family

Unfortunately, the list of South Carolina's Biggest Health Problems from more reputable sources does not include stress over bathing suits and jiggly upper arms(or that pesky cellulite that just doesn't want to go away) or making crucial choices between the services of a personal chef or just schlepping to Whole Foods and/or Kroger to get the stuff and make it yourself.

My curiosity with regards to First Lady Sanford led me to this conclusion:

Personal accountability = Pick your poison/sin.

Slumming. 21st Century style. Still wrong after all these years.

2009-06-17T20:17:00.004-04:00

Evil tongue speaks. CNN listens.

It isn't gentrification. It is revamped good old-fashioned slumming ratcheted up for the new millennium.

The quotes in "Got $100 dollars. Welcome to your new Detroit home" say it all.

Exhibit A:

"Those artists are doing a good thing; they are at least helping to stabilize neighborhoods that would be all but lost," said Mike Shedlock, an investment adviser who blogs frequently about Detroit's economy.
For less than a few thousand dollars, Cope and Reichert snapped up a dilapidated bungalow in a north Detroit neighborhood called "BanglaTown," for its unexpected mix of Bangladeshis, African-Americans, Polish and Ukrainians and the occasional shady character.
Scrappers had cleaned the house to the bone. The copper had been stolen; the electrical wiring was stripped.
But no matter. Here was a chance for Cope and Reichert, who run a popular Detroit art store, to rehabilitate the 1920s brick house into a bastion of energy savings, with solar panels, LED lights, recycled wood and high-end insulated windows.
They're installing a security system that exemplifies elegant efficiency with hurricane-proof windows and steel doors replacing burglar bars. They are also experimenting with running their air-conditioning on a car battery.

The project became known as the Power House. Cope and Reichert wanted to create a central place to power homes nearby and, in turn, revive a neighborhood's sense of community.

Exhibit B:

The trick was getting their friends not only to cheer the concept but invest in it by moving next door.
"It was much easier than we thought it might be," Cope said. "We told everyone that Detroit is an interesting city to work in as an artist, and the neighborhood is diverse. But, really, it came down to money."

Oh. This glorification of earnest white hipster saviors here in Detroit has got to stop.

Or be torn apart unmercifully.

Back on the road

2009-06-16T14:37:00.008-04:00

I just came across an article about Detroit's position as number 3 in road rage. I did so with more than some interest. Over the last 10 months or so, I had been coming to the conclusion that Detroit has some of the most disgruntled, meanest, nastiest folk of anyplace that I have ever lived. This feeling seems to have intensified even more so as the economy worsened... here at ground zero. All the NYTs articles in the world cannot underscore what it is like to live here in Detroit and drive about the Detroit metro area during this time. Even in my traitorous Nissan Murano, I had to fight back the tears as I drove by the Chrysler Assembly plant and saw the sea of unwanted/wasted energy Jeeps waiting to be shipped nowhere. The nastiness on the roads (of which I could tell many a story of both maneuvers and contorted faces full of hate and rage) seems to be a more concentrated version of the general mood here in "U.S. economy meltdown/American dream long gone/bailouts that will only grease the palms of the already well to do" Central.

See. Even the evil tongue is raging!

It isn't despair or anxiety that you see most blatantly here these days. It is a palpable level of rage. From city to suburbs. The students. The cashiers. The mail carriers. The drivers for sure. Young and old. You see it even more so after you come back from elsewhere in the country. Recession/Depression has hit there too, but here in the Detroit Metro area... Oh. It is hard to even describe it. You can see it in people's eyes. You can especially see it in the suburbs. In the eyes. In the foreclosures. In the boarded up storefronts. New construction in process gets more than a double take. It is both rare and seemingly stupid.

This is not a lament for the times when people were nicer to each other (when was that again?) or for when dinner was on the table waiting for you when you got home from your peaceful drive home (and when was THAT again? and who is the YOU in that bucolic scene from the American Dream)? Nor is this an ode to all of the happy young white artisans who have moved here --and not only from the suburbs like they used to. This is not a hopeful wish that their dreams (and heartfelt artistic projects--the 21st century version of slumming with the natives?) come to replace the "unhappiness and rage in the face of adversity" that is much more the standard m.o. in southeastern Michigan.

No. I make note of all of "this" because it has been bubbling here for a long time (where you decide to place the needle on the record/what track you decide to start with--this is for the kids who don't know the glory of vinyl and needles) in this so-called most segregated city in the country.

God, how I love the way that cities seem to almost be in competition for the title.

What seems so new and sadly amazing right now, at this particular moment in history, is this:

I firmly believe (conveniently the project that I am working on this summer) that Detroit is one of the capitals of the 21st century. The road rage "big 3" title is just one part of the complexity in which Detroit exists as both symbol and material reality of what very well lies ahead for much of the world. Anybody that knows anything about the evil tongue's multiple research projects knows that this is a continuation of a larger project that I started when I lived in Seattle.

Here in Detroit, the rage of the middle class (those who "lived" the American Dream in all of its variations) is everywhere. I do not think that we in academia, let alone those in government, have the tools to understand. It is not quite like the rage of those in Iran. How convenient. But part of what I will be working on this summer is to argue and make sense of the idea that this "anger" (or that of the Battle in Seattle/ WTO "riots" in 1999 ) is more than just "a sign of the times."

Not quite Marxist. Not quite Neo-liberal. Not quite the end times.

Very very much situated on that unknown route called the 21st Century.

Sad day in dry gulch

2009-01-11T23:49:00.003-05:00

On Friday our wonderful governor out here in Michigan territory "signed a slew of new laws."

One of these wonderful new laws is the "wine law." It basically is a way to "protect" Michigan's wine growers by basically prohibiting any kind of direct wine shipment to consumers. Dare I say that Michigan wine (the state is ranked number 9 in wine production in the country) is pretty much no good. I have yet to taste any Michigan wine that I would not classify as rotgut. Sweet fruity wines reminiscent of Ripple. No joke. Nothing that is even remotely "fine" on the palate. Sorry homefolk. Plus for some reason the wine selection that you can find in any "good" wine shop here is just kind of lame compared to everywhere else I have lived. Sorry homefolk again.

But this new law (which is basically a workaround for the Federal Court ruling that found that Michigan's previous "no shipment of wine from suppliers outside the state" was unconstitutional) brings a major major tear to my eye. Perhaps unknown to the folk that know the evil tongue.... I loves me some fine wine. This means no more shipments from my favorite Winery/Wine Club. Bye Bye Red Diamond Club. This also means no more lusting after the daily dirt cheap deals that I often cannot afford, but still salivate over when the alerts enter my inbox from Winestilsoldout.

Oh the shame. How will the UPS man be able to know my dirty little secret of wine consumption sent to me from sinful exotic places like Oregon and New Jersey?

Oh the joy I felt when I would see the tell tale boxes marked with the "must be delivered to someone 21 years of age" green stickers.

Oh the damage to my ritual of a bottle of "fine" luxurious wine per grading session (well maybe not quite a bottle... but a wee bit to make the grading go down a bit easier). Oh the damage to my sorta pride and joy wine collection.

Oh the damage to my idea that there is hope for the truly snooty pooty existence while living here in Detroit.

Oh the damage to my pocketbook since I never, ever bought wine that wasn't ever a serious bargain (which of course is always a relative term).

I bet Miss Kitty would not stand for this. And certainly not Festus. Not one bit at all.

Postcard from Kingston

2008-12-28T01:24:00.013-05:00

A test of river water near the spill showed elevated levels of lead and thallium, which can cause birth defects and nervous and reproductive system disorders, said John Moulton, a spokesman for the T.V.A., which owns the electrical generating plant, one of the authority’s largest.

Mr. Moulton said Friday that the levels exceeded safety limits for drinking water, but that both metals were filtered out by water treatment processes.

"Tennessee Ash Flood Larger than Initial Estimate." NYT , 12/26/08

My parents retired here to Kingston,TN for a whole host of reasons. Many of these reasons mirror those of the loads of other people like them, the last of the great pension holding retirees of the 20th Century, who have retired here from the Midwest. Low taxes, easy climate, low cost of living (this IS Appalachia after all), good health care (thanks to the U of TN in Knoxville and the legacy of "Oak Ridge"), friendly "southern" culture, and the beautiful TVA lake system.

As has been the case since my mother died 3 years ago, the girls and I have been coming down to spend time with my father at Christmas and for a longer stint during the summer vacation. We arrived on Christmas Eve, 3 days after the "largest environmental disaster of its kind in the United States" took place. 5.4 million cubic yards of toxic ash in the form of a nasty sludge has "escaped" its retaining pond and is now in the river/lake system that is at the heart of Kingston's Watts Bar Lake recreational area. (I am proud of that last bit...proof that I am on the ground... only the semi-native would know the importance of Watts Bar Lake...take that CNN and NYT). Lakefront McMansions as well as single-wide trailers were equally affected by the ash/sludge. All of those who depend on the Kingston water treatment plant and live elsewhere along the lake, including my father whose lakefront house is far away at least in mind's eye from the accident, are certainly at risk for some kind of exposure... even if as the TVA suggests is true... will only be minimal.

The first summer we spent here, when my mother was still alive undergoing radiation in the ironically excellent cancer center at the U of TN (a result of the region's dual claims to fame in tobacco consumption and proximity to nuclear testing/power production), I took my then 2 year old and 6 month old daughter to the beautiful wildlife areas that surrounded the TVA electrical plant. In the shadow of the huge stacks, and with the TVA's efforts to soften the blow of its intrusion into "real nature," the girls and I were befriended countless times by soft-spoken white Tennesseans who were always extremely friendly and curious about the "northern"spoken woman and her two beautiful "pretty girls." The bumper stickers on their cars and the tee-shirts they wore reinforced my decision to never ever mention politics, social issues, religion, or my increasing need for a "tonic" to calm my frazzled nerves during that horrible summer for me.

Every visit has made me think that this part of TN demands an intense ethnography. There are so many reasons why. The mixture of "northerners" with their American Dream retirement expectations, White East Tennesseans of both relative wealth and extreme poverty (again... this IS Appalachia), black East Tennesseans who are few in number and largely in poverty, the Asian (mainly from India) immigrants who come here to live out their versions of the American Dreams in the convenience stores and gas stations of the region.

So here we are in Kingston during one of its most horrible times. I will add that the last time that Kingston was in the national news was in August of 2005 when a modern day "Bonnie", a white prison nurse shot up the jail and killed a deputy in order to free her "Clyde," a black man standing trial for robbery at the Roane County Jail in downtown Kingston. The two were on the run for days. I remember joking with my father about going down the hill to the courthouse and waving to me via CNN.

The day after Christmas, the girls and I loaded up in the car to go to the Kroger grocery store for my Starbucks. The 2 -year-old Kroger is truly a testimony to the changing demographics of Roane County and Kingston in particular. Yuppscale food products and the Starbucks stand in the grocery store certainly must be looked upon as a slap in the face to the longtime residents who shop at the store. A stand alone Starbucks store just off I-40 and in the same plaza as the Kroger opened and closed (during the big retrenchment earlier this year) in less than a year. I never got to feed my yuppified addiction there sadly.

In order to get to the Kroger we had to drive down one of Kingston's two major roads. It is the road that passes by the courthouse, curves along the breathtakingly beautiful Watts Bar lake, continues past the funeral home where my mother's body was taken, goes on over the newly built bridge (contested because there was an eagle's nest that would have to be "removed" in order for the old one to be demolished and the new one built) over the river that stands as the "marker" between the sludge and the water treatment plant, past the brown "state" sign that directs you to the "TVA wildlife area" that the girls and I frequented, and continues on to the Kroger shopping plaza.

I had planned to slow down when we passed the entrance to the area anyway, but I didn't even have to on purpose. As we neared the entrance road, I saw a convoy of empty hauler trucks turning in front of me to go down the road to towards the area of the plant. I had to slow down. As I watched them turn in front of me, I saw that the drivers looked much like many of the men that I see here. Looking much like the Russian men that I saw when I took the Trans-Siberian from Khaborovsk to Moscow. Older than their years. Worn out by hard, hard lives. Poor, poor white people and MEN at that. Yes, here in Eastern TN those truck drivers helping to clean up a major environmental disaster (and probably getting paid not nearly enough to compensate for any risks they may be taking) had that look I have come to see all too often here. Something about their bodies and reflected in their eyes that easily (perhaps unfairly) allows me to imagine them as contemporary renditions of the men that Dorothy Lange photographed during the LAST depression. I wonder what stock images come to their minds as they look upon me and my children. I also must add that when I ran into the local Walgreens to buy some batteries (reminder to those shaking fists in condemnation of the ash/sludge debaucle... throwing away batteries of any type into your regular household waste is a MAJOR environmental problem that nobody really seems to want to adress or try to fix in this country...did somebody say unfettered leaking/burning/leaching of majorly bad chemicals?) earlier, there was a huge bin of "Obama, 44th president of the U.S" caps on clearance. Maybe people (including the truck drivers) around these parts couldn't afford them or more likely they were missing the big sale because they were too busy this Christmas season hooting and hollering at "Obama the Magical Negro" sent out by TN Republican National Chairman, Chip Saltsman.

I remembered all the talk I had just heard on CNN right before we left of the danger to the residents near the sludge and the risks posed to people LIKE US who were being exposed to the toxic chemicals in the air and in the water. Yet here were these men entering on the Kingston side of the plant to have the sludge scooped into their trucks and then driving them off on the other side of the plant on the "Harriman side" to take it off to who knows were. Their windows were down. The stereotypical lit cigarette that dangles out of the corner of the mouth of hardworking men in MY mind's eye was there in just about every instance.

Cancer stick minor in comparison to the sludge that these men are helping to clear away.

You’re not going to be endangered by touching the ash material,” said Barbara Martocci, a spokeswoman for the T.V.A. “You’d have to eat it. You have to get it in your body.”

Yeah, right.

My northern lefty suspicions were confirmed when I read the tiny Roane County newspaper yesterday. It was filled with multiple thinly-veiled references to the ability of anyone to trust anything said or done by the TVA.

I had also already decided that I was going to buy us some bottled water. My father had some bottles already that he just had around, but I was (and as I write this while still in Kingston still am) concerned about the water. The breathing in of the materials I knew I could not control, but I figured that I would sleep better knowing that we were drinking bottled water. I was prepared however to not find any at the yuppie Kroger. I was thinking that I would have to drive to Knoxville the next day to get some for us.

I ordered and got my soymilk latte, the girls' organic vanilla milk and blueberry muffins, and a cart for us to load up our water, if we were so lucky. We made our way to the bottled water aisle. I looked at the various carts of other shoppers and noted not one bottle of water. I knew it, I told myself. Futile! But I would check it out anyway...maybe there would be some ultra bourgie organic water that folk didn't want to pay for. My northern price mentalite might actually make the water seem a bargain, I told myself.

Much to my surprise it looked a regular day in the bottled water aisle. Plenty for anyone who wanted to buy it. I loaded up my cart, victim of the "hype" it would seem. My daughters laughing and begging me to let them put the demon plastic jugs of water (that would either be burned or buried to release THEIR toxins in due time) in the cart and asking me why we needed water anyway. I whispered to them that grandpa's water might be a little dirty and so we would get this so that we could have clean water.

...ashamed to say to them and think to myself that Kingston would certainly never be the same for them, me, my father, and anybody else around these parts ever again.

No matter their position "in the foodchain."

On Spongebob and halitosis

2008-11-02T22:45:00.005-05:00

It goes without saying that this has been one of the most charged presidential elections that I can remember. This is even more the case as I think about how Adah and Roxanne have absorbed much of what is in the air these days, and not just at home. The following are real life entries in my "kids say the darndest things about presidential candidates" diary from this past week:

1) I am upstairs sorting clean laundry. Girls are downstairs being entertained by Spongebob (yes... that is right Waldorfites and Mr. Obama... I let my young children veg to Spongebob while I do household chores. I will admit that I always laugh when they sing "aye, aye cap'n").

All of a sudden I hear cheers and clapping.

"Hooray. Hooray. Hooray. "

"Mommy, mommy! Obama is now president. Obama is now president. Yay. Obama is president."

I run downstairs and am just in time to see the end of a Obama/Biden ad. On Nickelodeon?

I remind the girls that it was "just a commercial" and that Obama had not been elected.

I must add here that I do believe that Spongebob has taught the girls many important life lessons. I'll never forget the day that 3 y.o. Roxanne asked me: "Why is it that some people, like Mr. Krabs, love money too much?"

Yet, I suppose Adah's response to my bursting of their pre-election confidence is just as telling a life lesson:

"You mean commericals lie to us about presidents too?"

2) Today the girls were looking at a handout that Adah brought home from school. It was in the form of a kid's newspaper and was structured to get kids to ask adults about the electoral process and the candidates that they preferred and why. Adah started reading the part which listed McCain and Obama as the presidential candidates. Roxanne screamed, " I want McCandy Cane." Adah screamed over her loudly (with a wee bit of a NYC accent... and classic Shaviroesque tone), "No way, Roxanne. McCain is an evil, bad man. He should never, ever become president." Roxanne, who I am not sure realized that she was making a joke out of John McCain's name when she did it, then shot back the following:

"Yeah, you know what, Mommy? John McCain has really stinky bad breath. It is the worst breath on the face of the earth."

Quiet Acts/Emails of Desperation

2008-10-13T21:10:00.004-04:00

Today alone, I have received 4 emails from various companies that I have ordered from during the drunken excess of the last 10 years, instructing me to "keep my chin up." The latest one tonight from King Arthur flour "takes the cake" as it were.

The fact that they all came today/tonight is interesting. It would seem that over the weekend all hell must have broken loose (for the billionth time) in the boardrooms of corporate America. No, it is not quite "THE DEPRESSION".... yet. But get those emails out there pronto. Tell them to not worry. We are on their side. Keep buying our stuff/using our services [We are on their side, right?]

But here is the troubling part of these corporate appeals to "our" strength during bad times. As only the latest example of this community service, King Arthur's homespun wisdom and ode to community (" we are all in this together") with no glitz (damn! the tongue loves herself some glitz) and so buy our flour, bake bread with your children (wholesome, wholesome, wholesome) and help to change the world is just plain creepy. It seems more than just opportunistic. It rubs me (others?) the wrong way. It is capitalism that isn't rooted in war bonds or victory gardens. It is like much of what is going on these days, not unexpected or shocking, but just plain impossible to really digest/make sense of.

The telling cherry on top of it all really is at the beginning of the message of hope and uplift—where we get a list of all those other crises in American history that King Arthur flour has helped to get us through. My personal favorite is "the countless financial downturns" bit.

If only.

Big Daddy McKane/Bridget McCain/That one over there

2008-10-07T01:01:00.007-04:00

What could bring the tongue out of beginning of the term hibernation? Not Palin (Plenty of folk asked me why I had not written anything... I felt like it all was being said. How could I add anything more?). Not the financial crisis (after living in Japan during the mid 1980s and Seattle during the mid 1990s... I can say that I know the meaning of "drunken spending." Living in Detroit in the late 2000s... I can say that I also know the meaning of "the beginning of the end").

It is the coded "that one" comment that just "slipped out" of McCain's mouth tonight.

This came from the man who is the father of a "very dark-skinned" (his words, not mine) adopted daughter. Not the little brown ones of the Bush, Sr. fame.

No... this is Bridget McCain, the daughter who found out about all of the racist stuff being said about her by Repubs (allegedly the Rovester himself during the last presidential election/primary) one day while googling herself. The official story is that she found out and came to her parents wanting to know why the President hated her... she/her phenotype became a crucial issue in the "Bangla Boating" of McCain in the South Carolina primary (she was identified as McCain's illegitimate black daughter). The story also goes that Cindy McCain admits that she was too high on the drugs that she was lifting/stealing/appropriating from her charity to step in to protect her young daughter.

I will never forget seeing Bridget during the final glorious family scene at the Republican National Convention last month, decked out in a garish green dress. I was reminded of a dress that Nella Larsen's main character in the classic Harlem Renaissance novel, Quicksand, is forced to wear. Helga Crane who has a black father and Danish mother is instructed to wear the dress at a party celebrating her "presentation" to Danish society. Her exoticness is ramped up by the earnest bad faith of the white people who love and fetishize her. They have no idea at all just how messed up they and their "love of her" really is. Pet negro? No. Something much sicker and emotionally toxic.

When I saw Bridget McCain (the picture I include here doesn't really show her... it is one of the few pics out there... how telling) standing there with her family last month, I felt nothing but pain for the young woman. There she stood in the garish green dress, full body straining against the fabric (you just know that she was wearing a serious full body "shaper"... cutting off her circulation, pinching, and cutting, limiting her ability to breathe--the glory of lyrca helping to hold it all in) next to her skinny blond mother and sisters. Pictures of her in any light, let alone flattering, are hard to come by. Just try to find some. I dare you. Her blond sister is everywhere online, labeled a hottie (lucky her). The painful smile Bridget, the adopted one, had on her face was one that I recognized--or at least could easily project my take on her with ease.

It was the smile that comes from being the obvious spot of color who stands out and knows it. Who knows how to behave in polite white society (in this case the ultimate version of polite white society), but knows that she will never ever be a part of it. Who knows that they may accept you, but you will never ever truly be like them, despite their claims to the contrary. The smile that comes from the ability to read and see the contexts around you, better than many white adults, even at your young age. The smile. A survival strategy of the highest order.

Bridget McCain already knows the drill/reality. I could see it. I know I could. I am not against transracial adoption/international adoption. But I think it was child abuse for that child to grow up in that home. And may I add, that Bridget McCain does not get as much of a share of her maternal grandfather's wealth as her siblings, including John McCain's children from his first marriage. When the executor of the will, Cindy McCain herself, has been asked about this, she states that "it will be worked out later."

There she stood off to the side. Literally and symbolically, cut off from the rest of the McCains.

That one over there.

So it really should come as no surprise that tonight McCain let out the "that one" over there comment. I asked Shaviro if he thought it would have been racist if I had not screamed out instantly, "That was f-in racist!" He said, "Condescending yes. Racist. Not so sure, I would have called it that without you saying it."

But take it from me, the evil tongue. Such a comment was code that was unmistakably about race for at least two groups of people. Black folks in America of all ages.

And the white folks of a certain generation and social location (many, but not all of whom were probably the ones who ate up the idea of McCain's dirty little miscegenated offspring).

It is a comment that was a wink, wink to white voters who will not ever vote for a darkie. It confirmed what they knew. Smart Ass Nigger. It was not a slip, I don't think. I think it was scripted. Planned. A risk by a "maverick" who didn't really care that he would blatantly offend black folk (and their non-black loved ones who had to be schooled about just how offensive such a comment was).

I just pray to all that is unholy that tomorrow the McCain camp does not issue a statement that claims that people are just being too sensitive about McCain's comment.

"How could he be racist? How could that comment be racist. Why, John and Cindy McCain adopted 'that one' from Bangladesh all those years ago. And just look at her today."

Joseph Biden: The Fat Blaster, Hydroxycut, Lipovarin VP choice

2008-08-23T23:10:00.015-04:00

Biden, huh?

Okay. Not that you care what I think, Mr. O. But come on! Joe Biden?

I know that you and your people strategized long and hard about your VP choice.

Perhaps he will serve the purpose that you chose him for. "Rare mix of change and experience...uniquely suited to be my partner as we work to put our country back on track.''

But to me (the jaded evil tongue) your choice in Biden just seems to be saying:

"Hey. Don't worry. The boy will have a man behind him. Watching his every move. Making sure that your vote will not be wasted. Making sure that he stays in line."

The less evil version of Mr. Cheney?

Perhaps it is a shrewd move. It seems so unbelievably calculated. Yet perhaps the American public will eat it up just like those of us who spend millions of dollars every year on bogus diet products.

Oh the seduction in the promise of being able to eat as much as you want, whenever you want, whatever you want, and still have the hot body that will make the heads turn as you walk down the street. No need to exercise. The pounds and inches just melt away.

Everybody knows the only time that kind of weight loss happens is if you are terminally ill or on serious uppers. But no matter, keep hope alive. You can have it all-- the promise/illusion of hope, action, change. And you don't have to sacrifice anything because a "regular" (read seasoned white man... even if he is a Catholic...gulp) guy will still be there minding the shop. Biden, as VP choice, underscores what I have felt all along about Obama. He is indeed change compared to Bush, but I have yet to be convinced that his administration would move the U.S. in any real progressive and substantial ways.

Yes. Indeed. America may gobble the ticket up. Maybe. And at least we know that Mr. Biden already has a fondness for his new charge:

"I mean, you got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy... I mean, that's a storybook, man."

Gag.

HBO: The Wire (Detroit)

2008-08-20T23:16:00.008-04:00

Since my mother died two years ago, I have been talking to my father almost every day on the phone. Such filial piety is tough. It also has really made me feel that I am part of the "Sandwich Generation" that I imagined I wouldn't be joining until much later in my life. The juggling act of small children and widower father sometimes seems the most difficult thing I have ever done.

Over the past year or so, all of our conversations have almost always included this bit of dialogue:

Evil Tongue's Father: So what is up with your boy, Kwame, today?

Evil Tongue: Um, oh yeah. Well ... (I then report whatever the latest development is that day and there is almost something new every day).

And so it has gone.

My father hates Detroit more than anything. The corruption and scandal that is everywhere you turn here these days just underscores what he already felt. He hates coming here. Wonders how I ever moved here. Wonders how I can raise my kids here. Tells me almost weekly that he could never live here.

But the reality is that he did live here. He was one of the young Detroiters who left the city in the early 1960s. He was part of the beginning of the Great Exodus (as opposed to the Great Migration of which he and his mother and siblings were part of the end when they moved from Tennessee to Detroit in the mid-1950s). He went West to find his fortune (Illinois). And he did for the most part. He tells me that he left Detroit because even back then "nobody was really hiring." He is thus both disgusted by and sympathetic to (if pressed) the economic realities that face Detroiters today.

When I spoke with him earlier today, I had not yet read the newspaper. So when he asked the question, I could not tell him the latest development that I just found out about this evening.

It seems that Kim Worthy, the Wayne County Prosecutor who has "gone after" Kwame Kilpatrick... and refuses to back down or make any deals is in major financial trouble. She makes 128,000 dollars/year , but her 337,000 dollar house is in foreclosure. She owes thousands of dollars in property taxes (on it and a rental property) and has a federal tax lien on the house as well. Thanks to an automated anonymous phone campaign, Wayne County residents also know that she "sent her child to a pricey Oakland county private school."

I am sure I know what my father will say when I tell him about all of this tomorrow.

But for me, I just don't know anymore. On top of all the scandals and the FBI investigations of just about every person, place, and thing associated with the city's government, this summer has seemed to have even more of the trademark Detroit fires. With all of the abandoned buildings and vagrants in an extremely dry summer, the large plumes of black smoke and the screaming sirens of engines responding to 4 alarm fires have become almost commonplace. Sometimes you can smell the fire before you see it.

The houses and apartment buildings, corner markets, office buildings, factories, warehouses, and sometimes ironically even the fire houses that helped to fuel Detroit's/America's economic heyday (now long gone) going up in smoke.

And now we have Worthy joining folk like Ed McMahon (and Joe Q. Public) as poster child for the foreclosure victim/overextended American. All of this as she is in the national spotlight as the prosecutor of "King Kwame," as he is disparagingly called these days.

What we are experiencing here in Detroit is not just a sad soap opera. I am becoming more and more convinced that Detroit is the living example—past, present, and future—of America. A story and a location perfect for a path breaking Hollywood production full of imagery, contradiction, irony, graft, greed, sex, lust, lies, violence. Conveniently, Hollywood/ "entertainment" is one of the last industries in which the U.S. has an edge. It is one of the most profitable exports that we have today. Take that China.

Duke John Wayne meet King Kwame Kilpatrick (and Kim Worthy too).

Doctor heal thyself

2008-08-14T22:50:00.004-04:00

For scholars of race, Barack Obama presents a new American dilemma.
On the one hand, his election as president would be a breathtaking symbol of racial progress. On the other, an Obama victory could prove illusory, doing little to dismantle racism while crippling their ability to call attention to it.
"Then what will we do as race scholars?" wondered University of Virginia political scientist Lynn Sanders.

Analysis: For America's Scholars Of Race, An Obama Dilemma

Any regular evil tongue fan knows how my self-hating Negro tendencies manifest themselves in my thoughts about Oprah and (more recently) Obama. Or perhaps it is better to say that I hate their actions and what they represent and give birth to in the U.S. There are entries o' plenty below to back up this bit of self-analysis.

Exciting news though. Thanks to a piece put out by the Newhouse News Service, I truly get why I don't care for Obama. It is because he evidently threatens my very livelihood. The opening lines that I have reproduced above clearly continue the belief that the reason why some black folk (including, and especially, politicians and now black academicians) don't like Obama is because he is going to end life as they know it. In other words, if black professional folk find Obama problematic, it is because his election would halt their gravy train.

The piece actually gets quotes, taken out of context for sure , from some pretty major academic cheeses to show differences between white and black, as well as, conservative and liberal academics. Sound bites from big time academics are usually not the stuff of interest to the masses, and this news piece follows that pattern. If you are interested in such things, you can read the article for yourself.

The idea that I have issues with an Obama victory because there will be nothing left for me to study, write about, and teach, makes me laugh.

Now if I could just get the real reason for detesting Oprah.

Inconvenient Truths

2008-08-11T22:22:00.021-04:00

I have been playing single mother to the stars while their daddy is making his (almost) annual trip to Great Britain. So today when I did some shopping without either of them in tow, I was almost happy to pay $6.00/lb for plain old black cherries. Reminded me of my days back in Japan... I soon learned to stop thinking of "what it would cost in America" and could do things like plunk down the equivalent of $4.00 (U.S) for a quart of milk without batting an eye. I am now slowly learning to do the same here in the U.S. Well, maybe not without batting an eye, but without as much hyperventilating as before the American food shopping dream turned mean.

I will admit the dirty little fun fact about my shopping. I am one of those nasty folk that shops at Wal-Mart. Like others who go for the cheap prices, I go to be able to "save more." But unlike most of the shoppers, I go because even Wal-Mart is trying to woo "upscale" consumers like me with bargains on organics and bourgie/gourmet products. Much, but certainly not all, of our household's upscale eating is made possible by "the evil empire." Most of the rest of my food shopping is done at Costco, where our household's insane consumption of organic milk is fueled. Between the "goodness" of Costco's treatment of its employees and the badness of Wal-Mart's treatment of its, I figure that my shopping balances out to Whole Foods' or Kroger's treatment of their employees.

I'll return to employees in a second...

So off I went to Dearborn, MI. Until last year, Wal-Mart did not have any SuperCenters in the Detroit metro area. SuperCenters are the Wal-Marts with "full" supermarkets. This particular one was written up in the newspapers and touted all over the place as proof of the changing racial/ethnic dynamic of the Detroit metro area. It has merchandise, signage, and bilingual employees to make Latino and Arab shoppers welcome while saving big.Dearborn has a long and twisted (and interesting) racial/ethnic history. I will not go into it here, but just know that it has a very large Arab American population coupled with an increasingly aged white population. The black folks who I see shopping there (in pretty large numbers) probably live in the City of Detroit and almost always seem to be multiple households who come to shop in a shared vehicle. Low, low prices. And thus because it is so close to Detroit and still really is located in "the town that Ford built," there is always an interesting mixture of folk in this particular store: Office workers running in for a quick purchase, mothers with screaming children, retirees holding up traffic in the always busy parking lot, as they slowly back their cars out of their parking spots.

Me.

It was especially crowded today. I made my way around the grocery part of the store and gloated a bit over some of the "reasonable" prices that I was going to be paying once I reached the checkout. Checking out went faster than normal and I was feeling kind of good as I made my way out of the store.

When I got to my car, I noticed that there were shopping carts everywhere. But I also noticed that there was a team of Wal-Mart employees (black men) rounding up the carts at the same time. While I put my purchases in the car, I noticed that one of the men was throwing any garbage, flyers, etc that were left in the cart directly onto the ground.

Living in Detroit, I have learned that people of every sort (race, age, gender, "income") have no qualms about just pitching their refuse directly onto the ground. I have seen some amazing littering episodes, including an entire bucket of KFC half-eaten chicken being thrown out of a Cadillac Escalade as it made its way onto the freeway. It was like... get that garbage out of here... before we get elsewhere...'cause it is "only" Detroit which is a dump anyway. No "Give a hoot—Don't pollute" Woodsy the owl in these parts. (Side note: the Woodsy of my childhood has been "updated" recently... to a slim and trim Woodsy who sports a backpack... the one of my childhood was apparently too fat and needed an overhaul) Sad, but true. And I know from living here that it isn't just people that live in the city and/or "the urban poor" that do this.

But even with that everyday reality, I guess I was just a bit startled to see this going on. As a child of the Woodsy generation, I felt a bit of anger and disgust at this man who could have instead simply (in my mind) just collected all of that refuse into one cart and thrown it into the garbage can at the front of the entrance as he brought the carts back. But I kept on piling my bourgie purchases into my Nissan (traitor, traitor, traitor) and when I finished with my cart, I wheeled it over to where the man was collecting them. He thanked me.

While shopping, I had also purchased a jug of windshield wiper fluid and the car needed it so badly that I popped the hood and started pouring it in. As I was doing this, the cart man literally ran over to help me. I told him, "Oh, it is okay. Thank you, but I've got it. I can do this. I could even change the oil if I had to." He laughed and replied, "Oh. I just love cars. I probably love cars more than I love people. I used to make cars at Ford until I got laid off. Now I am here collecting shopping carts at Wal-Mart." As he was telling me this he started to clean out the leaves and twigs that were in that part of the car between the windshield and the hood, in a place that is only visible when the hood is open. He also tossed this "organic matter" onto the parking lot asphalt with no concern.

At that moment, for some reason, the major shifts in the "American Dream" in all of their ironic sadness, as I experience them in the Detroit Metro area, hit me. The leaves literally blew over to where the man had just tossed out a bunch of napkins and plastic drink cups from a cart. I had one of my "Marxist eyes mist up" moments, as I watched this man, probably in his mid-30s, make his way back to the line of carts and push them into the even longer line that his co-workers had made. I closed the hood, got in, and drove off. I wondered, as I made my way back to Detroit, if he had noticed or even cared that the recipient of his love and adoration had been Japanese...

Or that I had carefully put the empty plastic jug of self-proclaimed "environmentally friendly" windshield solution (only $1.99 for the whole jug... I paid more instead of snagging the 99 cents bargain one, dammit!) back into my car to toss into the recycling pile at home?

Better than someone else

2008-08-10T20:32:00.008-04:00

My Edwards entry got me thinking about Jimmy Carter's "adultery in the heart" comment from yesteryear. You know the one. I remember, even as a 12 year old girl, lots of jokes and/or indignation at its/his expense. It continues to be offered up today as an indicator of his alleged "P.C. before P.C. was cool" lameness, as he is judged to be the worst president ever by loads of conservative types.

Here is the excerpt that seems to be most widely read/easily found online:

Because I'm just human and I'm tempted and Christ set some almost impossible standards for us. The Bible says, "Thou shalt not commit adultery." Christ said, I tell you that anyone who looks on a woman with lust has in his heart already committed adultery. I've looked on a lot of women with lust. I've committed adultery in my heart many times.... This is something that God recognizes, that I will do and have done, and God forgives me for it. But that doesn't mean that I condemn someone who not only looks on a woman with lust but who leaves his wife and shacks up with somebody out of wedlock. Christ says, don't consider yourself better than someone else because one guy screws a whole bunch of women while the other guy is loyal to his wife. The guy who's loyal to his wife ought not to be condescending or proud because of the relative degree of sinfulness.

As I searched for it today, I realized that I had never read the interview in its entirety. But I do think that it may have been a formative moment in my nascent interest in sexual politics and development of general evil tongue qualities. I really do remember thinking about it quite a bit back then and I have vivid memories of the discussions that were taking place all around me. Southern Baptist President helps in the ongoing shakeup of the good Catholic schoolgirl?

Over 30 years later... you gotta love Jimmy for his down to earth Southern self.

Or at least I do.

Dr. E.T. on John Edwards' Straying (reporting live from hell)

2008-08-09T23:15:00.038-04:00

I have no doubt that Edwards loves his wife, with whom he has had a relationship for over three decades. He clearly had bad judgement and in a bad moment created a situation that is now threatening his career as well as the trust of his family. I'm sure the conversation before the ABC interview between husband and wife was as painful as any medical procedure she incurred.
Imagine Being Elizabeth Edwards

No, Elizabeth Edwards had to be in some extraordinary form of denial and that's why she became her husband's "ambition enabler", when she supported his recent run for the presidency. My belief is that after almost thirty years of marriage she too had become so invested in his political ambitions, his cause, that she couldn't give up either, even after he cheated and she knew there was a chance his affair could be reported in the mainstream press.

"His success, now defined her success, so she was willing to go along with the fraud that that their marriage was fine," believes psychologist Victoria Zdrok, currently working on a book titled," Dr. Z on Straying."
"Elizabeth Edwards drank her Husband's Kool-Aid and Became his 'Ambition Enabler'"

The blog posts over at Huffington Post are particularly foul these days. Arianna's minions seem to have their knickers in a nasty little twist over the "Edwards Affair." There is a whole "some news is so big that it needs its own page" John Edwards page.

Although there is a pretty strong (but seemingly minority) group of commenters that has a problem with the "story" and see it as diversion/none of our business/the least of our worries, most of the blog entries and comments have signaled outrage and disgust at Edwards, his wife, and/or his"videographer" mistress. He let down staffers, he let down the men and women of America who were behind him (including ME dammit!!!!), his wife, his children, his country. Wow! He/his wife misled all of us by running for president knowing that he didn't have a bat's chance in hell of winning because of this affair. That strumpet/loose woman put her own health and that of her unborn child at risk by having unprotected sex with at least one, maybe two men (and in her 40s to boot!). Smug selfishness. Deceitful. "What about the children???"

There have also been two blog posts during this extensive Huffington Post "coverage" that focus on Elizabeth Edwards. Written by white women, that surely imagine themselves to be good feminists, these two entries take the only two possible (in lovely Puritanical 2008 America) approaches to understanding Elizabeth Edwards' place in all of this shocking (!) mess. These two posts really do underscore just how conservative, hopeless, simplistic, and high school cliquish most ways of thinking about sex and sexuality in the U.S. seem to me.

The first is from Jill Brooke, "editor in chief of FirstWivesWorld.com, a site that helps women contemplating, navigating or moving on from divorce heal through self-love, smarts and humor." She also is "a stepfamily certified coach." Brooke models the "poor Elizabeth who was cheated on while battling cancer and thus deserves our sympathy"mantle. There is nothing, it would seem to this self-identified "expert on divorce," that can possibly compare to finding out that your husband has been "cheating." It is the end of any woman's world. More painful than any cancer treatment. Simply devastating. I wish that I was joking here. But I would offer that this is a pretty widely-held belief among certain groups of women, especially those who have the most invested in "marriage" for all sorts of reasons. Yes. This may be true for lots of women, but all?

If this is the case, and I am not saying that these women should not be allowed to feel this way, okay. But the sex act as the ultimate in betrayal and pain in a marriage? Sexual behavior only with me, your loving wife, is the proof that you truly care? That is a whole lot of power to give to the imagery of your man getting busy with somebody besides you. And is it more painful to never ever really know, to hear it via his contrite confession, or to perhaps learn from his "outing" by the private detective you hired? Would it be more painful imagery if she was younger, thinner, and more refined than you? "Classier" than you? (There is an entire book waiting to be written about American women and the classy factor... classy trumps sexy every time, right?) Or would it be more painful to imagine if she was older, fatter, darker, whiter, "didn't keep herself up" as well as you do, and was just generally "lesser" than you? How could this be? You are his everything. He just didn't commit adultery in his heart, like Jimmy Carter . He lusted with his body while married to you. He booked you a prepaid stay at the Heartbreak Hotel.

Yeah, yeah. I know I am being cruel and nasty. I get it. I grew up in this country.

But there are societies, past and present, in which eating with someone other than who you are related to represents the ultimate in betrayal and suggests moral failing. The notion of "matchmaking" or first cousin marriage as the preferred type of marriage, which is the case in countless contemporary societies, seems barbaric and/or stifling to many people that live in the U.S. Most Americans would think this all is not quite right. Seemingly out of touch with "reality." The stuff of WTF? or quaint old-fashioned cultural practices.

Welcome to my world, my fellow Americans.

And is it really "cheating" if just maybe Elizabeth Edwards knew before, during, and after? That is beyond the realm of possibility. What kind of woman!? No... that is called no morals/risky behavior. Truly not fit for anything other than our disgust and/or pity.

Where exactly do tons of women in this country learn to equate their husband's sexual behavior with their own happiness? Even as these same women come home nightly to punch in for their "second and third shifts" of contemporary American gendered division of household labor, they have learned to see the betrayal, deceit, and disrespect of sex (and today that includes phone sex, porn, online chatting, right?) as the most threatening to their relationship. (Note to Jill: Statistically the number one reason that women give for getting a divorce in the U.S. is not infidelity/affairs, but "mental cruelty.")

I know such beliefs and ways of making your way through your life, with "cheating" being the worst thing a man can do to a wife, are learned. Hell, they can even sometimes be unlearned—placing you directly in hell alongside Dr. Evil Tongue. I have been convinced for quite some time and with loads of unpopular evidence to back me up that women's feelings about infidelity are not innate... despite what researchers might lead us to believe. So where do they learn it? At momma's knee? On Sunday morning?

Hmmm...

The other post is from Bonnie Fuller. She is "executive vice president and chief editorial director of American Media, Inc.... where she is charged with overseeing AMI’s 16 weekly, bi-weekly and monthly magazines, including Star magazine, Shape, Men’s Fitness, Natural Health and Fit Pregnancy, among others; and in April 2006 Fuller published her first book entitled The Joys of Much Too Much: Go for the Big Life--The Great Career, The Perfect Guy, and Everything Else You've Ever Wanted (even if you’re afraid you don’t have what it takes). "

Her bio also lays out her previous illustrious editorships with those wonderful mags, Marie-Claire, Cosmo, and Young Miss (never too early to start the brainwashing). The bio also points out that "she and her husband Michael currently live in Hastings-on-Hudson with their 4 children " (Wonder how much Ms. Fuller pays to have her second and third shift work done by what I am sure are described in The Joys of Much Too Much as a really great housekeeper, nanny, gardener, chef, driver, tutor, etc....wonder if she and the soon to be ex-Mrs. Russell Simmons have ever compared "great working mom" notes?)

With this resume Fuller has been deemed well-suited to pass judgment on Elizabeth Edwards and dares to suggest that she "drank too much of her husband's Kool-Aid." This from an editrix of magazines that have collectively probably done more harm to the general state of women's psyches and sense of self-worth over the last 35 years than all the extramarital activities (with or without the wife's knowledge) during the same time period? Good god.

And the "ambition enabler" dig? Good god again. Even if you can stomach the self-help speak (read one too many of your own drivel articles, Ms. Fuller?), how can you choke down the irony of this "successful" woman daring to attack another woman for being too ambition driven to do the right thing and refuse to support her husband in his presidential bid?

Marriage, even a religious one, in this country is first and foremost a contract. Legally binding, etc. That is the rub when I think about Americans' attitudes about marriage and "cheating"... marriage is charged with sentiment, but unlike Valentine's Day for instance, it is really about the unsentimental. What would happen if we started to think like grown folks about what government, credit card companies, mortgage lenders, and the like expect and demand from a married couple? What if we stopped thinking like teenagers desperate to be chosen as homecoming queen? What if we were brave enough to leave behind the heartbroken/mean-spirited "inner teen" who spread the rumors about the loose, trampish, low-down, nasty, skanky 'ho/skeezer (the concept remains the same even as the slang changes) that slept with all those guys, including your own Mr. McDreamy...?

Citibank could care less about your "priceless" adulterous dalliance in the Hilton, unless you are doing it with a stolen credit card or fall behind in your payments. When a marriage becomes "fraudulent," bringing to mind a string of bad checks written from your stolen checkbook, is it because the people in it did not view sexual behavior as the ultimate "deal breaker?"

According to Dr. Z., Elizabeth Edwards you are a fraud. You say your marriage is fine. But it isn't, cause your husband had sex with another woman and, most egregiously, you didn't tell us about it. You didn't let us know because you are so enamored with your own power and success that you can't see that you should have left his ass a long time ago. How dare you!

This anthropologist cum apparent kook would counter these "feminists," including the exotically monickered Dr. Z. from above, with my earlier blog entry about the now larger than life Kwame Kilpatrick and the affair that helped to bring him down (and bring out his over-the-top behavior).

People are outraged by the sex and the cheating and the desire and the passion--hell, fire, brimstone, shame... all reserved in their most concentrated form for the "racy" bits. None of this is really [ever] about sex or the titillation factor... It is much more than that.
The View from Down here in Hell

Yes, Sir. That's my daddy.

2008-08-05T21:39:00.013-04:00

Phenotype
Definition noun, plural: phenotypes

(1) The physical appearance or biochemical characteristic of an organism as a result of the interaction of its genotype and the environment.

(2) The expression of a particular trait, for example, skin color, height, behavior, etc., according to the individual’s genetic makeup and environment.

When people ask (which they still do almost 5 years later) how and why I could ever move from Seattle to Detroit, I often tell them that at the time I was so tired of living in the politically correct capital of America. At that time, I really was concerned about how Adah (this was before Roxanne was on the scene) would grow up as a young black woman in Seattle. Of course that was not the main reason for moving, but it did figure into the equation. I knew that here in Detroit, she would never have to struggle with the question of her blackness in the ways that she would in Seattle. I did not think, like many people, that it would be liberating to grow up black in Seattle. Here in Detroit I knew that she might be teased for having a Jewish daddy or that the questions that folks just think they can ask in front of children (So both of the girls are "yours," but they have different daddies, right?) would be asked. But I imagined that living in this black city that when she began to question race and racial identities (as I hoped that she would) that she would be doing it from a position of being part of a majority and not of being a sort of multicultural curiosity/pet.

It has never happened when Adah is with me in public. Because Roxanne is so much more "dubiously-hued" than Adah, we do get some looks on our Mommy and me outings. People are curious, I think. They are reading what they assume is my sexual behavior via my children's phenotypes. But no stranger has ever really been hostile or overtly questioning of my reasons for having my daughters in tow. People that we know and the questions that they feel they can ask are a different blog post entirely.

"It" has never happened when Steve, Jewish daddy, and the girls are out together. I am not with them, but I am sure that folks look. A "friend" told me here, when they go walking down the street here (in Detroit) they look like they are from 3 different races. Steve, with all of that white privilege and academic head in the clouds, does not notice the stares and double-takes. But Adah does. I have asked her and she already confides in me what she has seen people "seeing" and doing when they see them in the streets. Here in Detroit where there are so few white people living and walking around in the city with children of any hue, I am sure that seeing a 50-ish Jewish man dragging around two little girls of color is quite a sight. In a city in which only the poorest of poor walk anywhere, the New Yorker who loves to walk and often drags his girls along with him has got to be a puzzler. But it isn't just on the streets that they stump and perplex. Black men and women of all ages ask Adah questions trying to gauge if she is "all right" with this white man. "Protecting" black children, I suppose.

Adah is no dummy and she has learned (and been lectured after "it" happened the first time when she was 3 y.o.) that she must always be prepared (and never joke) to answer the questions of both complete usually hostile strangers, as well as, Detroit police officers who respond to calls and flash their cruiser lights on busy streets and gas station convenience store lots. She has learned to look on and watch as they ask Daddy for ID and question his relationship to her. Two times, this summer alone, Adah and Daddy have been stopped and quizzed by police (never apologetic) after receiving 911 calls about "a black child being dragged along against her will by a white man" or "possible kidnapping in progress." The last time this past week, the salt and pepper police duo quizzed Steve and Adah separately. The black officer asked Adah (in a mean way, Adah reports) who that man was that she was with. The white cop asked Steve for identification, wrote down his info, and asked him if Adah was adopted. It is a good thing Mommy wasn't there for any of this. I would have immediately asked him if thought this was Johannesburg and/or if he was going to administer the "brown paper bag" and "pencil" tests as part of his "investigation."

Phenotype disconnect?

These "it" incidents clearly are an indication that some concerned citizens of Detroit see something so fishy that they feel entitled to stop and quiz a total stranger with a young child and/or call the police with real or feigned alarm. These "its" never happen when Roxanne is along with Daddy and Adah. Her light skin, features, and long, slightly wavy hair ("passable" all-purpose ethnic looks that get her double takes and bring out the assumptions about her being my adopted Latina, Asian Indian, Persian (!?) child) must diffuse the concern cum outrage that folks feel when they see Steve and Adah. I say outrage because both Steve and Adah have signaled to me when they come home and tell me these stories that the people who pull up and yell questions at them as they are walking or who call the police and stand around waiting for the "interrogation" are always hostile (Steve's words) and really mad (Adah's words).

I really do wonder if any of these folks (adults) stop to think about what any of this has meant for Adah. Somebody might answer back to me that I should have thought about all of this before I "crossed the color line" and brought innocent children into this madness. I guess, I kind of stupidly assumed that growing up here in Detroit among black folk would be a more "positive version" of being an "oddity." I just imagined that black adults, at least, would have better sense because we all know that phenotypical blackness has always been a complex and variable bag of "looks," due to that glorious one-drop rule so precious to American racial politics (one drop of black in a bucket of paint and that paint is no longer white). I imagined that her sense of having a Jewish daddy and black mother here would be more positive than what was happening in Seattle, as she was increasingly being looked upon as a special kind of pet by white adults—well-intended white folk who wanted to make sure that their children had a diverse group of friends...which translated into the aging hipster Jewish/black professors and their "delightful" daughter.

Sigh.

I guess, as I made those calculations 4 years ago, I did not recognize the full gamut of "protecting our children" behavior and the rarity of seeing white men with black children, in an extremely racially charged city like Detroit. As a side note: we of course are not alone in our miscegenating antics in this city. But I do think that being on the street is so rare for anyone except for the very poor here in Detroit that the Adah/Daddy team gets an extra boost from the pedestrian factor. I don't think I have ever seen a white man with children, of any race, creed, or color, on the streets of Detroit in the entire time since we have lived here.

In any case, I certainly did not predict that Adah would answer Steve in the way that she did tonight. He asked her if she wanted to come along with him to walk Aki (our dufus dog). She did not pause or stutter. She simply said,

"No. I don't want to. People will call the police on us, because they think that you aren't my real daddy and the sirens will scare Aki."

You can run, but you cannot hide

2008-08-04T23:18:00.012-04:00

I have been lucky(?) enough to have come of intellectual age in the "As Foucault said, ..." era. I graduated from college in 1986, two years after he died. All throughout my graduate school incarnations, I have read and heard (and yes also gagged at) many others invoke the words of wisdom of the grand master/theory god. It was hard as a graduate student to not literally bust out laughing when a devotee seemed to see everything in the world through his/her lens of Foucaultism. It is even more difficult now, as PROFESSOR, to not get that nasty smug smirk that I know is often lurking in the heart of the evil tongue—and that is most easily brought out by a gushing MF fan.

I am not immune to his seductions. I think just about any "intellectual" who has read any of his work gets something out of his writings. And everybody has their own take/glorious moment/piece of revelation. Mine is his shrewd outline of the ways that "our lives" have and will become more and more about being kept track of--and his classic sociological examples of health care and prisons. But I am by no means an "As Foucault said, ...." type. No shrines to him in this house (at least not erected by me) and I don't think I even have ever cited him in anything that I have published or spoken about in any of my own work...yet.

But tonight as I made my way through the online news sources that take up way too much of my "research" time, I had one of those "As the master said" Foucault moments.

The Washington Post is reporting today about companies like "Ingenix, a Minnesota-based health information services company that had $1.3 billion in sales last year -- and Wisconsin-based rival Milliman" that are making it easy for insurance companies to pool their information about insurees' drug prescription usage. They do it "by plumbing rich databases of prescription drug histories kept by pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs), which help insurers process drug claims. Ingenix, for instance, has servers in the PBM data centers, updating the drug files as frequently as once a day."

The companies have little to no oversight and are saying that this will allow insurance companies to make same day "electronic, fast, and cheap" decisions about whether or not to insure a new applicant (bypassing physicians' offices). The article also pointed out that such decisions are being made generally without any of the "profiled" patients' knowledge.

Carceral Continuum meet Blue Cross/Blue Shield.

Blue Cross/Blue Shield meet biopolitics.

Those of you lucky enough (for now) to have health insurance meet the latest addition to your torment.

Baby Lust

2008-07-21T22:27:00.009-04:00

Nestled among national news stories about the Obama overseas junket, the booted McCain op-ed, and China's futile attempts to "purify" the air for the Olympics.... The latest "fetus abduction" case got me thinking.

Apparently, Andrea Curry-Demus "befriended" 18 y.o. Kia Johnson while the 2 women were at jail visiting their men. Johnson's body was found in Curry-Demus' apartment after Curry-Demus showed up at a hospital with a newborn baby that she claimed she had given birth to at home. This was not Curry-Demus's first attempt at baby stealing. She had actually served time for trying to do it before. And so, as was probably the case for many folk, over the last couple of days (even as I celebrated my own birthday this past weekend) I have looked towards Pittsburgh, wondering what the next strange bit of information would be with regards to this story.

On the surface it is yet another one of those thankfully rare stories about a woman who wanted a baby so badly that she ends up killing and/or cutting open a woman and then attempts (never ever with success!) to pass off the infant as her own. A little bit of research (and I do mean a little) has led me to believe that these baby lust crimes are more than just a few isolated cases of women who want babies so badly that they kill for them. In contrast to the forensic psychiatrists and criminal experts, it seems to me that while Curry-Demus certainly has major issues, her actions are an extreme acting out of the cultural belief that biological motherhood (or faking it) is the most important, most valued role any woman can have.

Is it a surprise that over the past 10 years, as far as I can see, the women who have committed these types of crimes tend to be very poor or barely making it? These are not the women who secretly (or not) mourn their childless state. These are not the women who have "other" social capital that allows them to "forget" that they have not been able to fully experience life. These are not the women that read the books and go to the seminars and decide that they will adopt children from exotic ports of calls and love them as if "they were their own." Their victims are just like them in most cases. They may be younger (since that "biological clock" is often a factor in the killer's inability to have a baby), but the victims are just as poor/working class as their killers.

The desperation of these women (my quick research suggests that over the past 10 years the majority of these cases have involved white women, but there has been a strong "representation" from black women as well) to kill another woman for her baby, usually after befriending her (!) is not just a psychological meltdown/burst of forensic criminal behavior. For women who have no access to frozen embryos, surrogate mothers, and expensive fertility treatments, the options are much more limited. That is if they want to give off the impression of having a biological child. I am not trying to downplay the criminal aspect to these killings, but I cannot help but see connections to the ways that our society privileges "blood" connections when it comes to motherhood. Countless American women, on either side of the ticking biological clock, and with varying amounts of "wealth," spend countless hours and health care dollars in a quest for a biological child of their own. How they define the biological part is of course always changing as technology changes. But at the heart of their efforts is the assumption/belief/desire to be a mother of their "own" child. at any cost, when things don't seem to be happening "naturally." Even in pro-adoption literature, adoption is a "second best" option, because the adopted child's "blood" ties are broken and adoptive parents will have to come to grips with the loss of never having a child "of their own."

What kind of world is this in which we still raise our children, and our daughters especially, to think this way? What kind of legal system do we still have in which the consanguine relationship is still the most important (oops except when it comes to the marriage contract!)? Who is her "real" mother? We all know that means that the real mother is the woman who gave birth to the child, not the one who has spent the last 8 years doing all that unpaid mothering "labor." Wanting to be a 'blood" mother, so badly that you will stop at almost NOTHING to achieve it, is not limited to people like Curry-Demus. I do not want to be disrepectful to the many women who decide to undergo fertility treatments. I don't want to be insensitive to the many women who hear their "biological clock" (notice it isn't their "motherhood clock" that they hear) and freak out. But I would imagine that if you could cut through the psychotic state that Curry-Demus clearly is living in, you might not find the answers to the questions of why she "did it" so different than many other American women who so desperately want a child of their "own."

Easy for me to say, eh? I am the "old" mother of two hilariously, rambunctiously fantastic young daughters.

But if I can't offer this up, then who can?

Shelly Get Your Gun

2008-07-14T00:10:00.005-04:00

I only have two things to say about the latest Obama "fun."

1. I told you so. I told you so. We are SOOOOO not beyond race.

2. How did Michelle "Hair so straight it Moves" Obama get a nappy fro?

"New Yorker to Don Imus. Can you read, Imus?"

As I noted in my "Imus post," you can do a whole lot of stuff to make black folk mad. Maybe just maybe the New Yorker cover's addition of a bucket of fried chicken and a busted open watermelon might have been more incendiary, but when you depict a "sister's stuff" as nappy, especially when she goes through lots of trouble to deny its natural "texture..."

You are in a world of hurt and begging for trouble.

Look out New Yorker, here it comes.

My people

2008-07-10T16:50:00.018-04:00

Skeptical & downbeat: 12% of the electorate
The election's most downbeat voters are the least enthusiastic about voting and skeptical about whether the election will make a difference for them and their families. They give Bush his lowest approval rating of any group.

They aren't excited about the contenders to succeed the president, either. Four in 10 haven't decided whom to support, by far the largest of any group, and the rest are open to changing their minds.

Thanks to a USA Today/Gallup Poll (and the clever monikers that arise from any attempt to interpret the results), I now know my people. Of the six ideal types of voters, I am most assuredly a "Skeptical and Downbeat." I needed pollsters to tell me that?

Yet I am a bit of a weirdo among my people since:

Voters in this group are older than average and the least likely to have a college education. It includes the highest percentage of those who live in small towns and rural areas.

And,

They favor McCain over Obama by 11 percentage points, but can he persuade more of them to support him — and then turn out to vote?

But I guess I really am an old union die hard in buppscale clothing anyway.

I will always thank the UAW for my straight teeth.... that orthodontist benefit that my parents had in their health care package probably saved me a great deal of pain and torment --emotional and physical. That alone would make you forever a grizzled crusty type. How could you turn your back on the union and/or "the workers", knowing that "the man" would never have helped to pay for your straight teeth unless pushed by the union?

So here I sit with my Apple laptop , Japanese language Google newsfeed, and glass of San Pellegrino, typing away in one of the poorest urban zip codes in the country. My compatriots would seem to be mainly old white men with names like Hank and Gus, Oscar and Ralph. They would most likely not want to hang with me. I wonder if we could agree on anything more than being skeptical and downbeat?

I will not vote for McCain. But I find it strange and a bit depressing to realize that my ways of thinking about the election are not like those of my "real" compatriots. I am out here with 12% of the American voting population who are nothing like me on the outside, it would seem. Not when it comes to race, education, employment, previous political views, gender, household structure--maybe even (Hold your hat, Harriette!) belief in God.

Why does the doctorate-holding, progressive, theory wonk black woman feel the same way as the older, less educated rural American? I think it comes back to how the U.S. has become decidedly anti-intellectual (and in some sense, rightly so). But at the same time , we have forgotten that there are many "uneducated" folk who also think critically and do not easily swallow the candy-coated mess that is both peddled and gobbled down so easily. I will offer that although many of "my people" lack formal education, they have learned how to think critically and beyond the easy answers/explanations--this mere 12% of the voters in this country. Many of their economic histories over the past 50 - 75 years must certainly stand in stark contrast to the dominant "American Century" tale that has been spun (and lived) as the tale of postwar America. The now "skeptical and downbeats" most likely learned a long time ago that their lives have basically gotten worse, not better, as global K-ism has grown up alongside them.

This is not a romanticization. It is not to say that my people are the salt of the earth or the "pure American soul." Yuck. It is instead to offer up the notion that the hope that Dear Obama offers up rings stale and hollow to many of these folks, because it is same shit different day and they don't really care (or at least in a positive way) that he is "black." Yet it is also because their critical thoughts/views have never been supplemented by anything other than mainstream rhetoric/ideas/films (Welcome to the dumbing down of America, everybody) that many of my people have no real way of making sense of what they see in their everyday lives. They thus will probably vote for McCain more so than Obama because they have learned to feel that if they have to vote, they might as well vote for the "man" and not the "boy."

My people.

And so I thus wonder, must I now also count Jesse Jackson as one of "my people," for the first time in history? Skeptical and Downbeat?

Talking down among strange bedfellows for sure.

In yer face

2008-07-05T22:51:00.017-04:00

Their tennis is pretty charmless, if pretty devastating. Each has a game that inspires admiration, rather than affection. Both play with little more than power, they like to blast everything in their way. They seem to have a taste not just for winning but for humiliating an opponent. Perhaps that is just a by-product of their style, perhaps it is their nature. It is impossible to say, only to notice that opponents defeated by the Williams sisters do seem to be unusually well beaten.
"Williams Sisters are Doing it for themselves," TimesOnline, 7/4/08

The above bit of coded writing comes courtesy of the man who will now forever be called in my book of "Undercover racist misogyny": Simple Simon. I know nothing about Simon Barnes, Chief Sports Writer for the London Times, other than what he wrote in his article covering the Wimbledon match up between the two Williams sisters yesterday. I do know from reading his piece that he has created a bit of sympathy for the Williams in me, where none really was there before.

I am not (surprise, surprise) a tennis fan. I know how to play. I had to learn in junior high school and high school. Aspiring upper middle-class parents in the 1970s, still expected/demanded that their girls become even better at tennis. I had never held a racket (or really watched a match on television) until that first day in 1975. I hated it. Mostly because I was already starting out much later than most of the other girls on the court. That first teacher (may she roast in hell) actually led the students in their laughter at my bumbling. She even made a crack about my body being more suited for other sports, like basketball (which I of course was always begged to play by the coaching staff every year) or track. Argh. I will never ever forget that. Who would say such a thing to a young girl?

It was in some sense true (at least the basketball part). My body was certainly very different from my female classmates all through school. I was taller, was stronger, "thicker," had more "bosom," and walked around with those power thighs, hips, and, buttocks characteristic of so many black women (all of which certainly went unappreciated in the aesthetic and athletic circles that I traveled in as a young girl/woman). This is not the stuff of Jimmy the Greek. This is the stuff that simply underscores that many black women (not all) have bodies that are "naturally" strong and muscular. Whether or not they are good athletes is a different story. Thus this is not Simple Simon's "nature" either. Have things changed from back then when that woman... (I remember her face clearly, but cannot remember her name) made her comment about bodies like mine, as the Williams (if Simple Simon's piece is to be taken seriously) in all of their glory get the more sophisticated treatment/assumptions?

Probably back then, my body (and my attitude) were much more suited for rougher sports--or at least that is what I came to believe. I can only imagine how things might have been different (if only in the witty come backs that I could have hurled at those oh -so-white and oh-so "toned" classmates/teachers of mine) if Venus and Serena Williams were not being born, but instead were playing tennis in the early 1980s...

Although I never paid much attention to them, I have read/heard all the stuff about their dad (same mold as Beyonce's Daddy?) and their notorious "bad tempers/home training." Over the years I have also noticed that online, there is a huge amount of racist and sexist commentary from "regular" people about them. Stuff that I have read has mostly made me cringe. Commenters using the easy fun of anonymous commenting to place their true thoughts into the public domain. Stuff that would cause this black woman in her 40s, with some notable muscle tone, to beat their asses, if she heard it come from their mouths, instead of reading it in the comment sections of Internet rags.

The Williams have had their bodies and their faces discussed in ways that bring back way too many of the comments and ha ha jokes that I remember from my own youth in predominately white schools. Being compared to apes. Being called "too mannish." Jokes about squashing men. Nasty, nasty, nasty comments.

If we do pay attention to where black women athletes seem to end up playing, whether for "fun" or for money, we still tend to see us in the places where we the stereotypes seem to ring true, Track and Field, basketball or The Independent Women's Football League (IWFL). Bodies still seemingly not well-suited for the gentile sport of refined power, wealth, and sophistication: Tennis (Can you imagine if Tiger Woods had the body of a hulking linebacker?) All of this even as the Williams sisters literally smash such assumptions. Just give it time. Yeah, right.

Which brings me back to Simple Simon. He also wrote in his piece from yesterday:

True, they have been a little bit abrasive at times, sometimes a bit awkward, sometimes a little rough about the edges. Well, that's often the way with mould-breakers. You cannot always change society with supreme tact and patrician manners. Sometimes the sisters have seemed to treat the conventions of the game with contempt, winning the warm-up, overdoing the glares, not apologising for points won from a net-cord, getting too close at the change of ends. Little things, niggly things that add up.
This made them seem a little too strident, a little too in-yer-face. But how could they have been anything else? They needed to batter down walls, they needed, most importantly, to feel that they were dealing with this strange and somewhat hostile world on their own terms. And so they did and if people didn't like it, then that was their rotten luck.
The sisters lack the sense of vulnerability that attends almost all tennis players, of either sex, even the best. That's because, uniquely, they are not alone. There are two of them, tight, loved and loving, and that is a source of extraordinary strength to them. And they go on and they go on, and here they are at Wimbledon and one of them is going to win it again.

As is oft the case, Simon would be shocked to find out that I find his commentary so offensive. I really do think that he imagines that he is being "pro" Williams sisters (how could he really imagine himself pushing any boundaries, when the title of the piece is taken from an Aretha Franklin song.... Kool and the Gang's "Celebration" was probably next in the queue, if things didn't work out).

Much of what Simon writes is simply code for the larger argument that still swirls around the Williams. All those niggly things that add up. They are too "rough" for this sport. They are not "feminine." They get pleasure from letting loose their power. And they aren't sorry! Their bodies are incredible and especially so when they are "beating down" their opponents, but damn do they have to gloat? They are not to be loved, but just simply admired. Their power is impressive and so American working class, like a Hummer (born in Michigan, raised in Compton). No finesse. No complicatedness. No sophistication. But damn. They stick together, don't they?

They are too black for this sport.

Earlier this year there was some "innocent" comment made by a sportscaster about Venus' booty during the Australian Open. Folks were outraged, but many were outraged not by his comment (and the camera person's blatant zoom in coverage of her booty), but by Venus' ignorance of the term "posterior." Others pointed out that the Williams clearly want attention placed on their bodies because they wear clothing both on and off the court that accentuates their forms. And so what do they expect when their "In yer face" clothing styles help to create a situation in which their bodies are commented on all the time.

I know that they both make loads of money. And I imagine that I would not find either of them a "hoot" to hang out with. Their lack of any real substantial education was a big mistake on Big Daddy's part from my perspective, but then again... who am I? But I have been having flashbacks/projecting of my own issues/sympathy for them, as I have been following the coverage of their wins "over there" over the last 24 hours. No matter how formidable, Serena and Venus are simultaneously "working it" and "being had" by the images of and assumptions about black women in global culture today.

Dear Venus and Serena: I got your back!

Um. Well. Sorta.

If only.

The Happiest Day of your Life

2008-06-29T12:00:00.014-04:00

I present a bit of salve for those who wonder about the evil tongue's appreciation of love, home, and hearth-- especially after that "downer" post about the Simmons' breakup yesterday and the post/attack on women's alleged universal desires for hugs and cuddling from earlier in the week.

Ruben Studdard, Mr. American Idol, got married yesterday. Everybody loves a wedding, right? Yummy cake. Pomp. Pomp. More pomp. From the pic, it looks like no expense was spared. Huge wedding = showing the world that your love knows no bounds, right?

Beware, Mr. Studdard. I read somewhere that the more money spent on a wedding, the more likely the couple will split. But I have also seen the statistic about couples who live together before marriage being more likely to split. In this case, it is clear to me (and the researchers!) that it is not the living together first that does it, but that such couples are more "open" to challenging "traditional" understandings of what men and women should expect in their personal lives--I am unhappy... Give me my divorce. ¡Pronto!

To be honest, I was shocked to read about the wedding because I always thought that Studdard would follow in the footsteps of HIS idol, Mr. Luther Vandross--confirmed bachelor. So I was also a bit at a loss for words to describe the photo that I saw of the wedding. I am not quite sure what the explanation might be for Studdard's expression in the photo that appeared in the press. There is a long list of possibilities: bad angle, shoes too tight, corset/waist cincher too constricting, too hot, too much bachelor partying done the night before. No matter what the cause, the groom looks like he is about to throw up and/or beat somebody down. Perhaps there are happier shots. Perhaps he crossed some newsperson who chose this photo as the public representation of the happy couple.

Perhaps he was secretly shown a copy of the Simmons child custody agreement right before the ceremony.

Hi Hater/Mommy Dearest

2008-06-28T22:33:00.006-04:00

According to legal papers obtained by, The Insider, Russell Simmons gets the girls one week out of every eight, plus extra time for summer vacations and holidays.

In addition, he pays $20,000 per child per month in child support. That cash flow stops when each reaches the age of 19 1/2, or until the daughter is emancipated, married, becomes self-supporting, joins the armed forces or stops living with Kimora Lee Simmons.

Finally, he's required to buy or lease a car valued at $60,000 or more for the girls once every 24 months. (People Magazine online, 6/27/08)

In an open letter wrote by Simmons to celebrity blogger, Perez Hilton, he praised his former wife for being an "excellent mother" who "is doing a great job with them."

"Regarding the money, my kids live a tremendous life. They do have lots of security, nannies, educators, special programs, travel, chefs, on and on. Their mother manages all of those luxuries and I'm happy to provide for that," he added. ("Kimora Lee Gets The Kids and $480,000 a Year for Each", 6/28/08)

I have to admit that I have never paid too much attention to Kimora and Russell. I mean, I know who they are, know their brands, know that the Mister made his first huge chunk of cash from peddling/helping to establish "hip-hop" in this country. He put the PH in fat... Phat Farm, Baby Phat. Like Bill Gates, that other mogul also in the news this week, he dropped out of college because he wanted to start his business. No comment.

I know that he also is a some kind of philanthropist/yogi master (despite the ironic violence and money making methods of the rest of his "business"). I am not really a Baby Phat kind of urban dweller and thus I also kind of found the Mrs. and all of her "style makin'" a bit too much... but hey... neither I , nor my children, are her demographic. But I know that the Simmons' lives were held up by many to be a perfect example of "making it" and "giving back." No comment.

Alas, I also know that the "blingiest" couple have parted ways. Their divorce settlement was made public today. A lot of news outlets/sites have been making a big deal out of the huge amount of money that the soon-to-be-ex Mrs. Simmons will get for maintenance/child support (sole custody to boot!). I have to say that I am not faulting her for wanting to "have her girls attended to." And clearly Russell himself has no issue with the huge, mind-boggling amounts of money that he will give to his children's mother for their support/proper upbringing. Great mom indeed. What a gig! Would I turn down the nannies, educators (!), chefs (plural), etc. if I could get them for my children? I don't know for sure, but I'd like to think that I would not want to raise children like that, especially in the world we live in now. Good god...

But it is just kind of hilarious that the conspicuous consumption (good life/luxuries!) that Simmons will continue to pay for (and only seeing the children now and then and without custody) is such a stark contrast to his caring/yoga kumbaya "self-branding." It just seems more "honest" to just go ahead and live like the filthy rich folk that you are... don't try and make it look like you are "doing good"/ humble at the same time. Your life choices are your life choices. All the "good" that you think you are doing is basically to make YOU feel good (and continue the belief that the rich really care about the poor). But you have to give it to Kimora. I don't think she ever claimed to have that "om thing" going on in the way that Russell did.

But even with all of that, what really pushed me over the evil tongue edge was the "car allowance." Seems so over-the top. Yet Ms. Kimora needed some consultation on that demand. With gas prices being what they are now, $60, 0000 just might get them half a year's worth of gas for their peaceful yoga-influenced vehicles by the time they turn 16.

Ante up, big daddy.

Despite the fact that

2008-06-25T22:31:00.007-04:00

I could get my blood pressure up into the stratosphere by deconstructing the following:

Men like casual sex more than women—scientific fact

I won't.

Let's just say that nothing says "great research/hypothesis" better than a study that confirms what everybody just "knows": "men" are hardwired to like hot and steamy getting busy throw downs with no commitment and "women" are hardwired to crave Glade scented candles and back rubs from their lifepartner cum daddy to their offspring. Not that there is really anything wrong with either of those modi operandi in principle,

But damn.

Driven by evolution?
Scientific fact!?

Where are those damned bonobos (not that anthropomorphisizing them is less fraught with major theoretical/conceptual issues than the so-called evolutionary psychology mess and its quest for the "true nature of gendered human sexuality") when you need 'em?

Another Happy Place...

2008-06-22T13:56:00.010-04:00

As I write this, it is Sunday afternoon in Falls Church, Virginia. I am hunkered down in the back of the Starbucks in Idylwood Plaza (could I have made that up?). I am here in DC doing fieldwork for The bullet and the veil. This is one of my ongoing research projects that I am working on right now. The bullet and the veil focuses on two culturally charged U.S. historical moments. The title is taken from events that took place in the summer and fall of 2002— the Elizabeth Smart abduction in the summer of 2002 and the case of D.C. sniper Lee Boyd Malvo in the fall of 2002, a year after 9/11. The project is focused on shifting understandings in the U.S. of innocence, evil, human nature, and childhood and the ways that these two young people's lives served as backdrops for larger arguments about the future of "the American Dream" in troubled times.

As I sit here making use of AT& T's wireless Internet service, I am just a few minutes drive away from one of the sites where the D.C. snipers killed Linda Franklin in a Home Depot parking lot. A killing that an FBI profiler described as "brazen" because it was close to one of northern Virginia's busiest intersections (the busiest intersection is code for "lots of retail," as I look at it six years later). Most of the Beltway snipers' victims were killed while being consumers.

And as I sit here, writing up my notes and thinking about what I have been observing, I decide to take a break from my work and read the Sunday Washington Post. And imagine my surprise as I make my way through the paper and spot a huge color pic of Detroit's Greektown on the front page of the paper's Travel section.

"Finding a happy place in Detroit"

It is a strange, strange piece. I am not sure if Ellen McCarthy, who wrote the piece, is for, or against Detroit. At its heart, I think, is a quest to see whether or not Detroit really is, as Forbes Magazine declared earlier this year, the Most Miserable City in America.

Anytime a visitor writes a travel piece about a city, natives (or least this native) have a good laugh. The so-called hip hot spots are usually tired and worn out by the time they are mentioned in a travel article. The great places to find food and drink/good times, may remain the same, but oftentimes the "local flavor" that appears in the Travel section is often canned at best when written by an outsider/visitor. This is in part why ethnographers like to think that we do "the outsider" bit better/differently than journalists and travel writers.

Ellen McCarthy depicts a Detroit that even I don't quite recognize. The things she sees and writes about (trying to gauge the misery index in a travel piece? Who approved this as a travel piece?) stump even me, who is by no means a Detroit booster. The places and people that are written about are not even stereotypes. They are unrecognizable to me, as both resident and anthropologist. Her main observation, in that oh-so-lovely snarky tone that I have written about here before, seems to center on the way that everything that she and her companion want to see or do is not open for business when they pull up.

As I sit here, one of the things that has come up in my fieldnotes constantly since I have been in the D.C. area, is the huge emphasis on shopping and buying. I have lived in many an American shopping paradise and this one takes the cake.

Just as Detroit (the city proper) is mainly a city in majority black, with commuter whiteness sprinkled on for good measure, metro D.C. is in the words of my cousin who lives here, "A United Nations of America." And if the American Dream is to be able to shop and buy what you want, when you want to, this is indeed the American Dream. This is the Happy Place that Forbes holds Detroit up against. This is the place where I have seen more personalized plates than anywhere else that I have ever been. I have been told that it is "cheap" to get personalized plates in Virginia. Happy, happy, happy day.

As I drove into the very shopping center that was site of the Franklin killing, I could have even purchased my own Mexican (probably illegal) men to come and do day work for me. As I make my way about this metro area, I see the "happiness" that has helped to make the Virginia towns of Manassas (another site that Malvo and Muhammed chose, this time a gas station) and Woodbridge have the highest home mortgage foreclosure rates in the country at present (I saw this on the local news this past Friday). Folks hoping to find happiness in the good life. Another thing just might be to buy some of the Obama goods that are everywhere in D.C. proper. Obama goods are certainly a profitable cottage industry these days. I did not exaggerate when I wrote in my fieldnotes yesterday: Obama goods/picture taking with cardboard likeness = multinational feeding frenzy.

I have come to see the majority of folks in this area as some of the rudest drivers and shoppers that I have EVER encountered. They may not register on the misery index, and may be happy, but god save their souls. They are what I would call, if I took off my social scientist hat, F-O-U-L. I am not sympathetic to the terror that the D.C. snipers created in this area, but it is indeed an irony that their serial killings were so "successful" because they shrewdly (evilly?) knew where to find easy victims/penetrate the everyday "security and happiness" of Americans. Would "Detroit sniper killings" have had such power? Would they even have been able to take place in Detroit, City of Infinite Misery?

So my addendum to McCarthy's strange piece is this:

Don't worry, be happy.

Don't let the terrorists (whether foreign or homegrown),
the lenders,
or those who led you to believe that the gas and the groceries would always be cheap (so move further and further out to live your version of the American Dream),
know that they have beaten us.

"Get out and shop."

Unless you live in/are visiting Detroit.

My mother and Steve Jobs

2008-06-16T21:02:00.007-04:00

I have never owned a Windows machine, although I can use one... I am the stereotypical Mac user. I could easily be in one of their commercials. I fit the profile big time.

When I was in graduate school at Northwestern, I needed to buy my first computer. I of course wanted a Mac. I decided that I would get a pretty good color monitor (a major splurge back in those days...god, am I that old?) and laser printer as well. I decided to take advantage of a low interest Apple loan to pay for my dream set up. I needed a co-signer. Of course I asked my mother. I wondered if I should get a lesser bundle. Less money, but less power/pizazz. My mother argued that it would only be a few more dollars/month in loan and that I would be sorry that I had not spent a little more for what I really wanted. I think she secretly thought that the more powerful computer would give me some kind of edge in my doctoral program. She signed the papers for the bigger and better bundle. The next time she came to see me, she saw the fish bowl screen saver (in color!), watched me use the Internet (!!!! WOW you can interact with stuff and people in real time! and order things on that site called Amazon.com?), and was duly impressed.

I forgot all about that little seemingly mundane memory of my mother until today. An article in Forbes brought it all back. It was all about the speculation concerning Steve Jobs' "rail-thin appearance" when he announced the latest iPhone/Mac power move last week. People have been wondering whether or not his cancer has "come back." The article was all about (complete with diagrams) Whipple surgery and how such surgery is only offered to the slimmest minority of pancreatic cancer patients. This is because usually the cancer is too far advanced when it is discovered to be stopped with surgery. The article details the specifics of the procedure:

surgeons remove the right-most section, or “head,” of the pancreas - as well as the gallbladder, part of the stomach, the lower half of the bile duct, and part of the small intestine - and then reassemble the whole thing in a new configuration. The severed surfaces of the stomach, bile duct, and remaining pancreas are stitched to the small intestine so that what’s left of the pancreas can continue to supply insulin and digestive enzymes.

It suggests that Jobs may be so thin and worn-out looking now (he had his surgery in 2003) because he is still dealing with the effects of this rigorous "mother of all surgeries." As any "regular" reader of this blog knows, my mother too had Whipple surgery (she was lucky enough too), but died almost a year later.

Seeing the picture of Jobs in the article, and reading about the surgery and its effects on those who have it, brought back memories of my mother that I had pushed aside for the last 2 years. I remembered of course, but I had forgotten about just how much the surgery took out of her. She was never ever the same, physically or emotionally, afterwards. Roxanne and I flew down to Tennessee the day after my mother's surgery. Roxanne was just 3 months old and quickly became the belle of the cancer wing. All the nurses loved her and at that time, there was still hope that my mother might be cured. A newborn baby added a great deal to the situation. But looking back, I do wonder what my mother really thought about all of our lame efforts to be cheery and business as usual, as she sat there with half of her major organs removed/reformatted. I remember taking Roxanne to the family lounge to nurse her and sitting there wondering what kind of sick, twisted world could create a situation where my mother's body was so messed/chopped up, while mine was seemingly miraculously "producing" so that my daughter would be nourished.

Whipple surgery is rough. Whether his cancer has returned or not, I have respect for Jobs. I know what it did to my fiercely independent, healthy, and vigorous mother. I know how sick she was after it. Some, but not all, of my most painful memories of her battle with pancreatic cancer come from that time right after she had her surgery. Ironically, the surgery also probably gave my mother another 7 months that she would not have had without it. Those who have undergone Whipple, alive or not, share a kind of bond that I can only imagine. Having gone through it and talking to someone who has done the same must be a powerful moment in their lives. A club of hard core surivors, no matter how long they live after the sutures are removed.

I might have to ditch my BlackBerry for one of those new iPhones, in honor of my mother and Steve Jobs.

My mother, the ultimate early adopter even when she died at age 62, would most certainly have approved.

Barak's lie-ability/All I ever needed to know, I learned at my pappy's knee

2008-06-15T21:50:00.023-04:00

You and I know how true this is in the African-American community. We know that more than half of all black children live in single-parent households, a number that has doubled — doubled — since we were children. We know the statistics — that children who grow up without a father are five times more likely to live in poverty and commit crime; nine times more likely to drop out of schools and 20 times more likely to end up in prison. They are more likely to have behavioral problems, or run away from home or become teenage parents themselves. And the foundations of our community are weaker because of it.
Barack Obama, Father's Day speech to Apostolic Church of God, 6/15/08

Barack Obama’s bid for the White House has stirred up excitement in Detroit, where residents have waited for the chance to elect a black president.

Nick Bunkley, "Navigating Detroit," NYT 6/15/08

Today is Father's Day. Adah and Roxanne wanted to celebrate with Daddy by going to the "big playground" on Belle Isle. Belle Isle is the huge Olmstead-designed island park (largest in the nation-- today the city of Detroit's reversion to the nation's largest urban prairie is an ironic addendum to that fun fact). As we drove there, Adah noticed a sign for Obama's rally here tomorrow. She whined from the backseat (as I blasted Lupe Fiasco's "Little Weapon" for her--she begs for it everyday--bad mommy), "OOO. I wanna go see Obama." Daddy told her that he too would like to go, but that "we would have to stand and wait a long time and might not get in AND it would be past your bed time." The youngest Obamaite ever. I don't know what kind of conversations Daddy and Adah have been having about Candidate Obama, but I guess their discussions have made her into a supporter. Good thing she hasn't yet asked mommy evil tongue (who has kept her mouth shut when her 5 y.o. pundit states her presidential preferences) her opinions about Senator Obama.

Kinda like the "Santa Claus talk." Except in good half-Jewish/half-weirdo tradition, she has never been told to believe in Santa. She is most certainly "the spoiler" that has ruined it for others and thus has never had to have her heart broken... Bad mommy.

Adah and Daddy's desire to see the candidate is not a rare thing in Detroit these days. There has been a great deal of buzz around his appearance. A student asked that we reschedule our meeting tomorrow, because she wants to see Obama. Flyers are everywhere, urging folk to come out and support Obama. Detroit is indeed excited about the first real (read: in the city) Obama appearance. And both the local and national media have focused on how our Dear Mayor's legal troubles might make him a liability for Candidate Obama ( Just yesterday Kwame announced that he has decided to stay away--or had it decided for him). Why the buzz? Detroit in all of its glory/ugliness is indeed a black city. A black city in a region of unbelievable dire need of something/anything/anybody to stop its continuing decay and waste (of people and of physical environment). And thus if people like NYT blogger Nick Bunkley are to be believed, we Detroiters are waiting in excitement to vote for a black president, because he knows what ails us and our city. And thus we here in this black city with more than its share of "issues," like the rest of our "skinfolk" in this country, are allegedly going to vote for Obama in huge numbers because he is black. We are excited because he is black. Because he is different. Because at last "our time" has come. He is "ours."

Allegedly.

Probably at around the same time that Adah and Daddy were lamenting being too old/young to attend tomorrow's rally, their lust object was concluding his Father's Day "Moynihan meets Bill Cosby meets 'our values'"speech/sermon in Chicago. Just like his "path-breaking" race speech from earlier this year, this speech represents what I find disturbing (instead of hopeful) about an Obama presidency. In both of these cases, following in the footsteps of that first black president--Mr. Bill Clinton, Obama's performance on the surface sounds like it might be kind of progressive and revolutionary. But it really is the same old conservative culture of poverty crap that Republicans and other neoliberals (this includes many in the Democratic Party as well) have used to weaken/eradicate the expectations of Americans about governmental and corporate responsibility. Gone is any real debate about what the government should actively and unapologetically do to help its people (all of its people) prosper.

In an era in which we are told that we can no longer afford public programs and that there is still no such thing as a free lunch, and while the wealthiest continue to become exponentially wealthier at the expense of "regular" Americans, Obama's "black men need to step up to the plate because they are to blame for their children's social ills" theory is not progressive or refreshing. It is the same shit, different day answer that is not about "personal responsibility" but is really about shifting the responsibility for dire social ills from the government to "the people."

It is easy to be branded as a "pie-in-the-sky-liberal" for suggesting that Obama's focus on black men's collective lame ass role as fathers is racist, classist, and will do nothing to change things for the better. I will take that slam, if need be. Except I actually don't consider myself a liberal, for the record. Somebody might counter my outrage with a but, but argument. But he started out with that little diatribe to help white voters (who we know secretly think that this is the main reason for why black folks in America are collectively "less" than them... how liberal... those family values--see di Leonardo's still relevant Village Voice article for a nasty old skool evil tongued discussion ) be more sympathetic to his more "revolutionary" proposals. Yet even if that was acceptable as strategy, which it is not, Obama is still causing immense harm to the birth of any real alternative to the economic realities facing the poor in America today. Obama was tapping into the widely-held myth that throughout U.S. history, everybody else (read: white folk and immigrants from other countries-past and present) made the American Dream a reality due in large part to their cultural and moral values—with intact families. With fathers.

There is no mention of the very different economic times (outsourcing/rust belt?), of systematic racism (you want to get a mortgage to live where, boy?), of the realities of white ethnic gangs and violent inter/intraethnic violence (the original boys in the 'hood). There is no mention of the huge amount of governmental help that was used after WWII in this country to foster the American Dream for white folk. There is no mention of what to do to help create a similar environment for those who still have not been able to prosper in this country. To do so would not be about hope, but instead would make white folk (and the talented tenth non-whites) uncomfortable in their belief that they have made it because of their (or their families') superior morality/family values. Obama, like Bill Cosby and all the other black folks who preach that we need to take charge of our own destiny by bringing back morality/weddings for the good of the children, speaks to "us" harshly, yet with love. Daddy knows best.

What makes it all so frustrating is that Obama likes to play the "sensitive-thinking-progressive -man" card. Heck, he even worries about the environment, while wringing his hands over the bastard black youth of America. Even as he spoke about the struggling single parents (mothers) he stressed how much an undefined "we" need to help them—his only suggestion of a governmental role is in a menu of tax credits. Ugh... when I heard that, did I ever get a nasty flashback to the excitement during my political coming of age: Reaganomics and the "supply side." Heck, he even makes it clear that he is no misogynist. Golly, he is a feminist (of the liberal feminist type--check out my earlier posting about "feminist defenders" if you need a refresher), dammit. Girls can do what boys can (and violence and hooch mammaism has no place in his fatherly world). Note to self: I wonder if his girls get to listen to Lupe?

Yet all is not what it seems, again.

So many of these women are doing a heroic job, but they need support. They need another parent. Their children need another parent. That’s what keeps their foundation strong. It’s what keeps the foundation of our country strong.

My problem with Obama is that underneath his skin and his smiles, he is nothing new. Yes, compared to what we have had for the last 8 years, he is indeed a gem. But, is that really a compliment? A reason to get excited? As I sit here in the Woodbridge neighborhood of Detroit, surrounded by slumming white hipsters who will inevitably return to suburbia or move elsewhere in the country when they outgrow their skateboards and "alternative" lifestyles, and in turn, all of us surrounded by some of the most heart-wrenching and maddening poverty that one can imagine seeing in this country, I am angered that Obama takes the "black men's inability to keep their penises in their pants and failure to step up to father their children" is to blame route.

Nothing about schools. Nothing about the criminal infant mortality rate in urban America. Nothing about the obesity and nutritional hell that black children face who live in this city. I can find any kind of snack food or sugary "drink" in the world everywhere in this city--and it is cheap and quick energy. You can find fruits, vegetables, and all those other wholesome food choices that your Bridge card can buy, if you look hard enough. But it is more expensive and more time consuming to prepare than all of that junk. A daddy in the home will solve that? A daddy in the home will help this city deal with the huge Brownfield problem that faces not just Detroit, but all those ring suburbs too? A daddy in the home will close down the incinerator (Go Detroit. Again, we have the largest municipal incinerator in the U.S....hooray) that is assuredly responsible for this city's children's out-of -control asthma rates? A daddy in the home will solve, or at minimum, lessen the effects of all of these problems?

I have nothing against daddies. I have nothing against marriage. But the notion that 1) black men don't marry the mothers of their children and don't pay up and 2) no father in the home (even grandpops and uncles aren't as good as that biological daddy, according to Obama) is THE explanation for societal ills is not progressive (Hey, did I just get another nasty flashback--this time to Murphy Brown and Dan Quayle?). I fear that when elected, Barack"The Dream" Obama will take us back to the future of the Reagan years (or to be gracious, if you want to give sociologist William Julius Wilson --Mr. Culture of Poverty himself--some credit, you could insert the Clinton years ) when it comes to thinking about black America.

"Hush your mouth," you say?

I would like Obama to move beyond those easy "statistics" and assumptions and think really hard for a change about the implications of what he so easily offers up for our consumption. Marriage, or rather the mystical saving power of black manhood, as the fix all for social problems is retrograde. I don't care whose mouth it comes from. What is shaking our community's (and the "our" itself needs to be problematized a great deal, as well) foundations is not the lack of live in the same physical space daddies who will whip you with a belt and/or gather the young ones around and instill respect and pride. And the question of child support? Here in Detroit, I wonder if the magic marriage wand was waved and all of "these children" had daddies that stepped up, where would these daddies be working to bring that paycheck into the household? With gas sure to be 5.00/gallon and the cost of living increased by 25% by the inaugural ball next year, and with no real public transport to speak of in the Motor City, work of the legal kind will be even more difficult to find and get to. Good luck, Daddy.

And that my friends is really at the heart of the matter. You can have 80 daddies living in your house. If none of them can find a job because you/they are living in a criminally economically depressed/dire situation (in which even educated white folk can't find work), the manhood factor is a moot point. Unless, again, you believe that it is sheer biologically deterministic maleness alone that accounts for why some kids thrive and others fail. This is easier to believe/ingest/suggest than really grappling with the reasons why kids (and adults) end up where they are and doing what they are doing--and this goes for non-black folk as well. And Mr. Pro-feminist Obama? Going along with your argument, what is to be made of the woman who dares to think of a divorce when she has kids? What kind of mother would do such a thing to her children? Girl, if you love your kids and are any kind of decent mother (and this cuts across all racial and class lines), you had better work on that marriage. Better to suffer in silence, or not, than to selfishly and irresponsibly subject your children to the statistical hell that awaits them as daddyless kids. Should have thought about your "obligations" before you got yourself pregnant. Use your evolutionary commonsense and find the mate that will be the best provider for you and your offspring. Unfortunately, this line of thinking has plenty of "research" to back it up. Anything that challenges this commonsense knowledge/research is branded as "opinionated." Michelle Malkin to the rescue, anybody? Unfair? I will be revolutionary enough to say in my defense: On target. Strawberry-flavored caca or unflavored caca? It all is caca, in the end.

For many this speech may very well convince them the Obama is their candidate. For me, I will admit that it has made me wonder if I really will be able to plug my nose and vote for Mr. Barack in November. I would never vote for McCain. But I really don't know. I just don't know how I will be able to hold my breath for that long.

To quote Outkast:

"Yeah, roses really smell like boo boo."

In Adah's defense, she also begged and whined in the same tone that she used today to see both Alicia Keys and Justin Timberlake in concert earlier this year.

R. Kelly—Homeboy gets off

2008-06-13T20:22:00.018-04:00

I will admit that over the past 5 years, I have used R. Kelly to titillate my Intro to Anthro students. Ever since the R. Kelly "pedophilia sex tapes" scandal hit the gossip charts/court docket, Kelly has had a cameo appearance in my kinship/incest/age of consent lecture. I have used the charges (and subsequent outrage over the lack of outrage by the "community" about the video allegedly depicting Kelly's golden-showered rape/domination of his 14 y.o. goddaughter) to encourage students to think about the cross-cultural realities (as opposed to the biological realities, or rather what they falsely assume are universal biological realities) of prohibitive sex. It is a classic exercise that causes students to simultaneously question and cling to their understandings of what is right and wrong, especially when it comes to ideas about sexuality.

Even though today Kelly has been acquitted of the charges, he will of course still get his biannual cameo in Intro to Anthro. The acquittal will even add a bit more to the example, I imagine.

But over the past few days as I read about the trial and the post-verdict coverage, I began to ask myself the question that one student almost always has asked me when we are discussing "R. Kelly."

What do YOU think, Professor?

Tons of stuff has been written just about everywhere about the tapes, the trial, the "community," the recording industry, the "troubled star/genius," the victim, and our society.

So for what it is worth, here is what I think/see.

1. One name: Josh Levin. Levin has contributed two "Dispatches" pieces over at Slate. Lord knows that the various witnesses' "problems with credibility" and the numerous twisted story lines throughout the case confirm that lots of my people (and yours too, for that matter) have loads of dirty laundry. From the prosecution's star witness to her AK-47 totin' boyfriend to the Sun-Times reporter who came close to being locked up for not answering questions on the stand... Good Golly, Ms. Molly. Yet in true Slate form, Levin's coverage of the Kelly trial is in that au courant so-snarkily-hip-white-dude way that it couldn't possibly be racist/classist/ageist/misogynistic... and if you suggest that it is then it is you that has the issues. Welcome to the 21st century, Mr. "We are beyond race" Candidate Obama. Levin's final "dispatch" doesn't even try to hide its smug self-righteousness. It makes even the evil tongue cringe. And that takes a whole lot of nastiness. It is not that I love Kelly or even think that he is "innocent" of the crimes. But responses to the Kelly case (and now his acquittal), highlight the huge divides among the people living in this country today. Just as the OJ case brought out the true colors, so to speak, of America, so did the Kelly case, albeit on a much smaller scale. Even if we can conclude that the murder of two white adults trumps the alleged down and dirty treatment of an under aged black girl--both cases and trials turn upon that unspoken secret shared among polite society. Black men are often violent, sexually deviant, and unbelievably gauche (again... welcome to campaign sleaze, Candidate Obama).

Levin serves as an example of how such public spectacles today really are a gloriously sick barometer of our times.

2. Another name: Ieshi Agee. This evening's Chicago Tribune's coverage,R. Kelly Verdict: R. Kelly acquitted on all counts, describes the reaction of many of the fans (by the looks of the pics that I have seen about 95% of Kelly's fans are black women of all ages). One fan "Ieshi Agee, 25, stood with her three young boys, who cheered as Kelly walked out. 'I knew he wasn't guilty!' Agee screamed."

Kelly has a nasty, nasty reputation in the media. It would not be difficult to find him distasteful, no matter what your gender, sexual preferences, race, age, or religious beliefs. Something in him for everybody to find offensive--or to love. Kelly is different from many of the other black men selling raunch though. Whether you like his style or not (or believe that he is functionally illiterate--as our friend Levin is only the latest to point out), Kelly has made a pretty significant impact on popular music in the United States. Underneath all of that, or maybe on top of all of that, Kelly is no dummy. Yet before and after the sex tape scandal, if you read or listened to any entertainment media... or hell... if you listened to Kelly's own music, it is easy to see that Kelly has not ever tried to craft himself as a "gentleman." He has made his public persona into that of a glorified sexed-up thug who sometimes calls upon Jesus, his deceased mother, grandmother, or all three, as needed. Who really knows if any or how much of this is true? But what has been so interesting to me throughout the trial, and especially today when the verdict was announced, is the number of black women who defended him against others outside the courthouse (usually these others were in the form of older black men who were mad as hell about Kelly's alleged pedophilia). I do not mean this in the Levin way--how can those people be so dumb? I mean instead, that you have loads of black women (and probably not paid by Kelly, I would imagine) supporting a man whose music is often (but not always!) about men being bad to women and portraying/dehumanizing women as meat. A man who was accused, and with videotaped evidence to support the claims, of doing all sorts of "nasty, freaky things" to a young girl that he was supposed to protect. As you know, the evil tongue is a critic of essentialized human behavior in any form. So I am not suggesting that black women should be the most outraged about sex crimes against 13 year-old black girls. And so in a weird twist, the daily scene outside the courtroom, among the spectators, looked a little like those anti-abortion protests--older men (this time black, instead of white) seemingly the most outraged over Kelly's alleged pedophilia and being outnumbered by many more women (mainly black and under 50, but by no means only that demographic of women showed up to support Kelly/gawk).

The Kelly trial was really yet another place where the tensions between the talented tenth/aspiring black folk and the "black proletariat" of the 21st century are evident--and thus I was reminded throughout about our own "little" version of this same thing here in Detroit. Kwame Kilpatrick still(!) has a pretty sizeable number of supporters in the city. From what I can make of it, many (if not the majority) of them are black women.

Respectability. Bringing the race down. Chaste sexual desire (I am not advocating sex with children... but I do wonder how much the freaky golden shower bit in the video in question helped to rile respectable black folk up). Devil Music (Did somebody say, "Trapped in the Closet?") Praising God (but not really meaning it).

I have to add here that I just love this from the same Trib article I mentioned:

When asked about his impression of Kelly now, the juror said he'd heard Kelly thanked God for the verdict. "I hope he does thank God," the juror said.

None of the fans/supporters that seem to show up in the various media accounts that I have seen, really care about this respectability issue.... or rather they believe that Kelly didn't do it. They want to believe. Yet in doing so, they ironically are both challenging and reifying the bourgeois notions of respectability that their very existence creates. The Kelly case and the "circus" surrounding it, show the class and morality complexities of black folk in America today.

Although I am one of those who thinks that Kelly was in the video and doing those things to the girl that prosecutors say it was, I again marvel at how respectability and ultimately sexuality/sexual behavior among black folk (which probably kept the girl, now young woman, and her immediate family quiet throughout the trial... and that had the girl denying that it was her) is such a battleground for us.

Where is Prince when you really need him?

Lessons from the playground: Sunscream

2008-06-07T22:19:00.007-04:00

As I end my first year as mother to a Kindergartener, I realize that I have learned many lessons as Adah's Mommy. Most have been ones that I could have predicted before my eldest daughter even entered "real school." These lessons have tended to revolve around the sappiness factor that comes from watching your "baby" learn to read (3rd grade level at the end of Kindergarten!-brag, brag) and of seeing her dealing with the realities of "life." Other lessons have been a nasty surprise: The self-fulfilling performances of the bitchy nastiness of girls and the rugged nastiness of boys, the intense replication of parents' world views in Kindergarteners, and the importance of the "coolness" factor among five-year-olds. I say these have been nasty because I was "schooled" via Adah's anger, frustration, and yes... tears, when dealing with these "facts."

This past Friday, as the school year was winding down, I learned another lesson. But it was in some ways a throwback to "simpler" times. The Friday lesson resembled the lessons I learned when Adah was just a toddler on the playground. Before she could talk, before she could verbalize her observations, before she probably even noticed anything more than how fast she could go down the slide, I could watch the things and the people all around us with a bit more detachment. I did not worry so much about how these interactions taking place all around us on the playground, colored by the class, race, gender, sexual politics of the children and adults in attendance on any given day, would affect her. Or at least I imagined, rightly, that the time would come in a few years when I would have to redirect/explain/instill.

This past Friday, Adah's class took the train to Ann Arbor (about an hour's ride away) to a children's museum. Parents came along and we all ate lunch in a nearby park. It was a scorcher and extremely humid, but other teachers had planned for a similar end of school outing. Thus our paths crossed with a much larger group of children from the West Bloomfield school district. West Bloomfield is a wealthy "good" suburb of Detroit. We saw them in the museum, in the gift shop, and at the park. West Bloomfield is as white, as Detroit is black. Thus I spotted 3 children of color in the group, 2 Asian American and 1 black.

And so the stage was set. As I stood around the playground space, vigilantly watching over Roxanne (the little sister who got to come along and steal the show... at least two sessions of therapy for Adah from that one probably) among the big kids, I overheard an exchange between the lone black (very dark) West Bloomfield pupil and one of his (very pale) white "friends" cum classmates.

Boy of hue (happy as a clam): "Hey.... Mrs. Smith gave me some sunscreen. "

Boy of non-hue (nasty as he wanna be): "So what! That stuff stinks"

(Boy of hue loses smile, seems like he is at a loss for words, but is clearly hurt)

What are these times that we live in? I too have read the warnings of recent years... black folks in America need sunscreen too. Skin cancer is lurking even for dark-skinned black folks. (I have to wonder how all of those slaves picking cotton and working on the plantations made it without their Banana Boat. I wonder about all those black folk in America today who clearly have chosen to not buy into the idea that they NEED sunscreen. Clearly a major health issue, right? )

Or maybe it is the wrinkles.

It can't hurt. Buy. Slather. Protect. Yet when I was the same age as those boys, there were no warnings for black folk. There were no warnings for white folk either, or rather they were not everywhere. Marketing was for Coppertone with that blond beach girl showing her pasty white butt courtesy of a "naughty puppy" (can you imagine a similar mainstream creation today in pedophile-obsessed America?). Instead in the 1970s, I watched as my "friends" cum classmates "laid out" slathered with Hawaiian Tropic, smelling of coconut and caring less about SPF factors, and hoped that they would darken and not burn. I remember in junior high school, laying out with them one day. Even with my own melanin protection, I felt my skin burning. It was uncomfortable, but there I was with my friends "enjoying" laying out.

After I heard the exchange, I called Adah and Roxanne (it is Adah, the darker sister, who demands the "sunscream" much more than Roxanne, the fairer sister) over to the tree that I was standing under (sans sunscreen), pulled out the SPF 50, slathered it all over their faces, and loudly announced so that the two boys could hear it:

"Black don't crack, but better safe than sorry."

In defense of Vanessa Bryant…sorta (Are you *&$^&%&% crazy?)

2008-05-29T00:34:00.011-04:00

Hey? Have you heard the one about the evil tongued wrestling match between a freshly-minted USC blonde Jamba Juice drinker/news reader/E! reporter and Mrs. Kobe Bryant, “the notoriously ill-tempered Vanessa,” herself?

As is clear from my previous entry, I am not a big sports fan. In full disclosure, I played basketball and softball throughout my twisted youth. I also loved to downhill ski until a few years ago. My "ski knee" has notoriously come back to haunt me in my old age.

Not a fan. Not quite an avid sportswoman. But I am an American citizen and read/research/ write about American society and culture. I am especially a popular culture/media freak. Plus I was raised in a “typical” black American home—Sundays were made for Michelob, a big meal, and the family room television reserved for the big games. I, on the other hand, had no interest in sports. And this has continued to be the case except for a moment in high school when my adolescent lust turned me into a major college basketball fan. As a full grown woman, my knowledge is limited to the larger than life coverage of even larger than life sports stars, their teams, their kinfolk, and ultimately their various scandals and/or jail sentences. Yet I do realize that sports are at the heart of American culture, business, and identity. It is amazing to see how sports fans’ self-identities begin to revolve around “their team.”

Cheeseheads and die hard whatevers. Their antics and their images are billed as, and in some ways are truly, humanity at its most raucous/raw/intense. They are usually white folk.

Owners, managers, front office types. Keep the spotlight on them long enough and they are bound to say or do something (or not pay somebody enough) that underscores the tensions between management and “workers,” and that keep alive the racialized overtones of unbelievably wealthy and uneducated men/athletes of color.

Notorious athletes—do I even have to write that they are usually of African descent? Nothing needs to be said.

And so in some sense I guess I do follow sports, if only because sports stories, and the supporting scuttlebutt that surrounds sports stars and their business/sex partners, are a complicated, but very pregnant vein, from which to mine “American culture and society.”

Enter the Laura Lane/ Vanessa Bryant story of the last few days. In case you can’t follow the links in my opening teaser, Lane is a young perky blond reporter for ESPN magazine, who wrote on her personal blog that she had been cursed out by Vanessa Bryant during a Lakers playoff game. According to Lane, Vanessa cursed her out loudly because Lane had reported earlier about the young Bryant girls’ busy sports schedules (soccer in addition to gymnastics, ballet and hip-hop!). Many blogs and news stories over the past few days have been written about this (as well as the strangeness of Lane’s entire blog vanishing, just as the story began to spread—she claims that she took it down herself under no pressure from anybody). Some have insinuated that the Bryant “cuss out” may be linked to Mrs. Kobe being on edge because of a rumored Mr. Kobe affair with a now (equally mysteriously vanished and similarly named/looking Vanessa) Laker Cheerleader--one writer made sure to put in the dig that the cheerleader was a hotter and better-looking version of Mrs. Vanessa Bryant. Of course love on the rocks… may ultimately mean an even bigger and more obscene 4 million dollar apology rock for Mrs. Kobe. Every account that I have read has tended to side with Lane—innocent cub reporter. What is a girl to do when “Vanessa Bryant’s claws come out” (I didn’t make that up).

But the evil tongue dares to probe a little deeper. My slanted reading leads me to believe that what we are witnessing, not only in the event, but also its coverage, is yet another episode in the continuing saga of nasty tensions between white women and non-white women (even ones like Vanessa Bryant who signal their newly “earned” wealth with what appears to be a boatload of plastic surgery to make them look “whiter” and a similar boatload of “stuff” to make them closer in appearance to the Carringtons of Dynasty than the Ubrietas of Boyle Heights) in the U.S.

Beef Issue Number 1. Language is political.

Lane, taking the moral high ground of WASPicty, is astonished that Bryant used some pretty down and dirty language (gasp) in front of her young children (been to the hood/barrio/holler much Ms. Laura?). Those dark ones don’t know how to raise their children properly. Even with all the accoutrements of wealth, we learn subtly from Ms. Lane and more directly from other commentators that Vanessa Bryant should never have allowed her daughters to see her cursing and hacking up a storm in anger. Children need to be protected at all costs. I am not giving Bryant a pass, because I think children of her daughters’ ages (I too am the mother to a 5 and 3 year old) MAY be frightened by a sudden uncharacteristic “outburst” of mommy calling folks dripping cunts and such. But if it has happened a lot (and not always directed towards the hired help or the kids), it means that Bryant is teaching her girls to be “tough” in all the ways that our society says that women (read women of privilege , usually white or light bright and damned near white for most of our history) should not be. All the money and/or education in the world probably cannot totally wash away the lessons that many young girls of hue/class/southern heritage learn at their female relatives’ knees. “Showing out,” “acting ghetto, “ “keeping it real,” “throwing down”… these are the ways that have often historically been used to protect yourself (AND YOUR CHILDREN) both among and outside of your non-privileged community. For many women this continues to be, despite the well-intended ill-faith of social workers and researchers, the way to teach your children how to survive. There is a disconnect between Vanessa Bryant and her language because she is doing both the expected and unexpected.

(Think the ha, ha antics of Julia Roberts in “Pretty Woman” or the out of place storyline that goes along with any tale of a lower class woman who through her true ladylike charms moves upward in her station in life. How long do you think Cinderella lived happily ever after when she moved up to the big leagues? If she had the money and status to protect her… hmmm… maybe a week before somebody, perhaps her own husband, wondered what the hell he had gotten himself into and why couldn't Cindy just stop embarrassing him?)

White women made their first inroads as professionals in this country by making a science out of telling poor and non-white women how to clean up their acts for success.This almost always included excising that foul gutter language. No lady would speak in such a way nor raise her voice…. she wasn’t a lady or fit to be a mother, if she swore like a sailor or hood rat.

I badly want to get footage of the giddy Lane on E!. I bet her voice is light and frothy. No matter how smart she is (and she probably is indeed intelligent), she has probably learned to speak in a way that is to be respected. And we know that does not mean “cussin’ somebody out.” Hey. It doesn’t matter that you were a video dancer/vixen when you met your dream boat at age 17. It doesn’t matter that you never graduated from high school and have basically done everything that a modern woman is not supposed to do to become filthy rich and powerful—almost like a ummmmm Queen? This is what the evil tongue sees even in Lane’s gracious (gag) post-cussing out take on the whole thing:

The sad part is before all of this I kind of liked Vanessa and I thought we hit it off. She doesn't give a fuck about anything. She wears these insane outfits, struts around Staples Center like a queen, shows off her daughters and lets them run around the hall way playing tag while reporters are trying to get by.... As a journalist I am going to piss people off. That’s just the nature of the business. I never want to or intend to piss people off, but if you’re not pissing people off occasionally, then you are constantly kissing ass [See how she uses the words "fuck," "pissing," and "ass"to underscore that she is neither some tightly wound white girl nor a wimpy type who doesn't subscribe to the "well-behaved women rarely make history" bumper sticker/school of feminism...see...see...see!].

Ummm…. I want to cuss you out and I have never ever “kinda liked” Vanessa. And you can go by yourself to see The Sex and the City movie this Friday.

Beef Issue Number 2. You are what you wear.

A white tube dress, a purple tutu, black leggings, high-heeled short boots and a rhinestone-encrusted white leather jacket with the number 8 on the back, Kobe's old number.

This is what I think is really at the heart of the matter. This is what I think may have pushed Vanessa Bryant over the edge.

There truly is a divide in this country (and there always has been) between “urban” influenced fashion trends and “sophisticated,” or “trendy” fashion. Rockin and Rollin’ was black slang for sex and dancing before it became rock and roll. Bling, bling, baby. But still there is a divide in styles that is clearly based on race, class, and regionality. It is especially true for women's and children's "fashion" choices. Earnest white mothers of black children cut their daughters' hair to the quick for styling "ease" and cuteness. They never put any type of moisturizer on it. Black women cringe in horror, but never in front of the child because they know that our hair is our pride. Thinking that they are looking good and ready for the world, black women go to job interviews "downtown" with hair and nails "did" in ways that guarantee them the lowest job in the joint, that is if they are hired (no matter what the race of the person doing the hiring).

I do not follow Vanessa Bryant’s fashion statements. But I did see pictures/video of the number that Lane describes above. It looked like updated Madonna/Like a Virgin for the new millennium. (Where do you think Madonna got/gets her fashion inspiration, btw). The description seems benign, but I do think that by calling attention to it in the way that she did, Lane was either blissfully unaware of the shit that she was stepping into or was trying to nicely in that polite way ‘diss Bryant’s “costume,” as they say in France. I only have seen a headshot of Lane, but I would bet my girls’ next two years of Nordstrom shoe collection that she would NEVER be seen in anything like the outfit that Bryant wore for Kobe’s MVP ceremony. Hidden text alert: Low-class, too much money, fashion victim (I am thinking Britney Spears here too…).

I don’t have anywhere near the net worth of Mrs. Bryant, and I try not to really care too much about what “people” say about my style… which I would describe as aging urban bohemian/sex shooter. Color me non-white and call me overly sensitive, but I smell some nasty race/class-based writing there, Ms. Lane.

Part of the issue at the heart of all of this is connected to the problem of expectations of what money and wealth should look like and sound like. Vanessa Bryant, like many others (but not that many in real numbers… let’s be real) of her type would NEVER meet the standards of someone like Laura Lane and the people that are on “her side.”

Even if she coddled her children and kept them in line (Ummm don’t ask any of my relatives about what they think of “white folks” parenting skills… I grew up with folks all around me pointing out to misbehaving children that “they were not white and they didn’t play that …shit.” ).

Even if she started to appear “classy” and only wore Farah Angsana Couture, for instance.

Even if she learned to pass the phone test and only said “Oh gracious me” when she broke a manicured nail in front of her children.

In the end, I think that Lane has learned a valuable lesson for life on the street should she ever lose her place at the media supper table.

You can talk about my man, and even my children (although I will tell you it is really about me protecting them).

But don’t you dare go off on my clothes, biyatch.

Fixed

2008-05-25T23:18:00.008-04:00

I watched HBO's Recount tonight. I felt my blood pressure rising as the minutes ticked on. 2 hours of reliving the horrors of watching "The Rule Of Law" work in Fall 2000. It reminded me all too much of the outrage and disgust that I have felt for the past 8 years.

I have had a longstanding argument with my father (I had it with my grandmother as well, before she died). I have argued that there is way too much money at stake for major sporting events (from college to the "pros") not to be "fixed." He always says that I just hate sports and will say anything to make it unpleasant for those that enjoy them. He always says that there is too much at stake for such events to be "fixed." I counter that those "unbelievable" bricks that are thrown during critical NBA playoffs or those "unbelievable" wacky passes during NFL division championships (or fill-in-the blank unbelievable moments in major sporting events) are all too believable given the huge amounts of betting (and advertising) dollars that are at stake. I am too much of a Marxist, I suppose, to believe that Capital would leave "sports" alone. This translates directly into my perpetual semi-conspiracy theorist moniker. As a registered Michigan Democrat, I am still mad about our 2008 primary. There is politics and then there is politics that in full view translates into legally sanctioned "fixedness." Did somebody say Supreme Court decision 12/12/00? Alas, I am not enough of a blissful/patriotic type to ignore the notion that elections continue to be "massaged."

I could not forget, even if there was no Recount to remind me, that certain votes and voters in the U.S. are conveniently ignored in order for democracy to work.

Of Preschool Predators and Parents

2008-05-22T23:09:00.019-04:00

I am not a good mother. Or rather I am not the kind of mother who relishes going to parent meetings. When I was a child, I always wanted my mother to be a member of the PTA or to be the homeroom mother. I remember, in particular, the year that we had an "art" mother whose job was to bring in reproductions of famous art (did somebody say Western Civilization = ART in 1970s suburban Illinois?). The mom who did it came in with a large black carrying case and unrolled or lifted out the reproductions, as every child (even the ones who were not so "smart") let out a gasp of anticipation. I learned to both love and despise "Art Lady" visits. I also knew better than to ask my mother to volunteer or to dare to ask why she did not go to the meetings. (Note: I had already been socialized like most youngsters then and now to believe that moms should be the ones at the PTA meetings and that women are the norm for the role of homeroom MOTHER/chaperone). My mother worked full time and worked loads of overtime--for pay. She came home and did the second/third shift of domestic work. My father worked loads of overtime as well, but guess whose job it was to do all that domestic stuff, until my maternal grandmother came to live with us when I was in 4th grade?

For many years, I "excused" my mother's non-cookie baking, dance-organizing, field-trip chaperoning on her work schedule. Yet as my 6th year of motherhood is about to begin, I realize that even if her hours and energy levels had permitted, my mother would probably not have been a part of the "concerned parent" contingency. I realize this because, despite my relatively open hours and schedule, I imagine that I share what must have been her aversion to the glories of organizing, involved, and "caring" parents.

I spent this evening at Roxanne's preschool's parent meeting/art show. Roxanne's preschool is in the heart of downtown Detroit. Many of the children of the movers and shakers of downtown Detroit go there. Chauffered black cars with tinted windows wait for parents to retrieve children, while across the parking lot, well-heeled parents (both men and women) try to maneuver their expensive SUVs into the small Prius-sized spaces. Yet there is also a good number of parents that clearly are not yet the movers and shakers, but through scholarships and/or penny-pinching, have decided to place their children in one of the "best" centers in the city. Young children at the core of power and privilege.

I attended the parent meeting alone tonight. Single mom to the stars. The meeting was supposed to be light, as there was an "art show" that would allow the children to join the parents afterwards (An auction for each classroom's group art project will last until next week... one parent asked if there would be a payment plan for the winning bids). The lightness soon left the room as one mother angrily demanded that the incidents of VIOLENCE and bullying in her child's classroom be reported on a regular basis--crime statistics for Toddler Room A (children from about a year to a year and a half), as it were. The center's director assured the concerned mother that although for privacy reasons there would be no such reporting, that if there was a problem with an individual child, then interventions would be taken, including bringing in Child Care Expulsion Prevention Program (CCEP) specialists. This program is one of the few things that I can say the state of Michigan is a leader in (positive leader, not leader in the depressing/embarrassing ). It works to keep young children with severe behavioral problems in childcare. Not only does the program help the children with early interventions that could hinder their progress towards kindergarten readiness, but it also helps parents to have a place to send their children during the day while they are at work or in school.

Get it, Michigan.

Open the floodgates.

All of a sudden the meeting turned into a forum for the pro-black manhood fathers. The director of the center is a white woman. Dressed in conservative suits and ties, two of the fathers (with no woman/wife/mother/partner in attendance) took issue with the very notion of the intervention program. One had issues with the notion of "our children being labeled" and was concerned that such labels as being an "expelled preschooler" would haunt a child for the rest of his/her life. He also offered up his child's name and told parents that if his child bit their child that they should let him know and he would "handle it. Make no mistake about it." The other father, although he said he agreed with the first father ("You can bet that there will not be a second time, if my son bites another child"), really wanted to go back to the concerns of the woman who had started the "discussion."

"We as parents need to know if there is a particular child who is always hurting other children. We need to know about the children, who are basically predators."

It took all the self-control I had to keep from busting out laughing or perhaps more appropriately screaming, " WTF?"

Other parents joined in with their own suggestions to the director (none of them, as far as I know, have any training whatsoever in early childhood development) about what until that day, I had not known to be a major problem in the center. Toddler violence. These suggestions included meetings out of the childcare environment (playdates) between children involved in aggression. Parents could work things out, if the teachers could not. I shuddered to think of what the parents in the room would think of our house in which girls play with trucks while dancing around in tutus. Oh the horror to know that in our house we spend a lot of time "correcting" the gendered stereotypes/assumptions that are already firmly rooted in preschool/Kindergarten belief systems.

We also found out that one of the parents was concerned that one of the children had called the teacher the "B" word. The director reminded parents that there was a range of "normal" behavior and that different families have different ranges of acceptable behavior. This reminded me of the outrage last year when some parents were upset that teachers were using the appropriate names for children's genitalia. Concerned parents wanted teachers to not talk about anything even remotely "sexual" with young children. At 3 Roxanne not only knows that she has a vagina and that a boy has a penis, she also knows that babies grow in uteruses and that every month "ladies bleed out the blood," if there is no baby to use it to grow.

As I sat there with the various ideas, opinions, outrages, posturings, and heartfelt concerns swirling around me, I thought of my mother. As much as I love my children and as much as I want to be involved/care/be informed, I realize that I am just way too much of a weirdo/alternative type/hot head/feminist/anthropologist to sit in these meetings without letting the evil tongue loose in full force. Yet I did not say anything. I knew that if I did, just about every parent in the room would turn around and give me "the look." I know that my moment of spouting my progressive opinions would do no good. There would be no smug self-righteous glory for me. In fact, I kept thinking of my daughters' unfortunate spin of the roulette wheel in the PTA mother category. Silence or no attendance just might be golden. Call it a cop out. Call it keeping my blood pressure down/avoiding a stroke. Call it protecting my children from their mother's "eccentricities," as exhibited in a public forum. Call it what you want. I came a bit closer to looking in the parenting mirror and seeing my mother stare back at me.

In the end, the woman got angrier and angrier as she realized that her "knowing better than the director and the center's programs" was not being heard. Is it important to all of this to add that her child was the only one that was in attendance at the meeting? All the other children were in the center with the caregivers. Is it important to add that during the art show, her husband went from parent to parent in their son's classroom, asking if the child had been a "victim" and who had done it? Is it important to note that Roxanne, child of the boho and oldest mother, is one of the most popular children in the center?

Outgoing, friendly, sunny, bright.

Predator? Maybe?

The view from down here in hell

2008-04-30T12:29:00.024-04:00

At least 9 billion book ideas. That is the number that I think is lurking inside the average academic. Or maybe I am just projecting my own easily intrigued self onto the rest of my "people."

One of my 9 billion is the "person a day" book. The first time I thought of it (and actually started doing it, if admittedly half-heartedly) was when I worked for a year, while finishing up my dissertation, at a Borders bookstore in downtown Seattle. The second time was after I had finished my diss and would go to the neighborhood Starbucks in the Capital Hill area of Seattle to grade or read. The second time it morphed into "an overheard conversation per day." In both of these contexts, I was confident that I could use ample detail to highlight both the simultaneously benign and amazing situations (and people in them) to make for an interesting (and I always vainly hoped) best-selling book angle. Anthropology without all that nasty theory stuff--for the masses.

Alas, these ideas went by the wayside. I have tended to channel those kinds of observations and "stories" to my friends and loved ones, most often, and here on the blog, every now and then. But as this entry is about to do (as did the one right before this one) I will take myself back to those days of daydreaming about trade paperbacks and non-academic publishers.

Yet again today, I took myself and my huge stack of papers that needed to be graded off to Starbucks here in Detroit. It is one of the Magic Johnson Starbucks that is right up the block from the newly opened and aforementioned "mini-Whole Foods" on Woodward Avenue. It has been open for about a year and I am known there as "the professor"—and the staff all know my drink without even having to call it out... double tall soy no foam latte. Scary but true. This Starbucks, like probably most of them, could be the site for a very intriguing ethnography. Over the year that I have been going there, I have come to recognize other regulars and also to marvel at the folk (and their drink orders) that pass through the store. It is a mixture of customers in all sorts of ways, given its location surrounded by hospitals, the Detroit Symphony, banks, Red Cross headquarters, and a major bus transfer point. It is also just a few blocks away from one of the poorest/problematic areas of Detroit—the Cass Corridor.

But enough of the ethnographic detail/setup. On to the reason why I write this:

Today both Detroit newspapers in true journalism for the new millennium-style ran front page stories about the latest installment in the "mayoral scandal." The text messages between the mayor and his former chief-of-staff that had been too much for a "family newspaper" to publish were released as public record yesterday. So hooray! Everybody can now read the "salacious" details of the text messages between the two people here.

From my vantage point, looking at both papers, their front page "coverage" continues to turn attention away from the matters at hand... lying under oath about police firings and making unethical (and illegal) secret out of court settlements that my tax dollars paid for.... and instead focus more on the "racy messages" between Kilpatrick and Beatty. My "favorite" Detroit News columnist, Laura Berman returns with another one of her gems today about the latest installment. In her true holier-than-thou style, she reads the text messages and comes to the conclusion that it is all a lurid and sad story (curiously sorta in defense of Beatty as woman/victim yet again... in a continuous history of love and betrayal "as old as Cleopatra"!). The "Mayoral Affair is a Classic Tale of Adultery." Kilpatrick is a cad and Beatty is a sap who as "the anxious other woman, [was] unable to contain her longing, even as she knows she should."

The moral high ground that Berman so firmly stands on, as is often the case in the moral universe of newspapers and journalism, is shaky at best. Berman nestles safely in the inner sections of her employer's rag, while the front page of the Detroit News grabs the attention of Starbucks customers with a gigantic picture of Kilpatrick and Beatty with the following in huge type:

Beatty: "I am madly in love with you too. More and more everyday! I can't believe how much more it grows. Is there a limit?"

Kilpatrick: "Not till death do us part."

I watched customers today, knowing that this was what they would see as they waited in line. The reactions (and numbers of people buying the Detroit News which had the most over-the-top front page) were amazing. I saw more people, strangers for the most part, than I ever have before, pick up the paper, buy it, and start conversations with each other. I saw much head shaking and overheard much disgust. The disgust was not for Kilpatrick and Beatty, although they did get a few spankings, but for the newspaper's blatant milking of the adultery angle. These customers were both men and women, mostly black, but some whites as well. A boyfriend/girlfriend couple (black and in their mid 20s) bought the paper to read more, even as the boyfriend remarked that "Damn. That is some cold-ass shit to print their business in the paper like that." The girlfriend giggled nervously. An older black man that I know to be a regular like me was ahead of an even older black woman that he did not know. He was waiting in line buying his paper (I know he buys the paper all the time, not just on days like today) and the woman behind him began to discuss the headlines, the newspaper's motives, and the idea that such coverage was a smokescreen to shield the judges, lawyers, and others who were just as guilty of the "real crimes against Detroit."

As an anthropologist, I understand how our society focuses on sexual behavior as one of the markers of being a "good and worthwhile person." I understand how disgust at cheating (how to balance this disgust with the oft-cited, All's fair in love and war?), or even seemingly anachronistic scowling over old-fashioned consensual sex between adults without any pretense of love or longevity, is reflective of our society's Puritan heritage. Although all you have to do is read the seminal Intimate Matters by historians D'Emilio and Freedman to know that we as a country have not always in belief —and never in practice—condemned sexual relations outside of marriage.

I know how respectability for women continues to turn upon the notion of sacrifice and chastity both in and outside of marriage--and the belief that "women" prefer cuddles to carnal activities. Berman reminds us: "Christine Beatty's high-powered life wasn't defined only by her chief-of-staff job: She had a husband and a home and two children who were growing up with a mother to emulate. "

I know how the definition of a good trustworthy male employee (or politician) continues to be defined as one who is a "devoted" family man. I know how "relationships" are to be worked on, be of "quality," and need to be "invested in" (using all the language and sentiment of capitalism). I think I know why we think that monogamy (even if only serial) is the most advanced sign of a moral, caring, and just society. I understand all of these things as an anthropologist. And I am thus prepared when I always encounter a great deal of resistance to my critique/deconstruction of these "truisms" both in the classroom and in my everyday encounters with "regular people."

But today, I have to say that I was proud to feel like I was just one of "the customers of the day" at Starbucks. I could hear it and see it in them and their conversations--even if they were not putting their thoughts in my academic terms. They might have even disagreed with me, if I had indeed started conversations up with them about the construction of sexuality in the U.S. But I do believe that most of the folks that I encountered today share at least some of my sentiment about the coverage of the text message scandal. It does seem to be a move to sell papers. And just maybe my friendly conspiracy theorist co-customers might be right that this focus on the sexual behavior is meant to turn our attention away from more serious and system shaking matters.

As a person/customer, I could care less who the hell sleeps with who or what, nor do I care about how they talk to each other on an intimate level. However, I am sickened that Berman dares to write: "Christine Beatty was taken advantage of" because he was "never going to marry her" and that he was a dirty dog because he sent her text messages that we all know he NEVER meant, because well... all men are dogs. Papers are sold and people are outraged by the sex and the cheating and the desire and the passion--hell, fire, brimstone, shame... all reserved in their most concentrated form for the "racy" bits.

None of this is really about sex or the titillation factor to be gained from reading painfully intimate text messages between two admittedly not very nice people. It is much more than that.

I continue to find myself with strange bedfellows, down here in hell. Ironically, a white man— who has been in a very public lip battle of sorts over the past few days with Jeremiah Wright when he spoke at the NAACP event here last weekend— appears in the Detroit News today too. L. Brooks Patterson, Oakland County Executive, is not known as a sensitive race man and maintains a very conservative position about race and racism in the U.S. and is no "friend" of black Detroit. Yet today he strangely is quoted as saying, "Until I see a message that refers to the fat-a-- honky north of Eight Mile, I'm not getting involved."

Dear L. Brooks Patterson: I owe you a latte and a conversation while you stand behind me in line.

"Come into my parlor," said the spider to the fly.

The Tell-Tale Heart?

2008-04-26T14:16:00.020-04:00

The problem is, nobody bothered to tell Clinton that honorary blackness is also temporary. No matter how much he's done on the subject of race, his brother privileges are always up for renewal
.
—Bill Clinton is no brother

These are troubling and illuminating times for "race" in the U.S.—and this is not just for people like the evil tongue whose bread and butter comes from paying close attention to what we are supposedly better off ignoring or forgetting. Of course a lot of this is coming from the Obama/Clinton battle royale. At least two questions of this election cycle center on which "ism" is the worst and the impact of the "regular white man as embodied by John McCain"factor in the general election. Identity politics reigning supreme.

It has become so evident that Sonya Ross, an AP reporter, wrote this week that Bill Clinton has lost his "honorary" blackness and the concomitant title of the first black president because of how he failed to recognize that such a title can be revoked at any minute—and hating (her words, not mine) on the "real" possible first black president can only bring bad bad ju ju upon somebody like Mr. Bill. She argues that Obama helped to prove his blackness in a sly wink to voters when he mimicked Jay Z's movements in "Dirt Off your Shoulder." I have a lot of problems with Ross' piece/analysis, but I do think that her argument underscores the unspoken painful realities of the new "multicultural America" in which we live. With all the talk of the declining significance of race (and this is found in a wide variety of ideological perspectives), it is easy to think that class matters most or that "race" is a thing of the past--move beyond it, or get left behind. But the truth is, as I see it, that any movement or "acceptance" across or between racial lines, especially at the individual level, is always subject to revocation. This most certainly includes white folks who are labeled as "down" by black folks, as well as, black folks who not only can pass the "phone test," but also are accepted as "regular" people by white folks.

I got to experience this in a very interesting way yesterday. A cool new upscale market has opened up on Woodward Avenue, just a few minutes drive from our house. Just about in any other big city, such places are a plentiful. In the words of the young woman, who I will write about in a second, "It is like a mini-Whole Foods." Zaccharo's is an important moment in the "rebirth of Detroit." It is not a grocery store for the poor, but it does signal a critical mass of people who cannot even be called gentrifiers. The people (predominately black, but with critical numbers of non-blacks as well) who are shopping in the 2-week-old store, seem to represent both the hardcore folk who have refused to move to the suburbs throughout the years, along with a sprinkling of newer/temporary residents like the three medical students that I encountered there yesterday.

(As a side note: for gentrification to take place, there has to be a relocation/removal of the poor. Here in Detroit anything , literally anything, that replaces the bombed out war zone look that is found EVERYWHERE in the city and brings people, any people to places like Woodward Avenue is positive and cannot be classified as gentrification. There is a book waiting to be written about how this process of "monied" folk returning to Detroit in such limited numbers and so late in the global game of revanchism differs so starkly from more commonly understood analyses/instances of gentrification.)

The layout of the market includes a little alcove nestled at one end. It has leather chairs and ottomans, as well as a 4 chair "bar stool table." I had seen this space when I was shopping, (I have been trying to go and spend at least 25 dollars there for the past 2 weeks...) and I decided to try it out as a paper grading space. When I walk in with my drink, three young women look up at me. All three have their stick straight hair pulled up in perky ponytails. Two of them are working at computers (free Wi-Fi) and all three have medical textbooks open all around them. All 3 are dressed like an ad from Abercrombie and Fitch. Plain shirts and shorts (khaki), flip flops, little makeup. Two of them are white and one is black. The three young women are sharing food, notes, and joking. They seem to be good friends and could easily be held up as the glory of post-racial America. I sit down behind them, most directly behind the black one. I hear her talk and immediately recognize the telltale "phone test" voice, not only would she be able to pass for white over the phone, but she seems to be even perkier and earnest in her speech—no surly bad attitude of the "average" black woman— than her study partners. I also notice that her telltale "real hair" is peeking out at the nape of her neck. Hidden away from all but those of us who learned a long time ago to pay attention to nappy kitchens and the like. I put on my earphones and start to grade.

About 30 minutes into all this, the young black woman gets up and moves closer to me to talk on her phone. I overhear her, over my music, tell somebody that she is at the aforementioned Mini-Whole Foods. A few minutes later, a young white man walks in. To the old woman evil tongue he looks like a rip off/Midwestern version of Justin Timberlake...but clearly attractive in a kind of boy-next-door kind of way. I immediately turn down my music, but leave the headphones on... I am thinking, "This is going to be good."

It is clear from their conversation that one of the white women is the black woman's roommate. She reminds the JT that there is still Thai food in the fridge to eat. He laughs and give her his million dollar smile. After more "pleasantries" (clearly charged with sexuality, race, and gender), the black student and her JT leave. As they walk away, he puts his arm around her and she leans her head into his shoulder. They have not even gotten out of the door when the two remaining women both sigh quite loudly. The non-roomie lowers her voice, but not enough for me to not hear her say: "So that is her type, huh?" The interesting part in all of this, at least from my perspective, is that they are clearly oblivious to me— believing for some strange reason that I would not be doing what I am doing... listening to their every word while my headphones give the impression that I cannot hear them. I am reminded of the house slaves who were so trusted or so ignored/taken for granted that they heard and saw all that the white folks said and did. Their guards let down with familiarity or the belief that these were "safe" black folks who would not betray/had not interest in their "true selves." All of a sudden a white man (probably about the same age, but clearly more "alternative" than them), who was sitting on the other side of their table speaks.

"Well-choreographed, ladies. Just like an episode of Friends?"

The two women turn around and without having to really say it directly, all three engage in a coded conversation of the likes that I have never heard before yesterday. I must add that this is only one of two times that I have openly experienced how white folks speak when black folks aren't around (the other is also a tale of sex, sexuality, and jealous white women... but I will save that for another entry). The bottom line to all of this coded speech is that the white women are upset that Mr. McDreamy is hooked up with their "black friend" and that Mr. Alternative White Man has noticed what I noticed as well... that the black woman's honorary whiteness is temporary at best, because of/in spite of her boyfriend.

Whiteness card, REVOKED, sister.

I think the words of the non-roommate to Mr. Alternative White Man are appropriate for all of us in these racially charged times.

"We always have the laugh track playing in our heads. WOMP, WOMP, WOMP."

Pure and Natural/Happy Earth Day

2008-04-22T23:24:00.015-04:00

If there is one thing that I got from my mother, it was a love of soaps, lotions, shampoos, conditioners, balms, etc. She was a sucker for anything that seemed "new and/or improved" when it came to health and beauty aids. I learned to get excited at an early age when we pulled into the Rexall Drugs. I knew that I too would probably get a new bar of soap or bottle of bubble bath. This was long before the days of Target (or at least the hip and funky Target of today). This was long before I ever lived in Japan where my ability to read Japanese was at its best when reading the promises, ingredients, and instructions for the bajillion health and beauty aids--Nihon style. I was in pure heaven, despite the fact that 90% of the Japanese stuff dried my hair and skin out something fierce.

Today is earth day. This is the annual day that has taken on even more significance, it would seem, as the increasing number of consumer choices and branding opportunities available to most of the "civilized" world stands in stark (at least to me) contrast to reality. How to make sense of the huge numbers of products that are offered up as salves for the "Mother Earth in danger" tone every year on April 22? So it is no surprise that today many companies work the earth friendly, organic (whoever started that branding trend for things like makeup!!! should be caned), pure, and natural to sell their products. Never mind that their production, their distribution, their very existence is very much a huge part of the problem—as every company tries to make their products stand out in a very crowded and very treacherous (at least from a "bottom line" perspective) consumer landscape. Thus we get loads of products with the telltale hearts of green labeling or "not tested on animals" to make consumers feel good about their choices.

Unguents perfectly calibrated/formulated for the soul of humanity during late capitalism. Balms of Gilead for the troubled consumer's weary shopping cart carpal tunnel.

And I place myself into this as well. As I wanted to make clear above, I am in it and of it. I feel most calm after I use these products. They give me a boost. They make my skin soft and they remind me of my mother and one of my closest friends. These women too appreciated (even if a bit too much) this part of living at this particular moment of human history and attached great meaning and significance to something as "simple" as a body cream. I love the ability to pick and choose what "moods" my body will be slathered with. And the more almondy and organicish the better. But the anthropologist in me is always lurking in aisle 15b, as the easily excited health and beauty aid obsessive in me slobbers over the latest brown-bottled wonder. I always look at the labels (Who made it and where...all natural, organic, and made in China...okay...).

Enter Pure and Natural. I should have remembered that Pure and Natural was one of the soaps that I used during my most horrible excema bouts during a pretty bad stretch of graduate school torture(yes... the truth is that I inherited my mother's excema as well.. it really makes no sense that either of us ever used anything that wasn't the most bland/fragrance-free anything... and this doesn't even go into the scolding that my mother got from my pediatrician about the problems with Mister Bubble's cleansing "effects" on little girls' "private parts"--I still got to use it, but with a great deal of hand-wringing and guilt on the part of all involved). It was touted as being better than Ivory, as it was less drying among other things. I remember looking on the wrapper to see who made it and thinking, "Dial's attempt to take on Procter and Gamble's baby. " I got over that hump and left Pure and Natural behind for the coming storm of organic aromatherapy products that defined most of the health and beauty choices/products of the 1990s.

Last week while I was at Costco, I noticed a new item. A 3 pack of body washes. The last thing on earth I need is another 3 bottles of body wash. But how could I resist? Brown bottles signaling "upscale." Promises of

"Moisturizing almond oil/cherry blossom"
"Cleansing Rosemary and Mint."
98% Natural Origin.
Hypoallergenic.
Biodegradable
Recyclable Packaging

Any nut who has ever dared to even think about getting a "spa" service knows those words equal what you want and need in a world-class body product. And promises of an annual donation of at least 100,000 to the WWF on the front of the packaging seemed a bit over the top, but hey I was willing to give the Pure and Natural company a break. The stuff was cheap. So good for them.

So I bought it. Yesterday, I brought out the almond/cherry one. I was prompted by the dollar off coupon in the Sunday paper. It reminded me that I had snagged some of this stuff a week ago (always on the cutting edge, evil tongue). It was not as luxurious or moisturizing as a "regular" bar of soap. It smelled vaguely of almond and not really very cherry at all. While I was still in the shower (who cares that every second of your shower wastes tons of energy...or so I have read), I read the bottle carefully. I wanted to know who had done this to me. Who had played dirty and simultaneously taken my love of things body luxurious and my lemming-like faith in biodegradable and renewable resources—and tainted them?

"Pure and Natural, Phoenix, Arizona."

That was all it said. But I suddenly remembered. Dial Corp. Headquarters was located in Phoenix. Recently purchased by a German transnational. Pure and Natural had been the Dial soap that I had used so long ago. Detective evil tongue to the rescue! I went to the Pure and Natural website today. Absolutely nothing to link the "products" to their parents. Don't ask. Don't tell. Give the impression of a tiny company that cares about the earth, lovingly creates/markets its products, and that is so very unlike those giant multinationals that care most about profitability-- as if the small companies themselves are not encouraging us to use even more stuff and "add to our carbon footprint." In this "alternative" marketplace cum website (pun intended) there are lots of pictures of rainforesty-looking rivers and jungles to counter all of that nasty "thinking"/evil tonguesque deconstruction stuff. Loads of fruits and herbs scattered about allow us to instead think:

Feel good. Look Good. Care about Mother Earth. All the while, get it cheap and even cheaper still in the Costco and/or Wal-Mart exclusive bargain packs.

Nothing to overtly signal the glory of Earth Day 2008 in all of its ironies.

You can run, but you can't hide.

Christine Beatty's "Feminist" Defenders

2008-04-14T23:12:00.028-04:00

Thank heavens for Judge Paula Humphries, presiding judge of the 36th District Court, who overruled a magistrate's order for Christine Beatty to wear an electronic tether. Mark that up as one small step for womankind.

"The man keeps his mansion; the woman almost got tethered"

Detroit Free Press, 4/9/08

But perspective is in order: Beatty isn't an accused drug dealer or murderer. And her interest in finding work outside the state where she's now notorious is more commendable than condemnable.
The tether order was struck down with dispatch. When Christine Beatty appeared in court on Monday, tall, slender and clad in a sleek black pantsuit, she wasn't playing victim. She looked smart, poised and ready for a job interview.
"Berman: Tether is Unlikely PR Boost"
Detroit News, 4/8/08

Last Wednesday was the second to last class in THE ETHNOGRAPHY advanced undergraduate/graduate seminar that I am teaching this semester. It was also "feminist ethnography" week. During the discussion, we talked about whether or not a man could write a feminist ethnography (of course they all said). There was a bit of trouble though when I asked whether or not a feminist ethnography had to deal with gender. As is often the case, the discussion quickly turned to a debate on what was "feminist." I egged it on, I will admit. I played the role of "universal subjugation of women" believer. How could any good feminist ethnography not pay close attention to the way that women are always on the short end of the stick, exploited by men, and generally downtrodden, cross-culturally?

Little did the students know that images of Christine Beatty were dancing in my head, as I instigated last week. What I want students to remember from my discussion of feminist ethnography and feminist anthropology is that although gender is central to feminist projects and analysis, feminist scholarship, in its truest sense, is grounded in the realization that gender is only one of many categories that stratifies our lives. Thus assumptions or statements about "all men" or "women" always get the "which women" or "which men" treatment in any course that I teach, texts that I assign, books that I write, or newspaper op-eds that I read.

Last week both Detroit newspapers printed op-eds from outraged women/feminists (Ann Doyle and Laura Berman) who were mad as hell ("hopping mad " to be exact) about Beatty's treatment in the 36th District Court the Friday before. Beatty "was hauled" before a white male judge last week to ask for permission to leave Detroit while under bond. The male judge's ("only" a magistrate) scolding and "over the top" requirements for Beatty were subsequently overturned by a female judge (the real deal, baby!).

In both of the op-eds the authors were white women who saw Beatty's case as a textbook example of the sexism inherent in U.S. society. I am pretty sure that both women believe in the universal subjugation of women. And like the good liberal feminists that they clearly are, they take the position that Beatty is a prime case of the U.S. version of the universal downtrodden, always at the bottom position of "women." This is of course in line with liberal political thought and NOT to be confused with progressive/radical/socialist/Marxist feminist theories. As liberal feminists, they see nothing wrong with the very system in which Beattie and her boss "governed" Detroit, the poorest of cities in the most economically troubled state in the U.S. Nor do they even seem to need to pay attention to race and (gasp) the fact that this is taking place in Detroit--the land where global capitalism was birthed and where that same "system" now has turned its back on its birthplace, like an ungrateful child. The system is not the problem for Doyle and Berman. The context is simple for them too. It is that "women "continue to get the short end of the stick and this is really evident for people like Beatty. Women of accomplishment, women who are smart, educated, and professional, deserve to be treated as equals to men. (Dare I also mention here that Hillary is also a textbook example of white liberal feminism?). Thus both authors, point to the differences in treatment between Beatty and Kilpatrick (her boss, the mayor, who has been charged with more serious crimes and more of them than Beatty, his chief of staff, his employee) as representative of the larger patterns facing "women."

Hence Ann Doyle, who wrote her piece in The Free Press which is Detroit's "more left-leaning" paper, has her own self-named "leadership and communications consulting practice." She states on her website that "today, a new generation of professionals, of all shades, ages and genders, is questioning the old, rigid paths to professional achievement. This new talent gold is abandoning work cultures that don’t work." She sees Beatty's new lesser restrictions as " one small step for womankind." Berman takes a similar position, but stresses that Beatty is not like one of those drug dealers or other thugs that parade through the 36th District court:

Lockhart's [the evil white male magistrate's] desire to treat Beatty as fairly as other defendants may have been colored by the usual clientele of the court, where two or three murderers are arraigned daily, and accused drug dealers are as numerous as bad drivers in other district courts.

In true liberal feminist form, Berman is seemingly oblivious to the structural realities of those "other criminals," some of whom might even be (gasp) women. Beatty, on the surface, is not put into the context of Detroit or of Southeastern Michigan or even the rest of the country where the majority of those who are arraigned, tethered, and usually pleaded out are poor and/or of color. What about the inequalities found in sentencing guidelines, in access to competent/not overworked legal counsel, representation, and yes... in the very real gendered differences in sentencing? To write of these very real markers of American Justice would take away from the image of Beatty, the professional, "looking tall, slender and clad in a sleek black pantsuit."

What is on the surface is not always what it seems. Of course Beatty's defenders are thinking about all of that other nastiness. Beatty and her case are in a classic dialogue in absentia (one of my all-time favorite terms, just ask anyone who has ever taken a class with me).

Beatty is not like all those other "real criminals" (women?) who stand before the judges throughout this country everyday—"people" who in contrast are short, fat, and dressed like an episode of Cops that proves that the poor are different from "you and me." Unlike most of the black women who live in the city of Detroit where health clubs, grocery stores (let alone those that sell organic produce), banks, parks, decent education, "top of the line" health care, and GOOD JOBS with BENEFITS are hard to come by. Unlike those lazy, fat, black women (and men ) who stumble through the courthouse and whose heinous crimes demand tethering (no matter that the crimes that Beatty and Kilpatrick are accused of will ultimately take a broke ass/broken down city DECADES to recover from/pay off) and who dare to complain when they are treated unfairly. Bad drivers, indeed.

Beatty —who before her current mess was famous for yelling, "Don't you know who the fuck I am?" at cops during an "under the influence" traffic stop near her home—is transformed in these op-eds. Through the miracle of earnest white feminist lenses, she is offered up as proof that race (or any of those other pesky stratifiers that those damned eggheads just won't let go of) both does and does not matter. Gender, gender, gender. How convenient in a metropolitan area that is staggeringly huge in both square miles and in rates of housing segregation by race, income, and education.

This is not feminism in the key that I learned to sing it. This is what gets us into the tit for tat fights of the current Obama/Clinton battle royales over who has it the worst--Let's see...I am both... black and woman... ooo I guess I'll choose black today and woman tomorrow. This is liberal feminism in the horrible key of Enjoli and "bringing home the bacon." This is feminism circa 1970 that still gets all the play while the hard, tough, complicated, messy brand of feminist theory that fuels my anger, guides my research, and challenges me to think of new possibilities is ignored or branded "radical." This is earnest bad faith writ large.

Heaven help you, Ms. Beatty.

Creepily, eerily, magnificently, cheesily marvelous

2008-04-03T22:29:00.003-04:00

I feel at home
Whenever the unknown surrounds me
I receive its embrace
Aboard my floating house

I am not a Bjork fan. Never liked her or her music really. This is in stark contrast to Shaviro. I remember teasing him unmercifully about desiring her when she appeared at some awards show in her dead swan costume/number/dress. He denied it. I know he was lying. Unlike Bjork's greatest fan, I have not written about her nor has she ever received any of my entertainment dollars.

It was really an accident that I stumbled upon her Wanderlust video a few days ago. I was on Yahoo music looking for the Kanye West "Flashing Lights" video yet again (Too cheap to buy it from iTunes--sorry Kanye no entertainment dollars for you either). I have been planning on writing something about it for the blog. But Kanye has been dropped to the curb because of my "new girl" Bjork.

I have always found her a bit "too weird." I have a pretty low tolerance for the use of "exotic others" in creative projects—just because you are "pushing creative boundaries of stupendous genius," doesn't mean that you get a pass on making fetishes out of entire cultures, especially when they are located in the "east." So Bjork's Wanderlust (yaks?, weird Nepalese?/Tibetan? iconography) complete with a journey down a river and wrestling with some kind of doppelganger ( an ape-like creature that seems to go through the entire course of human origins/evolution in the course of the video) would seem to be the kind of production that I would not care for. But just like somebody else who occupies this house, it would seem that I have fallen in love with the video. Not Bjork though. Let's be clear about that.

It is the music of course that probably seduces me most. The fog horns (or is it yak antlers/horns) at the beginning seemed to be following me all today as I heard the same rhythms all around me—car horns blowing on a busy Detroit street reminding me of some constructed other "world." The beat (Dance Bjork fans. Dance) finally after many songs seems interesting to me. Combined with the "weird that I like this time" video, the music reminds of some kind of silent film/rendering of Uncle Tom's Cabin. Strange.

"Bjork to Topsy. Bjork to Topsy. Can you hear me?"

The urgency and desperation. The desire for freedom. The futility and hopelessness of it all.

I have to admit that the first time I saw the video that I was a bit scared. A little known secret about the evil tongue is that I absolutely hate/am scared beyond belief by horror movies and the like. And that may be part of what is also intriguing about the Wanderlust video. I was afraid to watch as Bjork "sails" down the river on the back of some kind of yak with the Australopithecine Bjork trying to keep her from "adventuring." Even after watching it multiple times, I still am creeped out/a bit scared at a couple of different, but probably predictable moments: when the ultrasound looking image morphs into some kind of primoridal face, when she is suspended above the "thing made waterfall" in freeze frame reaching out to the evil (protecting?) "thing" in front of her, the thing's and the beasts' tongues...oooo chills down the spine, when she and her doppelganger are being sucked into some kind of underwater vortex, and of course the Blair Witch Project-inspired brick wall ending.

I find myself torn. I want to dislike Wanderlust for the cheesy almost playdoughesque looking feel and its affront to my anthropological and urban contemporary music sensibilities. At the same time, I am incredibly moved and affected by it. I am not quite sure why though. The video and song make for a strange combination... kinda like Hallmark card meets serious psychotherapy.

In full disclosure, I have never been in psychotherapy, but have shopped at a Hallmark store.

How to turn Adversity into Prosperity (Endorse This!)

2008-04-02T23:56:00.001-04:00

TODAY!!!!! Delta Sigma Pi Business Fraternity- Gamma Theta Chapter, will be bringing Omarosa to the Community Arts Auditorium on Wednesday, April 2, 2008, from 6-8pm. Omarosa will discussing How to turn Adversity into Prosperity. She will be available for a question and answer session, as well as a book signing. This is a free event, courtesy of WSU Student Council. Tickets are available in the Dean of Students Office, Room 351 SCB.

"No matter how many pushups I did, my boobs would never get bigger!" said Omarosa. She moved from an A" cup to a "D" cup at a Newport Beach office of CosmetiCare plastic surgery specialists GHADA AFIFI and MICHAEL NICCOLE. (In Touch Magazine)

You have to hand it to Omarosa. Just like Beyonce, she has cornered the market (although on a lesser scale... for a list of reasons as long as both ladies' full lace cap weaves) in marketing her own brand. Before her lecture circuit, before serving "as a Managing Partner for Access America Enterprise Corporation, a strategic planning and consulting service that combines first hand knowledge of government operations with a full service approach to custom business solutions," and before finishing her dissertation (still ABD!? Come on girlfriend!) at Howard, she was milking (no pun intended) her breast augmentation for In Touch magazine. Oh the brand diversity!

I unfortunately will be teaching during her "lecture" later today or else I would be there to see her in all of her glory.

Damn.

Kevin Bacon Who?

2008-03-25T21:58:00.009-04:00

There is some kind of fun fact that I distinctly remember from when I was in graduate school at Northwestern. I am not sure if I read it, heard somebody state it, or maybe even perhaps made it up. No matter what its origins, the fun fact goes something like this: Because of the relatively new and increasing middle-class/upper-class status of black people in America and coupled with the huge numbers of black folks in prison, there is no black professional in the U.S who does not have either a family member or close friend in prison.

I have always remembered this, even if I can't remember where I got it from. I think because when I was in graduate school this was my case. I didn't have to look very far to find my relatives (first cousins) in prison. I didn't have to look very far back in my own past to remember a certain boyfriend whose criminal/prison record was "sketchy." I grew up knowing that I was lucky to have been relatively well-shielded from the environments that foster the stereotypical/statistical crimes that black folks tend to commit and get them locked up. Yet even with that protected existence, I intimately knew, liked, and loved people who were incarcerated. I imagined then, and now, that I do not share this reality with my white colleagues. It is not that I claim any kind of special status, it is just that I do believe that the historical and economic realities of black folks in America, have led to 1 or 2 degrees of separation between those of us who have made it and those of us who have not/are doing time.

And so I added this to my lens of seeing the world. After living in Detroit (the city proper with one of the highest poverty and concomitant bad stuff rates in the country) for almost 4 years, it isn't hard to forget. I will admit that I have looked to gauge the number of registered sex offenders in our neighborhood/zip code/city. Again, I don't have to look far to find more than a handful. I was sorta shocked to learn that some of these faces were not just recognizable from before I took to the online database, but that a couple of these men I knew from hanging out on the front porch or doing yard work. Such is life in the city. But today, March 25th, 2008 has added a new twist to all of this.

Today two black men—both of whom know me by my first name, both of whom know my children, both of whom know where I live, both of whom have experienced the rapier wit and razor sharp intelligence of the evil tongue—went to court to face felony charges for "white collar crimes."

The first is of course Kwame Kilpatrick. Detroit's most infamous mayor of all time perhaps. Today Kwame pleaded not guilty to multiple counts of perjury and obstruction of justice, all of which could get him sentenced to 90 years in prison. As I have written before, he and I went to FAMU with one year overlap. I remember him vaguely from our days in Tallahassee. But it was here in Detroit that I got to "know him." It was at the newly built YMCA, just after Roxanne was born. His youngest child was in the same swim class as Adah. I would see him, his wife, and his older twin sons too. I always knew when he or they were "in the house," because of the big black Suburbans with dark windows double and triple parked in front of the building and the dark-suited ginormous body guards that were milling about. Because only politicians with their own security forces and professors with relatively flexible schedules tend to frequent health club facilities during the day, I was able to strike up conversations with the Mayor during the week. The first one I remember quite well, as it took place on the stairs going up to the cardio machines from the lobby. I introduced myself, "reminded him" of our FAMU days, and of our kids being in the same swim class. I then became "Prof. "whenever he saw me and we talked. He told me once (looking for votes?) that he had always wanted to study anthropology and that I might see him up in one of my classes one day.

The second is lesser known. He may have lucked out today (if there is such a thing as luck after being indicted for a felony) because the media outlets were all interested in Kilpatrick instead of the "Veteran mail carrier accused of trashing mail from route just west of Wayne State." Marc Sample reported to Federal Court today for a preliminary hearing for 1 count of mail theft. According to news reports, Marc had 16,000 pieces of undelivered mail stored in his house. A tipster alerted inspectors. Marc was undeniably and ironically one of the best letter carriers we have ever had. We have lived here since 2004. The volume of magazines, journals, junk (all of that online ordering means every catalogue in the world finds its way to me), Amazon.com cheapo deliveries, and holiday packages (Christian, Jewish, and birthdays.... with small children) that we receive is large. Neither Shaviro nor I have any recollection of not receiving any of it. You always knew that Marc would be here with the mail between 11 and noon, Monday through Saturday. After he was suspended (and now I imagine fired), the amount of misdelivered mail we have received is amazing. Looking back to when he was our carrier, we rarely had misdelivered mail. I always knew that our packages which couldn't fit through the mail slot would get to us and wouldn't be stolen or "sent back" to the maze of the post office. Since he has been gone, I have had to for the first time go and get a package at the post office. I wanted to thank him immediately for shielding us from that after I returned home triumphantly with a box full of Hammentashen.

But Marc was more than a civil servant. Most people in the neighborhood were shocked when they heard the news. Almost everyone agreed that he was "a good guy." He was the man on the street who knew everything about the neighborhood and the people who lived here. He was friendly and seemed to be able to get along with just about everybody in this very diverse and eclectic neighborhood. He had carried mail on this route for 16 years. He was an anthropologist's native informant. And despite the charges, I still consider him a good friend. I will never forget the look on his face and the words he spoke to me on the first anniversary of my mother's death. Adah and I often gave him cups of hot chocolate and orange juice, "'Cause he works hard, Mommy."

I am not sure if either of these two black men that I know will end up doing time. I imagine that Marc will probably and the odds are not in Kwame's favor either. The irony about these black men that I will know in prison, if that turns out to be the case, is that they will be serving time for white collar crimes. The crimes that black folks aren't supposed to go to jail for committing. In some way I do feel a bit weird, strange, and sad today about my "brothers." And especially with Obama in the background and my own "marrying outside of the race" status.

I am not sure if it is a sign of the times or what, but I predict that 2008 will be the year of the black man, magicality aside.

Magical negro-a-magical negro

2008-03-22T23:34:00.008-04:00

I watched the infamous Obama race speech tonight. But only after I watched Chris Matthews gushingly compare it to Abraham Lincoln! Only after I watched Bill Maher gushingly suggest that Obama's speech finally spoke to Americans like adults about race.

From the beginning, loads of folks have asked me, the evil tongue, "What do you think about Obama?" I have found it flattering/amusing/telling that these various loved ones, friends, students, colleagues, and neighbors wonder what someone like me thinks about Obama. I think the question has always really meant, "Do you support Obama?" I thus always began any answer to the questions about Obama with the declaration that I supported Edwards, the rich white man. I then went on to explain that I was sympathetic to Obama because of how earnest white folks were projecting all of their issues onto his clean, well-spoken, well-educated, extra-special magical negro self. I was sympathetic because of my own real or imagined status of magical Negro--academic version 2.0.

Which brings me back to Obama's infamous "you don't have to fear me white folks" race speech from this past week. I am again sympathetic to why he did it and to what he was trying to do. I again can only imagine what it must be like for him , his wife, and children. Polite white society and secret service agents cannot possibly shield them from what I KNOW they must overhear, see, and experience (I seriously believe this stuff is not reported in the media at his campaign's request. I'd bet my own "mixed race family" status on it). Yet, as I sat there listening and watching, I realized that the flip standard answer that I have been giving about Edwards' message trumping the "magical negro" solidarity that I share with Obama still remains true.

So to all of those who wonder what I thought about Obama's speech (and not just Obama)...
Despite his focus on structural racism and prejudice, corporatism and classism....

1) You cannot claim to be making a path-breaking speech about race in America when you still operate from the principle that the primary racial dynamic is black and white. Even though he mentioned brown and yellow in passing (Indians get one mention... "Native American" children in crumbling schools), his focusing on a black and white racial divide indicates to me that Obama, the "product of a biracial union," and his advisors/speech writers need a more sophisticated tutorial in race politics.

2) Reifying the idea that behaviors and beliefs are "coded in one's genes" and part of your "genetic makeup" is not a smooth move. Talking about someone, like your black American wife, "carrying the blood of both black slaves and white slave owners" is not advancing national understandings of race. Suggesting that you are related to every "race" and hue on 3 continents, really does no good except to conjure up images of discrete racial groups--something that Obama's very "pedigree" challenges. Any student who gets out of an Intro to Anthro course with a passing grade knows that race is a social construct and not a biological one. In using these types of genetic/biological explanations and folk understandings in a major speech on race in 2008, Obama should get the annual "disservice to anthropology" award (if there was such a thing and if *I* got to make the decision--fat chance... this magical negro isn't that magical).

3) "Black family," "black manhood/fatherhood," and "black men's ability to provide for" are all culturally charged code words for partriarchy and sexism. Progressive black women deserve Obama's impressive brain power to rethink these all too easy constructions of what ails black America. Don't make me choose between race and gender and expect me to vote for you with a smile on my MAC lipsticked lips and pull the lever with my gigantic diamonded left hand.

I wish Obama well, because he may very well be the redemptive magical negro that America deserves, if not needs, at present.

But as a disenfranchised voter/ Michigan Democrat and sometime magical negro, I still prefer the rich white man.

Prince, I hardly knew ya

2007-12-08T18:55:00.008-05:00

So there I am going through the Sunday (which come on Saturday) newspaper inserts...

My love of fragrance has always tended to go the route of the "natural" vanilla/sandalwood variety. The kind of stuff that is purchased in balms and butters at the natural food store. Not the kind of stuff that comes courtesy of the local upscale department store. Sadly, such fragrance choices fit my M.O. too easily. Earth mother meets aging hipster rip off.

I really am not big on those scratch and sniff pieces of paper that come in magazines and sales flyers for the designer fragrances—I may have inherited this from my grandmother who often said that such "scents" always…

"Smelled like fly spray."

When I come across them I usually tend to toss them without opening, but sometimes when the advert seems so over the top that it cannot be denied, I do give them a sniff. I have found that I tend to like the men's rugged fragrances much more than the women's florals—whether they are oriental (way too strong) or classic (smells like somebody's grandma's dusting powder for the bosom). This also probably fits into my M.O. as well, but that is for another entry.

Nestled in between the 14(!) inserts that fell out of the Macy’s regular flyer and special holiday fragrance buying guide… Prince’s 3121.

I used to be such a big fan of Prince. I begged my mother to let me go to his big concert in 1982. I had to take my cousin and baby brother along in order to be allowed to go. It is amazing that we were all allowed in. This was the early days and we easily made our way to the front of the general admission space. I have to admit that Prince may have been my very first sexual crush. I saw him on stage doing the things (and singing the songs about doing the things ) that I had only imagined folks doing. It blew my mind and set the stage for a very long love affair. Like most Prince fans, I stuck through the good and also the bad, but somewhere about 10 years after that first encounter and with the release of Emancipation and the marriage/dying child weirdness, I lost interest. Tons of other folks have written about Prince/the symbol, his genius, bad choices, etc. I have nothing more to add. No particular insights or revelations that I think would add anything more.

But this Saturday evening, sitting at the kitchen table with my two young daughters sitting there drawing and coloring and sorting through mail and newspapers, hoping that I will be able to find the time to read some of it before the end of the year, I opened the 3121 fragrance ad. 72 dollars for 3/ 4 oz.—get it Prince. I sniffed it. Despite its official description which sounds like classic Prince lyrics:

"white floral scent that opens with a refreshing sparkle of crisp bergamot, opulent jasmine and gardenia. Orange flower and muguet sensually intertwine with tuberose and ylang ylang, creating a subtle, mysterious blend; evolving into notes of patchouli and creamy sandalwood. Precious cedarwood and luxurious musks complement this sexy scent with an almost surreal draw that tugs at all senses for total captivation"

It smelled like a boat full of stinking fish, with an extra large helping of nasty seaweed and rotten kelp. I would best describe the top note as musty sailor armpit funk.

Oh how far we both have come. My first love, Prince.