Alice Walker on Obama: An Open Letter to Her Sisters

Now that I'm back from vacation, I thought I would end this women's history month and begin the spring season with the words of one of my favorite black women writers, who has finally broken her silence on politics, race, and gender.

In the online journal, The Root, Alice Walker offers what she calls, "Lest We Forget: An Open Letter to My Sisters Who Are Brave." Here is an excerpt:

I made my first white women friends in college; they were women who loved
me and were loyal to our friendship, but I understood, as they did, that they
were white women and that whiteness mattered. That, for instance, at Sarah
Lawrence, where I was speedily inducted into the Board of Trustees practically
as soon as I graduated, I made my way to the campus for meetings by train,
subway and foot, while the other trustees, women and men, all white, made their
way by limo. Because, in our country, with its painful history of
unspeakable inequality, this is part of what whiteness means. I loved my
school for trying to make me feel I mattered to it, but because of my relative
poverty I knew I could not.

I am a supporter of Obama because I believe he is the right person to
lead the country at this time. He offers a rare opportunity for the country and
the world to start over, and to do better. It is a deep sadness to
me that many of my feminist white women friends cannot see him. Cannot see
what he carries in his being. Cannot hear the fresh choices toward
Movement he offers. That they can believe that millions of Americans
–black, white, yellow, red and brown - choose Obama over Clinton only
because he is a man, and black, feels tragic to me.

When I have supported white people, men and women, it was because I
thought them the best possible people to do whatever the job required.
Nothing else would have occurred to me. If Obama were in any sense mediocre, he
would be forgotten by now. He is, in fact, a remarkable human being, not perfect
but humanly stunning, like King was and like Mandela is. We look at him, as we
looked at them, and are glad to be of our species. He is the change America has
been trying desperately and for centuries to hide, ignore, kill. The change
America must have if we are to convince the rest of the world that we care about
people other than our (white) selves.

Read in Full.

Another milestone: my 200th post to the blogosphere!! :)

Blog Hiatus: Going on Vacation

I'll soon be off on vacation and plan to return the beginning of April, so on this Holy Week, this Good Friday, let's remember all the positive work of churches, especially black ones - the driving force behind the Civil Rights movement - so motivated were they by the liberation theology that was fostered from the act of one man so many centuries ago who laid down his life for love and justice.

While Big Media would have you believe that black christians are a scary bunch, here are the words of two formidable African American writers nurtured by them (one Baptist, the other Catholic):

It is not too much to say that whoever wishes to become a truly moral human
being (and let us not ask whether or not this is possible; I think we must believe that it is possible) must first divorce himself from all the prohibitions, crimes, and hypocrisies of the Christian church. If the concept of God has any validity or any use, it can only be to make us larger, freer, and more loving. If God cannot do this, then it is time we got rid of Him.
-- James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time

(on the meaning of Jesus on the Cross):

See? The execution of this one solitary black man propped up on these
two intersecting lines to which he was attached in a parody of human embrace,
fastened to two big sticks that were so convenient, so recognizable, so embedded
in consciousness as consciousness, being both ordinary and sublime...See how this official murder out of hundreds marked the difference; moved the relationship between God and man from CEO to supplicant to one on one? ... This execution made it possible to respect - freely, not in fear - one's self and one another. Which was what love was: unmotivated respect. All of which testified not to a peevish Lord who was His own love but one who enabled human love. Not for his own glory - never. God
loved the way humans loved one another; loved the way humans loved themselves;
loved the genius on the cross who managed to do both and die knowing it.
-- Toni Morrison, Paradise

May we continue to hold onto hope and see the God in all of us.

Have an enjoyable Easter weekend! :)

The Morning After: A Different Discussion Worth Having

I learned about another response to Obama's historic race speech (which, from what I understand, the YouTube version has already reach 1 million hits!). While many of us (myself included) continue to be enraptured by his eloquent vision of a "more perfect union," I came across Cynthia McKinney's "A Discussion of Race Worth Having" (thanks to focused purpose for leading me to it!).

Much has been made around the edges of this campaign about the issue of
race. Sadly, nothing has been made of the public policy exigencies that arise
because of the urgent racial disparities that continue to exist in our country.
Just last week, the United Nations criticized the United States, again, for its
failure to address the issues arising from the rights, particularly the right of
return, of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita survivors. Author Bill Quigley writes in
“The Cleansing of New Orleans,” that half of the working poor, elderly, and
disabled of New Orleans have not been able to return.

Two weeks ago, United Nations experts on housing and minority rights
called for an immediate end of public housing demolitions in New Orleans. Now,
the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, ratified by the U.S.
in 1994, further observes that the U.S. must do more to protect and support the
African American community. In 2006, the United Nations Human Rights Commission “noted its concern that while African Americans constitute just 12% of the population, they represent 50% of homeless people, and the government is
required to take ‘adequate and adequately implemented’ measures to remedy this
human rights violation.” In short, the United Nations has issued reports squarely calling for the United States to do more to eliminate racial discrimination—and this discrimination is a human rights violation.

I am deeply offended that in the middle of a Presidential campaign,
remarks–be they from a pastor or a communications mogul, or a former Vice
Presidential nominee–are the cause of a focus on race, and not the deep racial
disparities that communities are forced to endure on a daily basis in this
country.

Read in Full.

Finally, the Speech I Was Waiting to Hear!

Here also is the full transcript, made available in pdf via BBC: A More Perfect Union.



Not only does this speech touch on every single aspect of race relations in America, he spoke the truth, exposed the pink elephant in the room, grabbed it by its horns, and de-clawed it. It is now up to us, America, to decide if we want to let racism divide us as a nation or if we want to overcome it and join together in solidarity.

More than any other speech, this is the one that spoke to me personally. I was so sure he was done in with the Rev. Wright controversy, but here, Obama shows that he's got the wisdom and the courage and the temerity to call us to conscience! I know that I, for one, am not going to get anxious over his ability to win or not anymore. That no longer matters to me because now, finally, someone has found the courage to call us on our bullshit racial politics and get to the heart of the matter.

This is definitely a speech for the ages, and I most certainly will teach it in future classes! :)

Common Struggles: Happy St. Patrick's Day!

"Black Irish":

State of Our Union: More Multiracial and Transnational Than We Care to Imagine?

It only took, what, three months?, for our nation to go from a vision of Obama's racially inclusive "Yes, We Can!" to his affiliation with "God damn America!"

Sigh.

Part of me wants to shake Obama's campaign people and say, "Why didn't you neutralize that preacher? Surely, you knew Fox News would be digging!" Just like part of me wanted to shake Michelle Obama and say, "Control that tongue of yours until you're in the White House!" after her infamous "first time I'm proud of America" speech.

These slip-ups are the kind that constantly underestimate that sleeping but watchful dragon called racism, which is always just below the surface, ready to raise its ugly head.

The other part of me completely understands the criticism inherent in both contexts of Reverend Wright's view of America's failings with regards to global policies and racism (although I will admittedly agree that "God damn America," especially from the pulpit, is really taking things too far - I flinched at the outrageousness, and I'm not some white supremacist blindly waving my flag with the impression that my country can do no wrong, domestically or globally) and of Michelle Obama's recognition of the historical struggle for racial equality and the historic momentum that is represented in Obama's successful run for president in the Democratic primary - so far.

Then, what I expected to happen happened. When Jon Stewart made fun of Obama's name at the Oscars, followed by the release of a photo of Obama in a turban, then the questioning of his religion - followed by the "Oh, he's that kind of Christian!" rhetoric embedded in the Rev. Wright controversy. In short, the media found a way to "be racist and get away with it." Because it's all in the subtext (that reading skill my students are sadly missing, as I mentioned in an earlier post). The media subtext that suggests that someone is un-American if his name isn't Anglo-Saxon sounding enough, or if his religion isn't conservatively Christian. In other words, since political correctness has taught whites to avoid addressing black-white racial divides in overt ways, then it's better to taint Obama with the Muslim brush, since anti-Muslim rhetoric is acceptable. I know in my class on racism, students didn't start to feel comfortable mouthing racist rhetoric until we moved to other non-black groups (i.e. Muslims and Arabs).

Once the anti-Muslim subtext allowed Big Media to further taint Obama with the "scary black man" stereotype, which then collides with Geraldine Ferraro's "black men are at an advantage over white women" rhetoric that we've already heard from other white women, we've now got ourselves an ugly situation. The doubt I had expressed way back in January, after Obama's Iowa victory (see my Open Letter to Michelle Obama) has come back in full swing. You see, I know - in theory - we like the idea of a multiracial and transnational, pluralist society. But, in practice, we expect everyone to conform to whiteness and the ideals of white dominance.

Case in point: aside from reading about the latest hate crime incidents in the blogosphere, I learned on Racialicious that the latest movie 21, based on a story of Asian American MIT kids who made good in casinos, has been whitewashed with white actors in the lead. Only in a society that expects whiteness to be the norm and the conforming identity could we even imagine that such an act - which disempowers Asian/American actors while privileging white ones, whether they are U.S. born or not (Jim Sturgess, who I believe is from the U.K., is in the leading role) - is justifiable (especially when studios use the "marketability" argument).

How are we to ever build a vision of our nation as a multiracial and transnational society if we can't even imagine it in the movies?

Even when we allow for "diversity," we only imagine it in the context of making room for the black people. But, if we're going to have a stilted vision of whiteness, then I guess our visions of blackness would be distorted too. Why else were there any questions about Obama being "black enough," whether because of his biraciality or the fact of his foreign-born Kenyan father?

I know, over on Black Women Vote!, there are enough black women angry about the recent actions of Al Sharpton and the NAACP in fighting for the legal rights of the defendants involved in the horrific gang-rape incident of Dunbar Village last summer. However, emotions are terribly high, and I haven't had the courage to raise issues about transnational blackness and how the victim's Haitian origins and the very Haitian-like state terrorist actions of the rapists might complicate the way high-profile black leaders might even touch the subject, or how anti-sexual violence advocates might begin to address immigrant women's rights within the context of "black-on-black" sexual violence, as defined by African Americans with a myopic view of how transnational blackness shapes our experiences in profoundly different ways (see my post on this issue from last year).

Obama's campaign held great promise, with a vision of unity (especially embodied through his mixed-race, child of an immigrant subjectivity) but I knew enough to "hope with caution," not to "hope with audacity." Sure, in many ways, I still believe in his monumental mantra of "Yes, we can." But, before we "can" form our state of the union that values our differences, we must first acknowledge that these differences have meant that certain groups have been given the right to dominate over others. And until we can talk freely and openly about this (without someone rhetorically threatening us with a "lynching party"), "hope" will truly be, as Bill Clinton had dismissively stated, a "fairy tale."

In a World With No Choices (Or Few of Them): Movie Review (Spoilers)

As the latest political news continues to smear both Democratic candidates (in particular frontrunner Obama and his "Church" woes), I'm starting to fear what life in these United States will be like with another four years of a Republican in the White House. And the more I think of it, the angrier I am with certain women who pitted "racial" issues against "gender" issues in this political campaign, as if both oppressions don't come from the same source!

Perhaps a world without Roe v. Wade might not be as dark and oppressive as, say, during the Communist dictatorial regime of Ceausescu in Romania, but watching a movie like Four Months, Three Weeks, and Two Days does make one quite worrisome about the return of back-alley abortion days.

Last year, 432 (directed by Cristian Mungiu) won the Palme d'Or at Cannes, and while it was snubbed at this year's Oscars, I can understand why it would fail to reach a wider audience in our country: not with the likes of such pro-life movies as Waitress, Knocked Up, and most famously, Juno flooding our box office instead. Still, I count myself as one of the fortunate citizens who lives near an art house movie theater that regularly features foreign language films, where I discovered this heart wrenching, realist documentary-style drama.

432 (starring the stunningly real Anamaria Marinca as Otilia) is set in 1987, two years before the collapse of Ceausescu and Communism, when abortions and contraception were illegal. Among its lasting legacies is an estimated half-million women who died from botched abortions and, of course, numerous Romanian orphans. Because of this political, economic, and cultural backdrop, it's much too flimsy to reduce this film to either a pro-choice or pro-life stance. It is what it is. And it starts out situating Otilia, a college student studying "Tech" and, eventually, planning for a job in the city (as opposed to the country), in a cramped dormitory where every mundane product those of us in the West take for granted (cigarettes, soap, toothpaste, cosmetics, and even black market birth control pills) are bartered. Otilia goes about the dorm assembling some of these items in preparation for what seems to be a weekend trip to a hotel with her roommate, Gabita (Laura Vasiliu). It will later be revealed that they are preparing for Gabita, whose duration of pregnancy inspires the film title, to abort.

It is clear from their interactions that Otilia is the responsible one (she's the one booking the hotel room and contacting the abortionist, ironically called Mr. Bebe) while Gabita is the flaky one (so flaky and careless that she fails to confirm their hotel reservation, thus leading them to book in another hotel outside Bebe's usual territory, and has lied about how far along she is in pregnancy). Such annoyances enrage the good "doctor" - who could be sentenced to prison for performing this illegality - and so, he ups the ante and forces both Otilia and Gabita to engage in sex acts before he does the procedure. It's a chilling scene, as both young women's naivete is made obvious, thinking the obstacles are just monetary inconveniences (and not actual personal sacrifices). Otilia, at this point, has gone above and beyond the duties of friendship. And yet, this is not out of the ordinary. Having had sufficient memory of my own college roommate, who once woke up at 3 in the morning to chauffeur the friend of a friend of a friend (the person involved didn't want her close friends to know) on a four-hour trip to an abortion clinic, I understood the sense of imposition while also recognizing the sense of obligation to a fellow woman who approaches you out of desperation because the stakes of motherhood are so high.

Certain scenes are quite graphic - the procedure itself had me cringing as I watched it unfold on screen, and the later shot of the expelled fetus on the bathroom floor is horrific, to say the least - and the drama (so personal, yet so, so political, as the second-wavers of 1970s feminism would say) unfolds against the backdrop of a state-controlled urban space. The cramped apartments, the Communist-style hotel lobby, the repressive bureaucrats one encounters on the bus or behind a clerk's desk, the darkened night alleys, made more so by the state's imposed roll backs of electricity, the bourgeois trivialities (as exposed at Otilia's boyfriends' mother's birthday party, which Otilia attends because she promised her boyfriend but which she could hardly enjoy - having just been traumatized by her rape and her friend's abortion).

If sacrificing her body for her roommate weren't enough, Otilia - being the responsible one - also braves the city's streets and the night to dispose of the unborn child. The shadows surrounding her terrified form are less about the dangers out there and more about Otilia's internal conflicts (she doesn't fear bumping into criminals; she fears that someone will find out her own "criminal" activity, for having and assisting with an abortion is already a criminalized act, according to the state).

By the time Otilia does the deed (dumping the fetus - covered in rags - into a garbage disposal), we only see her in silhouette. The camera ponders, and we know this is a life that has just been erased and that the act will not be dwelled upon if either Otilia or Gabita are to move on. As such, it most certainly will be repressed from the memories of the two women involved. After Otilia returns to the hotel, she finds her friend eating in the hotel restaurant, a wedding party occurring across the hall. They remain silent. They dare not look into each other's eyes for corroboration. Then Gabita asks, "Did you bury it?" To which Otilia responds, "We're never going to talk about this, okay?"

Fade to Black.

And that's just it. As women, we don't dare talk about this, but in light of Women's History Month, and in light of director Mungiu revisiting recent history, and highlighting women's lives, to remind us of life under a repressive regime, we tell our stories anyway.

If you don't have access to an art house movie theater, then I highly recommend this film the moment it comes out on DVD or is featured on the IFC channel. It certainly paints the stark, brutal reality of unplanned pregnancy that American movies like Waitress, Knocked Up, and especially Juno pretend is a comic, smooth, unexpected but cutesy little problem that heterosexual patriarchy can solve.

My Students Can't Read! (Subtext That Is)

I spend hours preparing for a lecture, and I do so with the particular students I have in mind. Using a mixture of PowerPoint, multimedia (depending on the students, they may need visual stimuli or sound, as in music, to wake them up and pay attention), group exercises, and discussion, each time I go into my classroom, I am over prepared.

So, imagine my shock and horror to learn that, often when I get non-responses to any of these lectures or to any assignment, these silences and off-topic discussions are attempts to mask the frightening reality that, despite being college sophomores, juniors, or seniors, they DON'T KNOW HOW TO READ!

OK. Let me clarify. Sure, they may be able to read a sentence or a paragraph. Hell, they may even be able to read an essay or a book. But, do they comprehend it?

Or, in the area of media, they can make sense of the visual or aural stimuli; they recognize the symbols. But, do they understand the multilayered messages?

It had become painfully clear over the last couple of months that my students can read the literal text (e.g. James Baldwin's The Fire Next Time or a political cartoon about the presidential race or a print ad depicting women's bodies in sexualized ways) but ask them to dig deeper for the subtext, and they get lost. In a course on racism, this is particularly brutal for students because much of our language and messages about racism are all in the subtext.

It's why they wouldn't understand immediately why noose hangings are never a joke. It's why they don't understand that circulating a picture of Obama in a turban is both an example of Islamophobia and anti-black or anti-African racism. It's why they don't understand that when white female public officials play "Oppression Olympics" it's racism undermining their arguments against sexism.

It's why their inability to do critical thinking and high-level literacy (of all media - print, audio, visual, digital, etc.) will make them extremely vulnerable to both state and corporate agendas. It's why their inability to read and interpret subtext will make them vulnerable to credit card and mortgage debts, problematic healthcare plans, and voting disenfranchisement schemes.

Make no mistake. An uninformed and miseducated public cannot form, let alone participate in, a democracy.

So, who do I blame? I'm going to blame the racist, classist, and sexist school system that has been miseducating our children K-12, as well as higher learning for refusing to step in and catch students who don't have the proper skills in reading, writing, and critical thinking and for refusing to reject students who will not succeed on the college level because we have become increasingly corporate in wanting to increase student enrollment alongside tuition fees.

And now, here I am, a college professor, who has been teaching on a level that I should be teaching but suddenly has an epiphany that my students are not on the same level. It would be the equivalent of trying to teach Calculus to students who are still struggling with their multiplication table. And that is no exaggeration!

Now that Women's Studies and Ethnic Studies are targeted for the chopping block, including foreign language departments, and now that various language and rhetoric departments are refusing to offer remedial writing classes - all actions in response to various budget crises - all levels of our education system are in ruins. Let's think about that, while our prison systems are on the rise, and the United States now has the largest prison population in the world!

Why are we investing in prisons while defunding schools, colleges, and universities? Why are corporations enticing more citizens deeper into debt? Why are we planning to build fences on our borders while trying to build a general mood of anti-immigration? If we got rid of all our immigrant labor, while relying on an illiterate, indebted, and incarcerated citizenry to supply all the labor, what exactly is the sinister plan here?

And, if one does not know how to connect the dots of our domestic and foreign, political, social, and cultural contexts because one does not have the critical thinking skills to read text and subtext, how can on even ask the kinds of questions I'm asking here?

I suppose this realization that my students can't read is a dilemma I must tackle head on. Because I don't want to "dumb down" my lectures. At the same time, the educator (versus the professor) in me doesn't have the heart to dismiss such students. The professor in me would simply shake my head and hand out F's the way Santa Claus distributes toys. The educator in me wants to plan a summer session to get students ready for the skills they need to succeed in college (and yes, you guessed it: most of the students struggling are students of color), while the professor in me would say, "Why provide that kind of service? There's no reward for it, and it will distract from your publishing goals." Why are we not given the support we need to educate and prepare students for democratic participation?

Maybe it's just this semester and this particular group of students. But, I'm starting to fear that this is, indeed, the norm.

Sentencing in the Megan Williams Case

This one I learned about over on Gina's What About Our Daughters. Two defendents - Frankie Brewster (the ringleader) and Karen Burton - received 20+ year sentences for their part in the torture of Megan Williams last September in West Virginia.

Read Full Story from CBS News.

Dismantling Women's Studies: A Plea from the University of South Florida

I received this email today (please support Women's Studies and Ethnic Studies, which are increasingly under attack in academia)...

HELP SUPPORT THE ONLY AUTONOMOUS DEPARTMENT OF WOMEN'S STUDIES IN THE STATE OF FLORIDA

Dear Friends of Women's and Gender Studies:

These are hard times for Higher Education in the state of Florida in general, and for the University of South Florida in particular. We write on behalf of the faculty, students, and members of theUniversity community concerned with preserving the Department of Women's Studies. Due to a severe budget crisis, the Department of Women's Studies faces the potential loss of its status as an autonomous department. As the only free-standing Department of Women's Studies in the state ofFlorida, and among the oldest in the nation, we believe that curtailing our autonomy will have a negative impact on our discipline and on our university as a whole. We ask you to lend your support to us by agreeing to sign the letter below urging the University to maintain the integrity and independentstatus of the Department of Women's Studies. Please send your name, e-mail, and affiliation to usfwst@gmail.com.

We will compile all namesand present them to the Administration.

Thanks!

Sincerely,
The Department of Women's Studies, University of South Florida
__________________________________________________________________

March 6, 2008

Dear President Genshaft and Provost Wilcox,

We are scholars, students, activists, and community members. We expressour deep concern at the planned restructuring of Women's Studies at USF and integration of the Department faculty into other disciplines or the merging of the Department as a subdivision of another disciplinary unit. USF has been a leader in Women's Studies; the Department of Women'sStudies at USF is among the oldest in the nation, celebrating its 36th anniversary this Spring semester, and it is the only Department ofWomen's Studies in the state of Florida.

We stress the value of Women's Studies as a discipline: In 1991, the American Association of Colleges identified Women's Studies as "one of twelve learned disciplines most conducive to the promotion of undergraduate liberal learning."

We are concerned that the University might consider closing or merging the Department. This would effectively undermine a discipline that according to the AAC report, has "transformed knowledge in the humanities, social sciences and life sciences, challenging long-established beliefs, contesting dominant paradigms, identifying newareas of research, and introducing new strategies of analysis."

According to the AAC report, "the strength of the women's studies majorlies in its commitment to criticize existing theories and methodologiesand to formulate new paradigms and organizing concepts across academicfields, its adoption of a complex matrix of gender, class, race, age, ethnicity, and nationality as fundamental categories of social,cultural, and historical analysis, its reliance upon interdisciplinaryinquiry in structuring a sequence of coherently interrelated courses, its unrelenting attention to pedagogy designed to create an equitablelearning opportunity for all students, and its ability to foster the student's critical and analytical skills."

We urge the University not to entertain any drastic plan to eliminateWomen's Studies as an autonomous Department at the University of South Florida.

Yours Sincerely,

Please sign in support by sending your name, e-mail address, and affiliation to usfwst@gmail.com.

Censorship and the Struggle for Independent Media

After a long period of creating independent and community media in Troy, New York, the Sanctuary for Independent Media has now been shut down by the city due to code violations of the doors on the building, curiously coming on the heels of an exhibit featuring Wafaa Bilal's The Night of Bush Capturing: A Virtual Jihadi (I only hope that now that I spelled out that art work - note, I did not bother to link to any websites, so if you're curious about the artist, do your own google search - that my blog doesn't inexplicably shut down). There was a massive protest by locals and conservative students and faculty at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in response to this exhibit.

So now, the Sanctuary seeks your donations to remain a functioning community center. With actions like this, it astounds me that the Democratic primaries are so divisive - this will not help us reclaim the White House. If we want to reverse such neoconservative actions, like the censorship of independent and community media, then we need to strategize to take back the government and truly restore our democracy. Sadly, these recent actions against the sanctuary - based on anti-immigration and anti-Muslim sentiments - combined with increasing acts of racism and sexual violence paint a bleak picture.

So much for the "progress" we keep harping about.

Thankful!

Recently, I had a biopsy, which ruled out breast cancer. At some point, when I have the energy to write about the ordeal (it took up six months of my life worrying about this), I will share my thoughts on the politics of healthcare and why this needs to be a top priority for black women and everyone in general, especially concerning this year's elections.

Until then, I will simply remain thankful that I'm no longer living out the title of my blog and finding some calm.

And now, here's a little Sade, because that's the kind of mood I'm in! :)

Your Silence Will Not Protect You

Remember back in the day when groups like ACT-UP (AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power) were righteously angry - no, enraged! - about the lack of government and societal response to the growing HIV/AIDS pandemic that then disproportionately affected the gay population? They engaged in guerrilla-like nonviolent protests, such as shutting down the Stock Exchange to force the issue of selling affordable AIDS drugs or staging a disruptive protest during mass at St. Patrick's Cathedral on 5th Avenue, to protest the church's violent homophobia and rejection of safe-sex education.

ACT-UP formed in 1987, when I had just started high school and was dealing with the challenges of black female adolescence growing up in inner-city New York. At my magna school in Brooklyn, we received continual safe-sex education, and condoms were regularly distributed and promoted; but when I later moved with my family to the suburbs of Georgia during my junior year, there were no such public education programs in place, and so many of my low-income black and white classmates had become pregnant before graduation. The closest we received to a "sex education" in this southern high school was an advocacy group, calling themselves "Clean Teens," promoting abstinence through fear mongering and self-righteous arrogance, which (naturally) turned off every kid assembled in that school auditorium.

I think about this difference in sex education - based on geographic locations - and especially of the work of ACT-UP in New York, which forced the issue of HIV/AIDS awareness, for the work that they did ushered in the popular education that TV networks like MTV later did to promote and make "cool" and "sexy" the use of condoms while I was a college undergraduate during the '90s. I think of the impact of radicalism, which came about because the GLBT community realized that everyone else was willing to let them die. And if they colluded in this evil plot by remaining silent, they all would. ACT-UP was a refusal to be silent because they wanted to live.

I think about this recent history because, more than 25 years since the first AIDS patient was diagnosed, and more than 20 years since AIDS activism, I am now forced to acknowledge a harsh reality. On this day, National Women and Girls HIV/AIDS Awareness Day, AIDS now bears a black female face. Something I never thought would be a reality, back in 1987 when I started high school, when AIDS was this "gay man's disease," even though at that time, black women were already starting to become infected. Unlike gay men in the '80s, however, we are conspicuously silent (or rather "silenced") in mainstream media and within the national conscience. Unlike gay men in the '80s, who had no illusions whatsoever that the rest of the society could and would leave them to die, black women (and women in general) still get lulled into thinking that, as long as we align ourselves within heterosexual patriarchy, we will be protected - not realizing that this has exacerbated the problem.

Unlike gay men in the '80s, who broke the silences surrounding their sexuality - promoting condom use through newsletters and even in gay porn (even though gay porn and personal relationships of late have dangerously resorted back to "bareback sex") - black women, who now comprise 70% of new AIDS cases and, if aged between 19 and 44, will most likely die by this disease, have not rallied publicly through collective rage (I'm very angry to see such high statistics among my sisters, aren't you?). We have not promoted, in TLC fashion (remember when they used to sport those condoms in their clothing?), condom use among women and girls through our erotic fiction, music, and videos (I know at least one porn star who gave out "goodies" at the Harlem Book Fair last summer but didn't bother to distribute condoms) nor have we staged walkouts at various church services when they promote violent homophobia and "wives submit" type sermons. We have not stormed through the Stock Exchange to demand affordable drugs for black women here and overseas, nor have we staged sit-ins at various corrections facilities and hospitals and schools, which have all colluded in the silent devastation of our communities through the spread of HIV/AIDS.

We have not figured out, as the gay men of the '80s did, that there is an insidious agenda to let us die. Make no mistake about it: The feminization of HIV/AIDS is femicide, pure and simple. And, just like Hutu rebels deliberately targeted Tutsi women by unleashing HIV+ men on them in acts of mass rape during the Rwanda genocide, just as what is currently going on in the Congo, do not - for one minute - doubt that the same mass rape occurs on our bodies. From the miseducation of low-income black women and girls (many of whom comprise the majority of HIV/AIDS cases) to the high rates of sexual violence (which often occur without "safe sex") to the continued spread of corporate pornography, which has taken to selling black female bodies in everything from hip-hop music videos to urban fiction in Barnes-n-Nobles to hardcore pornography. Curiously enough, because of the mainstreaming of pornography, hardcore - which continues to exploit their porn actors by exposing them to unsafe sex practices because "condoms in porn" don't sell well - has consistently engaged in various taboo acts to maintain their "edge" now that cable and other broadcasting networks all feature sex acts (simulated or not). This means that, even in the realm of fantasy, consumers are complicit in perpetuating the HIV/AIDS pandemic and, worse, because "safe sex" is no longer represented as the normative way to engage in sex, this spills over into people's intimate practices.

I'll never forget how disgusted I was, when watching an episode of Sex and the City, in which the sexually audacious Samantha once went down on a delivery boy, who came to her office. I imagine, for a certain population of women (read: white), she would seem so bold and empowered and liberated. All I could think of was: "Girl, why are you swallowing the cum of some strange boy? You don't know what he's got! Get up off your knees, sister!"

Now, if we replace the successful white businesswoman model that Samantha represents with a low-income black woman, who dropped to her knees the moment some hot looking delivery boy came to her home, we would all be screaming with outrage at her "sexual irresponsibility." And, sure, I understand that for many, it would be tedious to constantly present condom use in every sexual encounter dramatized on TV or in the movies. Daytime soaps simply address it when their teens have their "first time," but that's usually about it. It's assumed that everyone knows what they're supposed to do.

But, I'm sorry. A 70% HIV/AIDS rate among black women and girls tells me we can no longer afford to make such assumptions anymore. It also tells me that we, as women, need to talk about this pandemic beyond our personal responsibilities, for this is very much a political issue. And with all the "abstinence only" education promoted to our youth, it's that much easier to accelerate the pandemic far beyond our control. Most of all, we need to get radical in our responses and righteous in our anger.

To be blunt: as a woman or girl, do you feel empowered to:

1. say "No" if your partner insists on sleeping with you without a condom? (I once had a friend, educated and professional in her 30s, who consented to such a relationship because her partner didn't like to use condoms, and since he had previously been married for 12 years before meeting her, she reasoned that he was "safe.")

2. insist that the two of you go get tested for HIV? (It's not hard to find out your status: many hospitals have free testing - when you find out your negative status, it's a beautiful feeling, and it makes you value yourself all the more when you make a decision - especially in the midst of this HIV/AIDS pandemic - to stay that way.)

3. abstain from sex while exploring alternative ways to get your "O" on? (which, when you think about it, since so many women are faking it, you might as well take some time to figure out some things and be safe while you're exploring what gives you pleasure, instead of participating in the "instant hookup" that is our sex culture of late.)

If you said no to any of the above questions, you could easily become a victim of the HIV/AIDS pandemic, which, as I already said, is a new version of femicide, or violence against women. Because, when you think about it, if the above scenarios are ways that you can protect yourself, then there is only one reason why you're not protecting yourself: fear of losing your man (due to your economic dependence, social pressure, personal gratification, or all of these things). And in light of my previous post, which has exposed the patriarchal agenda of pathologizing single black women, we need to take note that such fear-mongering pushes us right into the midst of the HIV/AIDS pandemic, which targets black women and girls for sexual genocide. Now, don't get me wrong. Being diagnosed with the HIV virus is not a death sentence. With the proper treatment, one can live a long, healthy life, but if one is already misinformed about how to protect oneself from HIV, how much more misinformed will that person be in maintaining her health?

Moreover, the "marriage" crisis, designed to make unpartnered black women feel bad about themselves, also ignores another phenomenon: in Southern Africa and India, which now have the largest rates of HIV/AIDS infection worldwide, married women are now the largest group comprising new AIDS cases, far surpassing sex workers. Obviously, this is due to 1.) silences around sexuality and 2.) lack of condom use in marriage, which has traditionally been constructed as a "sanctuary" from the scary, evil sex that exists "out there."

It has been shown that the groups (like gay men in the '80s) and countries (the Bahamas and Thailand) that have tackled with HIV/AIDS head on through public education, have been able to cause dramatic declines in the spread of the disease. Among groups and countries where we fail to talk about sexuality in the open, the opposite occurs.

The days of the "culture of dissemblance" and the "politics of silence" are over, sisters. We need to break the silence, and break it loudly, and start addressing the crisis head on. No longer will we let misinformed, homophobic scholars and intellects make us feel like it's the fault of all those "down low brothers" who have deceived us by sleeping with another man, without paying attention to the ways that we have not protected ourselves or the ways that our society has encouraged this lack of protection through the cultural, legal, and physical devaluation of our bodies. No longer will we pretend that, if we aligned ourselves with respectability (like marriage), we will be "safe." There is no safety in a world of racialized misogyny. And in such war zones, we need to create defensive strategies for our survival and the survival of our daughters who come after us.

As Audre Lorde once said, "Your silence will not protect you." More often than not, it kills. I for one would like to get radical on this issue because I want to live and see my sisters live too.

Single Black Female: Fear Mongering as Patriarchal Propaganda

I came upon this video over on Black Girls Rock! and SMH:



I'm one of those "single black women" in my 30s, who's not worrying about her biological clock (I have a cousin who recently had her first child at 42) and who will admit that I've overlooked many good enough "he'll do" brothers and non-brothers alike, vs. "he's just what I'm looking for," and, honestly, I'm not feeling regretful about living in my singleness - multiple degrees and somewhat secure profession in tact with artistic pursuits, even if, now and then, I'm contemplating, "Gee, I'm all by myself tonight. Oops!" And that's really my assessment: "Oops, I forgot - while overachieving - to devote more attention to this aspect of my life; I guess I should start" (without really rushing to do so because I get so preoccupied with other things) instead of crying myself to sleep because, "Oh My God, I don't have a man! Oh, let me slit my wrists! Oh the agony!!"

So, all this is to say: I really get offended when I see these pathetic, fear-mongering propaganda telling unpartnered black women that something is wrong with them. It reminds me of the way single black mothers on welfare used to be demonized back in the '80s, because of societal fear that they were draining all of our public resources. Now, in the 21st century, more and more upwardly mobile black women, who are on the polar opposite of this spectrum of the "single black female," are still being punished for being unpartnered, for achieving educational and economic success on our own. Obviously, we, who are supposed to be "downtrodden," or as Zora Neale Hurston once put it in her novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God, "the mule of the world," we who are supposed to be on the lowest totem pole of feminine beauty (i.e. if our looks are not valued by the most successful of the patriarchs, then we are destined to slavery or drudgery or dependent spinsterhood) are doing remarkably well on our own (as in, we didn't need a black man or a white man to achieve our success, and that does rub a lot of sexist men the wrong way). Obviously, certain men are about to lose their minds because we may have inadvertently sent the message that they just might be redundant.

Except in the arena of sex of course (and even then, sorry fellas, but interracial dating, queer sexuality, and vibrators are showing black women they've got some options, you know?). One can achieve their "O" in a variety of ways (so long as you dismiss the sexual misinformation promoted in porn videos, erotic novels, and even various patriarchal texts interpreting the Bible wrongly - for example, I imagine the 45-year-old virgin in the video has remained that way because of religious beliefs that told her to wait until marriage for sex and, sadly, marriage didn't come her way. But, unlike many in our sex-obsessed, pornographic culture, I would hardly label her a "freak" or "frigid" or "repressed" for her choices, or lack of choices; I would only say that, as black women, we've got to find our "O" beyond patriarchal limitations - be they pornographic or religious, two sides of the same coin - of how we can define and express our sexuality and, better yet, how to intertwine our sexuality with our spirituality; i.e. penetration isn't the only way to get your "O" on).

Even when it comes to motherhood, single women who want to have children can turn to medical technology for such options (of course, not enough men of color contribute their sperms), but such technology is ridiculously expensive and not always covered by health insurance (and too many in the health care industry are so not trying to help black women reproduce, you know what I'm saying?). Not to mention that such technology will never substitute for real companionship, love, romance, and friendship.

I certainly wouldn't want to speak for other single black women, some of whom may share my opinions and some who may actually be crying themselves to sleep because they are alone. However, what I want to do in this post is to call attention to the obvious ways that this discourse, which pathologizes black women for being unpartnered, is completely entrenched in racialized misogyny. The black feminist sociologist Patricia Hill Collins, in her book Fighting Words, calls this phenomenon "the politics of containment," in which "the visibility of African-American women ...generates the invisibility of exclusionary practices of racial segregation ...this new politics of containment [fits] in with long-standing mechanisms of control..." (Collins, 14). In other words, by highlighting the so-called high numbers of unpartnered black women (and that's just my interpretation, mind you, for the "single" statistics could very well include black women in non-marital relationships, in same-sex relationships, or those who were recently widowed or divorced), the stereotype or "marriage crisis" places the onus on black women while conveniently ignoring high rates of black male incarceration, which reduced the number of eligible heterosexual partners, or the ways that upwardly mobile women of color in general (I know enough non-black women struggling with the same problem) have moved out of our socioeconomic bracket and, due to the exclusive social segregation of various ethnic middle-class groups, have aced ourselves out of eligibility with the men we have grown up with or with the men we now encounter in our new social circles but who have never learned to socialize comfortably with our new class of women of color.

I also see an insidious agenda targeting unpartnered black women - successful or economically struggling - for the propaganda promotes a belief that 1.) a woman in general needs a man; 2.) a woman, who achieves economic independence, is going to be "punished" (if one believes in the rewards of heteropatriarchy) by being alone; and 3.) a woman who is alone is an easy target for sexual violence. On another blog, I once read that some black women were targeted for rape in a certain city by a gang of rapists, who "knew" (based on this propaganda) that black women were more likely to be alone, without patriarchal protection, and more likely to not seek or find justice in the legal system for the sexual violence perpetrated against them.

I know in my experience I've encountered men, who expected me to be "desperate" for their company, and when I was not, the threat of violence was just below the surface. I do fear that, because the propaganda promotes the idea that this "single" status will prompt black women to do anything to find and keep a man (from masochistic behavior to man-sharing), then racist misogynists (yes, this includes black men who have internalized racism) are going to react negatively and even violently when we "resist" their advances. It's a horrendous new "controlling image," to borrow from Collins again, because these stereotypes are designed to blame black women for the racialized misogyny that's directed towards us.

The bottom line for me is this: this so-called "marriage crisis" would really be a crisis if the rest of the heterosexual community, across races, ethnicities, and classes, was a stable and thriving one. It so isn't! One of my close friends, who is an attractive white woman, behaved in such a desperate way when she realized that she reached 36 (this was a while back) and had not gotten married yet. She made some awful mistakes, twisted herself in a pretzel to get married to a guy (also white) who had a vasectomy and neglected to tell her a few days before the wedding, even though she wants to be a mother, and although she smiles that painted-on smile that says she's "happy" with her marriage (her husband made an attempt to reverse his vasectomy but they are still struggling to have a child because of this), she never misses an opportunity to tell me how she envies me my single status (I predict that she will wait a few more years before she decides to divorce).

If I, as a black woman, bought into the propaganda that I'm so unfortunate to not be a white woman or any other non-black woman because they're so desired above me (rolling my eyes because I get enough affirmation of my attractiveness - here and abroad - on a regular basis) and are living these happily married lives, then I too would be rushing into equally bad marriages like our white counterparts. Sisters, don't believe the hype!

Yes, some women definitely have more options than we do (but usually this means more options to get into really screwed up relationships; think about it - more men does not equal more quality men!), but this to me only reinforces the problem, not that there is something wrong with black women, but that there is something wrong with a society that promotes the belief that a quality man, who believes in women's equality and who values a woman with educational and economic success, is somehow not the norm. If a man prefers an emptyheaded skank (I know, not very feminist, but you get the picture) to someone like myself, the solution is not for me to make myself over into an emptyheaded skank but to avoid such men at all costs, even if such men are the norm. I'm valuable, I'm a good woman, and I expect to find a good partner and not settle for less (once I actually start actively "searching" - hee). If I bought into the propaganda, I will believe that no good man exists and that I must somehow stop being a good woman or accept any man with less than acceptable qualities (because the pickings are slim, the saying goes).

The natural world doesn't work like that (I've yet to see any female animal of any species mate with a deficient male. They just don't! Why should the female sex of homo sapiens react with less intelligence than other animals?) While Shecodes, over on Black Women Vote!, has said that the 70% single status for black women is just not a naturally occurring phenomenon for any of us to be comfortable with, and I can agree with that, I do want to caution us to not respond to this phenomenon through the lens of a racialized heteropatriarchal viewpoint that immediately positions single womanhood as a problem. I come from a line of women who've had to raise their children on their own - my grandmother was widowed with eight children and my mother was divorced with me. I am the first in a long line of black women who is now in a position to choose to be a mother.

Many of us are "alone" (loosely quoted because, seriously, I know few unpartnered black women who aren't constantly surrounded by their family and friends) because we've had models of how a woman in singleness can live her life (something my white and South Asian friends have not often had modeled for them, so even if they wanted to resist a life of marriage and motherhood, they don't always know how to comfortably go about it). We can view black women's singleness as a pathology or not, but I certainly don't.

As for the "spiritual" Christian message of the video posted here. Again, rolling my eyes. The Jesus Christ I know was most active as a thirty-something single (he started a revolution, for Christ's sake - pun intended) and even encouraged his disciples to leave their wives, husbands, mothers, fathers, sons, daughters, brothers, and sisters to form a new model of family. Many of our early Christians flocked to this movement precisely because they found a way to break the shackles of arranged marriages and family/community duties and discovered a new meaning for a spiritual family. Isn't it time we start exploring new models for family and community that value those of us who are single (with or without children) in this new century?

Furthermore, if Jesus wasn't worrying about not being married in his 30s, why should I? (Different gender, culture, ethnicity, and historical context notwithstanding.) But, seriously, the "family values" religious conservatives and the pornographers alike need to get over their angst about single black women.

I'm thriving on my own and will not do desperate. And I most certainly will not buy into the fear-mongering propaganda that tells me there is something wrong with who I am.

Decolonizing Feminism: International Women's Day

Today is March 8, International Women's Day, for the month of Women's History. And I'm inclined to give the "for shame" award to Google, which seems to recognize all kinds of holidays - national and insignificant - through cutesy little decorations around its logo, but fails to recognize such an important day around the world.

Then I remembered: March 8 holds great significance everywhere else except in the U.S. So, I'd like to highlight some key issues.

• The 52nd session of the United Nations' Commission on the Status of Women concluded yesterday at the UN headquarters in New York City. Of the many issues discussed is the prioritization of a women's central agency. Sounds good in theory, but we can only imagine which women will get included in such a "centralizing" agency and how different women from different regions of the globe will be able to address their local/global issues.
  
• Urgent issues impacting women around the world include economic crises and poverty exacerbated by globalization, HIV/AIDS pandemic, and brutal rapes and other acts of sexual violence exacerbated by various wars in the wake of our U.S.-led "war on terror" and various arms deals, drug deals, and free trade markets that have fueled these ugly wars throughout the globe - impacting severely on women's lives and creating refugee situations; both poverty and political instability have led further to the increase in immigration.
  
• While Clinton and Obama campaigns toy around with the discourse of NAFTA, please let's all think of the repercussions of this free trade agreement, which has led to said crises mentioned above (let's also not forget that NAFTA was signed during the Clinton administration). How will our worldviews help us align both domestic and foreign policies together as we cast our vote this year in the presidential elections?

In many ways, as I discussed with a friend, we can think of U.S. neo-imperialism as a house in which the foundation was laid under Reagan-Bush (think Cold War politics and the ways in which we aligned ourselves with countries like Afghanistan and Iraq in opposition to the Soviet Union, how we meddled with Central American wars, and most infamously in the Iran-Contra affair), the house was completed under Bush-Quayle (think first Persian Gulf War, police brutality and racial profiling, LA riots), the interior of the house was installed with lighting and other utilities, as well as with various decorations under Clinton-Gore (think NAFTA in 1993, Welfare Reform and the Telecommunications Acts in 1996, the beginnings of Blackwater and white supremacist militia groups with the 1996 Oklahoma City bombing, and various school shootings, the nuclear arms race between India and Pakistan, etc.), and the fortress and burglar alarms were installed under Bush-Cheney (well, I'm sure we all still remember September 11 and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq). And, yes, our new administration will either have to 1.) redecorate, 2.) renovate, or 3.) raze it up altogether and create something new. Which do you prefer, and which candidate is committed to doing one or more of these things? Or, which candidate is so not trying to do anything different but simply move on in, even keeping the same decorations and furniture?

So, with the upcoming elections, how will we cast our vote? After all, domestic and foreign policies are not mutually exclusive issues, and they are absolutely, positively "women's issues."

But, here's my problem with the way that those of us in the U.S. construct what's "foreign," what's "international," indeed what constitutes a celebration and awareness of "international women's day."

We tend to look at the world with "imperial eyes." I'm specifically reminded of San Francisco's International Museum of Women, which imagines that such a museum is about a colorful mosaic of multicultural women in their equally colorful and (dare I say the word?) "exotic" costumes, not to mention one of their first exhibits invited visitors to don a burqa so they could imagine what it's like to be entombed in such "Afghan oppression" (Yeah, please note that I did not bother to link to their home page). More recently, I'm reminded of Women for Women International, which is a worthy enough organization in raising awareness about women's struggles around the world, but must they perpetuate the "let's help those poor, poor, underdeveloped women in such backward countries" mentality?

One woman, so inspired by this mission (and by Oprah), especially in recent promotions of awareness of the recent rape epidemics in the Democratic Republic of Congo, has started her own campaign, Run for Congo Women, a marathon held today across the country for donations to women's aid in the region.

I link to these organizations because such causes do need our support, but while neither organization has bothered to articulate the kind of local Congolese feminism that exists - especially considering that it was local women on the ground (who alerted them and other news services to the crisis in the first place!), I think we need to think of ways to reframe how such women are positioned - not as helpless victims dependent on white or "developed" women over here but as powerful agents doing all they can to resist such oppressive forces and calling on those of us in privileged positions - whether in the U.S. or in Africa, middle-class or working-class - to join them in solidarity.

Western feminists, MUST WE ALWAYS ASSUME THE MISSIONARY POSITION? (If you resist it in sex, I certainly urge you to resist it in global feminist organizing!)


How about naming the actual feminist organizations in the Congo, who are working to create rape crisis centers and health clinics to address the needs of rape survivors and war refugees? Two such groups include the Association nationale des mamans pour l’aide aux déshérités
(ANAMAD, National Mothers’ Association to Aid the Dispossessed) and Mamans organisées pour le développement et la paix (MOADE, Mothers for Development and Peace).

How about naming important feminist individuals devoted to the region, like Rakiya Omaar, journalist and writer of several articles and books about genocide, and director of the African Rights organization?

This is not to just beat up on First World/Global North/Western feminism, for some groups do get it right occasionally. I'm thinking of MADRE, which addresses women's issues through the lens of human rights, and engage in various coalition-building and transnational partnerships with such "sister" organizations like Sudan's Zenab for Women in Development (with an increase in warfare violence and the targeting of women and children, both MADRE and Zenab are asking for Emergency Donations) and The Organization of Women's Freedom in Iraq (OWFI).

But for too many others, I feel the need to point out that we must decolonize our feminist view of the world. Asian American activist Joo-Hyun Kang asks the question: “How do we dismantle an empire?" I say we do this by first decolonizing our minds and looking at women around the globe as our equals who are doing their own feminist theorizing and practices from which we can both benefit if we shared equally in our knowledge on how best to address gender oppression - especially in its intersections with race, class, sexuality, nationality, and imperialism. Feminist theorist Ella Shohat suggests that we begin to build a "relational feminism," which "goes beyond a mere description of the many cultures from which feminisms emerge; it transcends an additive approach that simply has women of the globe neatly neighbored and stocked, paraded in a United Nations-style 'Family of Nations' pageant where each ethnically marked feminist speaks in her turn, dressed in national costume. To map resistant histories of gender and sexuality, we must place them in dialogical relation within, between, and among cultures, ethnicities, and nations" (Shohat, 2).


If we operated under this "relational feminism," I wouldn't have to be skeptical about plans for a UN women's central agency or the latest and greatest international women's campaign or museum that reproduces the "imperial gaze."

March 8, for me, means that we begin to dialogue across nations and across cultures (sometimes this is difficult since a U.S. neo-imperialist agenda does not encourage us to learn any other language outside of English) and that we complicate our discourses of gender through intersectional and globalized analyses.

I will end this post with a music video of a song that Marie Daulne, Congo-born vocalist and founder of the amazing Zap Mama vocal ensemble, collaborated on with Erykah Badu. Daulne, who is the biracial daughter of a Bantu mother and Belgian father, was forced in exile with the Pygmies in the rain forests of the Congo, during warfare in which her white father was executed in colonial independence struggles. Now living in Europe, Daulne has created music that pays homage to her Congolese roots (including a complex vocal styling from the Pygmy community, who are still viewed among other Africans in denigrating ways, most recently when a group of Pygmy musicians were relegated to a tent in a zoo last summer during a Pan-African music festival (please see this BBC news report because Words Fail!) . If you have never heard Zap Mama's debut CD, Adventures in Afropea, which interweaves African and European musical styles through a capella vocals, then you have been culturally deprived! Hurry up and get a copy, please! Daulne has since moved towards more experimental styles, especially hip-hop, hence her work with Badu in creating a neo-soul sound. What I like about their collaboration, "Bandy Bandy" from Daulne's Ancestry in Progress CD, is the way that they have created an African Diasporic dialogue through their love of music. May we all learn to collaborate in similar ways in politics, culture, education, and especially in new millennium movements.




Art by Roshini Kempadoo: first image ("European Currency Unfolds"), last image ("War of Position").

Citation in Ella Shohat, Taboo Memories, Diasporic Voices. Durham: Duke University Press, 2006.

Global Lockdown: Trapped in the Prison Industrial Complex

This post is a shout out to all those, women especially, in lockdown - a large number who have been criminalized because of their involvement in drug trade, sex trafficking, illegal immigration, racial profiling, and resisting situations of domestic and sexual violence.

I highly recommend Julia Sudbury's edited volume, Global Lockdown: Race, Gender, and the Prison Industrial Complex, which argues that "both the fabric of the prison and the people caged within it are shaped by global factors, from free trade agreements and neoliberal restructuring to multinational corporate expansion [i.e. creating the conditions that lead to drug and human trafficking, severe poverty, and violence]."

Here is also a You Tube video, dedicated to women in prisons, titled "Breathe" by Joseph Saito.

Breakthrough: Building Human Rights Culture through Feminist Perspectives

The next blog entries this week will build momentum for International Women's Day this coming Saturday (and also to provide some distraction from the latest Democratic presidential race news).

As an aside, when I anticipate celebrating women in global perspective, I think how different Clinton's campaign might have been had she focused on the potential for joining the ranks of the world's women where women leaders often run for office and ARE ELECTED to lead their nations (currently in New Zealand, Germany, Liberia, Chile, Jamaica, etc. and where countries like Rwanda have a majority of women in their parliament). Maybe use Chaka Khan/Whitney Houston's "I'm Every Woman" or Carly Simon's "Let the River Run" - a straight up gospel rendition, that is - snap shots of the women leaders who came before her and who's running the show today, and then add yourself as the next great hope. That would've been some powerful stuff (and something that could hold its own against Will.I.Am's awe-inspiring Yes, We Can). But what does she do instead? Play the Race card (and sacrifice a key population of women of color who will never vote for her again.) How different would that kind of campaign spin be, rather than take advantage of the increasingly racist ways that Obama has been projected of late - and don't tell me these recent negative racializations haven't helped her to win her recent victories in Ohio and Texas.

But, I digress. Below is the first music video produced by Breakthrough, an international human rights popular media organization based in India and the U.S., founded by Mallika Dutt, feminist lawyer and human rights advocate, called "Mann ke Manjeere."




In addition to music and videos, Breakthrough also utilizes animation, video games, video blogs, etc. to spread the word about such human rights issues as domestic and sexual violence, the HIV/AIDS pandemic, religious fundamentalism, and anti-immigration policies. They are simply phenomenal, especially in the way they demonstrate how all these human rights issues are decidedly "feminist" issues. "Mann ke Manjeere" is their first music video, which became popular in India, and it certainly makes me feel all hopeful and optimistic about women's possibilities (the video is dedicated to Shameem Pathan, who walked out on her abusive husband and started a "taxi" service in the country side, driving a big mac truck, to support herself and her daughter). Liberation indeed!

"E" is for Excellent! The Blogging Excellence Award

Thank you, Professor Zero, for rating my blog with the "E" Excellence Award for Academic Blogging (specifically for my work on the "Black Herstory" series). And now, in the tradition of memes and tagging, it's my turn to give a shout out to academic blogs that I think fits the bill. (For the purposes of this award, I am going to include here an "honorary" blog by a non-academic who is so worthy).

1. Professor Black Woman - as someone called her, the "Queen of Intersectionality," who maintains a variety of race-gender-class-sexuality issues and demands that bloggers not only think and write, but ACT and engage in real-world actions. I'm always linking back to her, so I need to definitely spread the love by naming her for this Award (even though she's already been recognized by others).

2. Rachel's Tavern - another academic blogger, who provides some fasinating and key insights into race-gender-sexuality issues as well. I especially credit Rachel for calling my attention to the Megan Williams case in West Virginia when the story broke last year.

3. Historiann - I discovered this amazing historian through a track back from my "herstory" series and am so in awe of the way she has popularized history and exposed its political workings through her blog. Much respect!

4. The "Honorary" Academic Blogger of Excellence: Black Women Vote! Shecodes is a non-academic, but she has been a revelation this year, and I admire her hard work in putting together this unique blog that's dedicated to the political education of black women from all walks of life. She has done this by creating a fascinating series called The Queenly Art of Political Warfare, using the game of chess as her metaphor and calling on all black women to take on the role of the "Black Queen" in chess to strategize for power, inclusion, and resistance. Absolutely phenomenal work. Shecodes is, at present, working on a manifesto based on this premise.

Wow, Saturday Night Live Hits a New Low with Their Recent Obama Cartoon

Please hurry up and go check out this SNL Obama cartoon, which aired on Saturday, March 1, 2008, before producers pull it from You Tube. You must be a witness! (And if you're too late, then you heard it here first.)

Do not miss how previous black civil rights leaders - Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton - have been reduced to inarticulate, sambo-like "Amos and Andy" types, while Obama himself is depicted as a sinister, overly articulate "New Negro" who is able to bamboozle the unsuspecting white crowd (read: voters). Do not miss the allusions to his "African" past: in Screamin' Jay Hawkins style, he will "put a spell on you."

Before anybody says, "Can't you take a joke," remember I had already stated on this blog this year that humor is the only space where racists can fully express their racial anxieties. I mean, who else but a racist would put a dog collar on a public black figure (and electrically shock him in such a way that his famously coiffed hair sticks out every which way like Buckwheat) and project this action on another public black figure?

What's Wrong With This Picture?

Got this one from What About Our Daughters and wonder how they could get the message so wrong. In creating ads against statutory rape, these Milwaukee PSA posters clearly missed the mark - both in failing to understand that pedophiles are attracted to underdeveloped bodies and in perpetuating racialized differences.

Notice the poster with the white child tells us explicitly how "wrong" it is to sexualize a little girl, but the poster with the black child tells us that "she may look like a woman," but her "brain" is not yet developed to think like a woman. Having already spent a whole month of Black Herstory and recently teaching on the subject of black women's images, I immediately recognize the hypersexualization implied in the "already grown" black woman-child plus the racist scientific arguments about our "underdeveloped" brains. See? Overdeveloped bodies, underdeveloped minds, all this PLUS some really creepy looking posters that miss the whole point of men who commit acts against underage girls. SMH.

Persepolis: The Graphic Novel and the Movie

Now that Women's History Month has begun, which I see as an expansion of my "Black Herstory" series, except moving beyond the African Diaspora, I want to highlight a movie I saw recently: the animation film adaptation of Marjane Satrapi's graphic novel, Persepolis, drawn by Satrapi herself. Because of her personal involvement, I found this brilliant film to satisfactorily capture the brilliant book.

Both the graphic novel and film illustrate the life story of Satrapi, an Iranian comic artist who came of age during the Iranian Revolution and the Iran-Iraq War in the late 1970s and 1980s. The first installment of the novel debuted in 2003. It was a timely story, in the wake of 9/11 and the Iraq War, and although it's easy to see how such a story - which was a bestseller when it came out - would be popular among Western audiences, Satrapi, who now lives in France, wanted to paint a different picture of Middle Eastern/West Asian communities that defied the usual stereotypes of Islamic fundamentalists and "oppressed burqua or chador-covered women." In fact, the first panel in the book presents the author-as-child and her nine-year-old view of “the veil,” which is satirized and emptied of its religious or even revolutionary meaning during the Iranian Revolution. In a sense, because Satrapi is herself critical of the “veil,” viewing it as both oppressive to women and antithetical to modernity and development, I can understand the popular embrace of the book by Westerners. However, the film, by contrast, is much more light-hearted about the enforced veiling and, instead, sharpens its criticism of Western intervention into the politics of the region. The visuals in the animation are absolutely stunning - in particular, one scene depicting a mass protest and the gunning down of innocent civilians is rendered through silhouettes: an abstract yet powerfully chilling scene all the same.

Both narratives are rendered in minimalist black-and-white drawings, so all the emotions are caught in the way Satrapi constructs a crooked line of the mouth or the roundness of a startled eye. I tell ya, when I tear up over some cartoon face's crumpled up lip line, that's simply genius! Yes, I cried reading and watching the film, although there were several comic scenes. My favorite humorous scene is when Satrapi falls in love for the first time and renders her beloved as this perfect Adonis with whom she rollicks in the grass and gazes at rainbows. When he betrays her with another woman, he's the grossest, nastiest-looking creature! Who hasn't been there?

The more poignant drama concerns the struggle to live life, to love, to dance, to party, to hold hands with your significant other, to stay close to your loved ones (who gets arrested and murdered under oppressive regimes - in the case of Marjane's beloved uncle - or who is forced into exile - in the case of Marjane leaving her parents and revered grandmother) while bombs drop and the state police enforce rigid policies. Because of such state and military oppression, it would be easy to read Satrapi's love for all things "Western" - punk rock and Michael Jackson "back when Michael Jackson was still black" (yes, like me, Marjane was a child of the '80s) - as a full embrace of Western policies and a complete rejection of her Iranian culture. However, it's all in the subtext: her full embrace of Marx and U.S. "enemies" like Fidel Castro and Che Guevara and the "children of Palestine" complicates her portrayal of the West, which is both a promise land and imperial nation. As PBW reminds us, it takes a decolonized mind to capture the nuances (which is definitely needed in reading this book and watching this film).

What is especially remarkable about both the graphic novel and the film is how these global scenarios unfold through the female body, especially through a precocious, all-knowing and rebellious female child, who is extremely political in her views. It is precisely her rebelliousness that causes her parents to send her to Vienna for safety, not just away from war but away from the threat of rape, were she ever to be arrested and imprisoned because she refuses to submit to enforced laws and cultural practices. Despite the distance that we often feel over here, hearing stories of war and terrorism, stories like Perspolis really bring these issues home and so personally. It's great to have the film version that breathes new life into stark and beautiful drawings.

If you're lucky enough to live near a theater that features art house, foreign-language films like this (it's in French), definitely do not miss it! (See trailer below):

Do They See What I See?: Teaching Visual History and Inadvertently Recycling Racism

Earlier this week, when I created some virtual postcards that reframed historical lynch photography to criticize recent comments that alluded to figurative lynchings of black public figures, a few of my commentators cautioned that it was risky to have these images circulating in cyberspace where anyone, especially racists, could use these images to reinforce white supremacy. Or, I was told that, by cropping the lynch photography to only focus on the lynched black body - while subsequently erasing from the scene the white mob that was responsible for the murders - I removed the historical, social, and cultural contexts that could show us how these gruesome acts were not the actions of a few demented individuals but encompassed the entire community since it was a communal and political activity. I think of this conversation because, two days ago, I was privy to how historical iconography can fail to "teach," as I had hoped to do, and instead, can cause contemporary viewers to react with the same kind of racism and misogyny as was intended in its original historical context. Here's what I'm referring to:

In my multimedia lecture for a class that explores racial history, I included derogatory "scientific" images of Africans and African Americans - images that pseudo "race" scientists used as a way to promote the imperialist projects of the nineteenth century. Some of these images included the scientific sketches made of Sara Baartman, the "Hottentot Venus," including the public displays included of her in scientific museums, as well as some of the 1850 daguerreotypes that depicted stripped down and naked black slaves - all created for the purpose of arguing for black people's "racial inferiority." Often, in showing these images, it helps students to visualize what that history meant and, worse, how such visual images have also shaped similar images that abound today. I often struggle about how to include illustrations of this history to students, but I always reason that, for teaching purposes, this is a history we should all know and that I shouldn't sugarcoat.

In the past seven years in which I've presented variations of this lecture, this is the first time that anybody reacted to these images with light-hearted jokes or with an analogy of these African women's histories and the issue of contemporary African women's genitalia (yes, one student thought that this was an opportune moment to remind everyone that there are women in Africa who suffer from "female genital mutilation" and that the nineteenth-century scientists were probably curious to find out if Sara Baartman experienced this). I looked at this student (woman of color, no less) and coldly asked: "What is your point? What does that have to do with nineteenth-century scientists trying to prove racial inferiority through the body of an African woman?"

She quickly shut up.

Because of this reaction, for the first time, I'm feeling very torn and even regretful that I showed any of these images, especially of Sara Baartman. I hope the joking that occurred was simply an attempt to find some kind of "relief" from this horrific history, that it's based on a reaction to discomfort or uneasiness or anxiety. I hope this is the reason and NOT that anyone found these images amusing.

I was so distressed that, after class, and a day later, I posted on our online classroom space, letting them know that I was disappointed in their reactions and that I had no intention of subjecting women like Baartman to 21st-century ridicule since she had experienced more than her fair share of said ridicule in the 19th century. So far, two students responded to this post: one from a white female student (who was not one of the "guilty" ones, mind you, who in fact recoiled in horror at the slide show presentation, but who is so plagued with "white guilt," I assume, that she immediately apologized for her "offensive behavior") and the other from a student of color (who was apart of the guilty crowd who laughed at the images but who was so sure that she was not the target of my post, since as a woman of color she couldn't have internalized racism, that she immediately thanked me for bringing up the subject because she too was "appalled at those students over there" who showed such insensitivity to such a brutal racist history - projection much?). Now that their black professor expressed her disappointment in them, they'll be showing up to class next week with their heads hanging in shame, no doubt.

I bring up this scenario because, for quite some time, I have found this visual history a useful pedagogical tool. Images are worth a thousand words, and they tell us more about a particular history than the most boring textbook. I guess I'm just wondering how a lecture that, up until now, was quite effective in conveying the evils and horrors of scientific racism, could now suddenly be treated not only in such a light-hearted manner but also with no questioning of the "science" that was applied to the images. There were students who looked at the images and didn't see the racism involved but, in fact, saw the message that those pseudo race scientists wanted to convey. I'm especially baffled and angry because their reactions made me feel like I was some pornographer trafficking "forbidden" images of black women (so many of the scientific subjects were women). Why did this group of students not recoil in horror?

Their reaction was akin to students reacting to lynch photography by asking: "Well, what exactly did that black person do to warrant getting strung up, castrated, mutilated, and burned up in a bonfire? S/he must have done something!" I know if I showed lynch imagery and I got that question from a student, I would pack up my stuff, tell my students, "I'm done teaching because you clearly cannot be taught," and promptly walk out of the room.

I need to debrief because we're not at midterm yet, and if my students truly "cannot be taught," then I'm only returning to the classroom for a paycheck, and I need a better motivation than that if I'm going to teach a course about racism. Moreover, I don't want to retire these images from my lectures because they are teachable, they do teach an important lesson about history (and even today), about how perceived racial and sexual differences were used to support and legitimate systems of power. But the people in scientific photography and sketches are real people (like Sara Baartman) whose integrity and selfhood, even though they are dead, are still worthy of protection. I am willing to use their portraits to teach, but the minute they get reduced, once again, to racial or sex objects, I must not circulate them again.

I just hope I have not ruffled the ancestors' spirits by exposing them to a bunch of insensitive, unteachable fools who, regardless of the so-called progress that 2008 represents, are very much in danger of repeating history's offenses because they do not know it, cannot comprehend it, and cannot respect it.