“Antiblackness is a gateway drug”
—Professor Tricia Rose @ UCLA Law Review Symposium “Overpoliced and Underprotected: Race, Gender, and Criminalization” (via abolitionista)
January 2012
56 posts
“and then there’s those times at the coffee shop when i want to lean over to the people next to me and say, “shut the fuck up. or at least lower your voice.” while thinking in my head, ‘white love makes me nauseous.’ and i silently hope this post is large enough on my screen that they can read it if/when they glance over. and i wish i didn’t lose that sticker to put on my laptop that said ‘BLACK LOVE IS REVOLUTIONARY’ so they can awkwardly stare at it as they stroke each others hands…
or what became of a lament of a black queer in a coffee shop.” —
or what became of a lament of a black queer in a coffee shop.” —
reflection.
Betye Saar, The Liberation of Aunt Jemima, 1972
* i once brought in a box of aunt jemima pancake mix to a Black Student Union meeting to remind the people… Mammy still exist. we watched clips from Marlon Riggs’ “Ethnic Notions” and discussed Black stereotypes and media representations. in effort of driving the point across about consumptions of Blackness, i hosted a pancake dinner immediately following the BSU meeting. at that dinner i posed to my community, ‘perhaps its not that we boycott these products, because i do find this particular mix of pancake delicious, and what products don’t have the blood history entwined in its creation? but perhaps the scary thing is we consume and consume, without knowing, or choosing to forget, the blood history. what if we engaged that history, which we consume in the present? what would we do? what if we stopped consuming Blackness? what would we do with our time?’
this was set against a climate where our university dining commons found it appropriate to serve chicken-n-waffles on martin luther king day.
but perhaps we are waiting for mammy to liberate herself, and bring the rest of us along? i don’t know. eat your pancakes, and shut up.
“…im a cook in the kitchen asking the misses to taste the dinner, take a long long sip, cuz death ain’t always this good…” -Sunni Patterson
I learn something every time you post. Sometimes I can't believe I get to read your stuff without having to pay for an anthology or a JSTOR subscription or something. Your writing is truly awesome, makes me miss writing papers! Thanks for taking the time to share it.
thank you. i write in hopes of inspiring others to write, tell their stories, live their lives, and protest the conditions of the institution. im really happy i’ve found this medium to share my thoughts and engage in conversation. the stuff i work on that is not on tumblr though, mmmm, that stuff is good, really good :) and i hope it gets into anthologies and on jstor one day, or at least gets me into grad school. haha, to quote JoJo (by way of @abolitionista) “i wanna doctorate, and still be rockin’ it” and i hope i dont run out of steam before i enter back into the academy. but for now, im really happy sharing here, on tumblr, self-publishing in a sense. its really good for me right now. and i hope your “miss” for writing papers turns into you, writing papers again.
lets write ourselves into a renaissance for the revolution.
peace&light…
Carrie Mae Weems, Ain't Jokin series, 1987-1988
Carrie Mae Weems is one of my favorite artist (if not my favorite; I constantly go back & forth between Weems, Adrian Piper, Lorna Simpson, Glenn Ligon, and Gordon Parks, then rest happy that I never really have to choose). Weems’ “Ain’t Jokin’” series (1987-1988), has long been one of the most intriguing bodies of work for me. Broadly, I am interested in the pairing of photography and language, and Black artist uses of stereotypes. I like to think through the lines of where artist utilize stereotype, and/or are consumed by stereotype. And further, how do we as viewers consume the work, particularly Black viewers as spectator and subject.
In “Ain’t Jokin,” a series of portraits are paired with culturally explosive language. However, I would argue the explosion, that act of political incorrectness or confrontation of stereotype, is not found in the act of the pairing. Weems has not invented themes outside of the cultural imagination, but rather documented a specific cultural certainty in a rather easy aesthetic. “BLACK MAN HOLDING WATERMELON” and “BLACK WOMAN WITH CHICKEN” beg the reader/viewer to locate, what is wrong with these pictures? Whereas the inanimate objects, chicken and watermelon, should be simply food, the inclusion of Black subjectivity, blurs the line between the animate and inanimate—rendering neither Black woman nor Black man, and further chicken nor watermelon, the sole subject of the work. We are left meditating on the cultural significance of ‘Black man holding watermelon’ and ‘Black woman with chicken.’ What makes this seemingly simple portrait, culturally explosive?
The most chilling photographs in the collection are the two surrounding notions of Black identity and whiteness. Where the two meet, confront a hopes of coexistence, and ultimately destroy clear cut containments. A Black woman searching a mirror for validation, which would presumably hold her own reflection, reminds her of social standards of beauty. What is Weems’ saying about the Black psyche? Where do notions of Black beauty go when consumed by the violent entrenchment of whiteness? Within the mirror we find a racially ambiguous woman, which we are led to believe is speaking, “snow white you black bitch, and don’t you forget it.” What is the possibility of this being a conversation between two Black women? Or a Black woman with a lighter skinned-self? A white imago, despite a search for validation of beautiful Black self? Amidst this crisis self-determination and validation, a small boy struggles with identity in combating generational narratives of progress. Though she is not pictured, the mother of this child bears the brunt of the viewers consumption just as much as the child pictured. And this is the power of language paired with Weems’ portraits. “WHEN ASKED WHAT HE WANTS TO BE…,” comments on stereotypes surrounding the Black family, while harkening on the “absent/useless Black father” and the “Black matriarch” (pace Moynihan Report). With the abysmal circumstance of being born Black, what better option is there than to be white? What is brought to light by Weems is the process in which this cultural norm (the normativity of whiteness) is institutionalized. What is our response to this child? Where do we resonate and/or become repulsed by his mother? What sense do we make of his logic when put in conversation with the Black woman and her mirror?
And finally, set with the above mentioned photos are two portraits of perhaps what bell hooks’ speaks of as ‘oppositional gaze.’ However, Weems’ captions have every bit to do with the documentation of resistance within the photograph. ‘White patty don’t shine’ despite being the ‘finest of them all,’ and our little Black girl is armed for battle to prove these ends.
The Black man on the porch, and the Black girl with boxing gloves sternly challenge the gaze of the camera, more than any of the other Black subjects captured in Weems’ “Ain’t Jokin’” series. Is this the place where we are to locate resistance, despite the possibility of consuming and being consumed by stereotype? This work is remarkable in its ability to conjure what we know, think we know, and don’t want to know about Black people. And that is the scary thing, because perhaps that means we know far less than what we think. Which truly begs the question, “What are three things you can’t give a Black person?”
Carrie Mae Weems, thank you, thank you, thank you. ashe.
______________________________________________________________
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WHAT ARE THREE THINGS YOU CAN’T GIVE A BLACK PERSON?
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LOOKING INTO THE MIRROR, THE BLACK WOMAN ASKED, “MIRROR, MIRROR ON THE WALL, WHO’S THE FINEST OF THEM ALL?” THE MIRROR SAYS, “SNOW WHITE, YOU BLACK BITCH, AND DON’T YOU FORGET IT!!!”
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WHEN ASKED WHAT HE WANTS TO BE WHEN HE GROWS UP, THE BLACK BOY SAYS, “I WANT TO BE A WHITE MAN CAUSE MY MAMA SAY, ‘A NIGGER AIN’T SHIT.’”
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BLACK MAN HOLDING WATERMELON
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WHITE PATTY, WHITE PATTY, YOU DONT SHINE, MEET YOU AROUND THE CORNER AND BEAT YOUR BEHIND
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BLACK WOMAN WITH CHICKEN
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Is This Love
Bilal
Bilal, “Is This Love” (Bob Marley cover)
'L' train flirting goes a little something like this...
- cute boy: (sits down next to negrosunshine)
- negrosunshine: (maybe i should talk to him? but what do i say without sounding crazy or thirsty or non-hitting on him, just in case he is not gay. no hate crime today, please.)
- cute boy: (reaches in backpack and pulls out a large red Family Law book)
- negrosunshine: (glances over unimpressed, but intrigued)
- cute boy: (smiles at negrosunshine)
- negrosunshine: (smiles back)
- cute boy: (reaches in backpack and pulls out macbook to check something)
- negrosunshine: (closes eye-lids to roll eyes. who uses a laptop on the 'L'?)
- cute boy: (puts laptop away [perhaps felt negrosunshine's disapproval]. opens book to chapter four, "marriage contract")
- negrosunshine: (smiles, yet still unimpressed)
- cute boy: (turns Drake on, on his iphone)
- negrosunshine: (smiles, reaches into his bag, pulls out M. Jacqui Alexander's, Pedagogies of Crossing, turns to most highlighted and underlined page)
- cute boy: (stares curiously at the book)
- negrosunshine and cute boy: (smile at each other)
- phone vibrates on the seat between negrosunshine and cute boy
- negrosunshine: (glances down at cute boy's iphone, it reads "Chris boo<3")
- cute boy: (looks at negrosunshine)
- negrosunshine: (turns away, shakes head, and begins to read)
i generally fear for the state of things as this Black history month approaches
with any and everybody non-black walking around muttering ‘niggas in paris’ freely and feeling comfortable with themselves cuz ‘in paris’ is at the end, plus Republicans resorting back to reaganesque ‘welfare queen’ rhetoric, The Help in the Oscar race, and charges of “racism” on ‘Shit White Girls to Black Girls’ being held as legitimate and news worthy…
i feel as though February 2012, will be twenty-nine days of fuckery.
keep your head on a swivel. stay woke. shit may get real, like 3-D real.
“come get free with me, or die in your living”
—
reflection.
i was presented with two options today:
1) white liberal woman from northern california who talked to me about her “white guilt” (her words not mine) while i stood in line for a cheeseburger. that topic was prompted by me greeting and conversing with the woman emptying the trash in what little spanish i knew. white liberal woman from northern california found it so refreshing i talk to “them” (her words not mine). (context for my conversation in spanish: i’ve talked to this woman multiple times and knew spanish was her primary language. i don’t just walk up to latin@-looking folk talkin’ spanish. i’d be just like the white woman talking to me about her guilt).
2) white conservative woman from the mid-west, upon overhearing that i like to read, she announced, “i don’t really read much, but i do go to book clubs. not really to read, but to drink wine.”
needless to say i went with option number two and joked about how ‘i too hate hearing other peoples opinions’ (lol!) and how milk is a disgusting concept when one really thinks it through: who was the first person to look at a cow and say, ‘hmm, that white stuff squirting out of it might be good’ (no queer male fantastical pun intended). i may or may not have freaked her out a bit when i picked up a kate spade and said “think this will be cute on me?”
Love Song #1
Me'Shell Ndegeocello
Me’Shell Ndegeocello, “Love Song #1”
stir it up / move your body nice and slow, yeah / stir it up
stir it up / move your body nice and slow, yeah / stir it up
move your body nice and slow
occasionally pensive: re black feminism & applicability →
daniellemertina.tumblr.com
Another thing is, what’s the point of black feminism if it’s so intellectual and therefore divorced from reality, that it is alienating to a whole bunch of black women… the same ones that it’s supposed to help?
I mean you’ve got these folks who think they’re *special black women* because they’ve…
negrosunshine: you’ve been talking to the wrong Black feminist! that was kind of a joking statement, but it was serious in a sense. i dont want to overstep my bounds as a non-Black woman speaking to this, but im going to go ahead and risk my words in hopes of saying, i feel you! but i don’t want to bash intellectualism, because we live in a really gross anti-intellectual world. i think good Black feminism, really radical Black feminism would laugh, and laugh hard, at the idea of a “right” way to be a Black woman. i think any so-called feminist with the Combahee River Collective statement bookmarked, while trying to live up to a Michelle Obama dream is a bit confused on the purpose of the CRC statement. i may be wrong, and deep down i hope i am, but i don’t think Michelle would be sitting around organizing with a bunch of socialist black queer women. im just saying. nor do i think those socialist black queer women would be dining at the white house, lobbying the obama family for better access into the country. just a thought.
i think the problem that gets wrapped in the ‘problem of the intellectual’ is a class conflict (class ambitions and false sense of middle/upper security), with a drive for middle-class respectability and the age old “cult of true womanhood.” though, noone would ever admit that, because many keep the CRC statement bookmarked, and Audre Lorde well-highlighted, as a treasure of a romantic struggle once waged, giving Michelle Obama her room at the white house.
I agree with a lot of this. In theory, black feminism is not meant to alienate any black women. But I think in practice, since feminist theory in general is so grounded in academia (it’s not as widely disseminated in the general public as say anti-racism is) what usually happens is that certain black women are cast aside because of a sort of elitism that is probably charged by academia/ the middle-class people who tend to have access to academia.
I agree with your assessment of Mrs. Obama & not organizing with queer black women. And I agree that there is some confusion if you’re gonna equate the CRC with class ambition yet I still think it happens. Not by everyone of course. But I still see it. And it’s not like they’re not adept to black feminist thought… but I think like any movement, it can be narrowed from its original vision to suit a specific portion of the demographic it was intended to support. I’d say that happens to most things. Black intellectual thought for example, is mostly for middle-class straight black men. Although it touts itself as being for all black people. Similarly, I think black feminism has a track record with being for middle-class straight black women just like how mainstream feminism really works for middle-class straight white women.
And as for intellectualism… I’m not anti-intellectualism (I don’t think anyway) but there is something about the strict adherence to “intellectualism” (a construct I don’t fully know how to define tbh) that strikes me as a sort of elitism. And it also seems like it has the tendency to divorce ourselves from different aspects of ourselves (emotionality, sexuality, for example). I don’t have any strong opinions on “intellectualism” and what it is and how it should be used. Just gut feelings/ reflexes at the moment, really.
negrosunshine: yes! i agree with you. which is why i thank you for your thoughts on the matter. it is very important that we interrogate the spaces where our academic theories begin to alienate the people the theories are meant for. but it has to be a push and pull, spaces like tumblr and post like yours are wonderful for exchanging ideas and opinions without the wrapping of academic glow. it is important that we critique black feminist strategies that value middle-classed sensibilities. and it is also important that we search out and listen to the black intellectual thought being produced by poor Blacks, queer Black people, or any others deemed outside the boundaries of Black “normativity.”
and for the broad question of intellectualism, i think it gets cast sometimes as not “real” or “authentic” political work. and your term “divorce” is apt, how or when do merge our political work, with our academic work, with our artistic work, which speaks to the way we live our day-to-day lives? im not sure i have an answer, but i know its not a new problem and it is in thoughts like that when i turn to Audre Lorde particularly when she is speaking of the erotic, “…it has become fashionable to separate the spiritual (psychic and emotional) from the political, to see them as contradictory or antithetical. ‘What do you mean, a poetic revolutionary, a meditating gunrunner?’”
This is a great conversation, and it came up during my time at university. Like, for example, how I’m about to totally not meet y’all on the academic-minded, intellectual level on which y’all are communicating and try to articulate myself like the poor Black wretch claiming to be a Black feminist that I am.
When I was an undergrad at a private PWI university that I could barely afford to attend, surrounded day in and day out by middleclass students and middleclass professors, even the Black ones, I always felt out of place. I tried to connect with them through radical organizing and “not acting ‘ghetto’” and cussin’ people out but I never fit. Even as considerate and tame as I was, I was always being told that my behavior and thinking was inappropriate to the the setting even by people I thought would understand.
The most radical student organization, which I was the newest member of at the time, organized a teach-in, discussing Precious, during which I was a spoken word performer. Amber Raspberry, from Tyler Perry’s 34th Street Films, was there as a member of the panel. Later that evening, after I performed, the students were invited to a dinner at some swank winery restaurant but none of them went except for me. I sat there, in silence, no one spoke to me, while the big heads and Amber Raspberry talked and talked, even the professors I thought might try to include me in the convo. I realized I was just a spoken word performer. That’s it. I was the help. I wish I’d just hung out with my “friends” instead of going to the dinner. I felt so bad I wanted to cry.
Even today, when sharing my experiences and voice, I feel like I need to let people know I now have a college degree even if I don’t come from the right class so my experiences and articulation of those experiences are deemed as valid.
negrosunshine: im sorry to hear about your experience at the dinner table. and i wish i had some magical words that would make that feeling go away, but sadly i do not have the cure for class conflict *cough*revolution*cough,cough*. and i will just say, if the most radical student organization on your campus is inviting Tyler Perry heads in for a panel and wine and dinner, then im sorry, and i just want to give you a hug. There are SO MANY things wrong with Precious, and Tyler Perry in general, that if that panel were to take place back at my alma mater, well it probably wouldn’t end in wine and dinner. but perhaps im romanticizing my past too much? @jeromeiznice, @jamesbliss, @abolitionista, any thoughts?
i will say though, for you being a spoken word artist, NEVER consider yourself “the help” inside of political organizing or intellectual conversation! you are a vital role in the movement for liberation, never ever ever forget that. i was taught that any good movemets for liberation needs to effectively utilize its three A’s: activist, artist, and academics. academics can document and theorize awesome things for the world, activist can organize and put their own bodies on the line, and artist make things understandable, creative, and entertaining. so you my friend, are NOONES help, except the help for the Revolution, and i don’t know about you, but that’s all i’m trying to progress.
and what’s this talk about “taming” yourself? child, youre Black and poor, your being will never be considered appropriate for any situation, so don’t let others dictate your behavior. trapped anger will kill you, i certainly hope your artistic work is your release.
peace&light…
a prelude
i want to write some revolutionary shit
that poem or article or speech type shit
make the people pause and think and act type shit
get your guns cuz its “get loose time” shit
and it wont be televised
but i might tweet some shit
like one hundred and forty characters
on some radical type shit
probably wont facebook it
nah, fuck it, ill make it viral type shit
update status: ‘revolutionary brother going buck’
see who likes the shit
probably catch all of it on tumblr
watch it roll down the dashboard
as bloggers talk like they give a shit
but this is going to be some revolutionary shit
on some other type shit
close your laptops, turn off your phones
come outside and take it to the streets type shit
ill write here and watch someone else write there
then we’ll all meet on the battlefield
and someone will say something
some “get-down-with-the-get-down” type shit
and we’ll all get on down
cuz we just can’t contain the shit
and we’ll sing about how we love revolution
on some real type shit
and the words to that song
i just cant write
cuz we’ll be in the streets
where writing is obsolete
but until that day
i want to write some revolutionary shit
off my map
i dreamed this place
away from snow
far far away. or perhaps not so
you were there. as was i
tanzania maybe. or perhaps a lie
off my map. but in my dream
you were there. as was i
we pulled at seams
and twisted real with make-believe
i dreamed this place
away from snow
no scars of truth. or perhaps not so
you were there. as was i
madagascar maybe. or perhaps a lie
off my map. but in my dream
you were there. as was i.
repost: Perverse Intimacy (a start)
*a friend of mine had this photo as his iphone background, and upon catching a glimpse of it, i begin a rant on how awesome i think it is, and all the stuff i write below (a thought from the summer of 2011) in the middle of a bar surrounded by white hipsters.
Lyle Ashton Harris, Brotherhood, Crossroads, Etc. Two, 1994
i was first drawn into this photo by the beauty of the black men pictured. surrounded by the colors of black liberation. an homage to black love? the kind that marlon riggs and essex hemphill term “revolutionary-” black men loving each other. closer examination reveals the gun, held by one man, pressed to the chest of the other. further research reveals the two men are brothers. should i be having a moment of crisis? or drawn in further?
lyle ashton harris often makes portraits of himself, made over in drag, signifying his queer identity, while repositioning what can/should be conjured with sights of Black skin. In the above photograph, harris is pictured holding a pistol pressed to his brother (thomas allen harris, also queer), while the two kiss. what can be said of this intimacy? the image is aesthetically pleasing, yet wrapped with violence, and a certain perverse closeness. Black love. Black intimacy. Black kinship. Black queerness are all topics thrown into the air with this photograph. what is harris making claim to by situating a certain sexual freedom amidst notions of kinship? why does the gun link these two men in the same fashion the kiss does? what stake in black liberation is harris making?
perhaps i am not repulsed by this photo due to the recurring theme of these strange intimacies running through Black cultural production. to name but a few, the relationship between ruth and milkman (mother and son) in toni morrison’s Song of Solomon. the male-male sexual violence paul d. experienced on the chain gang in morrison’s Beloved. or the relationship between louis and cisely batiste in kasi lemmons’ Eve’s Bayou.
definitive answers i do not have. but i think that is what is great about this piece, it offers no answers. just a space for meditation. i thank harris for this work. and all the artist pushing conversations of Blackness into uncomfortable, but wildly necessary conversations. in search of what essex hemphill deemed the “ass splitting truth.” i postBrotherhood, Crossroads, Etc. Two here, in hopes of sparking dialogue.
Cant Hide Love
Earth, Wind, and Fire
been listening to this song all day.
Earth, Wind, and Fire “Can’t Hide Love”
a poem to start the day.
be strong happy and Black
you’re a little bit nappy
so always watch your back
why are you SO awesome?
haha. thats not a real question! but i will fancy it for a second for a quick ego stroke. i love blackness and all its complexities. im a nerd, so i read ALOT. i believe the world has valued a ‘politics of culture’ for the last few decades, and i desperately want to engage and push a ‘culture of politics’ (F. Wilderson). everything is political, everything is political. everyone has an agenda, i have an agenda. how can i make people, Black people specifically, curious enough about the complexity of Blackness to do something about it? i believe it my mission as an activist, student, scholar, and artist, to show the political, bring it out just a bit and get all messy with it. to go to battle every single day, and engage in psychological warfare with the same tenacity and resilience as the warfare that is engaged ON Black bodies every second of the day. my tools: critical theory, visual analysis, historical archives, and fiction. how can i make what i study/read almost everyday, not only relevant, but resonate with Black people living day-to-day? im not sure yet, but im working on it.
MLK day plans
sangria at some point in Boystown, i have a dream that one day little black boys, and little white boys will join hands, (that may or may not be a queer paraphrasing).
BUT FIRST!
i will make it through Nahum Chandler’s “Of Exorbitance: The Problem of the Negro as a Problem for Thought,” so i can quit lying to myself that i read this and knew what was happening.
i will read this today! and i will love it!
i wonder what my headspace will be like upon finishing it. it may make for interesting table-talk as this son of slaves sits with the sons of “former” slave-owners (another queer paraphrasing?)
