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A (Black) Feminist Note to Young White Feminists

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The idea for this post came to me while I was reflecting on my work as a teaching assistant and teacher over the past year.

It is interesting how much I have changed as a person, having taught such hairy issues such as race, class, gender, sexuality, double jeopardy, the matrix of oppression etc.

My ability to read the energy in a room is sharpened, I feel empowered to intervene and de-escalate when it is clear that a situation may become out of control and harmful.

I saw a lot of promise in my students. They were interested in creating a better world. Some were very conscious of the privileges that they held in terms of class, race or gender. They were pariticulary floored when they learned that only 27% of the country has a bachelors degree.

The young white women students seemed to be most moved by the fact that their male peers could possibly earn more than them, even if they have the same training. They looked down right sad. When I saw this I told them that they looked down right sad. I also told them that we are arming them with this information so that they can go out in the world, and that they would be a apart of a long line of people who have seen issues with the world and decided to do something about it.

What I want them to be mindful of is the distinction between structural issues and individual issues and how they are both connected and distinct. It was challenging for them to think about how social systems, schools, church’s and families teach them what being “man” or being a “woman” is as most of them have been trained to think about the individual and choice. For the most part, they eventually got it.  In fact, they were really clear on the connection between the individual and the institution when it came to issues of reproductive justice. They understood that a woman can only make a “choice” based on the conditions in which she finds herself.

What was the most interesting thing about them is their ability to spot contridictions. It freaked me out at times. It kept me on my toes after I realized that they could spot contradictions the way that they could. In creating my lesson plans I anticipated their ability to spot contradictions.

For instance:

They were able to see the contridiction between the idea of the “melting pot” and the “all american beauty.”

They were able to ask why, when women out number men, are women not more frequently placed in positions of decision making authoritity?

They were able to see the contradiction between women “having it all” and women being expected to do all of the house hold social reproductive labor.
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Lastly, they were able to see the contradiction between a society that claimed to treat everyone equally yet perpetually paid women less for the same work that their male counter parts did, because in our social system, paying half of the workforce less means more money for profits.

I wanted my students to understand that it is up to them to take their lives seriously.

I want them to know that women are both similar and different, and that these differences should not stop them from engaging in social justice work. That we are ALL human beings. This does not mean that I am not Black and they- at least most of them, are not White, because we have our respective packaging and that  our “packaging” has histories.

One of my most impressive students was a young woman who wants to be a federal agent. And if she sustains her passion for reading and writing and work, she will be one. One day she asked me, Ms. Jarmon, “What do I do if I go on a job interview, and I get the job, but the employer is racist.” I was floored. Because this is a profound question.

I said to her, “Wow, well, there are a few things that you can do. Let’s talk about your options. Thank you for sharing this with me, because as your teacher, working through these kinds of issues are important.”

We then proceeded to discuss what her options would be in this kind of situation.

It was in this moment that I was reminded of my passion for teaching and how fulfilling it is to connect with students.

#ummhmm.

What would you tell a young white woman who is interested in social justice work?

As a teacher, what are your favorite moments?

Have you noticed how my writing has changed over the last year? I guess that is a question for long time readers.

A Tale of Two Lauryns: Why We Feel Entitled to Lauryn Hill.

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Note: I wrote this post last week, before she announced her pregnancy. #allcity.

One of the reason’s why I think we are incapable of letting Lauryn go, or understanding why she has chosen her family work over her artistic work is that we do not see parenting as work.

I have friends whose parents provided for their material means, they had food clothes and shelter, gadgets and toys, but moms and pops were always at work.

And they hate their parents for always being away.

I am not doing that, and I can see Lauryn Hill’s desire to give her children some sense of stability and protection.

People always say to me, girl, when you gonna have a baby- blahzey, blah? I look them dead in they face and say, listen, a child requires you to reorganize your entire life, and I believe that that child should be your priority, because as parents we bring them into the world. I also believe that women are hyper criticized for parenting choices, AND also given little support to be parents. So until those conditions change, I am cool. This is not to say that I don’t struggle with it. Because I do. AND, I am still cool.

How we think about Lauryn and what we feel that we expect from her is interesting.

I began thinking about this as I watched two videos of her. Once when she was twenty-five, the other from last year when she first started really touring again.

@:34 she says “I wanted them to have normalcy and privacy…I wanted a real life as well.”

@1:24 They are really not my accomplishments to be proud of.

@2:58 On missing her high school graduation.

@5:54 The music industry is a microcosm of the world.
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@10:49 Lauryn Hill makes me look up the word ethereal.

I noticed in watching these two videos that she says twice “I didn’t have any new experiences to write about.”

A lot of my blog posts are based on a mixture of experiences and things that I have read, so I can see her point.

I read a biography of Billie Holiday last fall, “If You Can’t Be Free, Be a Mystery” and the author Farah Griffin explores why we know what we know about Billie Holiday. She also forces us to think why Black men Jazz artists can suffer from drug addictions  and still be seen as a genius, but Billie Holiday’s addictions seem to always overshadow her genius, her knowledge production.

I am thinking about how we know what we know about Lauryn Hill.

How the demands for her to come back don’t take into consideration that parenting is work. That making music is work.

And that it was particularly challenging for her to be a petite Black girl with natural hair in a music industry premised on approximating blond, white beauty ideals.

The ability to accept Lauryn for who she is may be a barometer of freedom for Black women in this country.

Why the investment in Lauryn Hill?

If we acknowledged that parenting and being an artist was work, would we view Lauryn differently?

Can Black women breathe?

NMM Premium

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I am considering creating a space on the blog and charging a small amount per post during the month of July.

There are three reasons I am thinking of this.

1. I want to do some buttons, bags,  featuring tweets and #Blackgirlsarefromthefuture. Selling the posts would give me the start-up capital.

2. A commenter stated that my blog is a public service and the public servants DO get paid for their work and that I should as well.

3. Last fall, I was speaking to LaToya about charging for Racialicious posts, and she said that she didn’t want to do that because it would put her content out of reach of the people that she wanted to reach in the first place.

4. There is a young woman of color author who has earned a handsome sum selling her fiction online charging nominal amounts between $1-5.

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What is holding me back?

It seems tacky to charge. However, writing IS work. And while I do know that some work is paid, all work is not paid work and that doesn’t make it any less valuable.

Which leads me to one question, would you pay?

How much?

How often?

Arielle Loren Asks “Is Beyonce the Face of Contemporary Feminism?” My Response

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We need to be clear about who we are trying to be equal to.

In her blog post Arielle Loren asserts that most women do not identify as being feminists even if they share its core ideologies, that there has been a shift in the contemporary agenda for women’s equality and that women are tired of rhetoric of hardcore oppression and patriarchy. She goes on to say that “frankly, all of the traditional feminist criticism of her “Who Runs The World (Girls)” video is just another example of the disconnect between intellectual theory and real life.” Beyonce is the face of contemporary feminism because women feel empowered listening to Beyonce’s music, so consequently, they take this “power” with them as they go on about their day to day lives.

Interesting.

Let me lay out my assumptions.

Feminism is not about being equal to men. All men are not equal. A black man  from 135th street with a Harvard MBA does not have the same social capital as a Black man from 135th street who just got out of Rikers. Full stop.

Next.

We need to be clear about who we want to be equal to. In fact, we need to ask do we want to be equal or do we want to be free?

Second assumption.

Black feminists are rooted in Love.

Black Feminists are interested in creating spaces for men to feel because men who don’t feel do not know how to Love. Black feminists are interested in holding themselves, and others accountable when they say racist, homopobic ‘ish, because thats how we roll. Black feminists will get up in that behind when a rapper tries to make jokes and bets about non consensual choking of women during sex. Peace to Jay Electronica. The Black feminist I know are rooted in Love. Being rooted in Love means that you understand that you will not be able to have meaningful emotionally invested relationships with another adult until you have forgiven you one OR both of your parents for abandoning you. Peace to all my homies who are in therapy. We grown.

Black Feminist Love is hella grown.

We are so grown that we understand like Arielle Loren does, the importance of Black women being able to be sexual, complicated, whole human beings. We understand that is is particularly important for Black women who are rendered 50 million ho’s on the regular in pop culture. The mission statement for the Black Feminist blog  Betta Come Correct states that:

BECAUSE BLACK FEMINIST SEX IS THE BEST SEX EVER…THIS IS ALSO A WAKE UP CALL TO ANYONE WHO INSISTS ON INTIMACY WITHOUT ACCOUNTABILITY, CONDONES VIOLENCE AGAINST BLACK WOMEN, OR REFUSES TO BE TRANSFORMED BY THE ECSTATIC MIRACLE THAT BLACK WOMEN EXIST. YOU ARE SERIOUSLY MISSING OUT.

So Black women having space to be multidimensional and whole is a part of the contemporary Black feminist agenda.

Back to Beyonce.

As you many of you know I have done a lot of writing about Beyonce, because I am concerned about how the messages that she conveys shapes expectations within Black heterosexual relationships. Given the fact that she made 80 million dollars in 2007-2008 and that earning that kind of money is extremely rare for people in general Black women in particular, Beyonce’s messages influence society and they shape how Black women look at themselves and their partners. Black women are not allowed to earn nearly 100 million dollars unless they are beautiful, talented, non-threatening to White men and they convey historical stereotypes about Black men and women. Dave Chappelle walked away for a reason ya’ll.

Because I care about Black women, I pay close attention to what Beyonce says.

It is dangerous to make open statements that women run the world, because there is so much evidence women get the shit end of the stick in the world.

Black, Latina and Asian women are sex trafficked in the Bronx, East Oakland and Las Vegas.

Eastern European women are sex trafficked globally.

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Women are 50.7% of the US Population. Yet, women are only 16.4% of Congress. They are 17 of the 100 members of the Senate. They are 73 of the 435 member of the House of Representatives.

Women are routinely paid less for the same jobs that men do and this is broken down by race.In fact when I told my students two weeks ago that they could graduate from college and be offered less money, just because of what was between their legs, they looked depressed.

They couldn’t believe how profoundly unfair it was. When I said that “Women are cheap labor” they looked mortified. I explained to them that shutting down was not going to create a more just and equitable world. That they cannot change a system if they do not understand it. And now that they do know that women are offered less money to do the work that men can do, they are expected to go out into the world and change it. Peace to the Equal Pay Act.

Poverty is feminized in this country, meaning that a main predictor of poverty is having a baby because children are expensive (childcare, healthcare, food, clothes, shelter) and there is very little support such as state/federal child care, paid federal family medical leave, support for families who work full time as parents.

We need to be honest about who we are tying to be equal to.

Women do not run the world. The world shits on women. Ask Ester Baxter. Ask Susan Giffords. Ask the woman who claims that she was assaulted and raped by the former President of the IMF. Ask Shaniya Davis’s family.  Ask Ayianna Jones’s family. Ask Sakia Gunn’s family. Ask. Ask. Ask.

Now if we want to celebrate the catchiness of a Beyonce song, or honor her athletic ability, her fierceness as a dancer, that is perfectly legititmate. But to call her the face of modern day feminism is ahistorical and a slap in the face to Black, White, Latino, Asian, Muslim, Native American women and men who have been working to change our world so that being born with a vagina does not automatically mean being raised to be someones wife, street harassment material, nanny, slave or prostitute, but a fully developed human being.

For more readings on the history of Black Women and Feminism read:
Righteous Discontent: The Women’s Movement and the Black Baptist Church 1880-1920 by Evelyn Brooks Higgenbotham
Living for the Revolution by Kimberly Springer
Radical Sisters: Second Wave Feminism and Black Liberation in Washington in DC by Ann Valk.

For more readings on Black, White and Chicana Feminisms:
Separate Roads to Feminism by Benita Roth

For more readings on Third Wave Feminism
To Be Real, Ed by, Rebecca Walker
“Under Construction: Identifying Foundations of Hip Hop Feminism…” by Whitney Peoples
On Being Feminism’s Ms. Nigga by Latoya Peterson <<<And I still have issues with the title.
Feminism for Real: Deconstructing the Academic Industrial Complex of Feminism, Ed. Jessica Yee.

My post on R. Kelly and Julian Assange mentions some good books on feminism as well.

Thoughts. I know you have them.

Is positing Beyonce as “contemporary feminism” a move to come up?

What is your definition of feminism?

Music as feminist empowerment?

Rough Draft: Malcolm X + Lil B and Black Men’s Sexuality

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I woke up with the portion of the post on Lil B and Malcolm in my head.

“….Writing about Black men’s sexuality is important because sexuality is racism’s third rail. Sexual domination, violence and the threat of violence have all been tools to keep Black folks, women and Black women in check. An examination of sexuality, the language around sex can teach us a lot about ourselves.

Also, in the post “An You Even Licked My Balls: A Black Feminist Note on Nate Dogg” I argued that we need to interrogate how White men’s desires for certain images of Black men shapes the music that we consume. White suburban men and women singing “And You Even Licked My Balls” takes on a whole other connotation when we consider how segregated we live in the United States. Many White folks learn what they learn about Black people from the television. This makes Nate Dogg’s catalog take on a whole other significance.

I also know that I need to write this because as a Black woman who blogs about rap music, I unlike other rap bloggers am not interested in becoming friends with rappers or becoming beholden to a rap label. (Wait…some rappers do check for #allcity. Let’s be clear.) This free’s me up to say things that a rap blogger would NOT say, out of fear of sabotaging a relationship with a music label or an artist. I am beholden to myself as a writer and to my audience. Full stop.

I write this because I care about Black people in general and Black women in particular. I also write this because homophobia is a tool of sexism. Homophobia directed towards men, is rooted of the hatred of the “feminine” in men.
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I also write this because I am concerned not just with the relations between Black folks and white folks, but between Black men and Black women as well. So when Lil B decides he is going to name his album “I’m Gay”, I pay attention. Especially given the influence that he has on young children, I will absolutely pay attention.

Being an artist or being a genius does not give a person a free reign to be greasy.”

More is coming. I need to read the Malcolm book and also collect the links to stuff that has been written about Lil B.

Thoughts?

Have you read the Malcolm book yet?