I received an urgent message from a vibrant, arts-based center called Out ch'Yonda, located in Albuquerque, New Mexico. There's a great commentary on the work that they do, provided by Professor Black Woman, so I will not repeat it here. Instead, I would like to urge you to please support their endeavors, as they have been set back by a robbery, and they must make next month's rent in order to maintain their business. To lend your support, even if you can only contribute $5 or so, please mail your check to:
Out ch'Yonda Live Artz Studio
929 4th St. SW
Albuquerque, NM 87102
Or call 505-385-5634; email: colombeleland@yahoo.com
Thursday, August 30, 2007
Wednesday, August 29, 2007
Thinking Globally, Acting Locally: The International Tribunal on Katrina and Rita
While our mainstream news has bombarded us with the insignificant news stories of celebrities and public officials' sexual indiscretions, it may please us to know that, in the midst of various horror stories emerging from the Gulf Coast region, where human rights violations occur with impunity, survivors and their local, national, and international allies are going to do something about it. On this second anniversary of the Katrina tragedy in New Orleans and the Gulf Coast, I urge that you not get distracted by what the various news pundits, major news anchors, and various presidential candidates vying for their photo-op have to say. Rather, tune in to a far more progressive forum in which The International Tribunal on Katrina and Rita will gather in New Orleans to give survivors a voice for their complaints, from August 29 through September 2. The human rights violations they have documented include the following:
Since Katrina and Rita, the government has:Let us join our citizens, sisters, and brothers as they begin to apply international law to our local concerns.
1. Forcibly removed tens of thousands of New Orleans and Gulf Coast residents
2. Disenfranchised tens of thousands of African-American voters;
3. Refused to adhere to its own policies and procedures pertaining to the security and well being of internally displaced persons (IDP’s);
4. Grossly mismanaged resources for the reconstruction of the region, including awarding no-bid contracts to big corporations connected to the Bush administration;
5. Eliminated environmental and worker protection laws;
6. Unjustifiably criminalized thousands of Survivors, particularly the displaced;
7. Set up a reconstruction process that excludes effective input, oversight, and control over the process by the majority African-American population;
8. Currently threatening to seize large portions of New Orleans owned and occupied by African Americans to ethnically cleanse the city to prevent the return of its historic majority.
Countless abuses were and still are being committed against African-American, working and middle class communities of the Gulf Coast by the U.S. government. The U.S. government must be held responsible for these crimes against humanity. This is why we are calling for an International Tribunal for justice and restitution.
Friday, August 24, 2007
Taking Animation Seriously: Thoughts on Ratatouille (Spoiler Alert)
I'm surprised at myself. I love movies, and I usually spend much of my summer at the multiplexes. But this summer 2007 season has proven more lackluster than blockbuster for me. I've been preoccupied with completing professional goals and taking different vacations throughout my time off. So, it has come pretty much toward the end of the summer that I started visiting movie houses. The last movie I happened to see was Pixar's latest animation, Ratatouille, which I thoroughly enjoyed (the animation, the humor, the moral of the story, etc.).
Since this is the last weekend I have before I begin teaching for a new semester, I thought I would go see it again as I have zero interest in checking out the latest movies opening this weekend (I think I will pass on J.Lo and hubby's "El Cantante"). And, since I had not read movie reviews before seeing it the first time, I decided to check some out on the web. Imagine MY surprise, then, to find on the Internet Movie Database a discussion thread exploring the possibility that Ratatouille is antisemitic! Someone obviously made the leap by comparing the persecution of rats in the film with the real-life persecution of Jews, not to mention Nazi propaganda that often equated Jews with "rats and vermin." So, naturally - since I had not considered it during my first viewing - I did a search to see if anyone has made similar arguments. I found an interesting essay titled "Ratatouille and Jewish Assimilation."
Of course, when one reads reviews like these, the images immediately come back in your memory: then you think, why didn't I pay more attention? That scene between Remy and his father, who reveals to Remy what human beings can do to rats (he shows him a store window with a display of rat poisons and dead rat carcasses) was indeed chilling and the telltale sign - as was an earlier scene when the rats are exposed from their hiding place in an attic (yep - an attic) and subsequently fleeing through the sewers (when you really think about it, Schindler's List is all over this animation). However, I wouldn't so much as say all these parallels necessarily make the film "antisemitic," as some have argued, but it does problematize the moral of the story ( a feel-good "anyone can achieve their dreams" like Remy does). However, as the author Adam Roberts explains in his essay, how much is really achieved when Remy-the-chef is still "in hiding" or, as many racial and ethnic minorities have had to do, still have to "pass" or "assimilate"?
On the other hand, I could really be like many of the commenters to this essay and say to the author: "Dude, it's only a movie! And a cartoon at that!" But, to do so would be to dismiss the politics at work (I certainly didn't miss it when Disney portrayed jazzy black folk as apes in The Jungle Book or Latinos as hyenas in The Lion King) when obvious parallels are being made on the issue of bigotry, discrimination, and - that's right - genocide. Just as Aesop used animal stories to comment on humanity, it might behoove us to take our cartoons with talking animals more seriously. Especially when the drawings are sharp and artistic, the humor is biting, and the animal protagonists are oh-so-cute! What are we telling our kids? What are we telling ourselves? Surely, I'll have lots to think about when I watch Ratatouille again.
Since this is the last weekend I have before I begin teaching for a new semester, I thought I would go see it again as I have zero interest in checking out the latest movies opening this weekend (I think I will pass on J.Lo and hubby's "El Cantante"). And, since I had not read movie reviews before seeing it the first time, I decided to check some out on the web. Imagine MY surprise, then, to find on the Internet Movie Database a discussion thread exploring the possibility that Ratatouille is antisemitic! Someone obviously made the leap by comparing the persecution of rats in the film with the real-life persecution of Jews, not to mention Nazi propaganda that often equated Jews with "rats and vermin." So, naturally - since I had not considered it during my first viewing - I did a search to see if anyone has made similar arguments. I found an interesting essay titled "Ratatouille and Jewish Assimilation."
Of course, when one reads reviews like these, the images immediately come back in your memory: then you think, why didn't I pay more attention? That scene between Remy and his father, who reveals to Remy what human beings can do to rats (he shows him a store window with a display of rat poisons and dead rat carcasses) was indeed chilling and the telltale sign - as was an earlier scene when the rats are exposed from their hiding place in an attic (yep - an attic) and subsequently fleeing through the sewers (when you really think about it, Schindler's List is all over this animation). However, I wouldn't so much as say all these parallels necessarily make the film "antisemitic," as some have argued, but it does problematize the moral of the story ( a feel-good "anyone can achieve their dreams" like Remy does). However, as the author Adam Roberts explains in his essay, how much is really achieved when Remy-the-chef is still "in hiding" or, as many racial and ethnic minorities have had to do, still have to "pass" or "assimilate"?
On the other hand, I could really be like many of the commenters to this essay and say to the author: "Dude, it's only a movie! And a cartoon at that!" But, to do so would be to dismiss the politics at work (I certainly didn't miss it when Disney portrayed jazzy black folk as apes in The Jungle Book or Latinos as hyenas in The Lion King) when obvious parallels are being made on the issue of bigotry, discrimination, and - that's right - genocide. Just as Aesop used animal stories to comment on humanity, it might behoove us to take our cartoons with talking animals more seriously. Especially when the drawings are sharp and artistic, the humor is biting, and the animal protagonists are oh-so-cute! What are we telling our kids? What are we telling ourselves? Surely, I'll have lots to think about when I watch Ratatouille again.
Sunday, August 19, 2007
Where Race and Gender Meet: When Did Black Feminists Forget about the Intersections?
I really am looking forward to the upcoming school year and have been busy putting together my course syllabi. Over the summer, I've also had an opportunity to order some new books and videos at my school, including T. Denean Sharpley-Whiting's Pimps Up, Ho's Down: Hip Hop's Hold on Young Black Women and Aishah Shahidah Simmons' No!, a documentary film about black women's experiences of rape. I've been thinking specifically about how to use such texts, which center on black women, in the Women's Studies classroom, which typically include a majority of white women.
I once raised this issue at a conference during a discussion about pedagogy and how, for instance, might I use a film like No! in a class that was primarily white female. Both texts that I've previously mentioned are ideal for classes that were primarily black female students and other students of color, but I'm still left with the dilemma of how to "translate" these texts in a classroom filled with female students who either A.) construct the world and "women's experience" as revolving around white women's issues and/or B.) appropriate women of color's experiences of sexism as the "evidence" that they need to justify white supremacy and cultural imperialism since men of color's "sexism" is often viewed as being "worse" than white men's and, even more insidious, use our experiences of sexual violence perpetrated by men of color to justify why they should uphold their stereotypical myths of the "black rapist" or the "Arab terrorist" or the "Latin perpetrator of femicide" (in countries like Mexico or Guatemala), etc. In short, I am really conflicted about how to teach such texts to a white female student cohort.
This isn't to say that I won't, for these new cultural productions need our full support and, as educators in academia, we must do our part in diversifying the curriculum. However, part of my frustration with texts like Pimps Up, Ho's Down and No! lies in the myopic constructions of the sexual violence that impacts black women. Don't get me wrong: I think both texts are well-done, relevant, useful, and - more importantly - needed - in this age of hip hop corporate culture and global imperialist patriarchy that continues to demean the bodies of women of color, especially black women. However, there is something sorely missing in these black feminist critiques that never used to be in the critiques of black feminists from a different generation. That previous generation of black feminism included the theories of Patricia Hill Collins, bell hooks, Audre Lorde, Barbara Christian, Kimberle Crenshaw, Beverly Guy-Sheftall, and a host of other scholars who witnessed the fall of legalized Jim Crow segregation and the rise of the Civil Rights Movement, who pioneered the way for my present generation to enter the halls of academe and build on the work that they set for us. So, why are some present-day black feminists not incorporating in their analyses the foundation of black feminist theory: "Intersectionality," an understanding that black women's experiences are impacted by the intersection of race and gender, which means, in a nutshell, that we cannot discuss our experiences with sexual violence without also elucidating the way that racism impacts and shapes this sexuality?
I raise this issue because, had intersectionality been a cornerstone in these texts, then I would not have to worry about how to "translate" to my predominately white female student class the issues presented - including hip hop representations of women of color and rape against black women. The way these issues are presented in these texts do not illuminate the racialized constructions of black female sexuality; they merely apply a gender-only analysis of the patriarchal nature of hip hop or rape (as if racism is not an ever-present narrative of black men and women's experiences - the very marginalization of black women's experiences means that racism must be confronted). Sharpley-Whiting's critique of hip hop culture's sexism is spot on, but rarely does she talk about how this sexism is colored by white supremacy and global corporate culture. As such, this text makes it a little too easy for white feminist readers - who have not challenged their racism - to vilify black rappers as yet another representative of "patriarchy." Likewise, Simmons' film - which rightfully focuses on black women's experiences of intraracial rape, the more prevalent violence in our communities - makes it easy for bigoted white feminists to also reduce black men to myths that they often hold of "scary black men," if only because white women's tendency is to always treat black women as "other" and, thus, our experiences with "other" men renders us as outside dominant culture, even if our culture also mirrors theirs.
Surely, I do not hold it against either Sharpley-Whiting or Simmons for refusing to translate their stories for any other group outside the black community, but it does make it a bit difficult for those of us who teach outside the black community to convey these issues and centralize the experiences of women of color. However, I'm already creating "counter" narratives in which I will have to pair Simmons' film with something like, say, Angela Davis's chapter on "The Myth of the Black Rapist," from her book Women, Race, and Class (again, yet another black feminist from the previous generation who understands "intersectionality"), if only to complicate the worldview of those students who have not unlearned white supremacy. To be fair, Simmons does present historical contexts for understanding her subject, which will make it easy to incorporate Davis's work, and it is clear that, as a self-described "Afralesfemcentric" filmmaker, she does useful intersectional analysis of heterosexism and sexism and is very careful to present black men who are part of the "solution" in fighting sexual violence and not just part of the "problem." So, I find that her work lends itself to intersectionality.
In other words, I really would like to see more present-day black feminists address intersectionality for it lays bare not only our experiences with racism and sexism but also clarifies for non-black women the interlocking oppressions that affect all of our lives. It is not enough to just focus on black women's experiences with sexism. Any group of women can do that. We must widen our lens and complicate our worldviews to get to the bottom of what ails us as a culture, as a society since the sexism that we experience is unavoidably linked to racism, classism, heterosexism, and imperialism. In a previous post, when I tried to complicate discussions about African American women's reactions to the recent rape of a Haitian woman in her immigrant community in Florida, I was verbally attacked for what was perceived to be my insistence on "putting black men first" over black women's concerns simply because I wanted to raise awareness of how racism and anti-immigration might have shaped the community's silence and refusal to cooperate with the police. It seems that, for some black women, to address our issues through an intersectional analysis is to "erase" our focus on sexism, which is simply not the case.
I am also concerned, as I've expressed to a friend of mine, that a growing number of today's black feminists don't know how to articulate an intersectional framework for understanding black women's experiences with interlocking oppressions; this may actually be the result of miseducation at the hands of gender-only (presumably white) feminist instructors in the academy since women of color educators are still a small percentage of such instructors. Unfortunately, gender-only ("down with the patriarchy!") feminist instructors have ill-equipped too many students of Women's Studies who do not fully comprehend systemic oppressions that structure their lives, nor do they know how to apply useful strategies to address these multifaceted issues. Then there is the prevalent white dominance in Women's Studies, where women of color students are still woefully underrepresented.
I am grateful that, in my academic studies, I can boast that I'm a student of some great black feminist educators of the previous generation who have given me the tools to write and think critically about feminist issues from both a multiracial and transnational perspective.
As a black feminist educator, I hope to do the same for my students - whatever their race and ethnicity. I'm also confident that I know how to present the texts authored by Sharpley-Whiting and Simmons in a way that pushes beyond their myopic approach to black women's experiences with sexism. I only wish that these authors had met me half way by doing some of the groundwork in the first place.
I once raised this issue at a conference during a discussion about pedagogy and how, for instance, might I use a film like No! in a class that was primarily white female. Both texts that I've previously mentioned are ideal for classes that were primarily black female students and other students of color, but I'm still left with the dilemma of how to "translate" these texts in a classroom filled with female students who either A.) construct the world and "women's experience" as revolving around white women's issues and/or B.) appropriate women of color's experiences of sexism as the "evidence" that they need to justify white supremacy and cultural imperialism since men of color's "sexism" is often viewed as being "worse" than white men's and, even more insidious, use our experiences of sexual violence perpetrated by men of color to justify why they should uphold their stereotypical myths of the "black rapist" or the "Arab terrorist" or the "Latin perpetrator of femicide" (in countries like Mexico or Guatemala), etc. In short, I am really conflicted about how to teach such texts to a white female student cohort.
This isn't to say that I won't, for these new cultural productions need our full support and, as educators in academia, we must do our part in diversifying the curriculum. However, part of my frustration with texts like Pimps Up, Ho's Down and No! lies in the myopic constructions of the sexual violence that impacts black women. Don't get me wrong: I think both texts are well-done, relevant, useful, and - more importantly - needed - in this age of hip hop corporate culture and global imperialist patriarchy that continues to demean the bodies of women of color, especially black women. However, there is something sorely missing in these black feminist critiques that never used to be in the critiques of black feminists from a different generation. That previous generation of black feminism included the theories of Patricia Hill Collins, bell hooks, Audre Lorde, Barbara Christian, Kimberle Crenshaw, Beverly Guy-Sheftall, and a host of other scholars who witnessed the fall of legalized Jim Crow segregation and the rise of the Civil Rights Movement, who pioneered the way for my present generation to enter the halls of academe and build on the work that they set for us. So, why are some present-day black feminists not incorporating in their analyses the foundation of black feminist theory: "Intersectionality," an understanding that black women's experiences are impacted by the intersection of race and gender, which means, in a nutshell, that we cannot discuss our experiences with sexual violence without also elucidating the way that racism impacts and shapes this sexuality?
I raise this issue because, had intersectionality been a cornerstone in these texts, then I would not have to worry about how to "translate" to my predominately white female student class the issues presented - including hip hop representations of women of color and rape against black women. The way these issues are presented in these texts do not illuminate the racialized constructions of black female sexuality; they merely apply a gender-only analysis of the patriarchal nature of hip hop or rape (as if racism is not an ever-present narrative of black men and women's experiences - the very marginalization of black women's experiences means that racism must be confronted). Sharpley-Whiting's critique of hip hop culture's sexism is spot on, but rarely does she talk about how this sexism is colored by white supremacy and global corporate culture. As such, this text makes it a little too easy for white feminist readers - who have not challenged their racism - to vilify black rappers as yet another representative of "patriarchy." Likewise, Simmons' film - which rightfully focuses on black women's experiences of intraracial rape, the more prevalent violence in our communities - makes it easy for bigoted white feminists to also reduce black men to myths that they often hold of "scary black men," if only because white women's tendency is to always treat black women as "other" and, thus, our experiences with "other" men renders us as outside dominant culture, even if our culture also mirrors theirs.
Surely, I do not hold it against either Sharpley-Whiting or Simmons for refusing to translate their stories for any other group outside the black community, but it does make it a bit difficult for those of us who teach outside the black community to convey these issues and centralize the experiences of women of color. However, I'm already creating "counter" narratives in which I will have to pair Simmons' film with something like, say, Angela Davis's chapter on "The Myth of the Black Rapist," from her book Women, Race, and Class (again, yet another black feminist from the previous generation who understands "intersectionality"), if only to complicate the worldview of those students who have not unlearned white supremacy. To be fair, Simmons does present historical contexts for understanding her subject, which will make it easy to incorporate Davis's work, and it is clear that, as a self-described "Afralesfemcentric" filmmaker, she does useful intersectional analysis of heterosexism and sexism and is very careful to present black men who are part of the "solution" in fighting sexual violence and not just part of the "problem." So, I find that her work lends itself to intersectionality.
In other words, I really would like to see more present-day black feminists address intersectionality for it lays bare not only our experiences with racism and sexism but also clarifies for non-black women the interlocking oppressions that affect all of our lives. It is not enough to just focus on black women's experiences with sexism. Any group of women can do that. We must widen our lens and complicate our worldviews to get to the bottom of what ails us as a culture, as a society since the sexism that we experience is unavoidably linked to racism, classism, heterosexism, and imperialism. In a previous post, when I tried to complicate discussions about African American women's reactions to the recent rape of a Haitian woman in her immigrant community in Florida, I was verbally attacked for what was perceived to be my insistence on "putting black men first" over black women's concerns simply because I wanted to raise awareness of how racism and anti-immigration might have shaped the community's silence and refusal to cooperate with the police. It seems that, for some black women, to address our issues through an intersectional analysis is to "erase" our focus on sexism, which is simply not the case.
I am also concerned, as I've expressed to a friend of mine, that a growing number of today's black feminists don't know how to articulate an intersectional framework for understanding black women's experiences with interlocking oppressions; this may actually be the result of miseducation at the hands of gender-only (presumably white) feminist instructors in the academy since women of color educators are still a small percentage of such instructors. Unfortunately, gender-only ("down with the patriarchy!") feminist instructors have ill-equipped too many students of Women's Studies who do not fully comprehend systemic oppressions that structure their lives, nor do they know how to apply useful strategies to address these multifaceted issues. Then there is the prevalent white dominance in Women's Studies, where women of color students are still woefully underrepresented.
I am grateful that, in my academic studies, I can boast that I'm a student of some great black feminist educators of the previous generation who have given me the tools to write and think critically about feminist issues from both a multiracial and transnational perspective.
As a black feminist educator, I hope to do the same for my students - whatever their race and ethnicity. I'm also confident that I know how to present the texts authored by Sharpley-Whiting and Simmons in a way that pushes beyond their myopic approach to black women's experiences with sexism. I only wish that these authors had met me half way by doing some of the groundwork in the first place.
Saturday, August 18, 2007
Did I Hear What I Just Heard?
I couldn't believe it, but it was uttered on CNN this afternoon. A news anchorwoman (who shall remain nameless) asked a resident on the Caribbean island of St. Lucia, who just survived Hurricane Dean: "I think I speak for many here in the U.S., but we often wonder why someone, who is on such a vulnerable island, doesn't just up and leave. Why not head to a mainland when you hear that a hurricane is coming?"
Yep. She said that. So, here I am, posting on my blog a map of the Caribbean (I've used it often in my formative years when my various peers and friends wanted to know where the island where my parents are from is located). So, for any other person "here in the U.S." who is curious about why someone who lives on a "vulnerable island" wouldn't just "up and leave" and relocate to a "mainland", could you please point out where exactly Caribbean islanders can go when a hurricane is coming?
Oh yeah, do you see on the map where there are names with arrows? That's right! Those are islands, represented by tiny little dots. There are many of them. When you relocate from one island to another during a hurricane, it's rather pointless. The best thing to do is to board up your home or head to a hurricane shelter (for locals have figured out which part of the island is the least vulnerable to hurricanes) and wait it out. You don't "evacuate," because there is no vast mainland where you can relocate to.
And even if they could, are you going to now blame those who stayed behind for inviting a natural disaster in their lives? Why do I feel the ghost of Hurricane Katrina in that news anchor's question?
Anyway, enough of my ranting. Just wanted to call your attention to the stupidity and blatant ignorance of the world that many of those in our news media are expressing. CNN, "the most trusted name in news?" Pfffftttt!
Friday, August 17, 2007
Tales from the Congo: Are Our Hearts Still in Darkness?
I am not a self-proclaimed ecofeminist. However, I do believe in some of their tenets, which recognize how patriarchal domination of women is tied to a patriarchal domination of nature. And, while I agree with Andrea Smith (whom I've been citing often on this blog) and other Native environmentalists who constantly criticize white ecofeminists and other mainstream environmental activists for their shortsighted (and, indeed, racist) views concerning their perfunctory dichotomization between humans and nature, I often respect environmentalists for raising our consciousness about nature and all of earth's living organisms as having basic rights like their fellow humans. We must really learn how to co-exist in the "living commons" that Vandana Shiva talks about in her book, Earth Democracy.So, it is with sadness that I learned - while checking BBC news for the latest on Peru's earthquake, Hurricane Dean in the Caribbean, the World Stock Market, and other current and impending disasters - about a small news item: A female gorilla called Macibiri and others from her family were massacred in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Naturally, I followed a few links on the death of Macibiri, who is part of a group of mountain gorillas who face extinction in the near future (I'm sure we all remember the efforts of Diane Fossey, as memorialized in that imperialist, anti-African movie, Gorillas in the Mist - you know that message: those poor, defenseless apes that need saving from those other savage "they-look-like-humans-but-they-may-as-well-be-another-breed-of-apes-Africans!"). Sure enough, on a few blogs devoted to wildlife preservation, the news of Macibiri's death has spread, and comments expressing their outrage and their desire to see those "brute savages" shot on sight for killing those poor, innocent gorillas have also poured in.
What, pray tell, is up with this? Why do hearts "bleed" over apes but fail to register an ounce of sympathy when similar atrocities occur to human beings in the same region? While I'm saddened to hear that these animals were ruthlessly executed, can I please remind everyone that there is a GENOCIDE occurring in the Congo at this minute where human females are being targeted for rape and extinction? Can we also please make the necessary connections here and realize that the complete disregard for such lives locally and globally (last time I checked, there wasn't much outrage for those WOMEN who are being slaughtered in the same region) translates to a complete disregard for ALL lives, hence the senseless murder of the gorillas? It breaks my heart to hear of such atrocities, but I will not contribute to yet another "Africa is such an evil and backward place and those natives must be stopped and killed" narrative because that's just not helpful! If we recognize Africans as regular human beings, then maybe that humanity will translate across the board to all living beings.
There is also something even more insidious about the reaction to this news. I'm reminded of George Orwell's short story, "Shooting an Elephant," in which the narrator - who completely disregards the lives of local Indians - is so distraught over having to shoot an innocent and majestic elephant: Oh the inhumanity of it all! What is it about colonialist worldviews that allow humans to dehumanize each other while heralding the exotic animals and plants from different regions? I'm very concerned, as many Native environmentalists have expressed, when so-called environmental activists and wildlife preservationists divorce the human family from the rest of nature. How easy it is to construct narratives of poor, victimized Mother Nature and all her little animals who are defenseless against the evil creatures known as HUMANS, who of course must be exterminated or (in the case of arguing against "overpopulation") sterilized for the protection of the planet. How easy it is to dismiss a large number of those human beings who - lo and behold - tend to be poor, people of color, and women. This kind of global white imperialism will surely do nothing to really protect our natural environment. Here's a clue: start respecting your fellow human beings, and maybe we'll all learn to respect other beings too.
Then, there is that whole business between animalizing human beings and humanizing animals, somehow reinforced through these colonialist narratives. Here, I'm referring to the “African ape.” A popular trope in sideshow attractions, zoos, and world fairs throughout Western culture's history, the “African ape” links to the African body in ways that reverberate back to scientific racism, which circulated vitriolic concepts of black animalism and primitivism that borrowed loosely from Darwin’s theories of evolution and Aristotle’s ancient model of the “Great Chain of Being.” As popular culture and science combined in their perpetuation of racist stereotypes, cinema provided a worldwide arena in which these images proliferated. Perhaps the most enduring of these images is the magnified spectacle of King Kong atop the Empire State Building, the epitome of white progress and civilization contrasting with this savage representative of Africa, or in the 1968 film, Planet of the Apes, debuting at the height of the militant black and third world liberation movements. How many of us who are black don't recognize in these stories of "apes" some subconscious reference about Africa, about black people, or about Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness?
My heart goes out to both Macibiri and her human cousins who are both victims of senseless violence in the Congo, but please let us not deify the atrocity against one species while dismissing the atrocities committed against our own species. Neither should we divorce these tragedies from the larger global economy (the Congo is a nation rich in natural resources, where constant warfare is waged for lucrative profits, including sadly, any profits that come with the poaching and killing of wildlife and fellow human beings).
We are all one species - human beings (despite historic racist scientific arguments to the contrary) - one order (primates), and one kingdom (animals). However, if you're like me and have a resistance to scientific classifications - a system borne out of colonization - then we could just dismiss all those categories and call it like it is: we're all family. We're all living organisms on this Planet, which has been trying to tell us for a long time since the beginning of this century - from the Tsunami disaster to Hurricane Katrina and now to these latest incidents, from oil wars to mining tragedies - that she is supreme, must be respected, and all her children must come first before profit.
Thursday, August 16, 2007
Peru Earthquake Relief Effort
In light of the tragic earthquake in Peru, which measured 8.0 on the Richter scale and killing upwards of 450 people, MADRE, a human rights organization for women and their families, is raising funds for the earthquake relief effort. I thought I would post information here for your donations.
Saturday, August 11, 2007
The Women Behind "Talk to Me" (Spoiler Alert)
The image is striking. In the intimate booth of a radio station, we see some black hands placing a vinyl record onto a turntable, lifting the needle ever so gently over it before James Brown's "It's a Man's Man's Man's World" sounds off. The next shot is of a young, earnest brother (later revealed to be Dewey Hughes, played by the continues-to-amaze-me Chiwetel Ejiofor) listening to the music in his car, and in the distance, we see the world that passes him by - including the U.S. Capital building(indeed, "it's a man's man's man's world"), establishing his location in Washington, D.C. while also providing commentary on another kind of "man's man's man's world" - the exclusively male space of Virginia's Lorton Penitentiary, where Dewey Hughes is on his way to visit his convict brother Milo (played by Mike Epps). It's an important scene that comes at the beginning of the movie biopic Talk to Me. Here, we understand Dewey is only keeping up these visits because he promised their dead mother that he would, but had she not sworn him to it, we get a sense that the ever upwardly mobile Dewey Hughes would sooner forget about his lost brother and leave him to rot behind bars.More important, while visiting Milo, Dewey hears on the loud speaker the voice of the flamboyant Ralph Waldo "Petey" Greene (played by the versatile A-list actor Don Cheadle), a self-described "con man" (or "miscreant" as Dewey calls him), sweet-hustling and jive-talking. Dewey and Petey will eventually cross paths and forge a friendship that lasts for nearly two decades when Petey, released from jail, elicits from Dewey a gig at the local D.C. R&B station. At WOL-AM, Petey eventually becomes the sensational voice of the people and local folk hero, "keeping it real." Dewey sees in Petey an opportunity to break into the big time. Such is the premise of this deeply moving film, "inspired by a true story," that manages to capture the spirit of the times in a banging soundtrack.
I was in a movie theater with a mix of different racial groups. Everyone was into the soundtrack, but I think I noticed the head-bobbing in the audience once Petey put on the 1967 record "Tramp" by Otis Redding and Carla Thomas. I couldn't help but think, is it the baby boomers bobbing to the memory of the 1960s? I know my head bobbed less in recognition of the original Tramp recording and more in recognition of its use as a hook in Salt-n-Pepa's 1986 "Tramp":
Have you ever seen a dude
who's stupid and rude
and whenever he's around he dogs your mood?
I know a guy like that, girl
He thinks he's God's gift to the world!
Here's another interesting scene. The first time Dewey meets Petey in person, it's during one of Petey's "conjugal visits" with his "woman", Vernell Watson (played by a very impressive Taraji P. Henson, whom many might remember as the pregnant prostitute with a heart of gold in Hustle and Flow, whose soulful hook on the movie anthem, "It's Hard Out Here for a Pimp," may have garnered that song the Oscar award for Best Picture; if she plays her cards right, Henson may get one herself some day. I understand that she has a pivotal role in David Fincher's kooky and fantastical The Curious Case of Benjamin Button as Brad Pitt's mother, due out next year, so let us wait and see. In the meantime, she amazes here). Larger than life in her mini mini mini skirts and her outlandish afros, Vernell is both comic relief and, surprisingly, the ligament in the friendship between Dewey and Petey.
This is a man's world but it ain't nothing without a woman or girl.
It's a role that could've easily been reduced to pure stereotype, and in more chauvinistic hands (like Spike Lee's or John Singleton's for instance), the character would not have gotten deeper than a blaxploitation send-up a la Foxy Brown or even your typical stand-behind-your-man supportive role that so many black actresses get saddled with in black films. Why do I say this? Well, imagine my surprise, going into the film precisely on the positive reviews given about the performances of Cheadle and Ejiofor, when I realized that the the movie was directed by none other than Kasi Lemmons.
Her first major film since the misunderstood 2001 The Caveman's Valentine (starring Samuel Jackson in a film that I will forever remember as providing me with some wonderfully surreal images of black angels), Kasi Lemmons may be remembered for playing the "some of my best friends are black" characters in the movies of white heroines, like The Silence of the Lambs and Candyman. Her brilliant film directorial debut, Eve's Bayou, showcased Lemmons' nuanced understanding and sensibility toward black life - in this case, the Black Creole bourgeois world of New Orleans. In Talk to Me, she creates a rather different world involving the transitional status of Black America, from Civil Rights to "Black is beautiful," from "street credibility" to black professional upward mobility, and perhaps most importantly in the realm of cinema, from "Blaxploitation" to "keeping it real," post-hip-hop with a flavor for creating humanity in lieu of stereotype.
Here's what I'm talking about. In a scene quite reminiscent of any Blaxploitation image, Petey and Vernell, dressed to the nines in their outrageous bell bottoms, butterfly collars, psychedelic mini-skirts, and - of course - the well-coiffed afros, sashay down the street with panache and attitude, all pseudo confidence. But reality hits. Petey looks across the street at the radio station, realizing that he must impress on the first day at his new job. The jive-walking abruptly stops as he literally gets cold feet. It would take all of Vernell's coaxing and ego-stroking to get his confidence going again. It's a subtle scene - you start out laughing at the comical picture, then you quiet down and assess the situation. Behind the hard, shiny surface of black male bravado and black female flashiness is the reality many black couples face: eroded self-confidence brought on by self-doubt and acute awareness of one's "worthlessness" (Petey says as much to Dewey that "talking is the only thing I can do without breaking the law") in the system and the narrow opportunities one faces when one is black and an ex-convict. It's a moment of vulnerability, an expose behind the "cool pose," and Vernell "stands by her man," not in the typical, patriarchal expectations (that's what your "woman" is supposed to do) but in the compassionate stance of knowing the effects of racism and poverty on her man, knowing that if she can't get his "trifling" ass across the street, he will forever be canceled out of the system. Petey gets where he gets because another brother inside the system gives him a chance to prove himself, and a sister encourages him to catch the door before it slams shut in his face.
It's a very subtle message beneath the hard, shiny surface of black "cool" stances, and it's one that a black woman, who has always had to recognize the performance of black masculinity and how she will negotiate her way around it (whether it's her partner, her dad, her brother, her son, or her friend) has penetrated with her camera: the soft interior behind that hard exterior.
We get many such scenes of vulnerability as Lemmons probes behind the Blaxploitation masquerade to reveal the human selves of these stock characters. In another scene, Vernell - again, channeling Foxy Brown and Cleopatra Jones in her big ol' afro - breaks a wine bottle and holds the jagged end up to Petey's throat when she catches him in bed with another woman. Yes, she is prepared to kill him, having stood by him for so many years, even when he was behind bars. Her angry-black-woman fury unleashes in Sapphire-style, and it is only after she orders both the other woman and a naked Petey out the door, that we see her anger quickly transform into real pain. Behind closed doors, Vernell can take off her Sapphire mask and break down in sobs, ruling out any opportunity for the audience to laugh at this stock image - the black couple in crisis over the black man's trifling ways and the black woman's rage. We were forced to feel her pain.
Another scene of vulnerability reveals Dewey Hughes (whom Petey derogatorily refers to as the Sidney Poitieresque "Mr. Tibss" and also "the white man with a tan") and what he's about. We could easily dismiss him as the stereotypical "sellout," "Uncle Tom," or Oreo, but it's always more complicated than that, isn't it. A capitalist at heart, despite his humble beginnings in the ghetto, Dewey believes in Petey and sees in him the next Richard Pryor. Expanding Petey's repertoire beyond WOL-AM's morning radio show, Dewey gets Petey local stand-up comedy gigs and his own local TV show, Petey Greene's Washington. Petey's ambitions for himself, however, has always been about radio. It's what he was given a chance to do when he was in prison (which started so that he could share with his fellow inmates a record, Sam Cooke's A Change is Going to Come, that lifted his spirits), and it's his comfort zone. But, the friendship between the two men is so strong that Petey can't disappoint Dewey's ambitions and so goes along with plans to appear on Johnny Carson's The Tonight Show. There is where you find the keys to the kingdom, and if Petey gets launched there, the world is his. Both men know it, but unlike Dewey, Petey doesn't want the world; he wants to stay in the Chocolate City of D.C., where his impact makes the most sense. It's a cringe-inducing moment by the time Petey walks out on the Tonight Show stage, staring out at an unsympathetic white audience and noticing the "applause" lights, so he knows they'll laugh at him even if they don't find him funny. But that's the problem for Petey. At WOL-AM and throughout the Chocolate City, he knows his audience laughs with him, not at him. So, in uncompromising fashion, Petey tells Johnny's audience (preceding David Chapelle by decades): “I look out here and all I see is a room full of white folks waiting for some nigger jokes.”
The silence is deadening, and the fallout between Dewey and Petey is assured. It's really, indeed, a moment of "keeping it real." You feel Dewey's heartbreak because the stakes were high, and we all know what it would have meant for Petey to "cross over into the mainstream." But, we also feel Petey's self-limitations and knowing when the stakes are too high, that he could never keep it real in the mainstream comedy world, because deep down he knows that the white world doesn't want to hear what he has to say, and he won't be telling them any "nigger jokes."
Of course, witnessing this friendship breakdown is Vernell, who tried to warn Dewey that Petey wasn't ready for Johnny Carson and the big plans he had in store for him. Interestingly, during Petey's first day at his radio job, he called Berry Gordy a pimp, for which he was forced to "apologize" on air by his stuffy, white "boss man", Mr. E. G. Sonderling (played by Martin Sheen who curses by saying "blue blazes" - hee hee), so Dewey should have gathered early on that Petey would be a hard sell. But, sometimes, we get distracted by our own dreams, and Vernell is there to "keep it real." She knows her man's limitations, and she knows that Petey would never reveal his deep-seated fears to Dewey. She must translate.
She will translate again and again since black men don't know how to really talk, despite all the encouragements to "talk to me". Dewey and Petey stop talking after the Tonight Show fiasco, and it's up to Vernell to be the peacemaker and mediator, expressing what both men are afraid to express to each other. When the two men finally reconcile, we catch them sitting on a bench together at the Washington Mall, captured on a home-made video, as Vernell films the two men together (we get this brief 8mm image of the two men from Vernell's POV - perhaps a subtle insertion of Lemmons' viewpoint, a reminder that we are watching this male friendship from the gaze of a black woman).
A soft interior takes center stage against the hard exterior.
What has been described as Petey Greene's finest hour on the radio - quelling the rage of the Washington D.C. black community in the aftermath of Martin Luther King Jr's assassination - is also the film's finest moment. Lemmons, who has revealed in interviews that her only memory of King's assassination is of her mother screaming out in anguish that "The King is dead," not understanding the politics and the momentous historical milestone this would become, only remembers the pain in her mother's voice. It is that pain she sought to capture and to translate to her transnational cast of black actors - some who were born in the U.K . or in Canada - who may not have the personal connection to the event as African Americans. Again, in her subtle direction, she exposes the triviality of domestic conflicts - Vernell "gets even" with Petey's affairs by having a tryst with one of Petey Green's radio DJ coworkers, Nighthawk (played by Cedric the Entertainer), and Petey and Nighthawk have it out in the office - brawling over his proprietary rights over Vernell's body - in stereotypical Amos-n-Andy slapstick comedy, replete with onlookers wringing their hands or intervening on the two fighting men.
When Martin Sheen's Mr. "boss man" comes in, all somber and silent, without his typical white-male-outrage over his out-of-control-black male underlings, we realize something's out of the ordinary. Without announcing King's death, we instead see him show Petey the press release. The comic relief of the previous moment (black male rage and competition over women) is suddenly rendered childish and insignificant when contrasted with the real rage and despair of the larger black community erupting in riots over King's assassination. The surreal and operatic moment - looted stores, fires raging, and a Reginald Deneyesque white man running for his life when stepping out at the wrong place at the wrong time (both Dewey and Petey rescue him and get him out of there) - crescendos when Petey realizes that his "voice" is needed back at the radio station. He tells the people: "I went to jail because I was a knucklehead. Dr. King went to jail for what he believed in. Put your anger away." The "people" start calling in and give voice to their pain. It takes all night, but D.C. calms down, and Petey plays Sam Cooke's A Change is Going to Come (the film plays it in its entirety) in tribute. When Petey finally goes home to Vernell (who had witnessed the burning streets from her window through her tears), she opens the door with a gun in her hand, which she doesn't put down. She pulls Petey into her arms, still holding her gun, closing the door behind them. Ready to kill yet ready to love.
Thursday, August 9, 2007
Where is the Rage? Speaking of Victims
I must commend What About Our Daughters for keeping alive in our collective memory the horrific story of a 35 year-old Haitian American woman from Dunbar Village in West Palm Beach, FL, who was viciously gang-raped and forced to fellate her son in what sounds like a nightmarish recreation of Tonton Macoute torture techniques from the old regime of Papa Doc back on the island (something I had discussed with a friend). Had various feminist bloggers not kept up the momentum in reporting and updating us on the details of this June 18 crime, I perhaps would not have even learned about this heinous event.
However, I'm a little perturbed by the recent overtones on this blog, in which "Black leaders" like Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson are being criticized for not speaking out against this horrific incident since it's a "Black on Black" rape and not the interracial sexual violence that prompted their attention when they rushed to the aid of Crystal Gail Mangum, the young woman who was involved in the Duke Lacrosse case. As someone who is still distraught over the national response to that incident, I'm concerned that some of our black feminists are now pitting one rape victim against another, in some bid for national attention and outrage. Yes, we must acknowledge, as Aishah Shahidah Simmons does in her documentary film, No!, that sexual violence gets little to no attention within black communities and that black women rape victims are still ignored and rarely - if at all - receive justice for the crimes committed against them (including both Crystal Gail Mangum and the recent Dunbar Village victim). However, for What About Our Daughters to advocate that our communities work with the police, with the state - which has often reacted to our communities by incarcerating our youth at alarming rates while still ignoring those victimized by crime - is a bit misguided. So is the condemnation of community members who have yet to step up and cooperate with the police while many of the victim's assailants are still on the loose.
We should all be outraged that no one came to the woman's aid when she was being viciously assaulted, but in light of the equally outrageous stories that I've been hearing of late - of undocumented people victimized by crimes and then, after reporting these incidents, getting deported back to their country of origin in this climate of intolerance, rising hate crimes, and anti-immigration - to condemn such community members, who may be members of the undocumented population, I understand the hesitancy and the silence. That, unfortunately, is the byproduct of a culture of violence, and black communities are merely a microcosm of a larger social problem all across this nation and this world.
In Conquest, Andrea Smith said it best when she warns feminists and other anti-violence activists about working with the state: "Reliance on the criminal justice system to address gender violence would make sense if the threat was a few crazed men whom we can lock up. But the prison system is not equippped to address a violent culture in which an overwhelming number of people batter their partners [and members of their own community], unless we are prepared to imprison hundreds of millions of people" (154).
In other words, our righteous anger and rage need to address the inadequacy of the state to address violence within our communities and what we, as feminists, will do about it. Do we need to resort to guerrilla warfare or are we going to try some solid and effective nonviolent resistance? Smith suggests "restorative justice" (communal attempts to redress the crimes beyond putting more people in prisons) but that requires rethinking criminal justice, since the present system isn't working. In the meantime, victims are still being categorized according to whether they were "good" people or not, as if this criteria determines if they were "undeserving" of the crimes committed against them. I mean, I'm really distressed at the number of times the Newark victims keep getting referred to as "good kids" and "college bound," as if to suggest that - had they just been "thugs" or "strippers" (like Ms. Mangum) - they would've deserved their execution-style deaths. Is this kind of language helpful, or does it serve to further silence or marginalize victims?
In the meantime, these stark, MILITARISTIC murders and gang rapes (yes, please note that both the Newark murders and the Dunbar Village rape have this element of militaristic torture, which we have already witnessed in the past six years in this post-9/11 world with images of Abu Ghraib, the War in Iraq, and the neglected dead and vigilante-style shootings and killings in post-Hurricane Katrina New Orleans) highlight the dark and downward spiral that our culture has taken, and those who remain in the margins and at the intersections will receive the worst of it.
Should Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson get as riled up against the rape that occurred in West Palm Beach, FL the way they did over the rape that had occurred in Durham, NC? Of course, they should. Am I surprised that they are not? Of course I'm not. The same reason that they jumped on the Duke case is the same reason they're staying far away from Florida: politics and the tricky, seedy and unsavory business of racism intersecting with misogyny. To call attention to the savage "Black on black" rape in Florida is to feed into a racist media's image of the savage black rapist, and of course, they don't want to feed that hungry dragon. To call attention to the less common specter of interracial rape - as had occurred in North Carolina (which only occurs less because our segregated interactions keep these incidents from occurring at the same rate) - is to give them an opportunity to combat "racism" when they encounter it (and, of course, ignore all the sexual politics that surround the case since black women continue to bleed at the intersections of race and gender).
Again, I'm not letting Al and Jesse off the hook because I know where they're coming from. They really ought to be coming to the aid of a black woman who needs their help, but they have never been crusaders against sexism, and I'm not surprised that they haven't taken on this particular case. My concern is feeding the avaricious dragon that is our racist media by giving them some more "in fighting" between black men and women to prove the point of how pathological our communities really are, when it does nothing to highlight or raise the outrage on a national level for this rape survivor. She will still get racialized as some "other," and people will just shake their heads while watching the news and bend down to continue eating their dinner, the same way they did when black women were being mass-raped in Rwanda (at the behest of a fellow black woman - Pauline Nyiramasuhuko - no less), and the issue of sexual violence will continue to rise unabated.
Where is the rage? And do we really want Al or Jesse to have it and express it for us? I think not. It's time to get radical and extreme, sisters. And to speak on our own behalf. I would more ask where's Oprah to speak out on this? Where's Condi to address the state of domestic (in-house and in-nation) violence and how foreign policy might have exacerbated the issue? In the meantime, if you want me to organize a teach-in at my campus, to hold a Women in Black silent protest, a Take Back the Night rally, a hunger strike (yeah, even a sex strike - Lysistrata style), or guerrilla theater, I'm on it. Let's remember, at the next anti-war protest, to highlight anti-rape and why the two are linked.
These wars are ceaseless.
However, I'm a little perturbed by the recent overtones on this blog, in which "Black leaders" like Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson are being criticized for not speaking out against this horrific incident since it's a "Black on Black" rape and not the interracial sexual violence that prompted their attention when they rushed to the aid of Crystal Gail Mangum, the young woman who was involved in the Duke Lacrosse case. As someone who is still distraught over the national response to that incident, I'm concerned that some of our black feminists are now pitting one rape victim against another, in some bid for national attention and outrage. Yes, we must acknowledge, as Aishah Shahidah Simmons does in her documentary film, No!, that sexual violence gets little to no attention within black communities and that black women rape victims are still ignored and rarely - if at all - receive justice for the crimes committed against them (including both Crystal Gail Mangum and the recent Dunbar Village victim). However, for What About Our Daughters to advocate that our communities work with the police, with the state - which has often reacted to our communities by incarcerating our youth at alarming rates while still ignoring those victimized by crime - is a bit misguided. So is the condemnation of community members who have yet to step up and cooperate with the police while many of the victim's assailants are still on the loose.
We should all be outraged that no one came to the woman's aid when she was being viciously assaulted, but in light of the equally outrageous stories that I've been hearing of late - of undocumented people victimized by crimes and then, after reporting these incidents, getting deported back to their country of origin in this climate of intolerance, rising hate crimes, and anti-immigration - to condemn such community members, who may be members of the undocumented population, I understand the hesitancy and the silence. That, unfortunately, is the byproduct of a culture of violence, and black communities are merely a microcosm of a larger social problem all across this nation and this world.
In Conquest, Andrea Smith said it best when she warns feminists and other anti-violence activists about working with the state: "Reliance on the criminal justice system to address gender violence would make sense if the threat was a few crazed men whom we can lock up. But the prison system is not equippped to address a violent culture in which an overwhelming number of people batter their partners [and members of their own community], unless we are prepared to imprison hundreds of millions of people" (154).
In other words, our righteous anger and rage need to address the inadequacy of the state to address violence within our communities and what we, as feminists, will do about it. Do we need to resort to guerrilla warfare or are we going to try some solid and effective nonviolent resistance? Smith suggests "restorative justice" (communal attempts to redress the crimes beyond putting more people in prisons) but that requires rethinking criminal justice, since the present system isn't working. In the meantime, victims are still being categorized according to whether they were "good" people or not, as if this criteria determines if they were "undeserving" of the crimes committed against them. I mean, I'm really distressed at the number of times the Newark victims keep getting referred to as "good kids" and "college bound," as if to suggest that - had they just been "thugs" or "strippers" (like Ms. Mangum) - they would've deserved their execution-style deaths. Is this kind of language helpful, or does it serve to further silence or marginalize victims?
In the meantime, these stark, MILITARISTIC murders and gang rapes (yes, please note that both the Newark murders and the Dunbar Village rape have this element of militaristic torture, which we have already witnessed in the past six years in this post-9/11 world with images of Abu Ghraib, the War in Iraq, and the neglected dead and vigilante-style shootings and killings in post-Hurricane Katrina New Orleans) highlight the dark and downward spiral that our culture has taken, and those who remain in the margins and at the intersections will receive the worst of it.
Should Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson get as riled up against the rape that occurred in West Palm Beach, FL the way they did over the rape that had occurred in Durham, NC? Of course, they should. Am I surprised that they are not? Of course I'm not. The same reason that they jumped on the Duke case is the same reason they're staying far away from Florida: politics and the tricky, seedy and unsavory business of racism intersecting with misogyny. To call attention to the savage "Black on black" rape in Florida is to feed into a racist media's image of the savage black rapist, and of course, they don't want to feed that hungry dragon. To call attention to the less common specter of interracial rape - as had occurred in North Carolina (which only occurs less because our segregated interactions keep these incidents from occurring at the same rate) - is to give them an opportunity to combat "racism" when they encounter it (and, of course, ignore all the sexual politics that surround the case since black women continue to bleed at the intersections of race and gender).
Again, I'm not letting Al and Jesse off the hook because I know where they're coming from. They really ought to be coming to the aid of a black woman who needs their help, but they have never been crusaders against sexism, and I'm not surprised that they haven't taken on this particular case. My concern is feeding the avaricious dragon that is our racist media by giving them some more "in fighting" between black men and women to prove the point of how pathological our communities really are, when it does nothing to highlight or raise the outrage on a national level for this rape survivor. She will still get racialized as some "other," and people will just shake their heads while watching the news and bend down to continue eating their dinner, the same way they did when black women were being mass-raped in Rwanda (at the behest of a fellow black woman - Pauline Nyiramasuhuko - no less), and the issue of sexual violence will continue to rise unabated.
Where is the rage? And do we really want Al or Jesse to have it and express it for us? I think not. It's time to get radical and extreme, sisters. And to speak on our own behalf. I would more ask where's Oprah to speak out on this? Where's Condi to address the state of domestic (in-house and in-nation) violence and how foreign policy might have exacerbated the issue? In the meantime, if you want me to organize a teach-in at my campus, to hold a Women in Black silent protest, a Take Back the Night rally, a hunger strike (yeah, even a sex strike - Lysistrata style), or guerrilla theater, I'm on it. Let's remember, at the next anti-war protest, to highlight anti-rape and why the two are linked.
These wars are ceaseless.
Highlighting the Victims: The Joys (and Sorrows) of You Tube
As the story unfolds about the three college students who were murdered execution style (thank you, Prof Blackwoman for alerting me to this before I saw it on the news), with recent developments including the arrest of two men involved in the shootings, let me take an opportunity to praise my latest Internet addiction: You Tube.
While I had recently conversed in a previous post about what life was like before the invasive onslaught of video surveillance, which can track your every embarrassing move and then upload it for public viewing on sites like You Tube, there's another far more subversive and uplifting element of do-it-yourself video production. Before You Tube, we were at the mercy of newspapers and TV news offering us a decent profile of the victims of heinous crimes - sometimes only receiving a few minutes of coverage while our "if-it-bleeds-it-leads" media would focus their attention on the criminal minds of the perpetrators.
Now, everyday people can create their own video montages and highlight victims of senseless crimes, victims who don't always get the attention that is due them. In this shocking story of three college youth gunned down in Newark, NJ - Terrance Aeriel, 18, Iofemi Hightower, 20, and Dashon Harvey, 20 - their friends have created tribute videos to give us a glimpse of who they were when they were alive.
Here are two of them:
In Memory of Dashon Harvey:
In Memory of Terrance Aeriel:
Rest in peace.
While I had recently conversed in a previous post about what life was like before the invasive onslaught of video surveillance, which can track your every embarrassing move and then upload it for public viewing on sites like You Tube, there's another far more subversive and uplifting element of do-it-yourself video production. Before You Tube, we were at the mercy of newspapers and TV news offering us a decent profile of the victims of heinous crimes - sometimes only receiving a few minutes of coverage while our "if-it-bleeds-it-leads" media would focus their attention on the criminal minds of the perpetrators.
Now, everyday people can create their own video montages and highlight victims of senseless crimes, victims who don't always get the attention that is due them. In this shocking story of three college youth gunned down in Newark, NJ - Terrance Aeriel, 18, Iofemi Hightower, 20, and Dashon Harvey, 20 - their friends have created tribute videos to give us a glimpse of who they were when they were alive.
Here are two of them:
In Memory of Dashon Harvey:
In Memory of Terrance Aeriel:
Rest in peace.
Tuesday, August 7, 2007
Jammin' North of the Border: Caribana 2007
I'm back from another vacation trip, having returned from a weekend well spent in Toronto, Canada - visiting relatives and attending the Caribbean Festival (or "Caribana"), now in its 40th year.
As all Caribbean folk spread their love in the various communities where we have settled - Canada, the UK (which is gearing up for their annual Notting Hill Carnival - Aug. 26-27), and the U.S. (with Brooklyn's annual Labor Day parade on Eastern Parkway next month) - and vague memories of Emancipation Day (otherwise known as August 1), when Britain abolished slavery in its colonies, and while various Caribbean islands are in the full swing of carnival season, I just wanted to say: remember the past, celebrate the present, and plan for the future ... after partying all night and sleeping in for the morning, of course. :)
Some interesting things to know about Caribbean carnivals and their links to collective resistance:
- The Canboulay Riots in Trinidad occurred in 1881 when the police force tried to ban from the festivities stick fighters, chantwell singers, and other working poor descendants of slaves who often battled with each other musically, lyrically, dance-wise, and sometimes violently. The presence of the police caused revelers to stage an uprising.
- Samba Schools emerged in Brazil's carnival to put an end to rioting that often occurred during the parades, as a way to organize the people around Afro-Brazilian traditions and culture.
- The Notting Hill Riots in the UK occurred on August 30, 1976, in response to heavy police surveillance when police tried to arrest a pickpocketer. The revellers' protests eventually turned riotous.
One of my favorite evenings featured some old-time Trinidadian calypsonians at a free concert, Lord Superior (reminding the "black man" that he's an "African" - a wonderful throwback to the post-independence and Pan-Africa days of the 1950s and 1960s) and Singing Sandra whose middle-aged, heavyset body proved that she knew how to "wuk up" as good as the best of them: "It's not the size of the woman but the way she can t'row she body," she proclaimed. But mostly, she was there to give us some old-school, second-wave feminist messages since she's about "the lyrics and not de whine," in particular teaching the audience this defiant refrain from her song on sexual harassment in the workplace:
Keep your money
And I'll keep my honey
And I'll die wit' my dignity!
Oh well. I'm back and pleased to announce that I had a great time all around. So now, back to work, until the next summer holiday.
And I'll keep my honey
And I'll die wit' my dignity!
The audience loved it (at least the women in the audience loved it, while some men sang along). If only our video vixens and their ilk (including their superstar counterparts like Beyonce, Lindsay Lohan, Britney, Nelly Furtado, and all those shedding their clothes and shaking their booties just to get signed to a label or stay atop the music charts) would adopt this philosophy.
I had a pretty good time with the old-timers because so many of our contemporary soca-calypsonians are all about "the whine" (Caribbean speak for "booty-shaking"). In our present-day era when calypsonians shout orders to revellers to "whine up, whine down, jump up, get down," like any aerobics instructor, what a pleasure to get those singers from an earlier era who knew that the purpose of the calypso is to "preach," to "testify" and deliver your political message to the masses (and what a great mass there is!). Lord Superior had a particular knack for creating impromptu diddies whenever he had problems with the sound system (a spontaneous talent that I can't even imagine our younger artists who lip-sync at concerts and pre-record everything could do). A nice mix of the old and the new (including some nice soca remixes of Akon's "Don't Matter" and Beyonce's "Irreplaceable," and also some news about Rihanna really being from Toronto - Pickering, Toronto, I'm told by locals - and not the Barbados that her management keeps promoting - even though it's her parents' birthplace), and a lovely Sunday of relaxation before heading back south of the border.
Oi, the US/Canadian border! But that's a completely different post (or not).
I had a pretty good time with the old-timers because so many of our contemporary soca-calypsonians are all about "the whine" (Caribbean speak for "booty-shaking"). In our present-day era when calypsonians shout orders to revellers to "whine up, whine down, jump up, get down," like any aerobics instructor, what a pleasure to get those singers from an earlier era who knew that the purpose of the calypso is to "preach," to "testify" and deliver your political message to the masses (and what a great mass there is!). Lord Superior had a particular knack for creating impromptu diddies whenever he had problems with the sound system (a spontaneous talent that I can't even imagine our younger artists who lip-sync at concerts and pre-record everything could do). A nice mix of the old and the new (including some nice soca remixes of Akon's "Don't Matter" and Beyonce's "Irreplaceable," and also some news about Rihanna really being from Toronto - Pickering, Toronto, I'm told by locals - and not the Barbados that her management keeps promoting - even though it's her parents' birthplace), and a lovely Sunday of relaxation before heading back south of the border.
Oi, the US/Canadian border! But that's a completely different post (or not).
Oh well. I'm back and pleased to announce that I had a great time all around. So now, back to work, until the next summer holiday.
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