And the Haters Keep On A-Hatin'...

I knew there was a reason Jill Scott needed to preach to me today. I just got word from Pudgy Indian about the latest hate crime reported, this time involving a 13-year-old Native American girl, who was savagely beaten by white supremacists in Lewiston, Idaho. Five have been arrested for this crime.

And if that weren't enough, Professor Black Woman broke her "blog hiatus" today to report that a black female high-schooler in Palmdale, CA was manhandled by a school security guard, who broke her wrist because she dropped cake on the floor and later attacked two others who recorded the assault on their cell phones. The young woman's mother, who tried to get the guard arrested, has now been suspended from her job because she tried to intervene for some justice! Fortunately, PBW has more information on how we can respond to these unfolding events through some worthy actions - like letter-writing and YouTube witnessing.

Keeping you informed, and reiterating my earlier message today - as Jill Scott would sing:

Hate on me, hater

Now or later'

Cuz I'm gonna do me

You'll be mad, baby

(Go 'head and hate)

Go 'head and hate on me,

hate on'

Cuz I'm not afraid of it

What I got I paid for

You can hate on me

You cannot hate on me

'Cuz my mind is free

Feel my destiny

So shall it be

Sunday Sermon: To All You Haters!

I thought I should start my week with some attitude, courtesy of one of my favorite vocalists, Jill Scott, whose music video, "Hate on Me," hits the right note (and, yes, that is Cornell up in there). Enjoy!

"I've Been Stuck Like This for 3 Hours!": Animation of a Black Woman

While searching for some music videos by Cree Summer on YouTube, little did I know that she provided the voice to an animated character called "Foxxy Love" on an animation show, Drawn Together. So, here's one video segment from the series that had me falling out. Lest anyone take this seriously in terms of racist and heterosexist stereotyping, think of all the spoofs of reality TV and the "angry black woman" (or "obnoxious" as I've been called of late). WARNING: sexual content and strong language.

Black Women's Roundtable: Listen!

Congratulations to Gina from What About Our Daughters for bringing back the Black Women's Roundtable to Blog Talk Radio in a show called "From Imus to Industry." I learned an interesting word: hip hop industrial complex.

They address issues pertaining to black women, from hip hop to BET and Congressional hearings to Nailah Franklin to Dunbar Village to Megan Williams. Listen here!

Presumed Innocent: Heidi Gill, White Privilege, and Victimhood in the Media

I think those of us who are teaching white students in this culture of hate, which has proliferated under the Bush regime, need to resurrect Peggy McIntosh's "Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack" essay on white privilege (an essay I personally find tedious but it does light the bulbs in my white students' minds)and then ask them to apply this newfound knowledge on "white privilege" when reading the news coverage of "Taser Victim" Heidi Gill, the 38-year-old white woman who was arrested in Ohio at a bar for "disorderly conduct" and taser-stunned by the arresting officer seven times over.

What strikes me about the coverage of this case of "police brutality" is the way Heidi Gill is presumed innocent, her whiteness and femininity framing the way news media will treat her case - versus the way they discuss the Jena 6 case (where reporters are continually questioning the innocence of the young black men involved) and ignore the Megan Williams case, the young black woman who was raped and tortured but who was also arrested for outstanding warrants when her mother released her name and identity to the press. There is something terribly wrong when I, who totally abhors police brutality and would rally for victims' justice, would look upon Heidi Gill (appearing on the morning shows today to detail her horrific experience, with lawyer in tow) and immediately feel resentment that her whiteness allows her to tell her story and to do so under the assumption that the general TV audience will feel sympathetic towards her victimization.

Why does Heidi Gill get to be "presumed innocent" (we have yet to get the details about why she was arrested in the first place and why the police officer who arrested her started getting violent when he used his stun gun - and even then, he only uses a stun gun and not a real one) when other victims of police brutality get no such sympathy from the media when they themselves suffer under law enforcement?

If I assigned my students Peggy McIntosh's essay and then ask them to apply her arguments to the news coverage of Heidi Gill, I would simply ask them this question: "How would the news coverage differ if Heidi Gill was black?" I'm sure the question will make them uncomfortable, but we need to have these conversations. If they are confused, I would point them to news coverage of the black cases already mentioned and see if they understand what "white privilege" really means.

*Sigh.* I'm getting very impatient with liberal whites, who still refuse to acknowledge their privileges. At least I know, if I'm ever a victim of a crime that

1.) I'm hiring a lawyer PRONTO.
2.) I'm instructing family members NOT to reveal my identity.
3.) I'm going to get lawyer, family, friends, etc. to throw off the media by telling the world that I'm WHITE.
4.) I'll get my white friends to "pose" to continue to throw off the media and the ways they will spin my case.
5.) Even when I show up in court to testify, I'll ask my lawyer to continue throwing the media off by mistaking me for a "witness" and not a "victim."

I wonder how many of us can get away with it?

Console-ing Passions: An International Conference on Television, Audio, Video, New Media, and Feminism

Call for Papers
April 24-26, 2008
Santa Barbara, California

Founded by a group of feminist media scholars and artists, Console-ing Passions works to create collegial spaces for new work and scholarship on culture and identity in television and related media, with an emphasis on gender and sexuality.

Since the early 1990s, Console-ing Passions conferences have featured new research on feminist perspectives, including race and ethnicity, post-colonialism, queer studies, globalization, national identity, television genres, the social and cultural study of new media, the historical development of media, and an ongoing feminist concern with gender dynamics in the production and consumption of electronic media.

For more information, please visit: http://www.filmandmedia.ucsb.edu/cptv/cptv.html

Ending Colonial Legacies: INCITE! Southwest Regional Gathering

October 5th - 7th, 2007
Belmar Center
405 S. Teller
Lakewood, CO
(near downtown Denver)

INCITE! Women of Color Against Violence, is a national activist organization of radical feminists of color advancing a movement to end violence against women of color and their communities through direct action, critical dialogue and grassroots organizing. Ending Colonial Legacies (ECL) is a Colorado based, women of color led initiative that has worked toward dismantling the legacy of colonialism & eventual abolishment of Columbus Day through non-violent resistance and political education.

The gathering will center the experiences of Indigenous women from tribal nations located within the Southwestern United States. Violence against Native women is at epidemic proportions, yet is an issue that remains hidden within the mainstream anti-violence and American Indian movements.

For more information, please visit: http://www.incite-national.org/conf/swrg.html

Media Justice and Feminist Futures Conference: Call for Submissions

The Sixth Annual Women's Studies Student Conference presents this year's
theme:

"Media Justice and Feminist Futures"
November 29-30, 2007
Campus Center Assembly Hall
University at Albany
Albany, NY

This event will highlight the use of media for feminist social justice and
critical studies of women and gender. We especially encourage analyses
that intersect gender with sexuality, race, class, and (trans)nationality.

We invite college and university students and community activists to
submit proposals for papers, film, music, art, live performance, and other
creative and critical works.

Topics may include, but are not limited to:
* Critiques of media representation
* Impact of new media and the digital revolution on feminisms (e.g.
blogging, YouTube, Second Life, etc.)
* Historical explorations of media
* Role of media in activism and social justice movements (past and present)
* Role of community media and independent media in an age of corporate
control
* Access to media and technology, alternative low-tech forms, and issues
of the 'digital divide'

Please send 200-word abstracts describing your project to
wstudent@albany.edu no later than Friday, October 19, 2007. Abstracts
describing film and live performances should indicate the project's
running time (Image or digital files of media projects may also be
submitted as e-mail attachments or through a URL if presented on the web).

For more information, please visit http://www.albany.edu/wstudent_conference

Free the Jena 6

For those of you who won't be heading south for today's protest in Jena, Louisiana, don't forget to wear black in solidarity and to talk to others about the case.

Here's a Tribute Video.

A Tale of Two Mothers: Reflections

Whatever gripes my friends and I have about our parents (from the "grandmother pressure" - "When are you going to settle down?," which translates to "When am I going to get some grandkids?" - to independency issues - a friend of mine is ready to strangle her father now that she has moved back in with him, and no that's not a real threat, and her friend has neverending drama after going into business with her mother), none of us doubt for one moment that they don't love us and that we don't love them. That, if anything heinous ever happened to us, our parents would move heaven and earth to avenge the crimes committed against us. And, so it is with deep uneasiness that I offer this reflection on motherhood and the way it has shaped one of the heinous incidents this week: the West Virginia torture case involving a young black female victim and white supremacist perpetrators.

One of my first feelings of uneasiness when the story broke pertained to the releasing of the victim's name and photo. It was an uneasiness Professor Black Woman and others in the blogosphere also expressed, but far too many commentators dismissed our concerns by reminding us that the victim's mother, Carmen Williams, gave her permission to do so. I'm still not comfortable with this, but it dawned on me that no one else thought to question this power dynamic precisely because everyone is invested in the idea that our mothers always have our best interests at heart.

Then, I came upon an intelligent commentary in the Chicago Sun-Times, which I excerpted here on my blog because it offered a completely different and political perspective in which Carmen Williams was likened to Mamie Till-Mobley, the mother of Emmett Till: a tale of two mothers who refused to hide their children's tortured bodies and used the evidence of their bodies as a political act against injustice.

The article definitely made me go, Hmmmmm, that's an enlightening perspective. Alas, it wasn't long before I finally came up with a rebuttal:

But Emmett Till was dead! Carmen Williams' daughter is still alive and needs to be protected!

And therein lies the the heart of the matter for me. One act is motivated by the need for a mother to not cover up, to not follow the rules of polite society - which dictated that her son's deformed and mutilated body be presented in a closed coffin at a public funeral. Mamie Till-Mobley's insistence that her son's body be presented in an open coffin was a refusal to be polite because society was not polite and she would not corroborate in the pretense of politeness; she would instead shine a spotlight on the outrages and monstrosities of a racist society, as evidenced by Emmett Till's horrible corpse.

The other act by Carmen Williams leaves me with a very different impression. It wasn't until yesterday that I tuned into a CNN video online featuring an interview with the victim's mother. I did not see an outraged or devastated mother letting the world into the tiny hospital room where her injured daughter lay so that we could witness the crime done against her. No. I saw a mother not protecting her daughter. I saw a mother letting in the Media Vultures into that tiny hospital room, where her daughter needs rest and healing and perhaps hasn't gotten much with all this intrusion from the press. I saw a mother be interviewed by various press folk, only glancing at her daughter once while soaking in all the reporters' questions. I saw a mother leak out unflattering things about her daughter - from insinuating that she's got "mental issues" and "learning disabilities" (i.e. She's stupid, y'all!) to further insinuating that she'd "go missing for weeks, running around town" (i.e. She's a no good trifling so-and-so, y'all!) - things that may come back to haunt the victim as the defense team builds a case that would throw doubt on her testimony in court. I saw a mother caretaking while subliminally blaming her daughter for what had happened. I saw a mother not protecting her daughter and turning her over to the wolves.

Something else. I saw a daughter silenced. I saw a daughter lying in bed, filing her nails nonchalantly, pretending that she didn't care her mother and the press were talking about her as if she weren't even in the room. I saw her furtive glances into the camera while it objectified and fragmented parts of her body (close-ups on her shaven head, the bruises on her neck, her blackened eyes staring blankly out at us). I saw a daughter shut down, and I saw a daughter who is used to shutting down, making herself small and invisible. And, I hate to say it, but in that little TV interview, I also was able to comprehend how and why this victim got involved with someone like Bobby Brewster.

Am I being harsh? Perhaps I am, but therein lies my uneasiness.

In speaking with a friend about this, she says that we should view this as a poor, rural black woman, who is not used to anyone being interested in what she has to say, responding accordingly to the press. It's her moment in the spotlight, albeit a horrendous moment in the spotlight, so we can't overlook that people behave differently when confronted with such national attention. This isn't to say that this mother doesn't love her daughter, but it does mean that we must keep in mind that not all mothers have their children's best interests at heart.

On the other end of this crime is the Mother-from-Hell, Frankie Lee Brewster, who seems to be the mastermind behind the torture, with a violent past, which includes killing an elderly woman in her care and serving six years for the crime (after pleading guilty to manslaughter), while her son Bobby killed his stepfather at the tender age of 12 while she was behind bars. In addition to this violent past (because, we can only imagine what kind of domestic violence sparked a young Bobby Brewster to kill his stepfather), her son already chased her with a machete earlier this year, let alone the domestic violence dispute he had with the victim.

It's all so depressing and oddly familiar in many violent homes across America. And, contrary to people's shock and surprise that a white supremacist would be involved with a black woman, these relationships happen all the time. I tell the few black people who keep asking, why was she involved with these kinds of white folks, "Well, what are we saying? How often have we found ourselves in a situation where we're the only black person in a room full of white people? Did it ever occur to us that they would lock the door behind us, tie us up in a basement, and subject us to week long torture?" (Granted, other things occur to us, like waiting for somebody to say something racially offensive, thus prompting our early exit from the meeting, the party, the holiday outing, etc, but at least we have the freedom to leave, relatively speaking because we know the fallout when we act up in front of the white people we work with or hang out with.) And, if both the Williams and Brewsters are poor and rural people, I doubt these white people look any scarier to the Williams than, say, the white folks I hang out with, who are all urban, upwardly mobile, professorial, and far more capable of rhetorical violence than physical ones (I hope), but who I'm sure would nonetheless appear far more powerful to rural black folks than the Brewsters (because, generally speaking, they are).

Moreover, contrary to the idyllic myth of loving parents and loved children is an all too familiar story of neglected and tortured children who grow up to be damaged adults who do awful things to each other and continue the vicious cycle by treating the children that they have accordingly. Somewhere in the midst of neglect, hurled insults and put-downs, and unspeakable child abuse, Frankie Lee Brewster's son and Carmen Williams's daughter found their way to each other, and the violent wheels were set in motion.

And now the legal wheels are set in motion as to how this case will be treated, and how public opinion will influence the courtroom drama that will eventually prevail. My uneasiness is not one based on believing that, somehow, new details will throw doubt on the victim's credibility. There are enough witnesses that can corroborate her torture and abuse. Even so, I have noted that some are already raising the specter of Tawana Brawley and Crystal Gail Mangum because, those who are invested in "white innocence" must discredit a black woman's story: whether it's in calling her a "liar" or in simply pointing to the fact that "she made very bad judgments" and, somehow, this is all her fault (i.e. she used to date Bobby Brewster).

Meanwhile, a mother lets in the media vultures to stare (without much sympathy, I might add) at the mess her daughter has become. Another mother rallies her family around her to engage in unspeakable acts of violence. What motivates both women is a larger system of poverty, white supremacy, misogyny, militaristic violence, and the myth of the great American Dream for which both groups have been shut out. How easy it is to turn them into the latest reality TV stars of a very badly conceived Lifetime-TV drama-turned-horror flick replete with the most offensive racial stereotypes of country bumpkins, except this is all too grotesquely real, and I'm afraid, not nearly as anomalous as we'd like to believe.

The other myth that we hold dear is the one about motherhood. While most of us can attest to having healthy relationships with our mothers, there are many more who cannot. For every Cindy Sheehan, Mamie Till-Mobley, and Mothers of the disappeared in Juarez and Plaza de Mayo, who become politically active through their motherhood, there are other mothers who are attention-seekers or are irreparably damaged. Yet another issue for feminists to tackle without descending into the easy sexism of our world that loves to blame mothers and blame victims. Behind this West Virginia story is the realization that intersections of race, gender, and class create explosive and violent relationships that many of us are just not ready to explore.

"Why Can't America Have Human Rights?" One Year Later

If you missed this performance last year, here it is again, featuring Reggaeton and spoken-word artist, La Bruja, at Breakthrough's human rights forum on September 14, 2006, at the Riverside Church in New York City.

Chalk 4 Peace: September 14-16!

There's a global movement this weekend, calling on all activists, artists, and peace lovers to spread the words of Peace and an End to War with a piece of chalk and to reclaim the power of public art.

Let me add to that, now is the time for all antiracists and feminists to link this antiwar movement to our own movements, in light of recent events this week of September 11.

Say No to War, No to Torture, No to Rape, No to Racism!

For more information on "Chalk 4 Peace," please visit this website.

This is also an opportunity for "Counter-Programming," for those of you who are planning to attend the protest rally against BET in Washington D.C. on Saturday. For more information, please visit Enough is Enough.

Two Mothers Refused to Hide Their Children's Torture

In light of my concern of the victim's mother revealing her daughter's name and photo to the world, here's a different take on it, as commented on by Mary Mitchell in The Chicago Sun-Times.

No Justice for Emmett Till but Justice Possible for this Woman

It took a lot of courage for Carmen Williams to reveal the identity of her 20-year-old daughter.
Williams is the mother of Megan Williams, the black West Virginia woman who was tortured, stabbed, sexually assaulted and treated like an animal by six white offenders during a weeklong captivity.

You never get used to the lurid details of a man's inhumanity.

Just as it was hard to bear the horrible things that were done to Channon Christian and Christopher Newsom, the white Knoxville, Tenn., couple brutally killed in January, I'm sickened by the cruelty Megan Williams suffered.

I'm also struck by the similarity between how Carmen Williams chose to handle her daughter's ordeal at the hands of whites and how Mamie Till-Mobley handled the brutal murder of her son, Emmett Till, in 1955.

Although the news media usually doesn't identify rape victims, Williams told an Associated Press reporter "she wanted people to know what her daughter endured."

It's the same reason Till-Mobley gave when she allowed the beaten, disfigured body of her son to be viewed in an open casket. Till had been killed in Mississippi, and his body brought back to Chicago for the funeral.

Her decision not to hide the horrible way her son died was a pivotal moment in the civil rights movement because it drew city folk into the civil rights battle. Until then, the burden of the battle -- the lynchings and killings -- was being carried by their country cousins.

Read Full Article.

Does "Domestic Violence" Lessen the Severity of Racial and Sexual Violence?

I have to ask this question because I've been reading various blogs responding to the recent case of the heinous torture and abuse of a black woman by six white supremacists in West Virginia, and too many have been commenting - with the latest details revealing that the victim may have had a relationship with one of the young men - that this seems to be "just a domestic violence incident." Just a domestic violence incident?!

So, let me get this straight. Up until that little reveal, everyone was pretty much on board that this case was heinous, cruel, evil, demonic, and purely craptastic because we had the impression that the unsuspecting victim had been lured away by evil racist predators since she was "too trusting" by either meeting strangers on the Internet (the first version of the story) or by being led astray by people she "thought were her friends" (the second version of the story). Now is the possibility that the young victim may have been dating one of these guys (and already "transgressing" since she entered into an interracial relationship), so let's not get carried away with our outrage.

Ummmm.....What?! (To quote Geico Caveman - see this intelligent critique - yet again, and I've been doing this often so I had better calm myself down before I end up on a therapist's couch since I may be crazy if the rest of our insane, offensive, whack-job society is considered "normal"). James Baldwin once eloquently wrote how absolutely futile it is to surrender to therapy so as to adjust oneself to a society that is already irreparably damaged by systemic racism, misogyny, and imperialism, so, let's hold onto our sanity and our selves.

I guess I'm wondering why, with the term "domestic violence" added into the mix, we should adjust our attitudes and our outrage over this. In my previous post, I had already concerned myself with the fact that this victim - by virtue of being black and female - is far too vulnerable to the evil vultures we call the Media and, so, will have to needlessly suffer the vilification of her character when new details begin coming out, which may be spun into a yarn that turns her into a "liar" or a "fool" or a "conniving nappyheaded ho." Just wait for it.

In light of the Feds deciding that they will not prosecute this case as a "hate crime", I see the onslaught coming. Of course, in our minds, "hate crime" is a racial issue, and black women have somehow been dismissed from this category. Not to mention that "hate crimes" rarely address gender crimes, like rape and domestic violence, thus leaving black women and other women of color vulnerable and, once again, bleeding at the intersections of race and gender.

So, how does "domestic violence," which is now being raised as an issue since details revealed that the victim was involved in a case of domestic violence assault with one of those assailants - Bobby Brewster - back in July this year, necessarily shift the way we are to read the heinous nature of this torture and abuse story? As far as I'm concerned, it doesn't. In fact, now that we know the victim was in a previous relationship, we should be even more outraged.

Let me pull out a quote from one of my favorite feminist theorists, Andrea Smith:

Until 9/11, many people believed that terrorism was something that happened in
other countries, while our 'home' was a place of safety. But the notion that terrorism only happens in other countries makes it difficult to grasp that the U.S. is built on a foundation of [Native American] genocide, slavery, and racism. Likewise, the belief that violence happens 'out there,' inflicted by the stereotypical stranger in a dark alley, makes it difficult to recognize that the home is, in fact, the place of greatest danger for women. The anti[-domestic]violence movement has always pointed to evidence that home is the most dangerous place for women, and shown how our 'home' in the U.S. has never been a safe place for people of color. (Conquest, p. 177)

Just assessing the West Virginia case, the victim was assailed in another woman's "home," Texas Chainsaw-massacre style though it may be, so the domestic nature of this violent crime is quite evident. And, I can already hear the rebuttal from Black Nationalists: "See what happens when you black women chase after the white man? That's right, follow the likes of Halle Berry and Rhianna, and see what happens when you bump up against the Klan!" they will say, while ignoring the fact that most black women still suffer the most violence from black men or, worse, ignore an equally heinous crime a few months back, involving a Haitian-American woman, who was viciously gang-raped by black men in West Palm Beach, Florida (see an earlier post).

Even when "home" is the familiar surroundings of our neighborhood or our own community, there is still no safety. If there is "open season" on black women "out there," it's always been the case "in our own homes"! So, Black Nationalists need to dial it down because this is the result of not giving gender and sexuality issues as much importance as we do racial issues.

Whoever the victim in West Virginia chooses to date is her business, and while the moral of the story may be, "Women, especially black women, be on alert and use good judgment when getting into intimate relationships," our outrage must not lessen. Domestic violence has always been the prevailing form of violence, just as prevalent - if not more so - as the violence we witness in wars. Feminists have argued for ages that the home has been the breeding ground for terrorism and torture, and it's high time that we treat rape and domestic violence as "hate crimes."

If the international tribunal can now recognize rape as a "war crime" and a "crime against humanity," then isn't it time that our Civil Rights laws add rape and domestic violence on the list of hate crimes? The gender and racial intersections are clearly presented in the West Virginia case, and the involvement of women assailants does not lessen the severity of the sexual violence committed, even as they highlight the racist components of the act.

And while other bloggers might bewail, "Where is Al Sharpton or Jesse Jackson," I'm going to challenge mainstream feminists on this: Where is NOW or the Feminist Majority to speak out on this? Why, now that the spectre of domestic violence is being raised in this case, are so many feminists silent on this? It just goes to show how too many mainstream feminists are caught up in middle-class white women's concerns and in the belief that they are the "innocent" victims of patriarchy (I imagine they wouldn't touch this Frankie Lee Brewster story with a ten-foot pole). Unfortunately, as Kimberle Crenshaw once wrote in her influential essay, "Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence against Women of Color":

[White women] frequently have the power to determine, either through material
resources or rhetorical resources, whether the intersectional differences of women of color will be incorporated at all into the basic formulation of policy...In the context of violence, it is sometimes a deadly serious matter of who will survive - and who will not. (p. 367)

In the context of racial violence, it's also a matter of choosing to be on the side of "justice" or on the side of "just us" (those affluent white women who don't want the feminist movement "watered down" by special interests concerns. See also my earlier post on these wars between women.)

What a pity this is, because when feminists across races, ethnicities, classes, and sexualities don't join together and speak out against all forms of violence, not only do we render our movement meaningless, but we also render sexual violence inconsequential when it manifests itself, as it has in the West Virginia case.

At the end of the day, when commentators in the blogosphere say that this case is "just a domestic violence" incident, aren't we already saying that rape and domestic violence are okay? Aren't we saying, "Oh! It's a domestic violence case! That sounds normal."

So, are we all saying that domestic violence actually normalizes torture and abuse, so our outrage is not warranted? If that's the case, and if many people genuinely feel this way, then feminism is already dead.

Throwback Images: Reflections on Rape, Torture, War

Throwback. What a fetching term, often used to describe a certain sound in music that harkens back to a particular era in the past. Often used to describe the Amy-Winehouse-mimicking-60s-and-70s-vocal-styling of today's music. More and more, I think of the word in terms of images and, specifically, those images that have haunted me in my dreams and memories in the wake of our post-9/11 world while recalling earlier images, from eras of slavery, Jim Crow segregation, colonialism, Third Reich, etc. History has finally caught up with us and collapsed the meanings of time.

The above collage is one that I created out of searing images that continue to remind me, not only of how the black (and brown) body is perpetually under siege, but how this body takes on both gendered and national meanings.

With the exception of the Rodney King home video that led to the L.A. uprisings back in the early 1990s, all the images in the collage are from the twenty-first century.

There is the falling of the twin towers, which signaled the beginning of the end, the end of the beginning.

There is Janet Jackson and Justin Timberlake after the "wardrobe malfunction" at the Superbowl in 2004, an image that captures, in my mind, the "open season on black women" so many other black bloggers are proclaiming of late, when Janet Jackson was forced to bear the full brunt of the "indecency scandal," never fully recovering from it, while Justin's career has soared high eversince, somehow his whiteness and male privilege provided a safety net while his violent simulation against the black female body earned him mega cool points.

There is, of course, the infamous portrait of the tortures at Abu Ghraib, revealed not long after the whole Janet Jackson affair, an eerie reverberation of the same sexual and racial humiliation, this time in the all-too-real scenario of warfare as the nation immorally continues our unjust war in Iraq. Domestic and foreign policies continue to play out on the bodies of black and brown people.

There is the ironic portrait of an elderly black woman, draped in the stars and stripes, as she and so many others were left to die in New Orleans during the Hurricane Katrina aftermath.

Added to these horrific and outrageous images is an image that just came out yesterday: an AP photograph of a black female victim, who shall remain nameless on my blog, who lies in a hospital bed - comforted by her mother - after having survived one of the most heinous acts in recent memory: she was held captive for a week during which time she suffered sexual assault, battery, and such humiliating acts as being forced to eat dog and rat shit. This occurred in West Virginia, the hometown of Private Lynndie England, one of the U.S. soldiers visibly associated with the Abu Ghraib scandal.

I see a pattern here.

Beyond geographic location is the historic "throwback" image: rape, torture, war. Whether on the slave ships that brought us over here (where our ancestors were also forced to wallow and eat their own shit) or on the plantations of slavery (where slave mistress Madame Lalaurie of New Orleans, who was notorious for conjuring up the most heinous acts against her slaves - including holding them in a torture chamber - suddenly has to rival with a 21st-century white female counterpart, Frankie Lee Brewster, Bitch sans PhD, who seems to be the mastermind behind the torture of the black female victim in West Virginia) or on a Southern landscape littered with "strange fruits hanging from the poplar trees," this crop is beyond bitter, to echo Ms. Billie Holiday.

While the victim's mother gave her permission to release her daughter's name and photo, I didn't have the heart to render it in the same image. So, I depleted the original colors from my collage, rendering new colors and hues, as these are the ways the throwback picture appears to me. I must present them together, set the images side by side, reminding me that the links between each coalesce and cohere. Against this brutal backdrop of bodies in pain, and symbols destroyed, are other images we don't see: the numerous disappearing women and men, in our country and along the borders - in Juarez or Alberta or Florida or Iraq or the Sudan. Wars and terrors reign, and our black and brown bodies bear the brunt of it all.

So, I offer this "art" piece to commemorate the victims whose voices may one day speak out ... or not. I will remember the new victim added to this collage, who is currently receiving a great deal of sympathy across the blogosphere. But, I wait and see if the compassion lingers. I too remember how we immediately rallied around previous victims in the past - Tawana Brawley and Crystal Gail Mangum of Duke Lacrosse fame - until the media spun new images that forced us to call them "liars." As horrific as this West Virginia crime sounds, will we also eventually view this latest black female victim as a "liar" too? Will she be bombarded with death threats and hate mail too, the way the Rutgers Women's Basketball team members were, while their victimizers are, by default, thrown in stark relief (who would ever have thought Don Imus would eventually emerge as a "martyr" in the midst of it all)?

No matter the nature of torture, rape, or war, will our nation continue to invest in "white innocence," leaving black and brown bodies to take on the pain and the "guilt"?

As I've already said, I see a pattern. So, brace yourselves, sisters and brothers!

September 11: Haiku series

#1
From my New York home
to the world, I wish you peace
and an end to war

#2
Lower Manhattan
now opens up space for air
for breath and healing

#3
Where once was steel
collapsing in my memory
broken dreams now stand

#4
lies my leaders told
to justify pain and war
to celebrate death

#5
let's celebrate life
and commemorate the dead
here and over there

#6
My New Yorker's view
reveals a new kind of world
beyond twin towers

#7
beyond guns and bombs
and the profits of terror
women are weeping

#8
We shall weep no more
We shall tear down these borders
and reclaim our Earth

#9
We shall inherit
the promise of righteousness
peace, love, and justice

#10
I can only hope
to emerge from the shadows
of towers and wars

"The Least of These": Thoughts on a Sermon, a Blog Post, and the Future of Feminism

"I tell you the truth, whatever you did for the least of these you did for me." Matthew 25: 40.

"I believe in a movement, 'feminism,' that doesn't believe in me." - Professor Black Woman

Today in church, my pastor based his sermon on the parable of the sheep and the goats, in which Jesus, on Judgment Day, separated the righteous from the unrighteous, based on their actions on earth. Those of you who are churchgoing or remember your Sunday School lessons may recognize the story: the one where He says, "For I was hungry and you fed me, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me."

This is definitely one of my favorite parables (alongside the Parable of the Sower, which I cherish because of its liberation pedagogy message that I can easily apply to my teaching). The Parable of the Sheep and Goats offers a simple message of giving when there is a need, to take notice of God when She makes Her presence known (and She does so through the "least of these").

My pastor built on this parable by offering an anecdote, one which I've also heard preached elsewhere. The story goes that a preacher, upon reaching the pearly gates of Heaven, awaits entrance by the gatekeeper who looks up his name in the Book of Life, but the gatekeeper has a hard time finding the preacher's name in it. The gatekeeper asks the preacher to explain what he has done on earth so that maybe he could locate him based on his duties. The preacher responds, "Well, I preached over 3,000 sermons while I was alive."

The gatekeeper: "Well, no, I don't see any record of that. Is there anything else that you might have done to warrant your entrance into heaven?"

The preacher (thinking over what else he might have done): "Well, I've built over 75 churches throughout the world."

The gatekeeper (searching through the book, shakes his head): "No, I don't see any record of that either."

The preacher finally realizes that maybe he wasn't meant to get into heaven after all and slowly and forlornly turns around and heads in the other direction of eternity. Then, the gatekeeper calls out to him.

"Wait a minute, sir!," he says.

The preacher stops and looks back.

"I see here that while you were on earth, not a day went by when you didn't feed the sparrows!"

The preachers thinks about this. "Well, yes I did. But, what does that have to do with anything?"

The gatekeeper smiles. "Come on in, my friend! The Master of the sparrows wants to meet you!"

Maybe you've heard this anecdote too, but it immediately brought to mind a recent post by Professor Black Woman, who comprised a list of things she is ashamed of and things she's been made to be ashamed of (there is a difference!). One of those things that she is ashamed of is reflected in the above epigraph. In perhaps one of her most eloquently written posts (if not her best post to date), PBW rightly calls out another feminist blogger (Beeyotch PhD) for complaining about being "poor" when her income (or husband's income to be precise) and lifestyle precludes her from the ranks of the impoverished. Yet, when others remind Beeyotch PhD that her wealth and real poverty are not interchangeable, she immediately creates a defensive post about why it sucks when others want her to feel "ashamed" about her comfortable middle-class status.

I believe this is the crux of the problem and the impediment to social justice movements (and feminist movement in particular) advancing forward. Our complete disregard for the "least of these," our failure to recognize their humanity, let alone their divinity, and subsequently our refusal to recognize how our fates with the "least of these" (the poor, the homeless, the disenfranchised, the incarcerated, the undocumented, the queer, the disabled, the refugee, the elderly and dying, etc.) are inextricably linked. Something about the entitlement embedded in the middle-class "complaint" and "shame" of Beeyotch PhD also preclude us from hearing the intervention of divine wisdom and human ethics. "Shame" is a beautiful thing because it means that we still have a sense of decency and a sense that we have failed in some way. Most importantly, shame lets us know that we can and should do better.

Who can forget the national shame of seeing what our government (local, state, and federal) had failed to do when they disregarded the "least of these" in the wake of Hurricane Katrina on the gulf coast? Who can ignore that, when one immediately creates a defense against shame, that our ability to do what is right and what is just is halted? There is no moving forward if we have no shame. Shame doesn't create immobility. Entitlement does.

So, what does this have to do with feminism and my connections between the Parable of the Sheep and Goats and PBW's belief in a movement that doesn't believe in her and other women like me? These stories are basically about exclusion and the struggle to see inclusion as one of righteousness rather than political correctness. The U.S. women's movement has been notorious in the way that its theories and practices are designed to advance the rights of middle and upper-class white heterosexual, able-bodied women while subsequently ignoring the "least of these." It's why we continue to take one step forward and ten steps backwards, when an elite class of women who've designed feminism to reflect their concerns relegate the rest of us to the periphery, thus demonstrating that they have no interests in social revolution. They just want equal rule with the white heteropatriarchs and the rest of the world be damned.

Beeyotch PhD might be annoyed that PBW made her feel "ashamed" that her middle-class gripes don't supersede the pressing concerns of the truly impoverished in this nation and elsewhere. But, unfortunately, she and so many others think they are the center of the universe and, thus, appropriately centered in every discourse - be it economic, political, popular culture, etc. - while never feeling real "shame" that others who suffer the most from sexism because of its dangerous collision at the intersections of racism, classism, imperialism, ableism, and heterosexism are still silenced in the discourse of the subaltern.

While PBW lists the many shames that she has been made to feel by privileged academics, especially those calling ourselves "feminists," I could attest to having similar feelings, although one "shame" that I've been made to feel as an academic feminist is one borne out of thinking that, if I espouse religious beliefs, I can't be radical and revolutionary in my worldview. There are colleagues of mine who simply cannot fathom how one can believe in God while advancing women's equality and liberation or, worse, being an "intelligent" and "rational" human being.

Of course, I wonder, when pondering the quote - "I believe in a movement, 'feminism,' that doesn't believe in me" - if God could say the same thing: "I believe in a life force, 'humanity,' that doesn't believe in me."

Some very dispassionate deists might respond by saying that the Universe is far too expansive and infinite that, if there is a Creator behind it, it's unlikely that S/he would care about us on the periphery of a periphery of a periphery of a vast universe.

Being a Christian feminist means that I care about peripheries and those in the margins. That God isn't just the dark matter comprising vast deepness of unknown worlds but also the complex molecules making up all that is matter and all that matters.

Recognizing the "least of these" is recognizing the divine made manifest. On the most materialist of levels, it's the recognition of their value and their connections to us. It's an important lesson that I must constantly struggle to see, especially when living in a culture that tells me that I'm the center of my own universe - divorced from everything and everyone else - that my individual goals and needs supersede everything else, and that feminism is about whether or not I can climb the social and economic ladder without letting my ovaries get in the way and not about getting rid of those ladders in the first place if we want to reconstitute the greater living commons that is this planet, a precious entity (versus commodity) on the periphery of the vast universe.

If it's possible that God can determine that all the PhDs, salary raises, published books, expensive homes, trips, and latest car and computer models that I've obtained (including the amount of church tithes, offerings, and charity donations made) don't register in Her book of life as important, it's time to rethink what I hold dear.

Perhaps it's time for feminists to start asking when was the last time we've made the hunger of women and their children (let alone the sparrows!) a priority. Now, if I start spreading this idea to my students in my Women's Studies classes (parable-of-the-sower style), I wonder how many would rethink the goals of the movement. Or, would they simply say, "What does this have to do with feminism? I'm here to talk about my ovaries and my vagina! The woman who struggles to find clean water or who can't feed her children has nothing to do with me."

Let's hope there is still good soil for sowing.

Teaching Radically in the Wake of a Conservative Backlash

In the midst of my own battles this fall semester to diversify my undergraduate class, which so far only includes one student of color and which is opened only to students who qualify for our "Honors" college (I've since learned that the prerequisite for such students to enter the honors program is to demonstrate high SAT scores - scores that students of color traditionally do not have), I came upon a notice about an upcoming conservative student rally organized by the David Horowitz Center, called "Terrorism Awareness Week," scheduled the week of October 22.

I immediately went through my course syllabi to see if I was teaching any "anti-war" issues (fortunately, one week devoted to this will occur two weeks prior). Nevertheless, the organizing of this "awareness week" is laden with anti-intellectualism and anti-"academic-left" rhetoric, that I'm now panicked about the ways in which a certain student body is being guided to surveille those of us who seem not be in line with "conservative think tanks." I mean, if students want to boycott my class and do a sit-in to protest what I and my "radical leftist" colleagues have to say, by all means, let them. However, I am deeply concerned by this so-called protest because it sounds like the beginnings of what other totalitarian, fascist governments have done in the past: to target intellectuals (often the first to be carted off to concentration camps and other detainee centers) precisely because our jobs are to encourage students to think critically and, therefore, to develop skills that allow them to not only question various governmental rhetoric and propaganda but to also hold such governments accountable when they do not live up to our ideals of "government for the people by the people."

I don't believe in advocating just one political ideology when teaching, but I do encourage students to think critically about any information they are given. Given that I'm black and female, this means that some students are already predisposed to distrust any information I give them just on that basis. As such, I'm concerned that such an "awareness" week is designed to undermine one of the most important rules that I set up in my classroom: that of RESPECT for me and for each other. To encourage students to "distrust" the person in the front of the classroom (while simultaneously encouraging same population to "trust" those in the White House) is to encourage disrespect.

In light of this crackdown and this obvious threat to "academic freedom," in light of the violence that we've already seen on college campuses - as demonstrated by the Virginia Tech shootings this past April - I call on all educators and all students who wish to be students (i.e. to learn new information as a way of gaining knowledge), to plan our own counter-protests in the wake of this Horowitz-inspired sit-in. It never ceases to amaze me how right-wingers continue to borrow strategies from the left to use against the left. What will it take for liberalists, radicals, and independent thinkers to finally rise up and speak out against this bid for national suppression and repression? We must be ever vigilant in this high-surveillance, Big-Brother-is-Watching-You times.

No End in Sight? More Documentaries on the War in Iraq

I was really angry after watching the latest documentary film on the War in Iraq: Charles Ferguson's No End in Sight. It wasn't just watching yet another film showcase the never ending quagmire that is this nation's unquestioning allegiance to oil, imperialism, and the military industrial complex, but witnessing the responses of my fellow Americans as we filed out of the movie theater. While I quietly seethed with rage over what I had just witnessed, I was stunned to realize that other moviegoers merely expressed sadness, confusion as to what we could do to stop the hell hole that is this war, and pitiable responses along the lines of "Gee, that was a downer!"

Are you kidding me?

I think it's admirable that, in an age of (mis)information overload and media distractions from heinous world events, as we immerse ourselves in the insignificant, intimate lives of celebrities and closeted senators, we can find documentary films available at our local movie houses - albeit the art house variety. Still, I'm left with a feeling of impatience and agitation for I feel that these documentaries are presenting regular audiences with certain truths and facts that should compel us to do much more than passively watch the War from afar. I'd like to know how we, as citizens, as moviegoers, as antiwar philosophers and activists, can utilize such information to mobilize us into action.

No End in Sight reminds me of another documentary film that also left me enraged: Eugene Jarecki's Why We Fight. I'm struck by the similarities between the two. They seem determined to convince the right-wing, conservative and independently thinking audience - the kind that would be turned off by the likes of Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 911 - to oppose the reasons behind our occupation in Iraq. Both are careful to interview disgruntled insiders who have close ties to the military or to the current administration. They are careful not to advocate a political antiwar stance, but nonetheless propose that we recognize the failings in the directions of this war. They want us to mobilize against the current wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, but are oh-so-meticulous in avoiding outright calls to action. In many ways, this makes for exceptional journalism, with its objective stance and "just-the-facts-ma'am" presentation. However, I'd like a braver vision, for both of these films fail to offer us a blueprint for how we can envision ourselves out of the quagmire that has been "purposefully" created.

Purposefully. That is my own conclusion, for No End in Sight would have us believe that the main reasons behind the failures of the War in Iraq are the result of inexperienced leaders with no military training and no diplomacy whose shortsighted operations have caused the chaos and destruction that have ensued in Iraq ever since. Evidence after evidence is presented to us in this film, and it's easy to conclude that, gee, that lethal quartet (Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld-Rice) are a bunch of numbskulls who just don't know what they're doing. I beg to differ!

Don't tell me that, out of three of the four who have worked on the world stage prior to Bush Jr's regime, they didn't know what they were doing. That this "chaos" wasn't apart of the plan. Maybe I see more sinister plans at work than our documentary filmmakers who take it for granted that the so-called mismanagement of the War is the result of some naive players who weren't ready for the big time (i.e. the world stage). With all the intelligence and military personnel at their disposal, you mean to tell me that they were so ignorant as to NOT take their advice? I think not!

I suggest that, the fall of Iraq (Babylon-the-Great?) was deliberate, not an example of screwing up. I suggest that our leaders knew exactly what they were doing when they chose not to protect various ministries, including that infamous scene where they allowed looters to demolish cultural museums containing ancient treasures important to humankind's history. I suggest that, when they also chose to dismantle existing bureaucracies and to disband Iraq's military, they set in motion the complete and utter destruction of Iraq, thus leading to mass exodus and civil war, which will soon turn into genocide. All for what? So that, when no one is left to take over and establish a true democracy, that their multinational corporations, like Haliburton, can properly set up shop and maintain full control of the oil fields. Who would be left in Iraq to stop this? And who knows how this 21st-century domino effect will play out?

Now, I suspect that our filmmakers will not dare suggest that our government would be so cruel as to create this quagmire just to set up corporatized control of the region. It's easier to say, the people in charge just don't know what they're doing. Just like, recently on CNN, a well-spoken black woman repeatedly kept telling us, "These people are so incompetent, I can't believe they even have the intelligence to plan a conspiracy." She was specifically brought on to contest and render inconsequential another black woman, a 9th-Ward resident, who could barely string two sentences together while suggesting that a conspiracy was in place to wipe out the African American population in New Orleans while Haliburton and Co. continue with their sinister plans to gentrify the city in the wake of Katrina.

Isn't that what they really want us to believe? That our leader is so dumb and moronic, and his cabinet is so arrogant and incompetent, that the chaos we witness on both gulf coasts could not have been deliberately planned?

Well, I ask all of you to please put on your thinking caps and always question, who benefits from all this destruction? And when you find the answer, let's map out our own plans and strategies for resistance. And I'm not talking about one-day gas boycotts that doesn't even put a dent in the economy. What if we extended that one day to one month, better yet, one year? Those who participated in the Montgomery bus boycott certainly didn't do it for one day. And when we look at earlier history, those who participated in the American Revolution shouted "No taxation without representation!" and MEANT it. What if all Americans agree to not pay our taxes next year until this godforsaken war comes to a halt? What if we boycotted oil for a year?

Of the many issues the film addressed was the increasing costs of the war, which was estimated at 1.8 TRILLION dollars! Can we afford to let our government sink our economy deeper with this occupation? And who's going to foot the bill? You and I, of course!

Are we really against the War or for it? As Suheir Hammad once said in a poem she wrote in the wake of September 11: "Either you're for life. Or against it."

I'm for life. And, contrary to what the filmmakers say, I believe there is an "end in sight." Meanwhile, if this film shows up at your local movie house, I suggest you go see it. But, please, don't tell me that you'll leave at the end of it, simply saying, "Gee, that was a downer."

No to War: More from Suheir Hammad

Poem: "What I WIll"