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Rap & The Tea Party: Musing on Violence and Rhetoric

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I have been thinking about the resistance to the idea that words influence actions in general violence in particular.

In reality, the repetition of words is arguably one of the most powerful forces on earth.

Is there a connection between the ways in which rappers and Tea Party members use violent words, and how these words normalize violence against specific groups of people? It is certainly a question worth thinking about.

For example, last December, I along with Crunktastic, Crunk Feminists rep hard, wrote blog posts about Jay Electronica joking about choking women during sex during his concerts, his twenty thousand dollar bet with rapper Nas on whether “all women liked being choked during sex”, his silencing of dissent around the topic at his concerts and how this kind of rhetoric serves to normalize the conditions under which sexual violence occurs to women.

I had to block two people after I wrote that. They were incensed that I made the connection. On the other hand, many Americans don’t feel that there is a connection between Sarah Palin’s words and the violence that occured in Arizona recently either.

Go figure.

Interestingly Davey D wrote on a post on this topic as well in a post titled “If Rappers Can Take the Heat for Inflammatory Rhetoric, Why Can’t Sarah Palin.” I am not certain that rappers “take the heat” for their language. At least  not in a public and sustained way since 2 Live Crew. Oh wait, there ways Nelly and Tip Drill…

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In trying to figure out why people think about defending positions they know or suspect are dead wrong, I ask myself, “what is their investment in the argument?”

Some people identify with rap music or The Tea Party so, to criticize either feels like you are criticizing them personally.

When talking about ideas and how they shape violence, what we are really talking about is our own willingness to acknowledge how we are complicit in that violence.

Words are powerful, and if you think they aren’t watch what happens when a grown White man calls a grown Black man a “Nigger.” #ummhmm.

Honestly, it was refreshing to see a conversation outside of the feminist blogosphere, where folks were talking about the harm of violent rhetoric.

What responsibility does a person, who has a large speaking platform,  have for their language?

Why is it so easy for young men and women to see it as an issue when it comes to race but when it comes  gender (men and women) they short circuit?

The Gender Dimensions of the Giffords Shooting

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Earlier this week I was wondering aloud on Twitter whether anyone was going to address the gendered dimensions of the point blank shooting of Arizona Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords allegedly by Jared L. Loughner.

I realized that no one would, so it was my job.

By a gendered framework I mean aknowledging, naming and analyzing the fact that Congresswoman Giffords is a woman and that Loughner is a man and putting the shooting within a larger historical and a current framework of violence against women.

To put the shooting within a larger framework is to acknowledge that this is a violent culture against women, and once this is acknowledged, something will have to be done about it. That being said, it may be in the interests of those who organize society to act as if this is not a gendered act of violence. They have their interests, and I have mine.

In a culture that is violent against women, a significant amount of violence sexual or otherwise is committed against women, simply because they are born women.

For example:

  1. In 2005, 1,181 women were murdered by an intimate partner.1 That’s an average of three women every day. Of all the women murdered in the U.S., about one-third were killed by an intimate partner.2

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  2. The poorer the household, the higher the rate of domestic violence — with women in the lowest income category experiencing more than six times the rate of nonfatal intimate partner violence as compared to women in the highest income category.11
  3. 60.4% of female victims were first raped before age 18.
  4. Among high school students, 9.3% of black students, 7.8% of Hispanic students, and 6.9% of white students reported that they were forced to have sexual intercourse at some time in their lives.3

Looking at the statistics helps us to get a sense of how this shooting can be seen as  not only arguably connected to harmful Tea Party rhetoric but also  to a narrative of violence against women.

Looking at the shooting through a gendered framework is helpful because it can help us to see how public acts of violence, such as lynching, rape and murder have been used historically in the United States to deter marginalized bodies from participating publicly and fully in Democracy.

Baldwin says to act is to commit, and to commit is to be in danger.

I don’t hold my breath, I also don’t hold my pen.

Have you noticed in mainstream media that there has been very little analysis of how this shooting was a gendered act?

What would happen if that were broached or even acknowledged?

Why You Pay for Shit Twice in the Hood.

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Image courtesy Faith in Action.

I just received an email about a digital farm network in Dallas, and I thought, this is interesting.

I often have conversations with @afrolicious and @tomphilpott
about how to use technology to bridge the gap between farmers and people who buy food.

There is a lot of money being made off of people who live in the hood and this is why if you live in the hood you pay for shit twice, and the endless need for profit/growth plays a huge role.

Last fall, my professor said that a unit of profit requires exploitation. What she meant by this is that in order for someone to profit, someone else has to take a short.

Look at it like this, if you are working at Target, making $7 an hour, Target is making arguably $100 to $200 dollars an hour off of you. You are taking the short, and the corporation is keeping the rest.  What if you were able to keep more of the money you earned for them? Life would be different. On top of that, most of the items that we get from stores are from factories in China, Mexico, Haiti and the Phillipines where women work earning $2 per day. Again, those women are taking the short.

How do people pay for shit twice in the hood. Poverty is lucrative. People who own businesses in the hood make money charging incredible prices for the day to day things needed to survive.

The first example that comes to mind is a New York times article where Barbara Ehrenreich talks about the “ghetto tax” and how being poor is expensive. She writes,

  • “Poor people are less likely to have bank accounts..”
  • .”..low-income car buyers…pay more for car loans than more affluent buyers.”
  • “Low-income drivers pay more for car insurance.”
  • “They are more likely to buy their furniture and appliances through pricey rent-to-own businesses.”
  • “They are less likely to have access to large supermarkets and hence to rely on the far more expensive…convenient stores.”

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When you add that all up, you really get a sense of how when you live in the hood you pay more for services and products, just because you live in the hood.

The example of how poverty is expensive is Rafi and Dallas’ video Check Mate. Checkmate analyzes why people in the hood use check cashing places rather than banks, why there are arguably no banks in the hood and how check cashing spots,  pawn shops and gold chain shops operate to seperate the people who don’t have a lot of money from the little bit of bread that they do have.

So people in the hood pay more for mortgages, food, care insurance, furniture, banking or check cashing.

Let me focus on food for a minute.

For a long time I thought that the issue around food and social justice was that we just need have more locally sourced food. But the thing about this is that all cities and states are not created equal.

We don’t get our oranges from Idaho.

Because I come from Oakland, where lemons, limes, tomatoes, rosemary and avocados grow everwhere, I assumed that local was the solution.

It isn’t. More than anything, a solution will be food systems, bodega’s, grocery stores, co-ops, farmers markets where earning a profit, and accumulating ENDLESS profit isn’t the main directive or inspiration.

We have been raised to think that everyone can profit, that growth will always increase. Growth or the endless accumulation of profit has real consequences on the quality of life of people in the hood, and it shows. Peace to South East DC. Peace to East Oakland.

Growing and distributing food and ensuring that low income Latina women in Bushwick, and affluent Jewish women on the upper east side both have access to good, fresh reasonably priced fresh food and vegetables is what I envision.

@Umair talks a lot about this  issue of corporations thinking about the bottom line second or even third his blog.

I know that I am talking about a new society here. But isn’t it time?

Do you pay for things twice?

Have you moved from the hood to the suburbs?

Where you surprised by how much cheaper things were?

On My Mothers Language

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One of the things that you have to get use to when you meet me is my colorful use of language. It’s sprinkled with Spanish, bear language, slang, feminist theory, Mobb Deep quotes and some occasional Biggie rhymes.

It’s fun.

I have been wanting to write this post for a while. But I think that watching the Zora Neal Hurston documentary tonight finally compelled me to do it.

From Baldwin, I have learned that we use language to control our environments.

So this is what I keep in mind as I write about my mothers phrases.

The first one that has been on my mind is “It’s your little red wagon, you can push it or you can pull it.”

This seems fairly innocuous but in essence, she was telling me, a five year old, it is YOUR life to do with it as you wish. It makes all the sense in the world after all of these years. Especially as I regularly make “grown folks” choices and deal with the consequences of those choices.

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The third one is “you can eat it fast, you can eat it slow, when you eat it up you ain’t getting no more.” HA! I always heard this as I like snacks. Again, this was her way of teaching me about resources and managing them, and really placing my agency, my will to act, on my mind. It made no sense at five, makes ton’s of sense now.

The fourth one is “Your ass is grass and I have the keys to the lawn mower.” #Jesusbeafence. Why couldn’t this woman just say that I was in trouble and going to be put on punishment. No, she had to show that I was in trouble and she had the key to stop or start my punishment. I like this one arguably the best. Why, because its so colorful.

This one is a little fresh, and gendered but it is what she said. The comment has to do with characterizing women who are seen as “promiscuous.” I probably shouldn’t have been listening when she made this comment, but you know children are nosy. The comment is “She will ____ a snake if you hold his head.” I kid you not. Talk about learning about how women’s sexuality is perceived and shaped from your mother. I think about that line and I just kinda shiver now, but it captures something that is both patriarchal and violent but honest in terms how are taught we see women.

I have a candy jones. During finals there are candy wrappers everywhere. As a kid I didn’t really care for sharing candy. So, my mum would say, “Renina so tight she squeak when she walk.” Still cracks me up. I am SOOOO stingy with candy I squeak when I walk. Like I am the tin man. I am better at sharing now.

What would we do without language?

Do you have any sayings from your family that make sense now, but made no sense at all when you were a kid?

Marsha Ambrosius’ “Far Away” + Black Masculinity + Violence

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There are three videos circulating that have me thinking about Black men and masculinity and violence.

The first is the new Marsha Ambrosius video, Far Away, we see a story where a young man, who interacts with Marsha, is gay (desires men sexually) or queer (operates outside of the heteronormative ideas of sexual desire). He is beaten by a group of Black men, presumptively, because he is gay and he subsequently commits suicide.

I am delighted that Marsha is leveraging  her major label power to tell a story that needs to be told. This video is powerful because it speaks to the psychological costs of being oppressed because of who you desire sexually, and being open with that desire.

Honestly, I can’t believe the men embrace and kiss in the video. Black men who are intimate with each other simply isn’t allowed in pop culture. I don’t know if Black men can BE intimate with anyone in pop culture for that matter. Yes, they may have sex, but to be intimate, not so much.

In fact, when I saw For Colored Girls in a movie theater filled with Black women in DC, there was a huge range of hissing sounds that came out of the mouths of the women when the Carl character revealed to his wife the Lady in Red (Janet Jackson), that he was bisexual. Yet, the women were quiet during the rape scene between the Lady in Yellow (Anika Rose) and the man she was dating Bill (Khalil Kain). The point that I am trying to get at is that this experience showed me how conservative Black people can be around issues of sexuality.

In a post “On (Black) Masculinity: It’s Fragile + Illusive” earlier this year I wrote about Black masculinity and masculinity in general.

Quoting Global Gender Issues in the New Millennium,

“…Heternormative masculinity is an extraordinarily fragile and unstable construct and identity that leaves men having to prove repeatedly that they have “it”. They are put in constant fear and anxiety that they will be dubbed less than real men and therefore, be demoted down the gender hierarchy and be subjected to greater violence by other, higher men.”

This has me thinking about how men are subjected to violence in way similar to how women are, but under difference circumstances. It all turns on “conform to the way its done” or get smashed. For women its gimmie your number, or imma call you a ______ and slap you. Act like a man or imma sock you in the face and call you a _____. You get my drift?

The second video is the Ted Talk by Tony Porter where he talks about black masculinity. The most relevant parts are:

1:12 – The man box and socialization of men

2:35 – On teaching a 5 year old how to be a man.

4:11 –  On how his father apologized to him for crying in front of him.

6:50 – On deciding whether or not to participate in a gang rape as a teenager.

The “man box” is a powerful way for describing how sexism works, it takes the focus off of individual men and places the focus on social forces (how people in schools, churches, families think about gender roles).

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Keep this in mind while I talk about the next video.

In this video I just watched today a Black Uncle whoops his presumably 13 or 14 year old nephew with a belt for “Fake Thugging” on Facebook. He then forced the young man to put the video on Facebook. #triggerwarning.

I have long been reluctant to talk publicly about Black parents beating Black children, however, it needs to be done. Honestly, its one of the things that I have been scared to write about and I don’t scare easily.

bell hooks has said Black feminist’s lack of writing about how some Black parents, spank, whoop and beat their children is one of the ways in which Black Feminist have failed Black families.  We analyze domination between men and women and Black folks and White folks and even global violence but we don’t closely analyze how parents dominate children.

This is important.

For the most part globally and locally it is assumed that women will do the lion share of child rearing. Whether or not this assumption is legitimate is a WHOLE OTHER blog post. But because women do most of the child rearing,  disciplinary parental violence is something that I have been looking or a language to articulate.

For me, the violence done to the young man in the Marsha Ambrosius video is similar to the violence done by the uncle to the nephew, why? Violence or the threat of violence is used to get results from a human being, to force them to do something, to dominate them.

Is the violence connected for you?

Why or why not?

Do parents have a right to beat their children? #backtoBackBeatings

Does beating your children teach them that People Who Love You Have a Right to Beat You? If no, how?

Isn’t beating children as a much of a behavior deterrent as sending someone to prison?