Women's Studies Lawsuit Gets Dismissed!

Columbia University's Women's Studies department was sued for discriminating against men. The judge did not agree.

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Tribute to Bea Arthur: TV Feminist Pioneer

Here is a lovely tribute to Bea Arthur (1922-2009) of Maude and Golden Girls TV fame, who passed away over the weekend.  This is from the blog Florida's Daughter:

I was a 12-year-old Black preadolescent growing up on the Southside of Chicago when Bea Arthur first entered my life - 5-feet-9 and deep-throated when I was being socialized to squeaky-speak.  I don't recall making the racial distinction, after all, this was during the era when positive Black television characters, female or male remained rarities.  I recall now that Maude Finley had a maid, Florida Evans, a take-no-shit Black woman with challenges and troubles of her own that were later portrayed in the sitcom Good Times (which left me with an entirely different perception of Blacks, women and men).

Nonetheless, much of who I am - an independent minded Black woman free to say and do as she pleases unrestricted most of the time by cultural and family dictates - is rooted in what I observed, and did not see on television.  Maude - outspoken, politically liberal, three times divorced, an advocate of civil rights, and a woman's right to choose - was my hero.  By the time the show left the air in 1978, I had been married two years and was expecting my second child, but not before submitting to two abortions; mirroring in my own life Maude's revolutionary decision to have an abortion in her late '40s.  

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Black Histories Series: Holocaust Remembrance and the Linking of Oppressions

One of the saddest things about these inept UN conferences on global racism is the inability to compare oppressions without reducing it to the usual "my oppression is worse than yours" madness that marginal people often use against each other.

Well, earlier this week was Holocaust Remembrance Day on April 21, and so the Black histories I wish to highlight concern making connections between this history and "black histories."

Annette von Wangenheim, a German filmmaker whose work explores performers during early 20th century Germany, made a documentary film, Pages in the Factory of Dreams, in 2002. It focuses on Afro-German actors living in the Weimar Republic and Nazi Germany and explores how they were used as extras in Nazi propaganda films that connected racism, imperialism, and anti-Semitism. 

Another project worth considering in the wake of these connections is the World is Witness project of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, which incorporates Google Maps and Google Earth to conduct a global genocidal watch.  Much of the focus is documenting present-day genocides on the African continent.

Earth Day and the Teaching of Environmental Justice

It's Earth Day 2009! Now that everyone is in an environmental frame of mind, I thought I would post some information on various resources we can use to teach environmental justice from an antiracist and anti-imperialist feminist perspective.

Books To Teach:
Earth Democracy by Vandana Shiva: a veritable connect-the-dots in oppression manifesto, in which Shiva calls for "a new way of seeing, one in which everything is not at war with everything else, but through which we can cooperate to create peace, sustainability, and justice in our violent and violable times" (p. 115).

All Our Relations by Winona LaDuke: a documentation of the different indigenous groups across the Americas, who connect Native land rights and struggle with environmental justice.

Unbowed by Wangari Mathai's inspiring memoir that reveals how one woman can start a movement, in her case the Green Belt Movement that sprang from her native Kenya, planting one tree at a time. Mathai is the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize winner.

Boundaries by Maya Lin: a minimalist and skillful art book documenting the work of Maya Lin, famed architect and designer of the Vietnam Veterans' Memorial Wall and Alabama's Civil Rights Memorial. Even with these monuments, the book illustrates the environmental consciousness Lin embeds in each of her stunning work - most notably the "Peace Chapel" and the "Wave Field." She also discusses her plans for a "last memorial," which is a satellite monitoring project over the most endangered areas on Planet Earth.

Films to Watch:
Empty Oceans, Empty Nets: a documentary film exploring the global fishing crisis.

Thirst: a documentary film exploring the global movement to resist the privatization of water.

The Naked Option: A Last Resort: a forthcoming documentary film exploring the 2002 protest of women living in the Niger Delta oil rich region, where they resisted environmental and cultural ruin in their standoff against Chevron-Texaco.

The Global Banquet: Politics of Food: a documentary film that explores the globalization of the world's food economy and world hunger.

Daughters of the Dust: Speaking of the politics of food, the banquet scene alone is worth watching in this classic feature film from 1992 by Julie Dash. This is a film that we don't often think of in terms of environmental justice, but watched from this perspective, one can appreciate the spiritual dimensions Dash captures in the sustainable environments offered when black people live off the land.

Antonia's Line: Another feature film that we don't necessarily think of in terms of environmental justice is this 1996 film by Marlene Gorris, which tells the story of a powerful woman raising her daughter and her subsequent matrilineal line on her farm in Holland.

Artists Who Raise Our Consciousness:
Judy Baca: Chicana feminist muralist and artist. Her Website.
Betsey Damon: Conceptual Artist and Founder of the Global Community Project, Keepers of the Waters.
Vijali Hamilton: Earth-based artist and designer of World Wheel Earth Mandala.
Praba Pilar: Conceptual and Performance artist exploring environmental and technological issues. Her Website.

Activists Who Raise Our Consciousness:
Majora Carter - founder of Sustainable South Bronx.
National Black Environmental Justice Network.

Pedagogy Project Possibilities:
- Start a Community Garden on Campus, or Collaborate on an existing community garden in the local area!
- Incorporate Google Earth or Google Oceans to monitor "trouble spots" pertaining to sustainability, world hunger, or endangered species.
- Create a Community Art Project highlighting nature or sustainability of urban life.
- Begin a Conservation of Energy Activity Sustained Over a Period of Time, one that has more lasting power than a simple 24-hour "turn off the lights day" or "boycott oil day," etc.

Happy Earth Day!

Birthday Blog Bash

Another year! :) 

or :(

And how cute is this?

Borders, Routes, and Redemption: My Review of Sin Nombre (Spoilers)

Bad boys are irresistibly attractive to good girls. Let me rephrase that: Bad boys with heart are irresistibly sexy, and what we have in the Sundance-debuting indie film, Sin Nombre (translation: "without a name"), Cary Fukunaga's first feature-length film, is a romantic portrait of the redemptive bad boy, Willy - aka El Casper (played by Edgar Flores) - a member of the fearsome and ruthlessly brutal Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13) gang.

I call it "romantic" because (Spoiler alert!) tragic ending aside, the film goes to great lengths to make Willy a truly sympathetic character, a lone rebel in a sea of dark and sociopathic violence. It is most insistent that we humanize this outsider. Our first shot of our tragic hero is as a sensitive and mostly tattoo-free cute face (with a solitary tear tattoo underneath his eye) gazing at a wall-sized picture of an autumn landscape. He is introspective and observes his world around him with a keen and concerned eye. He brings his girlfriend flowers and cries over her death at the hands of gang leader, Lil Mago (Tenoch Herta).

Contrast this image with Lil Mago, the tattooed-faced rapist-killer who has no illusions or romance except for absolute power and who has no qualms in initiating 12-year-old boys by training them to murder gang rivals and offering up the remains of the victims to his dogs. All while cradling a baby in his arms. This image is itself romantic. Lil Mago, with his baby in his arms, invokes the dual nature of the patriarch as destroyer and creator, and his tattoo-covered body is reminiscent of both the contemporary menace of gang life in Central America and the ancient memory of an Aztec or Mayan warrior.

Against this backdrop, Fukunaga parallels another story involving Sayra (Paulina Gaitan), a young Honduran who accompanies her father and uncle on a treacherous journey "El Norte" via freight trains. Sayra's father, who had been deported from America, attempts reentry and reunion with the American family he left behind in New Jersey. Needless to say, fate will join Sayra and Willy in their quest for freedom from poverty and violence.

While terrorizing the illegal immigrants atop the freight trains, Willy does the unexpected as he saves Sayra from rape. In one fell swoop, Willy is now a fugitive, on the run from the MS-13 brotherhood, and joins Sayra and her family on their journey to the U.S./Mexico border. Such a complicated narrative is told through sweeping shots of the Mexican landscape and telling dialogue that contemplates the nature of immigrant life in the wake of NAFTA and globalization. In more than one shot, we are shown references to the free flow of goods across borders (be they on freight trains or trucks) and the not-so-free flow of human beings (who are constantly hiding within these goods to cross borders). In one conversation, Willy and Sayra look up at the sky to see an airplane. Neither has ever flown in one, yet Willy tells Sayra he's seen the factory near the border where such planes are assembled (referring to the dozens of maquiladoras where much of our technology is produced). There are moments of beauty, such as the young indigenous Mexican children who toss up oranges to the immigrants on the trains - occurring right after they have passed the statue of the Virgin of Guadalupe atop a mountain - and moments of ugliness, such as other kinds of children who throw stones at them, or the gun battles between gang rivals, and the constant border patrol.

Through it all, Sayra remains faithful to Willy, her newfound hero, even abandoning her father and uncle to follow him. (My movie buddies thought this was absolutely ridiculous, but I said, "Nah. 1)he's cute; 2) he saved her from being raped - when neither her father or uncle could; and 3)he's a bad boy who seems redeemable.") Needless to say, since she is our virtuous heroine, she will triumph over all, and it becomes obvious that Willy will sacrifice himself for her salvation. These selfless acts offer a provocative narrative about competing masculinities, for in many instances, Willy is a rebel - not just in his outlaw status as an MS-13 gang member but also in his refusal to follow the rules of the brotherhood. This is not just a competition between machismo, based on macho violence, and respectable masculinity, in which he tempers the brutality with the heart. It is also a standard script of the only two forms of masculinity men have to follow: to either be a Protector or a Rapist. In choosing the former, Willy becomes the ultimate redemptive sinner.

In these ways, this "Underground Railroad" story offers nothing new in shedding light on these portrayals. However, it is a worthwhile and quietly contemplative film that attempts to give voice to many subalterns.

Once Again, the UN Global Conference on Racism Gets Derailed by U.S. Absence

Sigh. This is just tiresome.  In how many ways are we going to refuse to address racism in global perspective?  Back in 2001, the U.S. boycotted the conference because of objectionable language in which Palestinians denounced Zionism as a form of racism.  Then, September 11 happened, and everyone conveniently forgot about the efforts of the first World Conference Against Racism.

Here we are once again, eight years later, failing to move forward on this issue, with the U.S. repeating the same actions it did back in 2001.  When will we come to the table on this issue? SMH.

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Photograph: "Watering the Wall of Indifference" by Anomalous NYC.

More Interracial Portrayals: Movie Trailers

Ever notice when relationships between the races are explored, movies can portray them deeply, especially if the black friend is in a servile position?

Whereas, when the relationship between the races seems to involve the black middle class, it somehow fosters hostility in the most competitive, over-the-top stereotypical way? (Although I must confess: as unbelievably bad as this trailer seems, with its equally trite dialogue, I'm tempted to go see this. I get the impression this is going to be sooooo horrendous, it'll be campy good - the way Catwoman or Show Girls or Mommy Dearest were so-bad-they're good.)

Black Histories Series: Citizen Journalism and Ida B. Wells

An exhaustively long yet astute book, Paula J. Giddings's Ida: A Sword Among Lion, a thorough biography of Ida B. Wells, which debuted last year, is a worthwhile read. More than anything, it demonstrates to contemporary readers the effectiveness of what is called "Citizen Journalism," or grassroots journalism.

Citizen Journalism is based in community activism, in which the journalist is committed to investigative reports, fair media, and unbiased news coverage that benefits the community and spotlights social justice issues. Ida B. Wells, as revealed in Giddings's biography, was a superb investigative journalist, whose meticulous skills and critical questions led her to uncover the racially motivated killings that we now know as lynchings. It's important for us to know about this history, for it was Wells' work that helped us to even grasp the concept of lynching - let alone raise awareness of its occurrence and how communities could join together to protest these killings.

What is fascinating to me about Ida's story is how she too at first bought into the idea that somehow black men were more criminally minded than others and had wondered why so many of these "criminals" were resorting to mass rapes of white women, hence why they needed to be lynched. Until a good friend of hers became a lynch victim. It was then that Ida B. Wells became suspicious and started investigating past lynchings to uncover that many of the victims, lynched on trumped up charges of rape, were in fact targeted for various reasons motivated by racism. Some of the victims also turned out to be women and children.

Fearless and outspoken, Ida B. Wells used her Free Speech newspaper as a platform in which to broadcast these crimes and to raise awareness and offer suggestions for a community action plan - a plan that eventually became national, then international.

I raise the example of Ida B. Wells' citizen journalism today because I've been in communication with certain students who are interested in pursuing journalism careers while they also maintain activist ties within their communities. One student is struggling with how to raise awareness about the sudden growth of suicides among young black girls at a local high school and, more important, to question whether or not these suicides are, in fact, suicides. Another student wants to raise awareness of the growth in "raids" against immigrants in her community. She was a recent victim of this when a police officer attempted to interrogate her by asking her to "show her papers." When she answered him in English, he backed off. Apparently, many in her community who are without their green cards are terrified to walk the streets. How can she raise awareness of these issues?

How can such aspiring journalists transcend the silence around these issues, especially in an era when our information is truly global and travels at such high speed? What are the lessons that they can take from reading Ida B. Wells's biography? In light of our corporate media, or what I call Big Media, are they free to engage in the kind of investigative journalism that, when done right and done in the interests of the community, can spark a movement - indeed a revolution?

Hilarious Video

How cute is this? LOL! :D (htp djxox over at The David Chronicles).

Sex = Power = Money?

Yesterday, while reading The New York Times magazine and relaxing after a family Easter dinner, I came across an article exploring a website that matches “Sugar Daddies” with “Sugar Babies.” On such a site, 18 year olds with looks of a “supermodel” could brazenly request $10,000 a month from an available and interested “sugar daddy” who could offer the “finer things in life,” while some well-to-do 50 year old could offer to pay some young “sugar baby’s” college tuition – no strings attached, well, almost no strings attached.

Granted, I wish I knew at 18 to be so bold as to be asking some stranger somewhere in the world for $10,000 a month to keep up some lavish lifestyle to which I “have become accustomed.” But, what strikes me about these economic transactions are the way those involved – both sugar daddies and sugar babies – are absolutely insistent that this is not the equivalent of sex work. Of course, one college-aged woman put it this way: “When these sugar daddy relationships go the way I think they should go, the lines are pretty blurry between that and a typical boyfriend-girlfriend relationship…And when they go the way I don’t think they should go, the lines are blurry between that and sex work.”

I don’t wish to get trapped in some kind of debate about whether or not such relationships are the equivalent of sex work or not. We could go on and on about how all women in heterosexual relationships have learned to put a price tag on sex to get what we want – whether it’s the good little Christian girl who insists on the expensive gold wedding ring or the suburban housewife who learns to keep the hubby happy while getting her big house with the latest appliances or the adventurous 20something who negotiates whether or not she wants a couple of drinks or a lavish meal or an expensive weekend trip before going to bed with her date. At the same time, there’s something about being steeped in privilege that describes such women who are in a position to make certain choices versus another woman whose limited choices might have her negotiating whether or not she can say no to a client who insists on having sex without a condom, or whose limited self esteem might have her making similar choices with a boyfriend who has no regard for her sexual health.

Whatever your views on this subject, I am a little frightened that our sexual ethics have weakened to the point that we don’t know how to distinguish between a sexual relationship based on mutuality and respect and one that is based on power and control. As the economy worsens, and more people find themselves unemployed, or underemployed, we as women are going to face some hard choices and serious challenges. As a college professor, who only recently thought I was fine because I got tenure – only to now worry that, with higher education gradually losing their various resources, we may not find the job security tenure once promised – I have been discussing with various friends and colleagues what our skills might be and how we might market ourselves and our labor in a way that we can maintain our professions and our self esteem. As much as I’m still turning heads at my age, sex work was and is not an option for me. These past years in which I’ve been employed as a professional woman, I absolutely love the simple fact that I earn my own money and that I earn an income based on my intellect – not on my body. I cannot intellectualize “sex work” from some theoretical perspective, because the economic recession is going to force all women to evaluate what we’re willing to sell of ourselves and what we’re not. Ain’t nothing romantic about forced and widespread poverty, and because the majority of sex workers engage in such work to alleviate poverty, it’s time we complicate the feminist conversation about the sexual economy.

Mostly, I want to still have the choice to say “No” to sex work, whatever forms it may take. Because I know I’m not willing to do it – not for a sugar daddy and not for survival. This is no longer an issue of the “it’s all good” postfeminist philosophy that has argued from a position that sex work is empowering. If a younger generation of women have learned to put an expensive price tag on their bodies – whether it’s advertising for a “sugar daddy” or selling their virginity or even selling their eggs (and keep in mind such women have already started doing this when the economy was good) – what ever will they do when the economy gets really bad?

The day the majority of the world’s women are engaging in sex work for survival is the day we can truly declare that feminism is dead. And, unfortunately, this is becoming more and more ominous. I doubt that the feminists of the 60s and 70s had envisioned this future for women. More importantly, since we never did reach the goal of getting our housework and childcare paid for, and since more and more unemployed men are going to resent women in the workforce (especially if there is a prevailing ideology that, as long as sex work exists, that’s the only labor women should be getting paid for), we are definitely going to have to start complicating our conversations on this subject. I certainly know that whatever version of feminism I ever taught my students, I hope they at least will know to resist the temptations of the sexual economy. Money does not equal power. That’s a tenet of capitalism that the world is now learning does not work. Money is a trap. Money is an illusion of power.

And if money is illusory power, then any sex that relies on money for power is just as illusory and just as dangerous. Money may help us to survive, but if we can’t move beyond the material needs that it offers, then humanity as a collective won’t survive, let alone thrive.

Citation:

Padawer, Ruth. “Keeping Up with Being Kept.” The New York Times Magazine (April 12, 2009), 38-43.

Happy Easter!

Photograph: "My Easter Mosaic," by batsax.

The Soul Circus!

One of the things you definitely miss out on when you don't have kids is the circus. So, when visiting family in Brooklyn this weekend, I decided to accept an invitation to join my cousin and her children to the "Soul Circus."

Little did I know that the Universoul Circus is celebrating its 15th anniversary this year as the first and only African-American-owned circus traveling the world. Founded in 1994 in Atlanta, the Soul Circus boasts an international assortment of acrobats and various other circus entertainers and live animal shows - except their circus is done to an R&B/hip-hop beat. It's probably the only time I could boogie-down with all the children and their parents and guardians to the "new school" sound provided by Soulja Boy and Co. Oh yes, that's the operative word: boogie-down, as the "ring mistress," a Medea-like mammyfied "church lady" clown - more popularly known as "Ms. Maggie Shirley Lee Mae Frances Upshaw Jenkins" (played by Patrice Lovely) - and her sidekick, Lucky (a young homie who calls her "Auntie" and who is portrayed by South African Daniel Mitshula), invited the audience at various stages to participate in such "dance offs" as the Soul Train line. The audience was especially ecstatic over a contest between a "new school" couple and an "old school" couple (in which, naturally, the old school showed the young'uns how it's done - heh). And being that this show was in Brooklyn, the audience members were bold enough to volunteer their participation.

And while I couldn't shut down the intellectual side of my brain long enough to be perturbed by the prospect of a Mammy as Ring Mistress of a soul-based circus, or by the implication of the cage in the disappearing act of a magic show that transforms black women into tigers (a really cool spectacle, actually), I was just as awed as the kids by the death-defying stunts performed by the many acrobats hailing from China and Ethiopia and the Dominican Republic. I was especially pumped by the soca calypso that provided the soundtrack for the colorful troupe from Trinidad and Tobago whose mocojumbies (performers on stilts) got low enough to do the limbo dance. And the elephants actually out-diva'd Rhianna and Beyonce as they danced to their music! ha! But my favorite was a contortionist act by two young West African artists (top picture), who wowed the audience with spectacular and mind-blowing choreography - inspired as they were by the words of President Obama's election: "Yes, We Can!"

All in all, it was a fun day at the circus. They sure didn't have this around when I was a little girl.

Black Histories Series: Lalibela, Ethiopia

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This Good Friday, combined with my Black Histories series, I offer you this fascinating history of the ancient land of Lalibela, Ethiopia, an early Christian community. I first learned about this location on the History Channel's "Cities of the Underworld," which will be re-airing this episode on Saturday, April 11 (check your local listings).

How much do you know of the Ethiopian Church and Lalibela's sacred underground sites? Watch and learn!



See also Parts 2 | 3 | 4 | 5

Forgive Us Our Debts: It's Time to Expand the Movement

It's Holy Thursday, and tomorrow, many Christians will be preoccupied with the recreation of the Passion, which usually includes recitations of Jesus' last words on the cross. One of those last words were, "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do."

Despite our claims to secularism, I think we can argue that America is a very Christian nation. Yet, despite this, I find that we are a very unforgiving nation. Forgiveness, one of the main tenets of Christianity and a virtue Jesus clearly preached, is something we have a hard time with, yet forgiveness is what we absolutely need to practice if we are to move forward and climb out of this economic hole.

Since it's unlikely that former President George W. Bush will ever be brought up on charges for the inhumane crime of reducing the economic surplus he inherited to the worst economic deficit this country has faced in decades by the time he left office, I think we can say that, by default, President Bush has been "forgiven." And yet, every time we discuss the economy and consider the stimulus budget, I keep hearing conservative debates railing against individuals who were fiscally irresponsible, or liberal debates that would prefer to demonize Wall Street, shark loans, and the bank system.

Can we all just come to consensus and say: "Everybody screwed up." And even if you're not part of that "everybody," because you were the responsible one trying to balance your checkbook and write off your debts, when can we move forward and say, "we," the collective WE messed up, and we need to start anew?

There is a global movement to cancel the Third World Debt, and I think it's time the U.S. gets on board with it. But, more importantly, I think it's time we make the movement local and demand that our government CANCEL OUR DEBTS.

Seriously. Whether you were responsible or irresponsible, whether you were an individual or a corporation, can we move to CANCEL THE DEBT?

Because this is what I see. I see President Obama pushing forward a very promising economic stimulus package, and let's face it: our economy needs stimulation. But guess what? You can't stimulate an economy when you're in debt! There's a wonderful federal initiative right now to give out a tax break to first time home buyers. Why? Because the government wants to stimulate the housing economy, which is in a hole.

But guess what? If your credit report is bad, and many people already have foreclosed homes, and if you just got laid off and can't afford to take on a mortgage, not a lot of people will be able to take advantage of this housing stimulus initiative. How is this going to get the housing economy out of the hole?

There are now awesome deals on new cars. Why? To help our auto industry get out of its hole. Do you know how many people I keep bumping into who are salivating at the prospect of such a deal but can't take advantage of these attempts at stimulation because they just lost their jobs! Again, how is this helping our economy?

This is really becoming cyclical. My state has just decided to not give any stimulus money allotted for education to higher education, which means no funding for students, impending job cuts for faculty and staff, and retrenchment of various departments and units. In short, a reduced university that was already "in ruins." What is the point of higher education for students? Unless that is the point: cut out the need for an intellectual population by only making available blue-collared jobs for the badly needed reconstruction of our infrastructure, and those jobs undocumented immigrants were doing (hence the anti-immigration wave to discourage this influx of new arrivals). The way things are going, only the elite will be able to afford college now, and the middle class will surely be cut out of this plan, not to mention there will be no upward mobility for the working classes if 1)there are no funds or scholarships for college, 2)there are only student loans for college, if even this, and 3)there are no jobs requiring higher degrees, hence the cutting out altogether of the middle class, only leaving the few elite and the poor masses.

If this is the nefarious plan - enforcing poverty which is easy to do since we are already a debtor nation - then I hope we're all ready to start a revolution. However, since our leaders all ran their political campaigns as if they seriously wanted to protect the middle class, then all folks in or aspiring to middle class status need to make some hardcore decisions now. One of these, I believe, is a movement to cancel our debts.

All these stimulus economic programs sound promising, but if the rope that our government is offering as a life line is too short to reach many of us in the hole, then it's pointless and will do nothing to break the cyclical pattern of indebted, unemployed masses who are in no position to "stimulate" the economy. If the government wants to reach us in the hole, they need to start drilling - not tossing down short ropes to reach us. Canceling the debt - our mortgage debt, our student loan debt, our credit card debt, our business debts - is a serious declaration that our nation is ready to do some drilling and restructure the landscape because a new landscape is not only necessary, it's inevitable.

We must draw on that fundamental principle of forgiveness if we are to move forward in any progressive way. Let us wipe the slate clean and stop quibbling over which of us were responsible and which were irresponsible and which of us got greedy and which of us were victimized, and just cancel the debt. If we could move forward on this, I'd be more than happy to forgive the debts of our former president since he clearly "knew not what he did."

Interracial Spectacle: Thoughts on Power Dynamics

I must confess. I have not forgiven Justin Timberlake for the part he played in the Janet Jackson Superbowl Affair back in 2004. Especially since I vividly remember how Janet bore the brunt of the scandal, while Justin's white male privilege allowed him to avoid the most intense scrutiny of this incident and to also abandon Janet Jackson without any repercussions - even though it was Justin who undressed her, accidentally or not. I have not forgotten that, while Janet was discouraged from attending the Grammy's a week later, Justin was in attendance accepting awards and apologizing for the incident as if it were all a joke, or that over time news anchors started referring to the Superbowl incident as "when Janet Jackson exposed herself" (subsequently erasing the presumed-to-be-innocent white hand that violently ripped a piece of her bodice to expose her already-guilt-ridden black breast).

So, it is with this scandal fresh in my hand, even fives years later, that I come to Justin Timberlake's latest interracial spectacle. This time, he is featured in Ciara's music video for their current song, "Love Sex Magic."



I find it fascinating that, like Janet before her, Ciara is on the receiving end of many of the disparaging remarks in which she has been called "slut," "ho," "whore," and other epithets by various You Tube commenters. Or, in the case of an intriguing discussion over on Racialicious, Andrea Plaid challenges us to read Ciara as a black woman with agency - despite the problematic opening in which Justin pulls on what appears to be a dog chain around Ciara's neck - and specifically one whose fantasy might engage in "race play" and "BDSM," especially since some comments, presumably from a black audience, have resorted to a convenient view of black female submission and white male dominance. Whether we view Ciara as the "video vixen" or the "victim" or the "powerful black woman" exercising free agency in acting out her BDSM fantasy, I want to know what we call Justin Timberlake. Other than the "funky white boy" appropriating black music and black female bodies for "street cred." What power dynamics are being reinforced here?

My problem with "Race Play" arguments is that, in the privacy of your bedroom or in the privacy of your little group orgies, I don't care what you're doing with others as long as nobody is getting hurt. If you're white and you want to enslave somebody black because it gets you off (and there is consent), or if you're black and you want to be enslaved for the same reason (and again, there is consent), or if you want to do some role reversal, whatever! But, outside of the little BDSM role play thing, in mainstream pop acts, these bodies get read in the most conventional sense. More importantly, in mainstream arenas, certain bodies get penalized more than others. These realities, at least to me, are some reasons why I can't "fantasize" some kind of "race play" where I'm in the subordinate position in an interracial relationship. I live that reality all the time!

And while the Perverted Negress might acknowledge that "my vagina isn't interested in uplifting the race," such self-gratifying expressions that whatever gets you off is all good ignores the many ways that, historically and even today, black vaginas have been used to oppress the race all the time. (i.e. - institutional rape used to produce a free labor supply of slaves, or Sara Baartman's genitalia floating in a jar of formaldehyde fluid at a scientific museum, used to confirm African people's inferiority, or the forced sterilization of black women to control populations of undesired black children - I could go on). Which isn't to say that our vaginas must engage in the flip side of such oppression - the repression of our sexualities to serve some ideal of racial uplift - but can we please acknowledge that our bodies are political, that the personal is political, and in a larger context, certain performances get read through the lens of unequal power relations (such as a white man spanking the butt of a black woman, which would elicit a very different response from a black man spanking the butt of a white woman, or if the spectacle were intra-racial)? I mean, somewhere in all our fantasies, can we grasp what freedom really means and whether or not freedom can exist when we internalize oppressive thought and behavior? In this climate of economic oppression, we clearly don't think it's okay for greedy capitalists to subjugate many into poverty. Yet, if we go by a BDSM/"race play" ideology, this type of behavior is "all good," as long as it gets you off and as long as the impoverished person consented (and many did through misguided attempts at aspiring to wealth, thanks to internalized classism). See what I mean?

Can we accept this economic rationale? And, if we can't accept that ethic in the context of our global economy, why do we accept this in our sex play? Former black stripper Jocelyn Taylor once stated in her essay, "Testimony of a Naked Woman," that "I finally realized that I wasn't going to find my sexual liberation in a Mafia-owned strip joint." How can Ciara find hers in a music industry fueled by corporate interests that cater to the bottom line in a market that has cultivated a porn culture shaped by capitalist and racist misogyny?


What is so "edgy" about seeing Justin slipping his finger down Ciara's butt when we had already seen him tearing off Janet's top while outraging the American public with this spectacle of interracial desire and a black woman's nipple (talk about "shock and awe")? What exactly is subversive in seeing Ciara wearing a zebra-print body suit while she's in a cage? Apart from the legacy of scientific racism that equated black bodies with animals or that reduced women like Sara Baartman, the Hottentot Venus, to perform in one, or just as horrific, the holding pens of African slaves, there is the present-day reality of mostly black men and women locked up in cages, which we call prison cells. In the past decade, when black women's incarceration rate increased 500 percent, I have a difficult time seeing the "liberation" of a cage. At least when Grace Jones did this nearly 30 years ago - when she appeared on the cover of her ex-husband artist Jean Paul Goude's Jungle Fever - she was doing so with a certain pastiche. Willfully playing with racial stereotypes and playing to queer identities of the disco era, Grace Jones's "animal in a cage" performance, replete with raw meat, was consciously toying with the ways her dark-skinned, androgynous body got read.

Why do I get the impression that, in today's climate of corporate-controlled media, neither Ciara nor Justin was trying this hard to mess with our ideas about race? Except in the most superficial ways of course - some mild BDSM (the chain yank, the butt-spanking) and naughty boy finger slips. This is perhaps the most banal representation of the same old gender roles and a tired, centuries-old trope of "race play." Can we get a new script already?

Seeing the Light: Some God-Talk to Begin Holy Week

I can't explain it, but the ending of atheist Carl Sagan's Contact (the novel, not the film) left me with an unlikely feeling of spiritual awe. The agnostic, everything-must-be-proven astroner, Ellie Arroway, embarks on a nearly impossible scientific experiment - to uncover the mystery of pi. It's an idea that gets into her head after traveling to a galaxy far, far away where some extraterrestrial (disguised as her earthly father) tells her that 1) "we are not alone" and 2) the universe was deliberately designed, that it didn't just randomly spring out of chaos, and that the proof was in the number pi.

One fine day, when her computer spits out a series of 1's and 0's, in its calculation of "pi," she discovers in the mathematical equation a perfectly formed circle. Out of this randomness was a deliberate order, and remarkably, it was the exact equation that she needed to "experience" God. Strange as it seems, reading this mathematically steeped novel (and I absolutely hate Math, mind you), I found the description profound. It was no less profound than that one moment in the movie version when Jodi Foster's Ellie catches a glimpse of the universe and realizes that, if she were to be a "witness" for the rest of Earth's citizens, she was rather unqualified.

"Poetry!" she exclaimed. "They should have sent a poet! It's so beautiful, so beautiful, so beautiful..."

And, just like that, you have to agree with her. In the film version, the narrow-minded NASA and government folk insisted that a bunch of scientists and astronauts, who would be familiar with space travel, should be the most qualified people on earth to journey to the stars and report back to the masses. Ellie Arroway's woefully limited vocabulary to describe her vision of the universe demontrated that, yes, a poet, an artist, should have witnessed for the rest of us.

So, I'm bringing up science fiction in a post on god-talk because I find it fascinating that our sci-fi and speculative fictions are often the materials exploring divine mysteries and spiritualities in our secularized world. Religious discourse has become much too dogmatic, so there is no genuine freedom to engage in god-talk. It was that clunky sci-fi movie, Sunshine (directed by Danny Boyle and starring Cillian Murphy), that ends with our main character reaching out to touch the sun's surface as he is then engulfed in eternal light. It is not unlike another recent sci-fi movie, The Fountain (directed by Darren Aronofsky and starring Hugh Jackman), where our main character journeys to the star Xibalba and then gets swallowed up in its light, transformed as he is in death, which is "the road to awe." Both films, it goes without saying, draw from the ultimate spiritual sci-fi movie, Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey, except that film does not end with its hero engulfed in light but rather, reborn in the blackness of the mysterious black monolith that reappears throughout the film. Whether the point of any of these films is the exploration of alien intelligent life or the triumph (and failures) of science and technology, the goal is always - God, I'm looking for you! Can you give me some kind of proof of your existence?

I don't care how atheist or agnostic the science is supposed to be, that has been the point all along, and the fact that science and technology have to be used to explore this basic question just goes to show that, in Western secular culture, many have lost their way.

Last week, in my graduate seminar on black feminisms, one of my students - an international student from China - remarked that she was suprised by the level of spiritual god-talk that many of our black women writers and theorists engaged in. And that in her philosophical background, you just don't question anything beyond the material world - or rather, the assumption is that the material world is all there is. I responded back to her that, in African Diasporic cultures throughout the world, we don't go by this philosophy because our cosmological worldview has always included a belief that our material world has a spiritual twin - that there is a different plane or dimension, and our ancestors and our gods dwell there. There is no questioning of this basic "fact" because it just is. In fact, when our ancestors traveled across the Atlantic in that horrific journey called the Middle Passage, the orishas did not abandon them (continue on into this present generation, actually) and when some deliberately committed suicide, they were not ending their life in some dark, unihabitable abyss. They were simply trying to get back to "Guinea" (Africa, the motherland). Our African ancestors (including those in ancient Egypt) looked up at the night sky and saw God, not simply in the billion stars that filled the sky, but in the blackness that surrounded them (the dark matter that modern scientists would later discover as black holes).

The only reason why Western, Judeo-Christianized secular culture would discount such spiritual worldviews is steeped in white supremacist thinking in which "primitive" peoples and cultures are constructed as antithetical to a modern, secular worldview without superstition and myths. Except, of course, when said Westerners are suddenly feeling lonely or sick or something, and then they travel to the "Orient" in search of Buddhism or some other Eastern spirituality to give "meaning" to their lives.

Nevertheless, they tend to stay away from African spiritualities because Vodun, Santeria, and Candomble scare the living daylights out of them, perhaps because African spirituality requires complete surrender to higher powers (although East and South Asian spiritualities teach the same principle, practices like yoga still manage to make the spiritual journey "all about me"). Spiritual possession is a scary thing to someone who believes that the individual must always be in control. Not to mention that our African orishas don't always behave "benevolently," as we expect of God, even though Her/His world and universe fluctuate between benevolence and violence all the time.

So, I raise the specter of the divine in this post because I'm always curious about how we can engage in god-talk intelligently, even though I'm an academic and tend to be surrounded by other academics who question your credentials when you say you still go to church or that you believe in God. Just as in Black Diasporic cultures (and I think I can include indigenous American cultures too), there is just an acceptance that God is (notice the difference - this is not "there is a God" belief but a simple belief that "God is"), in a secular culture, this equation is followed with a question mark. Why is it that, in some cultures, this must be questioned, versus in other cultures, where "God is" is just as natural as "Earth is" or "Wind is" or "Water is"?

When did we lose that concept in Western, Judeo-Christianized secular culture? Perhaps when Europeans were busy colonizing all the God-worshiping peoples of the world, which also perhaps required that white people eventually abandon God to "become god" while establishing global white supremacy? I mean, it didn't take much for Victorian scientists to proclaim white people were just "below the angels" while black people were just "above the apes." A rather Luciferian development of superiority, don't you think?

And even when Christianity was used to colonize the world, those of us who were colonized found ways to create hybrid forms of our worship and our spiritual beliefs. Perhaps because, in its origin, Christianity was a faith of the oppressed and the colonized, and at its core is the politics of decolonization. One time, when visiting a friend in Albuquerque, we went into a cool art shop with all kinds of amazing art work and religious relics. The Native owner spoke to us about the different healing powers embedded in certain objects, and as women of color who all practiced some version of Christianity, our conversation flowed naturally as we acknowledged both Christian doctrine and the indigenous spiritualities passed down from our elders. And there were no questions whatsoever about the truth in what the owner was telling us.

Last week, that same friend of mine was on the phone with me for hours, talking about religion and the meaning of life, and she worried about a gay friend of hers who had repressed his sexual desires to lead a "good Christian" life. She worried about what this friend, who had denied who he was for so long, would find at the end of life. The question turned to Heaven and Hell, and what would await us, especially those who 1) denied the existence of God or 2) denied who they were just to accept God in their life. Something seemed amiss in either worldview.

Scientists have already "explained away" the "near-death" experiences shared by some who survived, in which they all described seeing a light at the end of the tunnel, by stating that our brain cells are still emitting signals even after a person dies and that the light at the end of the tunnel is a metaphorical representation of that "crossing over" into death. However, since no one has returned from the great beyond to tell us what happens once someone has joined that light, science can't solve this puzzle either.

The Buddhists believe that, when one dies, there are two sources of light one encounters - a very bright light and a lesser light. Because the brighter of the lights shines so brightly, many are afraid of it, so they often choose the lesser light. The lesser light leads them back into "this" life, and so reincarnation begins. However, if one chooses the brighter light and is unfraid of it, that is the state of Nirvana. Perhaps in a Judeo-Christian worldview, the lesser light is "hell" or "limbo" and the brighter light is "heaven." Or, as my friend said over the phone, if hell is simply "the absence of God," and heaven is the "presence of God," then isn't joining that bright light source simply an opportunity to join God, hence the sci-fi versions of being "engulfed in light"?

All I know is, it's Easter week, and Jesus preached "I am the light of the world." If religion is school, where we receive our spiritual education, then at some point, we graduate (but at what point?) and use that learning to prepare us through life and beyond. If spiritual education is a tool to recognize the light source at the end of our lives so that we're not afraid to join it, then I do worry about those who reject such education altogether or, in the case of my friend's gay friend, limit their education. And even in this discussion, I've learned to think in dualities; if there is a way to move beyond dichotomous thinking, perhaps our god-talk can create a discourse of "God is" in such a way that theists and atheists alike can begin to embrace a common worldview. After all, God is too mysterious and too beyond the limitations of consciousness to embody a sense of either "God is" or "there is no God."

In a world of encroaching darkness, I hope we can keep our hearts, minds, and souls open enough to recognize the light in our lives and after. Perhaps our artists, poets, prophets, and elders can point the way.

Black Histories Series: Anniversary of the Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr.

April, my birth month, is unfortunately also a month of anniversaries of various tragedies: Virginia Tech (Apr. 16), Columbine (April 20), and the Oklahoma City bombing (Apr. 19), among others. Now, we must add the recent mass shooting that occurred yesterday at an immigration service center in Binghamton, New York (in yet another shooting spree incident during these dark times of economic recession and hopelessness).

Relating to Black History is the assassination of the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. on April 4, 1968. In an era when digital technologies are fast erasing our most recent histories, I must commend YouTube users for recognizing the site as a potential repository for video archiving. Below are related video footage concerning this anniversary:

King's last speech on April 3, 1968:



Walter Cronkite "breaking news report" on April 4, 1968:




Footage from King's Funeral, 1968:




A documentary on the Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr (part 1 of 8 episodes):




Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8

Watch when you have some down time, and learn. Learn especially that it is dangerous to speak the truth, but also necessary if justice is to strive.

April is Sexual Assault Awareness Month

I received an email today informing me of a pretty nifty resource site for songs highlighting issues of domestic and sexual violence: Creative Folk

Here are some other worthwhile songs/music videos worth teaching or using to raise awareness:

Eve and Faith Evans' "Love is Blind"

Ashanti's "Rain on Me"

Breakthrough's "Babul"

In the genre of country music, there is Martina McBride's Independence Day.

There's also developing public forums on campus to address the Chris Brown and Rihanna situation, as my campus did a few weeks ago (but make sure you include on such panels a number of experts and service providers involved in the anti-domestic violence movement, lest you want the discussion to deteriorate in ignorance).

Tributes to John Hope Franklin

In light of the recent passing of pioneering historian, John Hope Franklin (1915-2009) - an important scholar who helped shape African American history and scholarship - here are some thoughtful words from black public intellectuals:

Henry Louis Gates, Jr.

John Hope Franklin: The Prince Who Refused the Kingdom (oy, Skip - I mean, really!)

Mark Anthony Neal

The Living Link That Expired