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“Niggers, Fags and John Mayer, Oh My”

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The reason why Black women’s sexuality and pop culture is one of my research interests is because I know that when you dominate someone sexually, you dominate them physically and spiritually as well.

No one was put on this earth to be dominated, all humans
are intrinsically valuable, so I/we resist.

Before I get into John Mayer, I need to provide some background
on why I am writing this. I have an investment in writing about this because I had a turning point in 2006, while blogging about Don Imus and raising my hand in my Evidence class to counter a comment that a White male colleague made about the victim in the Duke rape case.

In thinking about John Mayer, I see how much I have grown as a thinker and a writer. This piece is another turning point of sorts. In some ways I found my blogging groove when Don Imus called the women on the Rutgers Basketball team Nappy Headed Ho’s.

What I knew then, that I didn’t have the courage to say is
that its not cool when Don Imus, Snoop, Wayne, or Common
call’s Black women 50 Million ho’s. It took me a LOOOOOONG time to be able to criticize hip hop publicly because so much of my blog life was wrapped up in that world. I know now that I Love Hip Hop BUT, I Love myself more.

To be silent when Black men refer to us as 50 million ho’s implies that because they are Black they have a right to call us that shit and they don’t.

I don’t want the police harassing and beating on them,
I don’t want them harassing and beating on us. Full stop.

Might don’t make right, as my momma says.

Now that I have provided some context for this post,
lets get into how John Mayer kinda stepped into it with his Playboy
interview.

The John Mayer Playboy interview as a whole is about, his childhood, his relationships, dealing with becoming a celebrity. The last third is where he gets into, race and sexuality, homophobia and white supremacy.

I am going to focus on three aspects of his interview:
his fascination with pornography, his usage of the term nigger and fags,
and the ways in which his interview is a treatise in how whiteness
works.

In the book Race Matters, Cornel West, provides a historical context for John Mayer’s comments and a framework for Black and White sexuality. West writes,

“Americans are obsessed with sex and fearful of Black sexuality.The obsession has to do with a search for stimulation and meaning in a fast passed, market driven culture; the fear is rooted in visceral feelings abut black bodies fueled by sexual myths of black women and men.”

“The demthyologizing of black sexuality is crucial for black America because music of Black self hatred and self contempt has to do with refusal of many black Americans to love their own black bodies- especially their black noses, hips, lips and hair. Just as many white americans view black sexuality with disgust so do many black Americans- but for very different reasons and with very different results. White supremacist ideology is based first and foremost on the degradation of black bodies in order to control them. One of the best ways to instill fear in the people is to terrorize them. Yet this fear is best sustained by convincing them that their bodies are ugly, their intellect is inherently underdeveloped, their culture is less civilized and their future warrants less concern than that of other peoples.

“White supremacist ideology is based first and foremost on the degradation of black bodies in order to control them.”

What an incredible statement in light of the fact that John Mayer said that he has a “David Duke dick.”

Porn

MAYER: “By the way, pornography? It?s a new synaptic pathway. You wake up in the morning, open a thumbnail page, and it leads to a Pandora?s box of visuals. There have probably been days when I saw 300 vaginas before I got out of bed.”

“MAYER: When I watch porn, if it?s not hot enough, I?ll make up backstories in my mind. My biggest dream is to write pornography.”

What does it mean when a “successful” White mans biggest dream is
to “write” porn?

What does it mean to see 300 vagina’s before you get out of bed.? I get it, its a Playboy article, so he may be hamming it up. Still.? It must be acknowledged.

In Empire of Illusion, Chris Hedges, has an incredible chapter on the convergence of pornography and technology. Hedges writes,

Porn has evolved from the airbrushed misogyny of glossy spreads in Playboy and smutty films sold in seedy shops. It is corporate and easily available. Its products today focus less on sex between a man and woman and increasingly on groups of men beating off on a woman’s face or tearing her anus open with his penis. Porn has evolved to its logical conclusion. It first turned women into sexual commodities and then killed women as human beings. And it has won the culture war. Pornography and the commercial mainstream have fused. The publicity for the pron production company Wicked could be lifted from a Victoria Secret catalog.

Nigger
MAYER: Someone asked me the other day, ?What does it feel like now to have a hood pass?? And by the way, it?s sort of a contradiction in terms, because if you really had a hood pass, you could call it a nigger pass. Why are you pulling a punch and calling it a hood pass if you really have a hood pass? But I said, ?I can?t really have a hood pass. I?ve never walked into a restaurant, asked for a table and been told, ?We?re full.?”

I am not sure that he is saying here, however, the issue with a lot of Black people was that he used the term “nigger.” For me it was all the subhuman terminology that was problematic.

At first when I read it, I thought it was a critique absurdity in the ways in which race and gentrification functions and the fact that hood passes’s have to exist in the first place. Rereading it,? I concluded that I didn’t? have reason to believe that he is enlightened enough to have such a sophisticated critique.


White Supremacy

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PLAYBOY: Do black women throw themselves at you?

MAYER: I don?t think I open myself to it. My dick is sort of like a white supremacist. I?ve got a Benetton heart and a fuckin? David Duke cock. I?m going to start dating separately from my dick.

I found this to be profoundly interesting because of the access that men and general and White men specifically have always had Black women’s bodies, historically.

In one sentence he illuminates, sex, power, race and how they have converged between Black women and White men throughout history.

White men and Black men have had a very specific kind of relationship in US history because the ways in which our bodies have been tied to White male wealth. Adreinne Davis writes in the essay “Don’t Let Nobody Bother Yo’ Principle”? “Wealth was not transferred from Blacks to Whites, as scholars have noted, but in addition, was transferred from black women to white men. Hence the economics of slavery were gendered and raclialized.

Desiring Black Women

PLAYBOY: Let?s put some names out there. Let?s get specific.

MAYER: I always thought Holly Robinson Peete was gorgeous. Every white dude loved Hilary from The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. And Kerry Washington. She?s superhot, and she?s also white-girl crazy. Kerry Washington would break your heart like a white girl. Just all of a sudden she?d be like, ?Yeah, I sucked his dick. Whatever.? And you?d be like, ?What? We weren?t talking about that.? That?s what ?Heartbreak Warfare? is all about, when a girl uses jealousy as a tactic

“Kerry Washington would break your heart like a white girl.”
Implied in this statement is that Black women are not desirable.
Only White women can break hearts.
The only way a Black woman could break a heart is if she is like a
White woman. Wow.

After reading this I thought of Beyonce’s appeal and how the Black
women that we see fall within what T. Sharpley Whiting has termed the “ascriptive mulatta” she isn’t Black, she isn’t White, she is mixed, with Eurocentric features and extremely attractive.

Black women, do not get shine in main stream media. To this end
one of the reasons why we enjoy seeing Michelle Obama is because she is curvy, brown skinned and you rarely see a beauty like hers centered in mainstream media. In fact there is such a hunger for seeing ourselves in mainstream media that some of us get upset when rappers make videos featuring only light skinned women. This happened this week with Wale’s new video his song Pretty Girls, and Drake’s video for best I ever had. More on Pretty Girls here and here.

Fags

PLAYBOY: Among the things we?ve read about you online is this: You?re gay. Have you ever kissed a man?

MAYER: The only man I?ve kissed is Perez Hilton. It was New Year?s Eve and I decided to go out and destroy myself. I was dating Jessica at the time, and I remember seeing Perez Hilton flitting about this club and acting as though he had just invented homosexuality. All of a sudden I thought, I can outgay this guy right now. I grabbed him and gave him the dirtiest, tongue-iest kiss I have ever put on anybody?almost as if I hated fags. I don?t think my mouth was even touching when I was tongue kissing him, that?s how disgusting this kiss was. I?m a little ashamed. I think it lasted about half a minute. I really think it went on too long.

I found it interesting that much of the Black response yesterday dealt only with the “John Mayer doesn’t like black girls” or “John used the word nigger” but not the fact that he used the term “fag” and that his dream is to “write porn.”

Multiple interlocking oppression’s can be hard to name and deal with.? I get it.

But I’m calling spades. There is a theme of subhumanity operating in this interview that and? I believe that this says something about both our world and human relations.

John Mayer’s usage of these terms reminds me of George Yanceys conception of how whiteness works.? In Feminism and the Subtext of Whiteness, ?whiteness goes unmarked? yet ?it assumes to speak with universal authority and truth.? He goes on to say,

Whiteness assumes the authority to marginalize other identities, discourses perspectives and voices. By constituting itself as the center, non white voices are Othered, marginalized and rendered voiceless.

John Mayer’s fascination with porn, his casual usage of the terms Nigger, Fag and the fact that he called his penis? “David Duke” leads me to believe that he is a profoundly troubled man. It also reminds me how whiteness operates by naming yet remaining unnamed.

I would imagine that one of the reasons that Black women have responded strongly to what John Mayer has said, because he has confirmed some of our suspicions,? and has stated explicitly what mainstream media says implies all the time: which is? that? Black women are not attractive and they only are to the extent that they are look like White women.

Trust. I understand that most of us don’t evaluate our beauty through the eyes of whiteness, or the levels of self hate would be even higher and depression would be higher as well.

We do our own thing. #blackgirlsarefromthefuture

However, it is shocking, when someone like John Mayer, who is in a powerful position in society and who is? member of the dominant group in society comfortably uses loaded racialialized,? sexualized terms in national publication, albeit a porn magazine.

What kind of society produces a John Mayer?

Now let me keep it even.

What kind of society produces an R. Kelly?

What will have to happen for us to hold R. Kelly and John Mayer
to the same standard?

Link list – Black Women Bloggers Respond to John Mayer:

Black Snob: WTF John Mayer Gets Creeptastical in Playboy Magazine
Jezebel: Its Impossible to Have Benneton Heart and a White Supremacist Dick
The Tuskegee Experiment: Nigger and (Dumb White) Guys
What Would Thembi Do:? Johhn Mayers Lies and the Brown Nipple Theory
Womanist Musings: My Dick is Sorta Like a White Supremacist

Two Heavy Post’s

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Concurrently, I am working on John Mayer jawn,
and a jawn on my new idea about how society is going
break into a global gated community and bifurcate
around food and the internet.

Light stuff, hunh?

The good thing about having these ideas, is that they
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you all is invaluable.

The hard part is sitting down and writing them.

I also hoped my RSS feed update worked.

Oh and I KNOW that I need to install a search bar. Working on it.

~neens

Quoted: Global Feminism, Gats, Haiti, Nukes

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Structural Violence makes population more vulnerable to social, economic, health, and environmental harms. Not only has the United States increased structural violence against its own population in favor of waging direct (and structural) violence abroad, but also a number of other countries, some of which have the weakest social safety nets, have made similar choices, given that most “developing” countries spend as much or more on military’s than on basic social services.

From the book, Global Gender Issues in the New Millenium by V. Spike Peterson and Anne Sisson Runyan.

I never heard of “structural violence” until I read this.

But as soon as I read this paragraph I thought of Haiti,
the history of the global embargo on Haiti, and WHY hoods in the US don’t have access to fruits and vegetables.

Elison Elliott’s post on Haiti does an awesome job of illuminating the historical structural violence carried out against Haiti. He writes, quoting Yvette Roper, an energy infrastructure professional:

In 1806, fearful that the Haitian Revolution (1804) might inspire enslaved Africans in other parts of the Western hemisphere to rebel, the U.S. Congress banned trade with Haiti, joining French,?Spanish and Portuguese?boycotts. Global shipping originating in or by Haiti was banned from trading with or entering American and European ports of trade. This coordinated embargo effectively crippled Haiti?s export-driven economy and its development as a once prosperous Caribbean port.? The embargo was renewed in 1807 and 1809, and in one form or another has lasted 197 years ? with additional restrictions added in 1991 ? until as recently as 2003.? The embargo was accompanied by a threat of re-colonization and re-enslavement by the American-European alliance if Haiti failed to compensate France for losses incurred when French plantation owners, as a result of the Haitian Revolution, lost Haiti?s lucrative sugar, coffee and tobacco fortunes supported by slave labor. [Dunkel, 1994] Haiti spent the next 111 years, until 1922, paying 70% of its national revenues in reparations to France ? a ransom enforced by the American-European trade alliance as the price for Haiti?s independence.

As a direct consequence of this orchestrated, century-long economic strangulation, Haiti is, today,?the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere by any measure: Haiti?s debt was $302 million in 1980. In 1997 it was almost $1.1 billion, which is almost 40% of its Gross National Product. The value of its exports has fallen to 62% of 1987 levels. It should be listed as a severely indebted low-income country but the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank have refused to do so under the insistence of the North Atlantic alliance.

For me, the lack of access to fruits and vegetables in low income
neighborhoods in the US and the historical embargo’s?against Haiti are both manifestations of structural violence.

I was also moved by another section of?Global Gender Issues that focused on? military spending. I follow Mohammd Yunus and Nick Kirstoff’s work because they get hella shine with regard to addressing issues regarding global women in the world. BUT. Neither one of them have a critique of capitalism.

Giving women an “education” and making “the market” available to them, and giving them “microcredit loans” are some of the working premises that guide Kristoff’s and Yunnus’s work.

How is Capitalism going to solve the problems that it has
created?
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Now on the nukes.

The following paragraph illuminates some concepts
that about the notion of security and war.

Peterson and Runyan write:

The quest for absolute security is itself productive of violence, for it relies on the eradication of all threats, real or imagined, and thus sets up a never ending defensive and offensive posture. Such a posture is emblematic of a “sovereign man” who like the sovereign state is fashioned upon this construct of hegemonic masculinity, thwarts connection and interdependence in fear of engagement with difference that might break down walls between sovereign “self”and the “other” on whom is projected all that one denies in oneself.”

“They got guns// we got guns too//” ~Raekwon, Wu Tang

Basically, what does security look like if everyone has guns, and some countries have nuclear weapons or even simply the access to creating
and selling them?

What does a secure world look like?

What does a policy that takes into consideration the fact
that women and children are disproportionally impact by wars,
globally.

Is security a social construction?

Where is the conversation about how if? the US is? running two? wars we will have no remaining capital to sustain a?social safety net?

Jay Dilla x Capitalism

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My homie went to the Jay Dilla Tribute Party on Saturday? night in BK.

He was on the line @ 12am.

There were people inside partying and on the line outside.

After waiting in line for 30 minutes, the bouncer told the folks on line,
“Only single women can be admitted, no [heterosexual] couples,
no single men.”? (I would imagine that queer and lesbian
couples were okay. Luls.)

At a Dilla party?

What is this, a man tax?

Whats bugged is that Dilla was a dude on the margins,
a soulful dude.

His music is the antithesis of the kind of pretense showed
on that line.

I think the first hip hop party at a lounge, where I was legal
and could get in was @ the 205 club, off Houston. It was one room juke joint and it was awesome. It was the first time I saw a room full of Black, White and Latino folks sing along to “I Got Chu Open“, Red Stripes and Corona’s in the air.

They knew all the words.

No pretense.

I always remember how there were big assed rats in the
parking lot between Houston and the corner that 205 Club
is on. You had to run from those rats, they had that block
lock.

Currently, there is a Whole Foods and apartment/condo building
where that parking lot was.

Ironically, in a article titled, “Put a Cork in It: Bottle Service
Corrupts NYC Nightlife“, Trishia Romano explains the changing
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of bottle service in clubs. She writes,

There wasn’t really a program of bottle service.” But as the ’90s wore on, the quirky club-kid world faded and the real estate market exploded, making bottle service not just trendy, but almost necessary to stay in business. Lewis, with his partners Mark Baker and Jeffrey Jah, brought bottle service over to the now defunct Life, on Sullivan Street. “Rents are 300 percent more expensive” Jah, a co-owner of Lotus, says. “Insurance can be up to half a million a year.” Meanwhile, drink prices and cover charges stayed mostly the same. Something had to give.

…As club owners quickly figured out, everyone wanted to be a VIP, or at least feel like one. Bottle service was an easy and very financially sound means of achieving mutual happiness for both the club and the clientele. A 38-table club like Marquee, selling bottles at $350 a pop, can rake in $20,000 a night minimum, and that’s not counting bar sales or cover charges.

This, of course, is blatant pretentiousness.

Where is the soul?

Ironically, even before I heard what happened at the Dilla party
I was thinking yesterday morning about writing a follow up response to “How Hip Hop and Crack Politically Underdeveloped Young People” after having a twitter conversation with Jay Smooth about whether Rap music is just music or
a political project AND just music as well.

Yesterday morning I was reflecting on reading bell hooks ten
years ago and how she said, “Capitalism co-opts anything that
attempts to subvert it.”

Recently Angela Martinez Dy wrote about Hip Hop being
rooted in Resistance. In some ways it was, but I would contend
that it was mostly about Black men performing Black male
masculinity. Partying, boasting and bragging. I explore this more
in “Crack and Hip Hop…“.

I didn’t really KNOW what bell hooks was saying at the time, but
I get it now. Which brings me back to Dilla.

Looking at Dilla and the pretentiousness shown on the line, that
was some Manhattan meat packing district type club antics.

The gussied up outfits and every thing is cool, the sneakers,
the negro mohawks. I get it, I like funky outfits too, but what impact
does this kind of performing have on our culture?

Can we just chill or does it have to be music video fresh all the time?

What does it mean when the ways in which we celebrate our musical hero’s looks this way?

What role have we played in it?

Black Women and Resistance: I was Free

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It was in mid semester last year that I learned, while reading Damita Jo Brown’s dissertation, “History is a Hungry Traveler: Black Female Subjects and The Grammars of Liberation” about how Black women who worked as washer women during reconstruction would meet together and discuss who to work for, who to avoid, who paid well, who would try and rape them as employees, etc.

My understanding of what resistance look like began
to expand.

It was in this moment that I realized that resistance looks
different based on the situation that you are in.

It can mean grunting, yet coming in to work on time or
even a little late.

It can mean standing up to your boss and saying that
an email or comment was racist, sexist or homophobic.

It can mean being silent and speaking up later, because
saying something at the time will get you killed.

It can mean that while on a date, and someone says something
derisive about gay Black men and you say, “Um, Everyone has a right
to be who they are.” Hard stop.

I was pleasantly surprise to see a book review of Jesus Job’s and Justice in the NY Times. Today. Not because it was in the paper, but because
the idea of Black women’s resistance being moved from
margin to center is awesome.

Within Sociology the trope is that White people are racist
and that Black folks are victims. Uh. No.

A historical book about Black women and resistance totally
negates this reasoning. In reviewing the book, Richard Thompson Ford writes,

Despite these affronts, black women have remained the most faithful and abiding servants of the church, and they have been among the most diligent and effective activists for racial justice. In ?Jesus, Jobs, and Justice,? Bettye Collier-Thomas, a professor of history at Temple University, tells the untold stories of scores of religious and politically active black women, their organizations, informal gatherings and intellectual movements. For readers who imagine that the religious and political activism of Sojourner Truth, Mary McLeod Bethune and Rosa Parks is exceptional, the book will be a revelation. The author details the contributions of black women to almost every important aspect of the struggle for racial justice. The book weaves its many smaller stories into the broad fabric of the black experience, beginning in the early days of slavery and covering the Civil War, Reconstruction, Jim Crow and the civil rights and black power movements, before arriving at today?s tense moment of renewed hope and familiar anxiety.

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Glymph analyzes how violence is gendered masculine, so
historians just DON’T typically deal the violence that White
slave mistresses carried out on enslaved Black women. The
general narrative is White slave mistresses were dainty, passive and generally and embodiment of Victorian mores.

In Out of the House of Bondage, Thavolia Glymph
provides a really interesting analysis of how violence is
gendered and the impact that this has on how the history
of American slavery has been written.

Violence on the part of white women during and after slavery is not only considered different because of who wielded it, it is transformed and made different through a gendered analysis of power. The power of white men was unquestionably formidable and it was more visible entity, recognizable in the most tangible forms: property ownership;the vote; access to public office; control of civic life; the legal subordination of white women, slaves free black people; and the sexual abuse of black and white women”

…The power of slave holding women seemingly, then, is mistaken as powerlessness and taken less seriously, not because it was invisible or unrecognizable as such, but primarily because the prevailing ideology, then and now presumes it to not exist.

…The power of the plantation mistress is exposed to view when we realize that in the American South, as elsewhere, the domestic realm was a site of power for women. It was also and therefore a site of struggle between women.”

It was only in reading this that I came to understand how
my personal experiences with work place dynamics are totally
rooted in THIS particular aspect of American history.

I wasn’t crazy.

Sites of power will be locations where struggles occur.

Hmmp.

It is what it is.

Given that, it certainly helped me feel a little less bugged out about conflicts that I have had, with bosses (especially in
when I was younger and fresh out of undergrad) and others who have more power that I do in certain situations. Especially when I take both their racial, and gendered histories into consideration.

In fact I felt like I #jumpedintheairandstayedthere.

I was free.