Renina

From Cafe los Negros to Black Girl Twitter: A Note on Race and Ownership of Social Media Properties

August 6, 2014 by Renina

Last year while writing my book I read (@ Moya’s recommendation) “Race, Technology and Everyday Life“, edited by Alondra Nelson, Thuy Lihn N. Tu and Alicia Headlam Hines.

In this book there is a hell of an interview by Andrew Ross of Mclean Mashingaidze Greaves. Greaves was the founder of Cafe los Negros an online destination for Urban Black and Latino folks founded in 1996. Yes. 1996, nearly 20 years ago.

Now I am going to get into race, access to venture capital, Black girl twitter and why Greaves was a visionary.

First, what is deep to me about this interview is that Greaves was running an internet start up company out of Bed Stuy in 1996. He was a visionary. He saw that the internet was a natural space for urban folks of color to congregate and support independent artists. He understood that once broadband expanded then independent content creators like myself, would be able to interact directly their their communities. He knew that the television and the internet would eventually become fused together. He also foresaw that that there would be a niche to be filled, as Brown and Black folks in the city with disposable incomes would begin to want media that was relevant to their lives. The Black gossip blogosphere and the hip hop blogosphere speaks to that, so does the evolution of The Root, Ebony, Essence and Jet.

Ultimately, Greaves argues that his company was cut off at its knees because he needed a team and funding to really gain some traction.

Here is the thing that disturbs me about the current rhetoric around women, technology, coding, venture capital, Black girl twitter and even crowd funding.

Whether than complain about diversity and numbers who is funding venture capital pipelines for folks of color to OWN their platforms, rather than continuously uploading free content to Wall Street traded social media platforms all day (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Yahoo…etc.)

Reading this Greaves essay shows me that even prior to the rise of the Blogosphere, young urban Black and Brown people were trying to OWN their own platforms. Not only where they trying to own their own platforms but that had a sense of building community while they did so. They were trying to own their own platforms while living in the ‘hood. After I read this, I was really curious as to why Greaves’ narrative is absent from the “we need to teach folks to code” discourse. Of course I am being rhetorical and marking power here because it is important.

Now let me tie this to Black girl twitter.

According to Pew Internet research I’ve known since appropriately 2010 that Black women are hyper represented on twitter. Because I’ve known that Black women are hyper represented on Twitter, I’ve been sensitive to the notion that NOT ALL social media platforms are equal. For instance, I can go back through all 963 blog posts I have written here I have statistics on which are the most popular, I can find old comments, I can see the countries of the people who visit my site. This level of social media info isn’t available on Twitter (even though they just upped their analytic cards) and you cannot get granular levels of details about who has visited your page and when, and for how long from Facebook.

My point about Black girl twitter is that I came to the conclusion at the end of last year that Black women (primarily in the US and on the coasts) are creating quantifiable value for other peoples media content on Twitter. I didn’t understand this until, one day while watching a show on OWN, a friend pointed out that there was a group of people sitting at a desk on laptops within a frame of the show. If you blinked you would have missed it. I was told that those are producers, interacting with Twitter users and that this was a relatively new development. I was also told that show runners negotiate for MORE money for ad sales for shows that have high tweet engagement. This is one of the ways in which Black women create quantitative value for television shows, but on user generated content sites, as they stand now, they will not be rewarded for this value creation. Don’t believe me, see Scandal Thursdays, Being Mary Jane Tuesdays, or the tweet volume associated with the airing of the Black Girls Rock award show.

I am still working out these ideas here, however I am clear that it is ahistorical to rely on coding rhetoric when thinking about the pipeline of Black and Brown technologists.

Greaves legacy shows that Black and Brown folks have been visionaries with regard to early adopting digital technologies and leveraging them to build businesses and niche communities.

Perhaps there needs to be less diversity talk, and more of an examination of the past, as well as more money placed into pipe lines to create the owners that folks like Greaves wanted to be nearly 20 years ago. Let me be clear here, I am not simply talking about making more moguls, but I am thinking about tech literacy, and justice literacy as it pertains to these tech spaces. I am particularly concern because the internet of things (sensors being placed on objects that then store information such as your refrigerator sensing that you are low on milk) will become an ingrained part of our day to day lives as we move into the future.

What are the limits of tech diversity rhetoric?

Did you know about Greaves? What does it mean that a Black dude who was trying to create a start up 20 years ago in Bed Stuy?

Overall post response? Is this really about making little Black and Brown Mark Zuckerbergs? If so, what are the benefits and costs?

Girls of Color on Tumblr: AMA (Ask me anything: Reddit Style)

August 6, 2014 by Renina

TW: suicide

In mid April of this year we lost kick ass Black Girl blogger Karyn Washington, the wonderful Black feminist historian Stephanie Camp, and DC was still looking for Relisha Rudd.

To say that I was overwhelmed was an understatement.

In order to cope with this, I decided to make myself available to girls of color on tumblr who are creating new media (blog posts, podcasts, digital poetry books, indie fiction) etc.

It was a way for me to honor the legacies of Karyn Washington and Stephanie Camp, and not be overwhelmed by the fact that we were looking for Relisha Rudd.

I promised myself that I would do the exercise again. So here it is.

When I did this exercise the first time people asked me questions about:

Using blogging to get into journalism (depends, you can go the school route, but you need to have a social media presence and online archive that legacy media folks can recognize, you can go indie as well)
How to make a blog that makes money? (get a squad, feed the meter, have and en game; a blog is social capital)
What was hard about writing the book? (finishing it was hard, marketing is far more difficult)
How can I monitize my Black girl fashion blog? ( you need to sell something your community is willing to pay for (make up boxes, t-shirts, coffee mugs…etc), or feed the machine in order to earn enough traffic to attract advertisers…this was easier to do pre-2010.
One person wanted to learn more about how to apply to grad school and I just had her call me because, that was too long of an e-mail to type out. We still remain in contact:)

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So leave your question below or e-mail me @ first name.last @ gmail and I’ll respond. The deadline to reach out is 11:59 pm Thursday night and I will respond to everyone by the weekend.

Thank you for your patience. I’ve wanted to do this all summer, and I just now have the time.

I look forward to hearing from you all.

~<3 Allcity.

What do you want to learn more about?
How are you trying to grow your current blog/podcast/vlog?
Is there anything you’d like to know about book writing, marketing?
How do I avoid burnout?
#BringBackRelishaRudd

On Black Women x Hip Hop x Feminism in 2014

March 29, 2014 by Renina

I am going to be @ UDC doing a panel on Hip Hop and Sexuality as a part of the One Mic DC Festival. If you are in the area, please stop by, I’d love to see you.

Feminism and social media has hit a tipping point of sorts over the last 6 months with regard to online conversations. As a person who has been blogging/writing about the intersection of hip hop and feminism for nearly, gasp, ten years, I have a unique perspective.

So here is what I am thinking about. Boom Bap. Feminism and the Political/Politics of who gets in the archive.

There is a post right now on The Awl about Women of Color and boom bap, as it pertains to the documentary series “The Tanning of America.” These conversations are peculiar to me because the elephant in the room is that SOME people just are not interested in hearing what Black women have to say. Now a lot of folks won’t say that shit out loud, BUT, I think that that is the subtext to a lot of these conversations. This blog post which addresses gender and why some men CAN’T listen to Nicki Minaj underscores it. Furthermore, Choosing NOT to listen to someone is an act of power. It isn’t also lost on me that Black Girl Emcees are underrepresented in the documentary “The Tanning of America.” In fact it underscores a clear pattern with regard to the treatment of Black women and girls. Black women solidly voted democratic and for president Obama, we are a key part of his base. However his most recently policy chooses to focus on our brothers and our sons, but we street teamed for him in ways like no one else did. The data shows this. One of the central jobs of Feminists in general and Black feminists in particular have been writing Black women back into history even if we have to do it in the crevices; for now. Choosing to write yourself into history is an act of power as well.

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Right now there is a lot of creative boom bap energy in DC because of the #OneMic festival. And it is deep to me that Nas is going to be @ the Kennedy Center tonight and that WuTang Clan is releasing ONE COPY of their new album and sell it for millions in order to create demand for user experiences and to test out a theory around distribution in the post cd age. Or at least that is my interpretation of it. 1994 is a pivotal year for rap music and hip hop culture because of the classics that were released. How is Tribe going to fit into the cannon of 1994? (I know there were other albums that came out this year, but Illmatic, Tribe, Wu, and De La, are my five go to’s.) Folks are concerned that the WU album may leak BUT the premise has been enough to get them press. If you can get press for YOUR music in 2014 without a huge controversy I think you are doing some incredible work.

So I have been thinking about Nas and his feminist mafia tweet. Nasir Jones’ Illmatic has been central to my identity since I was as a teenager. Especially as a teenager. So has Black feminism. See this blog post “Michele Wallace and Illmatic.”I had been going back and forth with Britni Danielle about Nas and that tweet and I came to clear conclusion. I am not really invested in what Nasir Jones thinks about feminism unless and only if he is using is platform as a space to interrogate healthy forms of Black masculinity, and toxic Black masculinity!!! The hood needs it. AND, I really think it would be interesting. This is no shade to Britni, she is my homegirl we’ve been in this internet game together for a hot minute and if all goes well we will be doing a book reading in LA next year. However, I needed to untangle, and mark my concern OR lack of investment in what he has to say about that topic. I think the other things is, two Black girls, queer Black girls were murdered two weeks ago ostensibly because they were a couple. In fact, Britney Cosby and Crystal Jackson may have been murdered by Britney’s father. They were killed and left near a garbage can. The fuck? And Relisha Rudd is still missing. I think that questions of state violence against Black people, and violence against Black girls in Black families presses ME more right now.

I just want Black girls to be free. Not just the sons. If I ruled the world. <—You see what I did there? #blackgirlsarefromthefuture.

All this being said. I am happy that there is a lot of theoretical energy invested in Black feminism online. I think it is the work of 100 years of often unacknowledged/ under acknowledged work by Black women and women of color.

What do you think about hip hop and feminism and 2014?

Is the issue really that some folks don’t give a shit about what Black women have to say?

Or is the issue that I am tripping because we can care about Relisha, Britney and Crystal AND Nas?

Oh and I LOVE my Ice Cube meme. I am winning!

10 Ways Writing a Book is Different From Writing 963 Blog Posts o.0

March 17, 2014 by Renina

Last summer I finished writing “Black Girls Are From the Future: Essays on Race, Digital Creativity and Pop Culture.”

I will be doing a book launch in Oakland, Saturday March 22nd, @ Betti Ono Gallery. Tix are $10.

1. There is a tie for number one. But I will say that being able to edit in real time was one of the major differences. With the blog, I also have an idea of who the audience would be. With a book, I had no idea where the ideas would travel. So I had to learn how to write in a way that assumed that I’d have to explain more.

2. Book formatting is the DEVIL. There was a template provided by Create Space, but I didn’t know that it would take me the better part of a week to actually format the page numbers, the text and fonts. Really, really stressful.

3. I had thought that writing a book, I’d feel lonely and away from my friends. But it was just the opposite. I was busy but I still saw folks; just on off hours or at planned times. But I was out, because I don’t write well at home. I remember one day in particular when I was writing at Whole Foods and the Delta Centennial was taking place and Keondra just came to the Whole Foods on P street to sit with me as I wrote in the cafe. This doesn’t mean that I don’t have extreme periods of solitude, because I do. But it ended up being more manageable than I expected.

4. Going digital. I had no idea the Kindle contract was 17 pages long. So I had it and read it, and thought about it for a long time. I wanted to be certain with my digital publishing choice. The book has been on Kindle since last week.

5. Getting book blurbs. The work flow process of doing a second edition is HELLA non-linear. I actually have two blurbs and an academic review coming out (Peace to Perez) but I had no idea that when I started this process these were the kinds of things that I’d want to add to the back as a blurb and that I’d have to wait, plan and coordinate adding the blurbs to the book. All things I am grateful for.

6. I have NO idea what people think of the book, unless someone actually TELLS me. Blogging is a feedback system. Writing in print is not. Folks found me to tell me on social media, but it just isn’t the same. I am not complaining, just marking the difference.

7. The internet isn’t a respected medium. It was deep to me to learn that having written 963 blog posts isn’t as significant as having 16 essays in print. I get it now, books are tangible, they require waaaaay more resources, and books can travel to places where digital cannot. Which brings me to my next point. I felt like the same person but folks will see you different in print. It just is the nature of the game.

8. You never know who is going to show up when you shine your light, and I was scared at first, but now I am fearless in it. Why? I learned in February that the book was selected by Ruth Nicole Brown to be taught in the Education Justice Project. Reading what men and women prisoners had to say about my work (typos and all) changed.my.fucking.life. Like to know that brothers and sisters TOOK my words so seriously AND that a sister took it upon herself to teach it (And folks say Black women don’t support each other. Some do. Some don’t.) My God. You have no idea. I felt like whatever book writing hangups I had, I needed to address them at the root, because there are, in Ruth’s words “folks who are ready to read Black feminists words on Black feminist terms.”

9. I’m ahead of the game when it comes to a lot of folks who are independent because I’ve been blogging for so long and interacting with folks, I don’t have to over rely on traditional mainstream media gatekeepers. @MarquetteJones has been telling me this for years. But I HAD TO EXPERIENCE it in order to believe it for myself. This is important as Black feminists have been writing and creating public work in the US for at least the last 100 years, and I am grateful to be a part of their legacy on the internet. (More about my project on this later.) You cannot build a community overnight, and in many ways the game is saturated right now. It isn’t impossible to start today. Just work.

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If this is your first time reading my work here are some examples of my blog posts:

1. On Kim Kardashian’s Empire and Race

2. Is A Black Web Browser Racist: BET x Kevin Kelly, x Blackbird

3. Race, Class and Prostitution in the City: Washington DC’s Black Madam, Odessa Madre

4. How Zora and Dilla Helped Me to Claim My Crush

5. Black Women and Pleasure

6. For Colored Bloggers Who Consider Sexism and Racism

7. Are Black Men Really That Homophobic?

8. Kill Me Or Leave Me Alone: Street Harassment as a Public Health Issue

9. The Gender Politics of the Dance Floor

Sign up here to receive Newsletter, and here is the Facebook page. I am excited to see you old friends, and I am excited to meet you new friends.

Is there anything else you want to know about moving from the blog to the book. Let me know, and Ill answer your questions.

Saturday March 22nd-Black Girls Are From the Future x Oakland: 6pm- 9pm @BettiOno Gallery: $10

March 17, 2014 by Renina

Saturday March 22nd, at Betti Ono Gallery in Oakland California, I will be doing an Oakland book launch. Tix are $10 on Eventbrite and you can get them @ the door as well.

As you know I have been writing about Oakland, for a VERY, VERY, VERY long time, so it is really surreal to go home to the place that made me and say “Look ma we did it,” literally and figuratively.

Honestly I am happy to go home too to pay homage to the Oakland Public Library, specifically the ones in West Oakland and Martin Luther King on East 14th (yeah, I know it’s International Blvd now, but when I was a kid it was E14th, so there) and see about getting the book into their library system. The West Oakland Library was so extensive in terms of their fiction and nonfiction by, for and about Black Women and Women of Color.

Peep game. In the 90’s the dope game was eating Oakland from the inside out, so there are two places that I didn’t have to plead with my mother to let me go to; the grocery store and the library. Hence my Love affair with the MLK library on 66th Ave.

I feel safe in libraries.

For me it is really important for little bears to have access to books the way I did. AND BGFTF is now on the Kindle, so folks can download them and get it cracking, “We Are Living in Your Internet” ~Ms. Erykah Badu. By May of this year, I’ll have broader distribution so that I can get in libraries. (Let’s not even GET into the indie publishing politics around getting into the Library of Congress, book stores, and libraries. I will save that for another day.)

I can’t help but thinking all the times I was a little bear walking up and down telegraph avenue, buying cd’s and tapes at Rasputins, now I am selling books on the internet. What!?!?!?

Oakland Haunts Me.

Oakland Made me.

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LINKS

1. Video

2. Newsletter

3. Audio Book Chapter “Oakland Haunts Me, Why I Will Not Be Going to See Fruitvale Station”

4. Facebook

5. Digital Story

Here are some of the topics we will discuss.

Please leave a comment below, ESPECIALLY if you were one of the people who encouraged me back in the day. I have something I’d like to send you.

Reading anything good lately?

What do you see on the horizon for Black women’s stories in 2014?

Oh and if you bought a book and have something nice to say, please leave couple of sentences on AMAZON. Ya’ll have my page looking thirsty, and I KNOW I’ve sold some books in from August to September. I know you are busy, so a few sentences are fine. Do it on the bus/train on the way home. I’ll hug you for it.

Is 2014, #BlackgirlTime, as I say?

What do you do to relax before a big day, I am kinda pressed, and all I want are tacos, #snowedin. #notacoyet.