Well Glory and Hallelujah

Well saddle up kids.  It's Black History Month time once again!

Of course Black History Month has come to be completely meaningless to me.  I will admit, as a child in grade school, Black History Month wasn't all that important to me either.  Even learning about Black people, Black history, Black achievement in school, which is good, meant little to me.  It never really moved me.

It wasn't until late high school that I understood Black History Month to be as meaningless as it is meaningful.  I'm getting ready to leave my college prep school and be Black in a real world.  It's at this time I realized I had been lied to.

As an intellectual, Black History Month is meaningful for a slightly perverse reason.  It's an opportunity to take a real shot at American education and the American memory of historical events.  History and the American memory of historical events are two very different things.

As an adult now, removed from the naivete, apathy, and ignorance of school children, brazened and emboldened by a tumultuous initiation into adulthood, I have come to understand the process through which I was lied to in all my years of expensive, American education.  The unlearning is coming undone.

The history is false.  The biology and chemistry are hidden.  The art is surpressed and made dumb.  The intellect is frowned upon.  They'll jail you and nail you for not participating in this fanciful facade.

So we have this month to spend as we wish educating or not educating ourselves on not just Black History, but on the history of all people of color, who are connected and made family by the comprehensive brutality of these White aliens.  Yeah I said it.

I have always found it to be some kind of insulting irony that they give us a month to reflect on a false history that covers a true story of suffering, resilience, intrinsic strength and blessings.  Why not just call it Black Celebratory Month?  So we can just pick what it is we want to celebrate.  It's as if to taunt us.  Black History Month...for a people whose histories were drowned in a middle passage centuries ago...whose futures was cauterized by an invasion and stability infected under the disease of colonization -- slavery on site we should call it.

It's Black History Month.  If you don't pick up a book to read, select a movie to watch, pick a place in which to volunteer, or anything else the spirit of the month moves you do to for Black people -- if you'd rather not participate in those activities, just slap a few aliens a day.  That keeps colonization away.

Happy Black History Month. ;)

Quiet As It's Kept...

"Fall In Love" by D'Banj


...my sweet potato / i wanna tell yu my mind / i wanna tell yu my mind...

So you know I have been natural for a little over a year now and I have been rocking the Afro for six months.

About a week before graduation, I got my hair braided to fulfill my mother's request.  She absolutely hates my natural hair and thinks I look like a boy.

And even though I am happy to have gone natural, it's still a daily struggle.  I don't always feel so beautiful in my consciousness.  There are days when I feel so hideous (and that's when I put on a crazy, colorful, extravagant outfit and rock it all day and all night).

I still have the braids in a month after graduation.  It is most definitely time to remove them but I am scared to see my Afro.  I ain't ready.  I feel prepared everyday when I wake up with these braids.  I don't have to do anything.  I don't have to hide from my bedmate until I wet it and comb it and shape it.  Then I am presentable.  I don't like that I feel this way and I don't know what to do about it.

Sitting here writing about this, picturing the different activities of my day with my Afro...no bueno.

And it shouldn't be like that.  I am doing this to revolt against a untrue aesthetic, to show my children their true African beauty, to show my sisters and brothers that our aesthetic is valuable and worthy and original.  Ugh I'm so torn.  My mind knows the intellectual and spiritual value of natural hair but my shallowness supersedes what I know...at least for now.

This is why I didn't even want to get braids because I knew this would happen.  It's going to be like going natural all over again.  And I was scared to commit to locking my hair...I'm going to lock my hair as soon as I take these out.

Well maybe in a couple weeks because this paycheck ain't looking right enough for no $400 installation fee.  But it'll sure be worth it when I get my natural swag back.


Chuuch.

Day 3: Gender

"Black Brother" by Angie Stone

...He is my King, He is my one / Yes he's my father, Yes he's my son / I can talk to him, cuz he understands / Everything I go through and everything I am...

If I wasn't already a staunch womynist, I would be after this semester.  I am taking three women's studies classes to satisfy the credit hour requirements for this Bachelor's in Psychology (finally).

One of them is cross-listed with African American studies: The History of African American Women (AFAM 491).  I love it.  I love to learn and discuss the experience of women but I worship the knowledge about the experience of women of color, especially African and African American women.

AFAM 491 uses the textbook To 'Joy My Freedom by T. Hunter.  I have read 2 of the 8 chapters I should have read by  now (but I just bought it soooo).  In these 2 chapters, I have read of the disturbing system that was chattel slavery.  I was reading about the work that 6 year old children were accustomed to doing, work I will NEVER do, and vowed in a written statement in the margins that I won't complain about the work I must do.

This week, we discussed the way in which race informs gender and gender informs race and the continual exchange that occurs between the two.  To no group is this more pervasive of a concept than to Black women living in the United States following the collapse of slavery.

From the history we have discussed, Black women following slavery were more inclined to defend their race first, and then their gender.


While White women were out protesting the universal suffrage of men, Black women were praying, pushing, fighting, marching, arguing, screaming, writing, and hoping for their Black men to get the vote.  White women thought they should get it first.  Some Black women wanted suffrage too, but for now, they had to focus on their men getting political power through the vote.  Black women evaluated that it would be nice to have the vote as well, but it's a step in the right direction if the system is at least willing to consider allowing their men to vote.

A big theme of this class is the way race and gender intersect and the tradition race has had of trumping gender for Black women in social and political considerations (until the divisive campaigns of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, in which the conversation erupted over which was more important: race or gender?).  It is interesting to see the kind of solidarity, community commitment, and collective preservation mode Black people had and were in in the years following the Civil War.

It was exceptional to see how the Black woman argued for and tried to augment the rights of her Black man.  And it was even more exceptional to see how the Black man aggressively campaigned for legislation protecting the chastity, virtue, and pride of his Black woman.


I was reading it and eating it up.  It was beautiful to read of people who look like me spoken about in such a way, despite their lot.


Fast forward 145 years and what has happened?  Black men don't respect or cherish Black women and Black women don't respect and have given up home on Black men.  Black girls get pregnant (or get educated and make themselves ineligible for marriage) and Black boys go to jail (or die).


Additionally, in our contemporary times, the momentum of Black female improvement has slipped only to rise again.  We see CNN specials all day long about why Black women are still single.


Black, educated, self-reliant, professional women are out of the running for Black husbands (y'all better stop playin' before we take off with them Italian/Dominincan/Brazilian/Samoan/Phillipino/God forbid White boys).  They have educated themselves out of the pool.  Black men are having a hard time catching up to the academic and professional achievements of their women and are intimidated by or not attracted to this new "Buppie" (Black yuppie) population of women.

Black America is also quite fragmented and Black culture is perverted.  Hip Hop culture has become synonymous with Black culture and it  is not Black culture.  It is a subculture.  It is of Black people.  It was intended to communicate the atrocities of inner cities that America chose to ignore while genocide was being committed on American streets.  

But it is not the sum total of Black culture.  There is a rich African remnant, seasoned by slavery, preserved by the Civil Rights Movement, but left in the freezer and forgotten in the age AIDS and crack.  And all this (with much more that is too viscous to include here) has worked to fragment Black America.  

The old people think the young people are crazy as hell.  The young people think the old people are useless and judgmental.  The men think the women are to blame for all that's wrong with them.  The women think that they have nothing to do with all that's wrong with men.  The light ones hate the dark ones for making them go out of style.  The dark ones still hate the light ones for being light.  The permed up ones hate the natural ones for complicated reasons.  The natural ones hate the permed up ones for complicated reasons.

On what issue can we come together?  Children starve, can't read, don't know how to tie their shoes, have no sense of respect, can't count, get put into special education too quickly and too frequently, have babies they can't take care of...all types of mess...and they are children.  I'm not even talking about adult pathologies yet.  None of that brings us together.

I truly believe that the improvement of any people in any place is contingent upon how they treat their women.  People have been saying it for several decades in Africa after the last of the countries gained their independence from White Western countries.  Educate the women (about anything) and they take it back to their cities, to their villages, to the grandpas, fathers, sons, brothers, children, everybody.  When you provide something for an African woman, you inevitably provide for those she provides for.

Look at what is going on in Haiti.  An organization had to introduce a food program aimed just at women because they know the women will feed the children and the elderly who cannot stand in line to wait for bags of rice.  Men were appearing at truck doors and with their strength, hauling away the food to cook for themselves.  So they revamped the situation, started handing out tickets to women to appear at a certain place in the morning hours to be given bags of rice.  The men stand in an audience outraged by this seemingly sexist move.  But without such a move, Haiti's children may not be fed because when you don't provide for a woman, you disenfranchise far more than just that woman.

Black women in America are getting it right (sometimes).  I have not even a suggestion for a solution but I would like to propose that the minute the solidarity between Black women and Black men returns, it's a done deal.  Black men, we know you have been through a lot and we are willing to help nurse wounds and protect you from further damage.  But you gotta meet us at the halfway mark boo. 

And ain't no woman like a Black woman gonna nurse your wounds like us anyway.

Day 2: Environment

"We Don't Care" by Kanye West

...drug dealer buy Jordans / crackhead buy crack / and the White man gets paid off of alla dat...

Happy 2nd day of Black History Month.

Sticking with the theme of "the kids", I would like to speak about environment.

The conversation about nature versus nurture seeks to address which facet has more of an imprint on the way a person develops and ultimately behaves.

Are people born with the behaviors, tendencies, habits, etc. that they conduct?  Or does the environment (people, punishment, personal experience) create the behaviors, tendencies, and habits a person demonstrates?

In the age of advance science and research, most people agree that some of our behaviors and characteristics are intrinsic and some are shaped by the environment a person finds themselves.

Language is a good example of the interaction between nature and nurture.  In humans, language is acquired so fast, that linguistics and other researchers hypothesize that the human brain is wired for language and that there is a language acquisition device (LAD) in the brain.

Infant children who are pre-verbal are able to recognize the syllabic boundaries (when a syllable ends and when a syllable begins) of any language, suggesting that the human brain already has a system ready to accept the acquisition of language if exposed.

This is where the nurture part is introduced.  The child has to be exposed to a language to acquire it.  The child has to interact with other verbal human beings in order to finesse the processing and expression of language.

In studies conducted on toddlers, socioeconomic status strongly influences the level of verbal ability of the child.  Children of high socioeconomic status tend to be exposed to more words and have larger vocabularies than children of low socioeconomic status by the age of 4.

This goes to say that all the children exposed to language (barring cognitive difficulties) do learn language.  But the level of aptitude in language is dependent upon exposure.

In my opinion, low socioeconomic status in code for colored people.  I don't mean to say that there are no poor White people.  However, race and socioeconomic status seem to converse frequently and people of color are disproportionately poor.

Poverty (you again) interrupts the potential for successful development afforded by biological devices.  The children are not exposed to appropriate language and therefore do not acquire it.

When does this end?  I ask again, what do we accomplish by blaming the poor for being poor other than keeping their children poor so we can blame them for being poor adults?

Children of poverty who are unable to disengage from the tantrums of being poor are surrounded by children and families just like their own.  They do not have examples of how to live differently.  Those things that surround you are those things you believe are possible, attainable.

So if everyone a person knows doesn't completes anything higher than high school, never travels, lives in the same neighborhood for most of their lives, is never really financially successful, what standard of living do you expect them to adopt?

However, this is a conversation about nature versus nurture.  Even if you are surrounded by a lackluster environment, you have some personal accountability.  I do not say that such environments give you the excuse to never accomplish anything.  I suggest, however, that it makes sense when a person falls into this lower standard of living when that is all they know, for a poor diet does not nourish the body.

Warning! Controversial!

The morning of April 16, 2007, I was a sophomore in college, awaking from a long weekend of partying.

When the news of the shooting spree at Virginia Tech was hitting the airwaves, my tv was still off, I was still snugly in my bed, at my apartment, sleeping.

I heard my phone ring and it was the ringtone of my best friend at the time, Melanie.

Because it was her, I decided to look at it.  I was hoping she was trying to invite me to Shafer for some breakfast (God knows how much I love Shafer Dining Court at VCU).

It was a text message and the text message read something like "Are u awake? u watch the news?"  I responded that I hadn't and that her text message had awaken me.  She told me to take a deep breath and turn the tv on.

I have anxiety so I was really freaking out in my head.  I am also my mother's daughter and I immediately started thinking worst case, end of days scenarios.  I turned on the tv (to CNN, no doubt) to live coverage of the shooting spree at Virgina Tech.

Melanie and I were on the phone by this point and I really could not hear anything she was saying.  My little brother goes to VTech, and the prospect of him caught in a madman's crossfire was worse than the end-of-days scenario I was sweating over.

I immediately hung up with Mel and called my brother.  Of course! It went straight to voicemail.  God wouldn't make it any less dramatic.  I called him several times, wanting to know I would see him again.

It then occurred to me that my parents and all of our huge extended African family was probably trying to call him too.  And he was probably trying to call out as well.  Calm down Zainab.  Just call Dadddy.  So I called the house to speak to the parentals.  My mom was at work and had not been told yet.  We don't usually tell mom about crises until we have concrete information because the woman just goes wild (later on, I found out she was at work with her younger sister.  My aunt told her about the shooting after we found out my brother was okay.  She fell to the floor in thorough Afrakan dramatics before her sister could mention that her baby was okay.  She is just wild).

My Daddy hadn't spoken to Sheikh yet and he said no one has been able to speak to him.  Well, the panic began.  I didn't even know what to do.  I wasn't sad or even really panicking that he was dead.  I was just fixed on how am I going to get in contact with my baby brother?  It hadn't occurred to me yet that he could be dead.

Half an hour later, my Daddy called to say he spoke to my brother and that he is safe in a friend's dorm room.  My brother is a computer engineer major and had all his classes, save for one, in the very building, in one of the very classrooms in which students were murdered.

He said that when he was walking to his nine o'clock class, he heard gunshots.  He says that because of the farmland and forestry that surrounds the campus, one often hears the gunshots of cattleherders and hunters.  But he said these gunshots sounded uncomfortably close to campus so he turned his Black self around and went to a friend's dorm room, so as not to have to walk all the way to his own dorm room.  He said it freaked him out.

I used to make fun of my baby brother for being a "punk".  I used to strongly perpetuate the hyper-macho, masculine ideal to my brothers all the time.  Sheikhy was in no way interested in investigating things, finding out sources, etc.  He was adventurous and aggressive in play like most boys are, but anything that he was afraid of or weary about, he stayed away from.  And really, in all my ridicule, it was his "scaredie-catness" that kept him alive.

In the days and weeks following, as investigations and commentary flowed through the news and our living rooms, we students on our social networks put up profile pictures (like the one featured in the beginning of this entry) in support of the Virginia Tech community and in remembrance for the lives lost on that day.

I remember going to a vigil held on our campus for the murdered students, crying so bitterly about the crazy world we live in, as if parents don't have enough to worry about when they send their children off to school; about the loss I almost had to deal with; about the loss people are actually dealing with.

Over the summer, after the news frenzy had waned a little bit, I came across an article about the www.lansing.com cartoonist who created the cartoon image I use for this blog entry.  The article, written by an HBCU alum, discussed the lack of HBCU mascots in the social network campaign to support VTech.  He (or she, can't remember the author) said it was difficult for him to find something that expressed a unity of his alma mater and VTech.  Many universities had flags with their mascot and Tech's mascot linked by a compassionate message of support and condolences.

The article also wondered why in the construction of that cartoon, the artist did not consider the HBCU's of Virginia who were also feeling the pain of the massacre, or students of HBCU's who suffered a personal loss because of the massacre.


I guess in the safety of not suffering the loss of my brother and being some months removed from my initial emotional reaction, I could entertain the message of the article.


Such an article begs the question "Why does it matter?"  Why does it matter that the HBCU's were left out?


In the grand scheme of things, given that 32 innocent people died that day, I would say it doesn't matter.  But on a smaller scale, within the contextual conversation of race relations, I think it is very significant.  This White artist failed to consider the Black institutions' response to the massacre, which was the same as all other institutions.  All of us with breath and soul were sad for Virginia Tech and sad for the turn American culture has taken into violence.


The artist who drew the cartoon is not a racist because he left out the HBCU's.  But what does it say about our culture, about White culture, about the relationship between Black people and White people (in higher education, mind you) that the HBCU's had a hard time finding symbols, illustrations, flags, etc. to express their condolesenses to the Virginia Tech community?


Is it because we (all of us who reside in America) don't consider HBCU's to be serious institutions?  We don't consider them to be 'mainstream' because they are for Black people?  We just don't consider them.  What are the social experiences that Mr. Lansing drew from (no pun intended) that caused him to fail to include HBCU's, as if people who go to HBCU's had no opinion or sentiment about the massacre?


That is the point of the conversation, I believe.  In almost anything that seemingly affects us all, regardless of any group characteristics, Black people are often left unconsidered.  I say that Mr. Lansing is not necessarily a racist because he did not include HBCU's in his drawing because it is possible that it did not occur to him that there are HBCU's in Virginia.  It is possible that he doesn't know any HBCU's in Virginia.  

As a White man, belonging to the dominant, oppressive culture, he does not have to look to either side of himself to see the marginalized groups and how they live.  If he did know of HBCU's and deliberately decided not to include them, then he would be a racist.  I have no way of knowing which case is true (which is the grand conundrum of being a person of color and experiencing racism. In this day and age of legislated equal rights, few instances are outright and inarguably racist. Some circumstances are more subtle and draw on the past experiences of the person of color being discriminated against, which allows a person to assume they are being discriminated against).


This is a controversial example of how race informs so much of what we do and how we do it because innocent people were murdered.  The conversation I address in this blog entry is seemingly just a distraction from the facts of the matter: 1) 32 murders  2)Virginia Tech's negligence evidenced by their failure to shut down school after the first 2 early morning murders  3)the transition from college (or anywhere) from a place of institutional business to a place vulnerable to the attack of any given sociopath.


If I had lost my brother on that day, I would not give a damn about this conversation.  I mention only because I find it so interesting that conversations of race are relevant to almost everything in this culture.

Day 1: Poverty

"Daughters" by John Mayer

...i know a girl / she puts the color inside of my world / she's just like a maze / where all of the walls are continually changed...

Happy Black History Month.  My, how time flies.  It is already February.

This is the first February in a long time in which I am employed.  And I have the very appropriate job of teaching young Black girls.

When I was looking for a job, I was looking for more clerical and administrative work, thinking I was not qualified to venture into education, although I love it.

My students suffer from the devastating condition of poverty.  The symptomatology of their situations include distracting and destructive environments, young and/or inept parents, minimal monitoring, poor educational systems, cultural incompetence, and much more actually.

I live in Richmond, VA and my students also live in Richmond, VA.  However, by the questions they ask about the simplest things (like where I bought my lunch from, what kind of food it is, where is the restaurant I bought it from, etc.) you would think we live in different worlds.

It may not seem like a big deal that they are unfamiliar with the restaurants I frequent, as I am a diverse eater.  However, because I am in class all day and then report to work immediately after, I usually stop at generic franchises like Chipotle or Qdoba because they are on campus and don't disrupt my travels to the school.

They don't know what Chipotle or Qdoba is because they are prisoners of their projects.  If it isn't in the projects, they don't know what it is.  Many of them come from homes which don't have access to transportation and public transportation in Rich City is unreliable.  Therefore, they don't even travel around their own city.

The Chipotle and Qdoba on the campus I attend school is less than 5 miles from where most of them live but that 5 miles, which seems negligible to us cultured, working, educated adults, is a world away to my beautiful Black girls.

Atop that, they don't know what the food is called.  They don't know what a quesadilla is.  They don't know that there is a difference between Southwestern food (food of New Mexico, Texas, and them) and Mexican food (although, I wonder how many people at all know there is a difference).  The only food they were familiar with was the burrito.

I felt slightly elitist because of the shock I felt at the things they didn't know.  I caught myself continuously saying "How can they not know that?"

But why should they know about that?  They are left in their neighborhoods, alienated and isolated by poverty, a poverty thorough enough to make them culturally incompetent to the culture within a 10 mile radius of their residences.

And when the kids grow up, we blame them, ridicule them, judge them, and shake our heads at them for what they have not seen, what they do not know, and what they do not understand.

But it starts when they are children.  I knew what a quesadilla was at age 10, mostly because I am a fat ass and I love to eat because my parents, the educational system I was in, and the resources I had to access popular culture all helped to inform my cultural competence.  

My parents wanted me to know about other cultures.  When I saw a restaurant I wanted to try, we would try it and I would always love it, and I would add the items of the menu to my vocabulary.  I would then know what was in that particular item and see if their was a correlation between the ingredients and the name.  

For example, the quesadilla is called such because it is queso (Spanish for cheese), cooked into a tortilla, a round, flat bread made of wheat.  Hence the name quesadilla.

Mind you, the process I just described is not an active one in which I am conscious or slightly aware of becoming cultured.  I simply had access to these things and had parents who would indulge my curiosity.  I had no idea I was becoming "cultured", even in this rudimentary example of my introduction to quesadillas.  I elucidated the process for arguments sake only.

If a child is introduced to Mexican food, understands where Mexico is, and understands this food, although native to Mexico, is something the child likes and has access to, by human nature alone, and some education, a child will wonder what other people live in the world and what do they eat?  Who are the Japanese and what do they eat?  The French?  The Hungarians?  The Gambians?  The Egyptians?

These questions don't just elicit knowledge about food.  These questions reveal that the child is considering that there is a world beyond the neighborhood, the city, the state, or the country the child lives in.  There is more out there.

My students are wholly unaware that there is more out there.  And it is not their fault.  They are not stupid.  They are not ignorant.  They are not uninterested even.  They just have no access, no encouragement or reason even to wonder.  And even if they did wonder, how will they learn?  They are stuck, physically, culturally, and intellectually.  Poverty literally keeps them stuck.

They want to know.  They ask me where my lunch comes from.  They ask what kind of food it is.  They ask how it is made.  They ask how I found out about it.

I took knowing about Chipotle and Qdoba for granted.  I, becoming more culturally competent everyday of my life, take it for granted.  I do not even notice I am learning.  And I have forgotten how I was even introduced to these things.  And I assume that we all are introduced to these things.

My story of course is different because I am an immigrant and as such, I am almost inherently interested in other immigrants living in America.  But I grew up with African Americans who, now, are just as educated and culturally competent as I, even without the arguably inherent interest in immigrants and the immigrant experience.  

My best friends, Gwenny & Christina, are just as intelligent as I am.  They know there is a difference between the Chinese and the Japanese, between the Hungarians and the Dutch, between the Nigerians and the Sierra Leoneans (actually ery'body know the Nigerians are a totally different species or something).  I wouldn't be surprised if my students have never heard of Hungary or Sierra Leone or think China and Japan are one nation.

But Gwenny, Christina, and I are products of adventure.  We were allowed adventure by not being confined to the projects and we had some resources.  We saw things that introduced us to the concept of a bigger world, which allowed us to wonder about what we have yet to see, which allowed us to research, either in school or in experience, what else was out there.

And that is how you form a human being.  A human being must be aware that there is more to life and to the world than the small network she knows, the street that she can see from her window.  That's how people become compassionate for experiences other than their own, work to improve the lives of those in a culture/space/country/time in which they don't exist.  You cannot empathize with he who you don't know exists. Duh.

So how do we expect our beautiful Black children to want to participate, professionally or socially, in our society, contribute to their country if they have no idea that the world is bigger than Gilpin Court?

Everyday that we blame the poor for being poor, the children remain ignorant.  They grow up to be ignorant adults who we continue to blame again for their condition, not realizing they were ignorant, isolated, alienated, imprisoned children from day one.

Everyday that we blame the poor for being poor, we miss thousands, millions of opportunities to show children, who are enslaved by poverty, that this is not all they are meant to be.  This is not all they are meant to see.  There is a big world with big problems, with big fortunes, with big chances that they should be allowed and encouraged to participate in.

They say incarceration is the new slavery and I agree.  But poverty precipitates ALL the social ills we speak of: drug use and distribution, teen pregnancy, STDs, HIV/AIDS, health problems and poor health maintenance, violent crime, high rates of incarceration, domestic abuse, child abuse, high school dropout rates, illiteracy rates, generational welfare dependency...I cannot think of a single social issue that we fight about on the House floor, in our workplaces, or in casual conversation that is not found within the parameters of poverty.

I get paid to teach these beautiful Black girls and I have programmed into my job description that they will know more than Mosby, more than Gilpin, more than Highland Park, more than Hull Street.  They will know a world exists for them and there is no reason why they should not see it.

Fertile Pathology

"Better Days" by Anthony Hamilton


...and I realize the compromise that love ones make / i'm holding on for the future some more better day...

I just watched "The Killing Room" with my friends and former roommates Stevara and Tiffany.  We went to see "Sherlock Holmes" in the theater and it was quite good.  I am going to do some research on Mr. Sherlock Holmes. In the movie, he was depicted as an incomparable genius and also quite disturbed.  It was good.

But this "The Killing Room" movie was horrible.  It is influenced by the CIA's MK-ULTRA experiment of the 1960s (and maybe later).  I had heard of the experiment but I didn't know what it entailed or the controversy that surrounded it.  I looked it up after I watched the film and I couldn't believe it.  I couldn't believe the GOVERNMENT thought to do this.  The scope of MK-ULTRA was incredibly wide.  Basically, the CIA was investigating ways in which to control a person's mind.  They administered drugs like LSD without the informed consent of the participants.  The experiment is blamed for the death of 2 participants.

What the hell?

Why do you want to control people's minds?  No matter what you are trying to do, eliminating someone's autonomy is not the right way.  If a terrorist or whomever does not want to cooperate, you are just going to have to deal and come upon necessary information another way.  Mind control? White people want to do waaaaaaay toooooo much.

"The Killing Room" was a variation of the MK-ULTRA experiment.  They incorporated our current fear of terrorism and the elusive, vague enemy we are "fighting".  The experiment sought to observe and learn what it took to make a person willing to sacrifice themselves for the greater good.  A parallel was drawn to cell apoptosis, in which a cell will voluntarily die when it realizes it is no longer adequately serving the larger system it belongs to.  They were studying this mess in humans.  How far can you push a human to give up his/her own life for the greater good? What? Why do you want to know this?

The human mind is fragile where it is also resilient.  Human behavior is also completely unpredictable when a person is struggling to survive.  Any duress in which your life is on the line means you abandon all notions of social order imparted by whatever culture you subscribe to.  People go buck wild in order to stay alive.  Why do you want to watch, observe, record, or care about such a debauchery?  What do you think you will learn from such a blatant disregard for human dignity?

Please watch that movie.  The White woman in the movie, who had the opportunity to save the poor participants in the experiment, chose not to which only made me further question the respect for human dignity White people have.  SMH.

Just Show Business

"Empire State of Mind" by Jay Z

...the city never sleeps / but she'll slip you an Ambien...

Giggity.  I'm so happy that Christmas is over.  I am excited for New Year's Eve.  New Year's is the greatest holiday, I think.  The whole world recognizes it and we collectively talk about what we are going to do different, better, or stop doing in the new year, knowing full well that most of us won't change anything.

It's wonderful, however, this universal feeling of improvement that is fostered, even if just for a few weeks.

Everything I want to do in the new year, I have already begun.  I finally went natural and am rocking my coily afro.  I am reading up on how to make natural products for my use.  I am not kidding about this.  I really want to stop using so many chemicals.  I don't want to have to buy so much from the store anymore.  I would feel truly beautiful if I made the beauty products that I use.

Seriously, I want to learn to make my own shampoo, conditioner, leave-in conditioner, moisturizer, lotion, deodorant, body wash/soap, dish washing soap, house cleaning products, EVERYTHING!  And if it is too inconvenient to make a particular product, I will make sure I purchase it from a private merchant who makes natural products.  In the coming weeks, I am going to buy some books and research online that will teach me to make such things.

I want to free myself from the slavery that is technology in the new year.  It is wack.

Lastly, I need to do is start working out.  I don't really want to go to the gym and run on a treadmill or anything of the sort.  I want to pick up tennis again, sign up for yoga, and meditate more.

Happy New Year Boo.

Christmas: A Commercial Success

"Give It Away" by The Red Hot Chili Peppers

...give it away give it away give it away now / give it away give it away give it away now...

I'm not going to lie to you.  I don't much care about Christmas.  I don't think much of holidays at all, except my birthday and New Year's.  I only like Christmas because I am to receive gifts.  

My family is Muslim and Mommy had us celebrate all the commercialized Christian holidays so we wouldn't feel any more alienated from our peers than we were by being foreign African Muslim kids.  It was a wonderful idea on her part but I didn't learn anything meaningful about the holidays that wasn't imparted throughout the rest of the year.

Selflessness, charity, compassion, special care for the poor, humility, unimportance of material things, respect (and probably more than that) were all themes that our upbringing was predicated on.  I remember wanting Kool-Aid, but not wanting to go through the hassle of making an entire pitcher.  I would get a big cup, fill it with water, maybe a 1/3 of the packet of Kool-Aid and an unnecessary amount of sugar, mix it together and let it sit in the fridge.

Usually, the Kool-Aid would get cold and I would get to it before my Mommy noticed.  On one occasion, she saw it in the fridge before I got to it.  She looked around for the pitcher of Kool-Aid and found none.  I came to get my cup and she blasted on me about making Kool-Aid just for myself "as if no one else lives here."

At the time, I thought the old lady was just buggin' because she didn't like me.  My mother and I always argued and I thought she was just being annoying.  She made such a big deal out of not showing concern for my brothers.  "How do you know they didn't want any Kool-Aid?  Now you've made that pack obsolete for anyone else to use."  She said some more stuff too but I can't remember.  All I heard was the voice of the teacher from Charlie Brown at that point.

With age, I have come to understand that she didn't want me to be selfish.  She wanted me to consider my siblings, my family.  She wanted me to always consider other people before myself.  Now, I believe I have utterly absorbed all of those lessons and characteristics into my behavioral lexicon.  I'm quite good at being compassionate, empathetic, generous, and selfless...sometimes to the deteriment of myself.

I don't mind however.  The African worldview I have finessed informs me that life is hard and my main purpose in life is to alleviate the stress of any person I encounter in any small way that I am able.

Therefore (forgive this long digression), holidays just don't mean anything to me.  I have been taught to have this "holiday cheer" and "spirit of giving" all year round.  And that good which is not already inherent in me, I force myself to display for the good of other people.  That's just how it should be.

So here I sit, watching Big Love, texting friends, reading, eating, generally relaxing, unencumbered by the commercial holiday that is Christmas.  I didn't buy any gifts and I didn't ask for any really.  I will give my gifts after the new year, God willing, to those people I love in subtle protest of the lack of humanity we live under yet makes an appearance for the last five weeks of the year, every year.

It's all just a crock.  I can't buy it and won't spend money buying any of it either.  Love and health are free and they are the most important things we have (or don't have...and you'll miss it when you don't got it).

...in my quest to live simply, live happily, in harmony with God and nature...

3:13pm

"Africa" by D'Angelo

...Africa is my descent / and here I am far from home / i dwell within a land that is meant / for many men not my tone...

It's time to take my braids out this week.  I got them done in North Carolina by my aunt when I went to visit for fall break.  It's the second time I've gotten this hair style and I love it so.


I have also been gloating to myself that my hair is natural under it and that is amazing.  However, I feel a sense of security in these braids.  My hair is natural under, but I feel like I am keeping the trend of European hair going with these braids.


But when I analyze again, braiding is an old, old, old African tradition and set of aesthetics.  Therefore, on their own, my braids do not make me a traitor.  But if I get braids to hide something, be it from myself or from those I interact with in the world, I am a traitor.

I cut off all my hair.  I stopped perming my hair in April of this year and have been getting braids every few months to speed up the growth of this natural hair.  This last time I had my hair braided, I let my aunt cut off all the remaining permed hair.  All that was left was this inch long afro of natural, super-coiled hair.


I was proud of it.  Then I was ashamed of it.  Then I was happy with it.  Then I was excited.  Then I was ashamed again.  Then I was indifferent.  Then, I was just looking at me.

I am not my hair.  It is my crown of glory and I want it to be healthy and pretty but I want it to be just as it should.  I am an African girl and my hair is short and tightly coiled and dark brown.  I am an African girl and my skin is dark and smooth and produces little oil and is without many blemishes.  I am an African girl and I have an African worldview.  You are responsible for me and I for you.


I must remember that I am not my hair.  I am not anything that I carry with me on my body.  I am so much more complicated, beautiful, and timeless than this vessel I have been given.  And whomever judges me based on the components of this vessel is doomed to miss my profundity.


I remember what I saw in the mirror when I first saw my natural hair in the afro it is meant to be.  I loved that girl, still.

It is just so unbelievable how stringent, how strong, how usurping this European standard of beauty is.  I see it everywhere I go and I fight in my mind.  However, I am still trapped by it.  I want to just be confident and happy without having to think about it, talk it over with myself, give myself a pep talk.


I am not hair.  I am not this skin.  I am the soul that lives within.

You're So Pretty For a Dark Skinned Girl

"Pata Pata" by Miriam Makeba

...Hihi ha mama, hi-a-ma sat si pata / Hihi ha mama, hi-a-ma sat si pata...

Actually, I am just pretty.  I have this exotic African look my says boss, informed by the lust of a old White man for a slave girl concubine.  And what is enormously funny is that because he is attracted to me and wants to be "naughty" with me, he thinks my panties are all in a knot over him.  I don't want that old man.  I don't want any men.  Men only seem to be in interested in delivering augmenting efforts to expand the hell I already live in.

But that's neither here nor there.


When I was younger, people used to tell me that I was pretty for a dark skinned girl all the time.  I wasn't particulary offended by it.  I was actually pleased by it.


For back in those days, I was self-conscious about my complexion.  I thought that being light skinned was step number one in being pretty.  And I wasn't aware that I was pretty back then either, so I thought I really needed the light skin to spill all over me and make me pretty.

So when people noticed my face, and told me I was pretty, it was elating.  I needed the reassurance.


Now that I am older, I would be insanely offended if someone said that to me.  I would have to take the time to explain why that is such a heinous way to think and tell them not to tell that to any dark skinned little girl they encountered.  Just tell her that she is pretty and leave it at that.


The problem of complexion among Black people around the world is amazingly sad.  White people and others who are not Black fall into it too, but I excuse them because they aren't Black.  What do they know about Black beauty?


But Black people?  I get disappointed.  How are we so thoroughly brainwashed into believing the White man's idea of beauty is better than our own?  The White Western standard of beauty is fine...if you are White.


And the origin of the complexion complex is so securely explained by slavery and colonization.  Those who were lighter skinned were more acceptable brands of Negro.  They made us think dark skin hideous.  We, Black people, think dark skin is hideous.


Even I, born in Africa to a beautiful African couple, have a complexion complex.  I love my dark skin now.  I love my soft, dark chocolate, even toned skin now.  But I will say that I am glad I am not darker than this.  And there are even times when I look at my body and wish my whole body was the same color as the lighter parts of my body where the sun don't shine.  And when I see people who are very dark skinned, I cringe for them, imagining the self-image issues they have wrestled with and the lack of reinforcement about their beauty.


Then I remind myself that I love myself, brown and dark brown portions.  And I remind myself I love my Black people, neurosis and all.

Nonetheless, I am so perplexed by my People.  It's almost as if we refuse to redefine Our standard of beauty.  We refuse to reject their standard of beauty.  There is absolutely nothing wrong with being as black as tar and there is nothing wrong with being white as snow (as long as you're Black).  So how did it happen that we look our brothers and sisters in their souls and tell them they are not beautiful?  That they are inadequate?


I just don't get it and it frustrates me even to talk about it.  I am unable to even discuss properly here because it's infuriating.  They abandoned slavery and they retired as colonizers but damn has the damage been done.  Black girls and boys in Africa killing themselves with bleaching cream to be what they cannot be.  Black girls and boys around the world living in large rooms of inadequacy, realizing the bleaching cream will never work.

For My Unborn Daughters

"What It Feels Like For a Girl" by Madonna

...do you know what it feels like for a girl / do you know what it feels like in this world / for a girl...

Of late, I have been running into conversations about gender, gender roles, gender discrimination, the changing rules of gender roles in the workforce, etc.

And of late, I have realized that I am a much bigger womanist than I thought.  These conversations are usually other womyn and apparently, I'm kind of a "feminazi".

Yes, I have been scorned and hell hath no fury like a womyn scorned especially me, because at this point, I would just cut yo a$$.

However, that is not why I'm a "feminazi".  My personal embitterment is miniscule, negligible, and unimportant compared to what womyn around the world face everyday under the oppression of hegemonic patriarchy.


I think my womanism was created and nourished by the relationship I have with my father.  My father was very protective, very doting, indulging, funny, encouraging, and had a lot of intellectual conversation with me.  

Never once was I made to feel that I had to participate in particular activities or act in a particular way because I was born a female.  My father always emphasized the importance of good character.  In African culture, that is what matters most in any person's existence.  Traditional African religion does not include things such as heaven and hell, because the punishment for doing bad things is to be forgotten about, ridiculed and disrespected in death.  You cannot be an ancestor, which is African equivalent of heaven.


For that reason, my parents have always encouraged me in anything I want to do that contributes to the world and the people in my community in a positive manner.


I was never too aware of the social significance my gender entailed until I was older and spent less time at home.  At home, I was protected.  I was my Daddy's brilliant, philanthropic, idealistic, wannabe world saving baby girl.  I had good ideas.  I had great arguments.  I had a serious sense of justice.  And I had a big heart.  At home, I was a star.


In the world, I was a girl...and inadequate.


But I don't buy it.  I don't buy that crap at all.  There is nothing I am not capable of because I am a womyn.  If I am not capable of something, it is because I don't want to, because I don't want to put the effort in, because I don't want to do the work.  But my cliche "destiny" is mostly up to me and not up to the reproductive machinery between my legs.


In conversations with different womyn from different socio-economic, educational, professional, religious, and political backgrounds, I have gathered that a lot of womyn do buy it.


And I don't understand.  How can a biological characteristic, determined when sperm meets egg and is influenced by nothing other than 1 chromosome, determine your life?  Get outta here.  Probability predicates success?  Get off my line.


I can't buy it.  If not for myself, then for my daughters.  I will never look into the eyes of my girl child and tell her that she has to cap her dreams, limit her goals, reduce her desires because she is a girl.


I am so glad that my Daddy never once looked into my eyes and told me that my dreams were lofty.  When he looked at me and I told him what I wanted to do with my life, he was not only proud of me but he convinced me that is possible, within my reach, and I was entitled to grab it.

But the world tells us girls the very opposites.  Get married, have babies.  Have more babies.  Be a grandmother.

I want to do those things, definitely.  But that would not totally be fulfilling.  I feel an obligation to the world, to leave better than I encountered it.  I can do that by raising conscientious, kind, generous, humble, and selfless African children.  But I can also do it by encouraging people in my community to do more with their lives, by showing them resources, by informing them how resourceful they themselves are.


And the womyn I talk to think that tradition should remain.  A woman should cook and clean and support and let her man be in charge.

I will cook and clean and support and let him think he's in charge, but not because I am a woman and that is my "place".  I will do these things because my husband will respect me as a human so much so that I will want to do these things.  I know that I am equal to him.  The safety of that equity will allow me to happily take care of my husband, not the obligation of my gender.




I watch the news, read articles, volunteer at schools and clinics, observe people on campus and at work, look to my mother and her sisters, and absorb all the difficulty of being a womyn in this world.  Even in this highly industrialized, capitalist democracy, women live under a roof of restrictions and are assigned characteristics based on their gender alone.


And when I think of womyn in Africa, my sweet Africa, that we identify with a feminine title [the Motherland], I wonder a million things.


From genital mutilation to strict societal rules governing womyn's activities, I just wonder why we are teaching our daughters to hate their femaleness.


I truly believe much of Africa remains backwards because of how we oppress womyn.  If womyn went to school, if womyn participated in politics, we could change the world.  When you educate a womyn, you simultaneously educate a community and generations to come.


Because, I will say, that womyn are socialized to be caretakers, empathetic.  We are socialized to care about more than just ourselves so we spread the wealth of knowledge in order to help others.  Oh Africa.  Let us send our daughters to school.

When I think of every little girl in the world...I think of them as me.  It was elation I felt when I told my father I want to be a lawyer and he would smile and tell me I would make such a good lawyer and he is already proud of me.


I just don't want any little girl or boy to suffer.  Tell the boys they are awesome and give them all they need to stay that way.  And tell the girls they are awesome and to ignore the world's lies that they are not.

By Any Means Necessary

When the first baby's skin rotted off her head
We should have known that the revolutionary cries were dead.

When the smell of rotting vessels rose to God in heaven
The missing Black girls were at a count of eleven
And God's children ignored the noses on their heads
We should have known the the revolutionary cries were dead.

Who came to the door to check on this man
Who could do such heinous things with his bare hands
To the body of some poor Black woman's baby?

And when they came to the door and knocked with their hands
Did they not see with their eyes what had happened to the land?

When bodies decorate the lawn of a home owned by a man
Whose mind has long departed
To whom also falls the blame for this man's action, living alone
And conspicuously unguarded?

Why, my goodness, do these Black girls learn love so hard?
Death is the only thing that outdoes the heavily scarred.
And even in death, my love, we shall not matter.
But with this poem and this life, I vow to shatter...

The silence, the silence that surrounds our screams
The silence, the silence that confounds our dreams.

And lest another one of us falls and dies
I replace my complacency with revolutionary cries.

I Accept

I cut off all my hair.

I cut off all my permed hair.

I took out the braids I had (featured here) and washed my hair. I had it done when I was in New Orleans at a small shop. Two ladies braided my hair and I really did love it.

However, when Shahedah and I were taking it out, I started to notice that my hair was hella short. I haven't had a perm since March or April, so of course some of my hair has gone curly and it has shrunken, but dis bin pasmak (this was bad).

After we (mostly Shahedah because I fell asleep on the floor, head in her lap) took out about 3/4 of the braids, Shahedah and I realized that the fools who braided my hair stopped and tied it before my real hair had been completely braided in. So when we were cutting the loose ends of the braids, we were also cutting off about an inch and a half of my real hair.

When all the braids were out, I had this cute, sort of long fro beaming out of my head. I did think it was cute. I sprayed in some detangler (which worked like a Miracle) and combed out my hair. After all the dead hair was out, I washed it twice (because it was mad dirty...I only washed my braids once). Then I conditioned it, although no adequately.

Then my hair shrunk even more into a slightly shorter afro with permed hairs sticking out like Black people at a clan meeting.

My aunt asked me if I want to just cut the "stray hairs" off and have my afro of all natural hair. Without hesitation, I jumped up to say yes and got her some scissors. She trimmed my hair and I thought about other things, like sushi dinner we were going to that night.

A few minutes later I stood up to look in the mirror at this totally different girl. Of course I looked different but that's not what I mean. It is hard to explain but I was a different girl.

I think that something has to happen in you, as a Black woman, to go natural. We love our silky wraps, and turning our heads like the White girls. I used to be so frustrated that my hair didn't toss like the White girls I went to elementary school with in Wisconsin. But Auntie Rugie did put beads in my hair which is the dopest hair style ever.

So I cut it all off. Left was about 2 inches of natural new growth that shall never know the feeling of a relaxer. My Auntie Teresa stopped by my Auntie Rugie's house and asked my why I did it. She was like "Why did you cut off all that beautiful hair? You used to have such nice hair!"

Looking at her with her super shiny perm, I know she thought my hair was hideous. Short and "nappy", no movement and no perm.

And a lot of people will think that if not say that. That my hair used to be pretty, that I looked better before, that it doesn't look professional.

I think it is so sad. This is the hair that I was born with. These are the genes I was given by my mother, by my grandmother, by my great grandmothers. This is my hair.

I am not my hair. Remember when India said that? I loved that song but it didn't mean then what it means now.

I did feel, for a minute, less pretty when I looked at my shrunken afro, without shine, without length. Obviously, although I recognized that the White aesthetic is the right aesthetic is a fraud perpetuated by many the many vehicles through which culture is imparted, I still bought it and ate it like a last meal.

For now, I'm going to keep my hair in braids until my natural hair is of a more suitable length. I have a shrunken head, so these 2 inches of hair ain't enough. A few more inches will give the appearance of a larger head to match this gargantuan intellect, giant mouth, and an infinitely giving heart.

I'll keep you posted on the developments of life after a relaxer. I accept this challenge. It's a challenge.

I spelled "gargantuan" without having to look it up. I looked up afterwards. Dope huh?

No Mixed Babies Please

"Black Butterfly" by Deniece Williams

...you've survived, now your moment has arrived / now your dream has finally been born...

I don't know why, but I decided to look up some information about the Roe v. Wade case. I read a about it as I have several times, and can't understand why it is such an issue in this country. If you think abortions are wrong, don't have one. But I will save my opinion for another entry.

Anyway, the thing that struck me in the article was about the opinions of presidents since Nixon. Nixon was president during the court case and didn't say anything publicly. However, records of private conversations reveal that Nixon thought there were times in which abortion was necessary. He is heard saying to an aide that "There are times when an abortion is necessary. I know that. When you have a black and a white or a rape."

By that he mean interracial babies should be aborted. All I could say was Wow. But it is Richard Nixon. Should I be surprised?
George H. W. Bush supported abortion rights
Presidents Henry Ford, Ronald Reagan, and George W. Bush opposed abortion. Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, and , although Bush in his early political career before he was elected president (still can't believe that happened). But it is remarkable nonetheless.

Ronald Reagan legalized abortion in California in 1967, six years before the Supreme Court decision. What a useless man.

Amazing. Abortion is immoral and wrong, except if the baby is mixed with Black. White people are funny.