Crystal and Beau Willie Brown and in a pivotal scene in For Colored Girls.
In Ta-Nehisi’s response to me, he acknowledges me, which I appreciate, then he apologizes for critiquing For Colored Girls without having read it recently, then I read him to go on to say that his blog is his space to work out his ideas, that his writing is for him, and that the gender politics may best be left to the gender studies professors.
I am a Black feminist scholar, from East Oakland, California and I have been blogging for nearly 5 years.
As a thinker, graduate student and blogger, I have done a lot of writing around racism, sexism and pop culture.
As a Black feminist the straight jacket of hegemonic Black masculinity matters to me and I see it as my job to support men and women who openly challenge and wrestle with it. I saw Ta-Nehisi do this in the “O” magazine article in 2006 and in his book The Beautiful Struggle.
In The Beautiful Struggle his treatment of his relationship with his father was profoundly moving especially given the ways in which the stereotype of the “no good” Black man father is deployed on the regular in main stream media. In many ways his courage to both celebrate and critique his father has provided a framework for me to do the very same thing on my blog with my father.
I also really appreciated his candid discussion of what it felt like to be a young Black boy dealing with Black violence in the Baltimore in the 80’s. As Americans in general and as Black people specifically, I don’t believe we have a language yet to articulate and deal with the ways in which violence is a fucked up part of our every day lives and the impact this has on our relationships with each other and with ourselves.
If the condition lingers, there is necessity for consultation with buy generic viagra see here the health experts, more particularly with renowned sexologist. However, this problem has easy solution with herbal ingredients such as Arjuna, Amla, Momordica, Cassia, Safflower, Cordyceps, Bladderwrack, Reishi Mushroom, Curcuiliog, Zinc Oxide, Solidilin, Drilizin and buy canadian viagra Shatavari, this sexual enhancement product needs to be taken twice a day, preferably one with breakfast and one with dinner. An increasing number of men prefer to use this blog as a means of venting your frustration. cialis purchase Some other possible causes of ED include: Nerve injury: The penile, prostate, spinal cord, bladder or pelvis might have had a physical injury, which needs treatment. tadalafil buy india
Context matters so here is a little about me. My family is working class, my mothers block in Oakland was shot up last month and I just received my first invitation to a White House event this week. Life is complex.
“I only have one question for you Senor Coates. Where is the book ? Tell the publishers there is a market and if you need proof I will give them a list. Trust.”
I provide this information to give background and context for my perspective. As I believe that our experiences shape what we see and how we interpret things.
Ta-Nehisi appears to be have been critiqued around his gender politics before and the line in the sand that he draws is that his blog is his space to work out his ideas. I actually feel the same way about my blog. No one tells me what to write. However, I am regularly challenged on WHAT I write and I often respond with reading more to make my work tighter. It makes me a stronger more nimble thinker. It happened when I called Camus a White Algerian on Racialicious, and it happened when I blogged recently about Black Male Privilege vs. Male Privilege. Experience has shown that that I will be held accountable for the things that I say. In terms of a critique of his gender politics Ta-Nehisi states,
I have fairly often found myself confronting this critique. I have tried to cop to my blind spots, and consciously work toward abolishing them. But I do not think bad impersonations of a gender studies professor are the way forward.
The “do for self line” stung a bit.
“I’m Out for Delphia Selfia P’s Not Helping Ya'” ~ Mobb Deep
Telling me or his audience in general to “do for self” mask’s the power dynamics at work between him, The Atlantic and his audience.
“Get It How You Live, We Don’t Ask For Help” ~ The Clipse
Perhaps he wants to enjoy the rewards of blogging for The Atlantic, but not the responsibilities? Perhaps, from his standpoint his responsibilities appear to be to himself and his employer, to ensuring that his blog remains a safe space for him to explore what he is interested in. Touche.
In the comment section of Racialicious, Shauna helped me to clarify why I was compelled to write a post about Ta-Nehisi’s gender politics, so long after the original For Colored Girls original post was posted way back in March.
You see, two weeks ago, as I read Ta-Nehisi struggle with Malcom X’s misogyny I thought two things. First, I thought, if he was more familiar with the literature of Black feminists within the civil rights movement then Malcolm’s misogyny wouldn’t be a surprise.
Second his response to discovering Malcolm’s misogyny kind of reminded me of the moment when some White folks realize that racism exists. Like damn Gina. Word?
Today, while perusing the comments on his blog I noticed that he hasn’t read much on the gender politics in The Black Power Movement. I had already inferred this based on his reading of Malcolm.
I mean, it is well documented in Black feminist circles and in some civil rights movement circles that Stokley Carmichael said that “the only place for women in SNCC is prone” and that Eldridge Cleaver said regarding rape in his book Soul On Ice that he “started out by practicing on black girls in the ghetto” and then when he considered “myself smooth enough I crossed the tracks and sought out white prey.”
Perhaps most prominently Assata Shakur, Elaine Brown, Angela Davis have all written about misogyny within the Black Power and Civil Rights Movements. In Why Misogynists Make Great Informants, Courtney Desiree Morris writes,
Angela Davis, Assata Shakur, and Elaine Brown, each at different points in their experiences organizing with the Black Panther Party (BPP), cited sexism and the exploitation of women (and their organizing labor) in the BPP as one of their primary reasons for either leaving the group (in the cases of Brown and Shakur) or refusing to ever formally join (in Davis’s case). Although women were often expected to make significant personal sacrifices to support the movement, when women found themselves victimized by male comrades there was no support for them or channels to seek redress.
This is humbling but real. I am going to make it a point to mention that there are Black men online who struggle with both race and gender in some of their blogpost’s such as Professor’s David Ikard, Mark Anthony Neal and Dumi Lewis.
Racialicious, Crunk Feminists, JoNubian.com and Clutch Magazine. I hope that Ta-Nehisi reconsiders his stance, Love and change are always possible.
If not, I am satisfied with the discourse that my critique has engendered and perhaps if one or even two people pick up Black Feminist Theory from Margin to Center, Black Macho and the Myth of the Super Woman, When and Where I Enter, ot the awesome new book I read this weekend, At the Dark End of the Street: Black Women, Rape and Resistance, A New History of the Civil Rights Movement, then my work, in some ways has been done.
This a very measured response. However, I don’t agree with your reasoning re: Misogyny In The Black Power Movement.
Yes – most of the men of the time were still awash in a patriarchal view even though they were trying to challenge White Power, but that doesn’t make the movement misogynist/patriarchal – merely the participants.
Sadly, and again this is reflection of the times or priorities, while the movement was trying to redefine the relationship between White & Black it didn’t yet involve redefining the relationship between Women and Man (on a large scale at least).
Re-evaluating Malcolm Autobio only to realize that his views on women weren’t expanding at the same rate as Black Empowerment doesn’t mean Malcolm is misogynist either – only that he’s a hero with flaws. If he lived to see the 1970’s I’m hopeful that would have changed too.
“that doesn’t make the movement misogynist/patriarchal – merely the participants”
…what? A movement is nothing but the drive, ambitions, and goals of the participants. The bus doesn’t drive itself, and that bus didn’t stop at the misogyny part of town too damned often. And that’s the fault of the drivers, who did lack not only the foresight to see the potential of bringing women in as full partners, but couldn’t even grasp how they were demeaning them in ways that echoed what the white man had been doing to African-American women for centuries.
No one’s saying they were evil people. Everyone knows how the play went down, back then. But whitewashing it as “not really misogyny” when it was, so very much so, does nothing but put people on a pedestal they don’t deserve, and does a disservice to understanding where we came from, and the long road forward.
[Correction — that’s “bus _did_ stop at the misogyny part of town too damned often”.]
Thaddeus,
Our society both globally and locally is organized by and for men. Patriarchy is a social system that
assumes that Men, by virtue of being Born “men” have the right to dominate Women, Children and implicitly
“feminine” men (“fake” men.) Violence or the threat of violence is used to keep women, children and “fake” or “feminine” men in line.
I have three questions for you. My question is on top, your comment is below.
1. How can you seperate a social movement from the people who comprise it?
“but that doesn’t make the movement misogynist/patriarchal – merely the participants. ”
2. Where does your understanding of the Black power movement come from reading? Have you read any text
by Black women in the Black Power Movement? If you have not, then how can you disagree with my reasoning?
You cannot successfully refute an argument if you don’t know the text on which it is based. Hence, why I responded to Ta-Nehisi in the first place.
3. The Black Power Movement the Black womens struggle for liberation were NOT mutually exclusive. I stated above that this is a society organized by and for men in order to demonstrate the Malcolm wasn’t a “bad” person, he however was not as committed to a gender politic in the same way as it was committed to racial politic, in the particular section of the autobiography that Ta-Nehisi was revisiting. Lastly, a cursory reading of texts by and/or about Black Feminists and the Black Power movement would reveal this.
Ignore half the people, you wind up with half a history.
And of course Malcolm was changing. We all do.
~R
Hello Renina,
I am a sometimes vociferous commentor over at TNC’s blog, and having chimed in more than a couple of times over at his blog, I wanted to come over here and leave a comment.
I don’t feel as at ease here because I am not a reader, but I what I want to address is the “do for self” as it relates to blogging specifically.
A conversation I’ve been having for the past couple of years with Alan Jacobs and several other writers and commentors at TheAmericanScene.com; (mostly obliquely) at TNC’s blog; sometimes publicly but mostly privately with James Fallows; and generally with anyone who makes the mistake of appearing interested is the rapidly changing nature of the internet from a frontier to a rationalized, commodified, consumerism-driven and regulated space.
Like any frontier, the internet has its own mythologies, and one of the more powerful myths of the internet is the blog as voice for anyone with the daring do and gumption to make their voice heard.
Like the Kentucky Rifleman or the Yeoman Farmer of the American West, the myth has it’s roots in (at least) some fact. But it’s also equally rooted in our dreams and aspirations; the “now anyone can…” is now more often a pitch to buy a new gadget or subscribe to a new media platform or reveal even more personal data to marketeers than it is an accurate description of great new opportunities for the voiceless to be heard.
I don’t want to be misunderstood. I’m not calling TNC a shill; and I’m not saying there’s not value in his “I did it and you can too” both as inspiration and example; but espeically where blogging is concerned “do for self” has a very different meaning in 2010 verses 2005.
Best wishes,
TC
had no idea of the rampant misogyny involved in the Civil Right Movement. Taking a pause to think about it, I guess I shouldn’t be so surprised given the times but it was never talked about growing up.
I am kind of glad though, I think what the brothers did for the race overall opened the lane of conversation for others to claim equal rights (women, homos, transg). I do believe the brothers deserve their pedestals, despite their flaws. (what’s a better word than flaws for that?)
Great write-up M., some great insights.
Hi Tony,
You are brave. Thats awesome. My blog comments are a safe space, for the most part. I have built them that way over the last five years.
You raise a very important point. Is the blogosphere a frontier space where everyone can “be heard”?
OR
Do the power relationships of Race, Class, Gender, Sexuality that elevate certain voices and marginalize others
in the same way that occurs in our day to day offline lives?
AND
What role do corporations, and the people who run them in shaping who or what gets heard on the internet?
I had a very interesting conversation with my friend @afrolicious about WHO the internet was Made for. Read it here @Storify.
Look forward to your reply,
Renina
Renina,
i just wanted to thank you for this post and the prior post. this is important work, and i appreciate your voice.
Julia
Renina,
The link to the Who The Internet Was Made For storify isnt’ working for me. I’m just getting the Storify homepage. I do look forward to reading it, so please do pass along a URL!
As I said, this is something I’ve been thinking about for more than a little while. I’ve been living a huge portion of my professional, creative and social life online for something like 15 years, and in that time the internet has changed.
In particular, I found this round-table that James Fallows posted on his blog last Spring pretty mind-blowing in the way it echoed my own observations and concerns:
http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2010/06/internet-friend-of-dictators-or-dissenters/57626/
And I was particularly gratified when Fallows published my response a few days later:
http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2010/06/a-different-aspect-of-the-internet-and-freedom-story/57744/
While the above response stays inside areas where I have 1st hand experience and expertise, I agree with the premise that the internet has become a place that more or less mirrors society, with the same power relationships of Race, Class, Gender, Sexuality and more or less the same effect.
I might even go as far as saying that on the internet these relationships are even more forceful because they are so often coded into mechanized processes that lack the capacity for human judgment.
For example, just yesterday, hoping to make a point with my 5 year old daughter about “skin-colored” as a color description, I did a google image search for [africans] and then for [asians].
I think if you do the search yourself, you’ll see just what I’m getting at.
.
LITTLE BEAR!
You are so very welcome. I am doing the work my grandmomma wasn’t allowed to. 🙂
Hi Tony,
Here is the @storify link. http://storify.com/mdotwrites/the-internet-wasnt-made-for-you-watchu-gon-do-abou
From my own little corner of the internet I’ve watched the disintermediated internet give way to an internet with powerful gatekeepers who use rather unsubtle tools to sift information, most especially alternative or dissenting views on sexuality.
=====
Read the @storify post. My friend @afrolicious is tre Brilliant and really gets at WHO is the internet made for what
does that mean for those of us who do social justice work. #ummhmm.
~R
Renina and Tony,
At the risk of taking this conversation too far off topic, which I don’t want to do, is this the problem that the whole “internet neutrality” kerfuffle was getting at? I was thoroughly confused by the conversation around that and didn’t know, quite honestly, what side I should be on. I would appreciate any enlightenment.
I enjoyed and appreciated the storify link and will also check out the links you posted, Tony, in a bit.
Best,
Julia
Hello Julia,
“Internet Neutrality” is a pretty easy to define technical concept. The idea is that all packets (the basic unit in which data travels over the internet) are treated equally, regardless of their source, destination, or content. ie if my wife and I are sextexting each other or two Fortune 500 corporations are having a video conference, there is no prioritizing one set of packets over the other. I’m not a net neutrality absolutist, so I won’t get into the arguments about why some people think it’s the very essence of the internet and why some don’t.
The meaning I take from @afrolicious’ comment in the @storify is that “the internet wasn’t created by a fair system. it was created by powerful institutions to serve their needs, so don’t expect it is naturally constituted to suit yours.” I think that’s an important point. In the first link, Columbia law Prof and media historian talks about the Utopian phase that all new technologies go through, with special attention to radio (which ultimately became one of both Hilter and Stalin’s most powerful tools.)
My comment spins utopia slightly differently, looking at the rise of a certain kind of sexual freedom in media that (in the moment) seemed to hold a lot of utopian promise, but ultimately collapsed under the weight of reality.
@Julia No problem in going off topic. That means we are thinking 🙂
I hope Tony summed it up.
@Tony
Can you describe this more? [My comment spins utopia slightly differently, looking at the rise of a certain kind of sexual freedom in media that (in the moment) seemed to hold a lot of utopian promise, but ultimately collapsed under the weight of reality.”]
Thanks, Tony. That helps.
Thanks, Renina.
@Julia, Glad it helps on the tech front. But I think @afrolicious’ socio-economic insight is more important.
@Renina
Oy, a lot to unpack here. But how about this:
On the subject of depictions of sexuality in media, see parallels between the post Hays Code era (roughly 1968-1980) and the early internet era, roughly 1995 to 2006) and I think I’ve had some insights into how and why certain kinds of freedoms and optimism about certain kinds of ideas flourished in those eras, but ultimately gave way under the “weight of reality.”
I’m pretty ignorant about the Black Power Movement, but my impression is that there’s strong temporal overlap with the post Hays Code era in cinema.
That leads me to wonder if there might be similar parallels in CR and if @afrolicous’ “Who the Internet Was Made For” isn’t one of those weight of reality observations.
Does that make things any clearer?
@Tony
I think I’ve had some insights into how and why certain kinds of freedoms and optimism about certain kinds of ideas flourished in those eras, but ultimately gave way under the “weight of reality.”
========
For example?
I’m pretty ignorant about the Black Power Movement, but my impression is that there’s strong temporal overlap with the post Hays Code era in cinema.
=======
Well, Black Exploitation saved Hollywood. Perhaps the Post Hays code era…coincided with the rise of Foxy Brown…et al.
That leads me to wonder if there might be similar parallels in CR and if @afrolicous’ “Who the Internet Was Made For” isn’t one of those weight of reality observations.
===
Whats CR?
~R
This is Ann, aka @afrolicious chiming in per Renina’s request… I hope I don’t get too off point.
@Tony, thanks for putting my observations into better terms 🙂 I think it’s important to realize the kind of race we’re in right now and why the myth of the internet as a democracy needs to be debunked before we find ourselves in a self-fulfilling 1984 prophecy.
As our material and virtual lives converge, things will just get amplified in translation. It’s no coincidence that the same the institutions that created the internet are the same institutions that play a big part in our “offline” worlds today. Likewise, the way we relate with each other offline translates rather effortless and without euphemism to our online spaces.
So when I read TNC’s “do for self” directive for spaces online, it’s not surprising considering the ways gender, sexuality, race and class play out on the streets, in the classrooms, at the grocery store. And we’ve already seen the socio-economic impact of limited or no internet access play out in rural and low-income parts of the country. See danah boyd’s work on http://www.danah.org/papers/essays/ClassDivisions.html “Viewing American class divisions through Facebook and MySpace” for a more comprehensive take.
It’s been very easy to get online and carve your virtual image through a mashup of social sites and blogs, but it’s still and always has been a struggle for power. Ultimately, in terms of the internet, whoever owns the pipes controls the flow of information and has the power.
In my own limited understanding I’m trying to educate folks and acquire infrastructure that is owned and operated on a collective model. But here’s what get’s me: no one really knows how the internet can and will transform the way humans relate to each other. It’s like an organism unto itself and we’re quite unprepared for what it’s here to do.
RE: Insights
The gist of long response James Fallows published in his blog is something called Climax Ecology, and the importance of distinguishing between clearing events and actual changes in the underlying ecology. But when you’re in the midst of a clearing event, that’s a hard thing to distinguish
Treatment of language, violence and sexuality in Black Exploitation is a good example.
Prior to the abandonment Hays Code this sort of filmmaking was only possible outside mainstream Hollywood. But with the abandonment of the Hays Code and adoption of the 4 tiered system (G, PG, R, X) it suddenly become possible to use this sort of content in films that mainstream finance, production, marketing and distribution behind them. (Midnight Cowboy, A Clockwork Orange, Bonnie and Clyde, etc.)
Looking at who was distributing Black Explotation Cinema I’d offer that it (at least partially) had it’s roots in traditional exploitation fare, but the new ratings system cut it off from those roots (the new ratings system narrowed exploitation filmmakers content arbitrage margins)
I also wouldn’t be surprised if there was a certain Do For Self arbitrage as well. With AA stories/characters so utterly absent from mainstream entertainment, that leaves a big gap for someone to step into. But in either/both cases, the bigger culture eventually gobbles the angle or the angle closes up because teh gap isn’t there anymore, or both.
These are all first blush applications of my point of view to an area that I don’t have any real expertise, so please take them as an example of how I parse culture by looking at tools, rules and markets, not definitive analysis. IOW, I could be all wet.
But what it makes me wonder is if the Tools, Rules, and Markets POV might offer me a deeper understanding of @afrolicous’ cautions about what the internet is and isn’t.
Hello Ann, glad you stopped by. Reading your comment I’m nodding my head and remember an aphorism I tossed off on Twitter a few weeks ago:
“The Internet gives you the unlimited freedom to say the things you’re allowed to say.”
Brilliant convo folks. Thank you.
Thanks Tony for better articulating my issue with the “do for self” mantra & the internet. I was struggling to find the words for why I have had an issue with TNC saying that as often as he does. I think your 1st comment in this thread gets at. Especially the mythology analogy.
And thank you to Ann for our convo. I think that convo was the planted seed that my issues with the “do for self” mantra on the internet sprung from.
He can’t call on his lack of expertise to explain away his ignorance. It’s better to say “I didn’t know” and open yourself to knew knowledge than say “don’t expect me to know, I’m no professor”.
@Kandeezie.
Well shit Gina.
I ain’t no professor either, but I also know better to admit when I wrong when I am being challenged. To shut up. And read THEN come back wit it!