Is my work such an integral part of me, that if you don’t get it, I can’t fuck with you?
Is this being dogmatic? Or am I just being honest?
Would I even have to ask myself these questions if I were born male?
These questions came out a conversation with @hotcombpics this morning.
As many of you know I have written about accepting the fact that as much as I hate Bleek Gilliam, I have serious Bleek Gilliam tendencies…hence my hate.
We hate the shit we hate because it reminds us of ourselves.
It is the third phosphodiesterase inhibitor drug used to cure the impotence.Silagra is to be taken into loved this viagra ordination consideration before buying these medications online. So for this one needs to seek proper guidance from the doctor ask them about the best pill generic cheap cialis to eradicate impotency issue. The website contains viagra overnight usa a wealth of information regarding various medical conditions including ED. Many men, for the time being, take erectile dysfunction drugs in the Indian subcontinent and of late its market is gaining momentum in other parts of the world as well. cheapest levitra prices That being said, I have been thinking a lot about what it means to be comfortable challenging people in general and Black men specifically about gender. As a second year doctoral student, I do gender. I don’t know it all, but I know enough historicize arguments and to admit when I don’t know something and defer to someone who does.
As a Black girl in East Oakland, I had to learn to think critically on my feet as Oakland went from pretty Black town to Crackzilla monster overnight in 1986. Why does this time period matter and how is it related? For me it speaks to how I had the develop the courage to trust myself and my instincts. About people, about relationships, when and where to walk, whether or not to go to a party, whether or not to challenge a person as they may have a gun and me talking back could mean losing my life.
In someways my willingness to stand up for myself is rooted in the fact that the cost of learning to think critically is that I can’t do it any other way now.
If I learned to trust my instincts at 15, I can’t stop doing it at 30, even if trusting them means that people don’t know what the fuck I am talking about, or even if it means going against the grain, even it it means losing a friendship that I cherish.
#damnGina.
File this under the costs of being a high achieving Black girl.
Thoughts?
sort of unrelated, but your mention of crack + the 80s made me think of the Barry Michael Cooper essay (http://bit.ly/9xBxe3) i just read yesterday. the open quote hit me in the heart…
“”The inner-city crack epidemic is now giving birth to the newest horror: a bio-underclass, a generation of physically damaged cocaine babies whose biological inferiority is stamped at birth…This is permanent brain damage. Whether it is 5 percent or 15 percent of the black community, it is there. And for those children it is irrevocable…”
crazy. was just having a convo w/ my mom about some of the students we work with and how we are not even dealing w/ the issue that SOME kids have…that they were born crack-addicted. we just keep slapping labels on them (Sp. Ed, ADHD, ADD, etc), but never deal with what they actually need.
anyway…onto the questions…
Is my work such an integral part of me, that if you don’t get it, I can’t fuck with you?
depends. if they don’t your work AT ALL & therefore don’t find value in it…then yes. keep it moving.
Is this being dogmatic? Or am I just being honest?
i’m gonna go with honest.
Would I even have to ask myself these questions if I were born male?
if you were born a colored male…yes, i think you’d still ask such questions.
BD Dub.
I Love that BMC piece however I do not agree with the “super” crack baby narrative.
Primary because there are MORE children historically and currently born w/ fetal alcohol syndrome, across race. This stat comes out of Killing the Black Body, Race Reproduction and the Meaning of Liberty.
I am not saying that BMC don’t have a point.I am saying that further context is needed because White mainstream media worked hella hard to vilify/reify the Black Woman Crack addict breeder w/ a house full of unkempt kids and that shit is the devil, as far as I’m concerned honey.
You really think I would ask myself these questions if I were born male? Boys are socialized to assume work first, fuck social relationships…intimacy can be purchased. Or that, presuming hetero, women will just be there, waiting.
Wasn’t it proven that the whole “crack baby” narrative turned out to be largely unfounded? I think it was either NY Times or WaPo that debunked that. I’ll find that piece later.
Getting back to your questions though…I think it’s very important for someone to be on the same page with you, since the work you do isn’t a job kind of deal, a “this is what I do for a paycheck” thing. Your work on race and gender is what you do because you’re passionate about it. Whenever we talk, you’re constantly referring me to what you’re reading, ideas you’re working with, and giving me great recommendations on books and papers and the like.
However, someone being on the same page with you doesn’t necessarily mean they have to understand exactly what you’re all about, as much as they need to at least have a healthy curiosity about it, a willingness to learn more.
Would you have to ask yourself these questions if you were male? Hmmm. Maybe, maybe not. I really think that depends on the person. Some people just aren’t self-aware enough to ask themselves these questions, regardless of gender.
On the other hand, I think women are generally socialized to choose the relationship over their work, their passion. Like, do “xyz” until you find a good man, then drop it for him. Whereas men are socialized to believe they can have it all, that they’re supposed to.
#DamnGINA
On the other hand, I think women are generally socialized to choose the relationship over their work, their passion. Like, do “xyz” until you find a good man, then drop it for him.
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My daddy would beat my ass.
My daddy get’s my work.
#damn.
So regarding this quote:
As a Black girl in East Oakland, I had to learn to think critically on my feet as Oakland went from pretty Black town to Crackzilla monster overnight in 1986. Why does this time period matter and how is it related? For me it speaks to how I had the develop the courage to trust myself and my instincts.
My gut tells me this has very little to do with gender and a great deal to do with how people adapt to the environments in which they find themselves. My experience is that people who come up hard usually adopt one of two ways of looking at the world. Either they learn to walk small and they end up determined indwardly focused fighters who work on fighting themselves because the world is too big; or they end up projecting the internal conflict out into the world and fight against the larger “forces” that they see as hindering their potential. Now it’s not all cut and dried, but I really do think that these are two basic ways of looking at the world. There’s that old story about Alexander the Great Meeting Diogenes where Alexander says “If I were not Alexander –who conquered the world– I would be Diogenes –who conquered himself–.
@Sorn
For me the hood is a very gendered place. In ’89 my brother hustled. I wanted to be like my brother. In fact I remembered my mother saying that she was glad that I wasn’t a boy because I would have been in the streets selling crack, like him. She was probably right. The ways in which we move about the world, from point A to point be are HIGHLY gendered. As a Black woman I am treated in a very particular way in the street by Black men, in comparison to how they treat each other. My understanding of this comes from reading Robin DG Kelley’s brilliant “Yo Mommas Dysfunctional.” Girls get in the street selling their bodies, men sell drugs. Furthermore, LGBTQ kids sell what they can.
Either they learn to walk small and they end up determined indwardly focused fighters who work on fighting themselves because the world is too big; or they end up projecting the internal conflict out into the world and fight against the larger “forces” that they see as hindering their potential.
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This is interesting. I don’t think we have enough conversations about how we make meaning about the world. This comment speaks to this.
Renina,
In a way we see the world through the virtue of who we are. If we’re men we see the world through a male lense, if we’re female we see the world through a female lense with the resulting insights that come from each gender’s experiences. (Meaning no disrespect to other experiences that don’t fit into the male/female boxes) Respectfully, I don’t think that the hood is any more or less gendered than any other place.
However, the rules are different. Success in poverty does not equal success in a middle class environment because the rules and expectations are different. I don’t know much about gender theory, but I do know a little bit about living in hardship and poverty. My little brother’s best friend was stabbed 3 days before he was supposed to graduate. A kid that I was friends with down the street and spent the night at his house occasionally went to jail with one of my classmates for a violent sexual offence. There are too many dead people where I grew up. Too many violent crimes go unprosecuted, because crime on the reservation is seldom dealt with any regard to justice.
In many ways the opportunities open to men and the opportunities open to women are different, but the same is true of any stratum of society. It’s true moreover that poverty has a way of intensifying gender discrimination, in writing this reply I was more concerned with how the habits we learn at one level stay with us as we transition out of our environment.
The crux of the matter comes in your quote at the end of the section that I didn’t quote:
“About people, about relationships, when and where to walk, whether or not to go to a party, whether or not to challenge a person as they may have a gun and me talking back could mean losing my life.”
In my mind this isn’t a gender thing this is a temperment/worldview option of which gender plays a part but it is not the sole determining factor. Moreover, it exists and interacts with upbringing, education, and basic temperment to produce a mentality that in the wrong place or the wrong time can cost a person a great deal. Had my brother’s friend not been in the wrong place running his mouth at the wrong time there’s a good chance he would still be alive, but he wasn’t wired to walk small. Part of this undoubtedly had to do with the expectations placed upon teenage boys, but I can’t seperate those expectations from the larger point of how we as people often choose because of our own insecurities and experiences the coping mechanisms that will shape our lives.
In my mind temperment or character trumps gender as an explanation because gender is a part of temperment. Ultimately temperment is a product of experience and nature and while gender plays a part it ain’t the whole story.
Why do some people fight against the impossible, while others fight themselves? Why do some people adapt and find ways to make it out while others stay stuck and wind up dead? It can’t all be seen through a lense that says Men in a patriarchy are raised to do x and women in a patriarchy are raised to do Y. Temperment and individual choices predicated on temperment play an important role that sometimes speaks beyond a person’s gender.
Sornzilla be writing essays ya’ll!
Thank you for your dissertation. I kid you, I kid. I appreciate the discourse. Blogging teaches me to lay out my assumptions and to listen really hard to see what I am assuming AND not saying, and to listen to others as well.
Let me lay out a couple of working assumptions.
1. Social environments are gendered and sexualized spaces. Work, street, churches, the train. Our different identity markers (class, race, sexuality, age, ability) become salient depending on the context.
2. Our identity markers mutually construct each other. A hetero, White working class woman’s experience will have different experience from a affluent, queer, White womans experiences because of how their identities shape each other.
Some aspects will be similar as well.
“About people, about relationships, when and where to walk, whether or not to go to a party, whether or not to challenge a person as they may have a gun and me talking back could mean losing my life.”
In my mind this isn’t a gender thing this is a temperment/worldview option of which gender plays a part but it is not the sole determining factor.
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Ahhhh ha!
I see. I believe my assumptions one and two get at this.
In my mind temperment or character trumps gender as an explanation because gender is a part of temperment. Ultimately temperment is a product of experience and nature and while gender plays a part it ain’t the whole story.
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In a society organized by and for men, both gender and race and a whole other slew influence how we shape the world.
I insist on gender because it often gets written out the narrative when it comes to public spaces and African americans.
White feminists + White queer theorists analyze gender but they are reluctant to do race. Black race analysts tend to do just that, race.
From the margin’s I sit here writing trying to mindful of the various identity markers that shape our daily lives.
Does that provide clarity as to why I keep bringing up and centering gender?
Why do some people fight against the impossible, while others fight themselves?
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Shit. I don’t know. Thats a existential philosophy question, I think.
Peace.
~R