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Orisha’s and Clarity for Black Girls #blackgirlsarefromthefuture

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Last night I saw someone dance so, how do you say, he was such a light that I stared. I try not to stare. Staring is rude. However, I was mesmerized.

There is always a moment when I am dancing were I go somewhere else, where everyone else recedes and its just me and the music. His whole joint was like that.

I knew he was touched by and dealt with the Orisha’s. I went and spoke to him and my suspicions were confirmed.

He told me a few things about myself that were so right that I am still kind of riveted.

He said that I am a conduit (this makes sense as a writer), that I speak with my eyes, he reminded me that my number is 11, and that I am protected.

He also asked me whether vulnerability was a strength or weakness. I just storta looked at him and said “I have been dwelling in the fearless and vulnerable since last February.” #Badunem. He then responded saying that when I became more able to not be concerned with the things that others said, that I would be unstoppable. I am still thinking about this.

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It was incredibly terrifying and liberating to consenting to being read by someone who is as equally comfortable in the spirit realm as they are in the material.

This interaction was strange but it felt like I was returning to the familiar. As an undergraduate student I studied in classes religion around the African Diaspora and living in New York I was constantly exposed to visual representations of the Orisha’s (from Cuban, Puerto Rican, Haitian and Nigerian people.) My undergraduate dissertation was on looking at linguistic (and some cultural) connections between Nigeria, The Sea Island and Oakland.

Last week I was talking to Court bear my dating coach about the politics of being willing to be myself in a society  where social institutions (church’s, schools, films,)  say that Black women are many things, but quirky and worthy of Love and being desired isn’t one of them. She said yes, it’s hard, yes it gets lonely but think about how you LIKE yourself as a person and of the lives that you touch.

I have also decided to forgive McSloppy. Why? It just doesn’t feel right any longer to be beefing.  Honestly, it’s only a matter of time until he has a self induced hot grits moment if he keeps on at this rate. It would be horrible if that is what it took for him understand that women need to be treated like human beings. He doesn’t need any side eye from me in 2011.   I have demonstrated to myself that I have tried to act with integrity in this situation.

Honestly,  after being read last night, I was reminded that  human beings hate what they fear or can’t control. I also felt like I had been acting a bit immature. What I understood from the dancer last night is that because I am a conduit, I need to keep the path clear. This obligation is bigger than a situation between me and any other single person, but just something that I need to do on gp. This was confirmed last night. Conduits have to keep the path clean. That means forgiveness.

Oh, and I called @afrolicious today because she is Nigerian and evolved and helps me to see my blind spots. She responded, “I bet its really interesting when someone see’s the God in you.” Word? That’s what happen? No wonder I felt the need to sit still tonight. And if you know me offline you know I stay in motion unless I am sitting somewhere writing.

When Fahn Strangers Try to Dominate Me.

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Yesterday I was on the train platform and I was walking past a REALLY handsome gentleman. Like Denzel if he were a pulman porter in the 40’s, but still like 30 though. Square jaw, chestnut colored skin and impeccable eyebrows. 

He was like “Hi, How are you” (smiling while I type).

I responded, “Well Hello Dahling.”

He said, “What are you doing.”

I respond, “Flirting with you.”

He retorted, “You call that flirting?”

I was stuck like chuck. And said, “Wow, wait, people never come back as witty as I do.”

So he proceeded to introduce himself,  looking me dead in my grill, never blinking. ONCE. #OOWWWW.

He then proceed to ask me where I was from, and he took out his cell phone and was like whats your number.

I was like, umm, do you sell things, or is your train coming because it feels like you are trying to close the deal.

He was like nah, my train isn’t coming.

I was like, wow, I am use to being the direct one.

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Record scratch.

I was like what? Yes I should, we both should.

He was like yeah well, “I am in control right now.”

Red Flag. Red Flag. Red flag. Even though you FAHN (peace to @thepbg) my intuition told me to roll out.

I was like dahling, when is your birthday?  He was like oh, I’m a Taurus, I was like oh, I’m sorry, I don’t to date you all or Leo’s and said good bye and walked away.

What makes a grown man think he can tell a woman in the street that he doesn’t know, that “he is in control.” I’ll be like, and I’m from the future. Bye boo.

Lol.

I don’t care what  say…I am waiting for my Spring Aquemini. #yerp.

#AllcityTells.

Was he playing with me or was he serious?

He really think that ‘ish is cute?

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?