A Black Feminist Note on the 50th Anniversary of Hip Hop: #Blackgirlsarefromthefuture

 

This is dedicated to all the Black girl feminists and the people who love them.

This is dedicated to East Oakland, California.

This is dedicated to SBee who loved me so much that he was a reader in the  2006 blogspot days and when prof. bell hooks died in 2021 he sent me a *HOTMAIL* email asking me if I was okay and telling me that he knew that I loved her and blogged about her and hip hop all the time.

This is dedicated to Britini Danielle who was a day one reader from 2006, a cheerleader, AND she contributed to my Gofundme for my community self-funded sabbatical. Money is my love language and I love you back.

 

I became a writer, in part, because I was trying to make sense of being a Black girl feminist, who loved rap music and hop culture from East Oakland, California.

The music made sense to me because it described, and helped me to make sense of the world I lived in. The violence, the drugs, the Black people living and loving and raising their children to the BEST of their ability. Rap music helped me to develop a language to understand what it meant to be Black in the face of White supremacy. It did not speak to my Black girlhood in a wholistic way.

Plot twist. Rap music was also very homophobic, AND laden with misogynoir. Misogynoir, a term created by Prof. Moya Bailey was just added to the Merriam Webster Dictionary. Moya and her crew at Spelman held Nelly accountable for the Tip Drill video. Black girls been in trenches.

Let me be crystal clear, Black girls was outside too. We had YoYo, McLyte, Queen Latifah on the national rap scene. Still. It was masculine and often hostile space for Black girls.

How was I able to listen to music that called me fifty million hoe’s? Well, very carefully.

So, I blogged. I blogged and blogged.

My name is Renina Jarmon and I was a Black feminist blogger from 2006 to 2013. I was one of the bloggers that created the think piece. Legacy.

I wrote about masculinity, I wrote about patriarchy, I wrote about Nate Dogg, I wrote about bell hooks,  I wrote about Black Women’s Sexuality, I wrote about The Clipse, I wrote about heternormativity.

I wrote about how people listened to rap music in order to feed something dark inside of them.

I wrote about the White consumption of Black death.

I wrote about the Black consumption of Black death.

I wrote about my daddy and feminism.

I wrote about Black men and patriarchy.

I wrote about Buffy the Body as Venus Hottentot who is actually named Saarah Baartman.

I asked what “What if Rakim had the internet?”

I wrote about Barry Michael Cooper, the creator of the movie New Jack City. He then found me and TOLD ME to keep writing and continues to encourage me to this day.

I was writing to save my life, to create my voice and to find my people,

You have to remember that blogging arose right at the imminent decline of magazines and newspapers, and many of us were young. So we were able to use the internet to find each other.

My peers at the time were Unkut, NahRight, and The Smoking Section.

This summer marks the ten year anniversary of the publication of my first book. This book is in part, created because I my blog readers said that they would buy it.

I went on to blog with Black feminist Collective titled the Crunk Feminist Collective in 2010-2012 because Prof. Moya Bailey kept asking me to until I relented. Her most persuasive argument was “Girl, you already writing, just take your stuff and bring it over here, and I did.”

Writing at Racialicious was life altering because my words were exposed to people across race internationally who actually cared about what I had to say and left comments of praise, support and sometimes a combination of both.

So on the 50th Anniversary of Hip Hop and the 10 year anniversary of my book, I reflect on what I have contributed to the game and how blogging helped me shape myself and find my people.

Just like the rap world, the rap blogosphere was a masculine space. What I mean by that is while it celebrated Black youth culture, and music and storytelling, it also routinely portrayed women’s as whores who should be seen and not heard.

As you can imagine this was rough for me because I from East Oakland, California and I got a smart mouf.

There were two early moments that shaped my writing voice. I was in law school in 2005 and I wasn’t writing, writing yet. I was aggregating articles and giving little snippets.

Then ish changed. I cut Con Law to write about Jena Six and the title was “More Jena Six and Less Michael Vick” and readers found me and supported me. In that moment I began to wonder, if I am cutting Con law, to write about Black culture then maybe that is what I need to be studying. I ended up going graduate school at the University of Maryland AND teaching African American Studies there. FULL CIRCLE.

The second moment that had an impact on me was a moment with rap blog Nahright. I will never forget. The owner the blog called Karrine Stephans, the video vixen and author “a slore.” Very casually. I was one of a vocal few women on the site, and I said “Why she gotta be all that? If she is a slore then what does that make the men who sleep with her?” I paraphrase but that was the energy, and I was not being heard.

The third moment is that the Duke rape case dropped and I raised my hand during my evidence class to talk about the case and the entire room got quite. I was one of four Black women in a 130 student evidence course. TO THIS DAY I still remember the rule of law. It was the federal evidence that prevents a rape victim’s sexual history from being admitted because it is seen as unfairly prejudicial. I blogged about that and I felt community, on the blog that I did not have in the classroom.

The fourth moment occurred when Chris Brown beat Rihanna Fenty. A blogger posted the beaten face of Ms. Fenty and I was livid. Not only because he posted it, but because it felt like a betrayl. This right before smart phones and video phones dropped, so we didn’t really have celebrity media access then the way we do today.

This moment changed me because what I learned is that while the rap blogosphere may support me when I am critiquing White supremacy and tell me that I am a great writer with a distinctive voice, they did not want to hear my mouth when I talked about Black men being accountable for violence against Black women. Period and on sight.

So in 2010 with the birth of the #hashtag, community and brand #Blackgirlsarefromthefuture I was about to find my home and find my people.

So in some ways writing about hip hop culture and my life publicly brought me to this beautiful culture that we have created. I sell hoodies, books, journals, and most recently guided journals that you can buy for 19.99. I have 85 left so get one for you and your friends. Community is all we got.

Girl You Ain’t an Imposter helps you to feel capable and spectacular at work.

Women of Color at Work will help you go from feeling dismissed and ignoring to thriving and collecting your well earned bag.

Pause, Rest Pivot is the journal you need when you are in a rut. You know you need to make your next move. Pause Rest Pivot gives you a space to create your own map to what is next. I congratulate women when they quit. It means that they are taking action in their lives to be their own superhero and we need more of that. #quittingseason

Death to Strong Black Women is a safe space for Black women to fall apart, be messy and vulnerable, take off the superhero cape and ask for help.

The Joy Jar is for a sister who needs a little bit more joy in her life.

Black Girl Love Notes is a journal that has love and appreciation notes for Black women. Most people appreciate Black women for doing things for them, Black Girl Love Notes appreciates Black women for existing. Period.

Fragile and Fearless celebrates the complexity of Blackwomanhood. Most people see Black women as sterotypes but this journal is a space for Black women to discuss how they see themselves. The call is coming from inside the house, not Hollywood.

Black Women Need Grief Doulas is a space for Black women to recognize, make sense of and make SPACE for their grief. Grief can be deadly if you don’t make space for it. It is sneaky, it can creep up on you one day and take you out .

 

I am an award winning African American studies lecturer and I believe that much of success as a teacher comes from writing publicly for so many years. People don’t like to be challenged, and writing online about race, class, gender and sexuality forced me to learn how to talk to people how did not agree but STILL engaged with the material. It is really something.

On this 50th anniversary of Hip Hop and the 10 year anniversary of my first book, I would like to think that my time spent in the trenches going to toe to toe with the rap blogosphere, advocating for women, asking Black men to interrogate Black patriarchy, enjoying new music together, and affirming that a Black girl from East Oakland had something to say.

Navigating the rap blogosphere and being a hip hop head taught me a very important lesson. When you are being called names, or you don’t like how you are being treated it is my right to leave and find a place that loves me.

Writing during those years really helped me to understand that some of these spaces would not accept of all of me, and that was okay because I had the ability to use my voice and find my place in the world and sometimes it would within hip hop culture and sometimes in would be in the future.

You can pre-order Black Girls Are from the Future: Memoir and Manifesto.  Spring 2024 here.

My podcast is here. My news letter is here.

Black Girl Hip Hop Head Feminist Starter Pack (listed by release year)

Black Macho and the Myth of the Superwoman by Michelle Wallace

Feminism is for Everybody by bell hooks

When Chickenheads Come Home to Roost by Joan Morgan

“Hip Hop Beyond Beats and Rhymes” dir by Byron Hurt

Black Cool: One Thousand Streams of Blackness ed by Rebecca Walker

Black Girls Are From the Future: Essays on Race, Digital Creativity and Pop Culture by Renina Jarmon

 

Remember the blog days ya’ll. I took it back.

Which sites did you use to visit in that era?

Did I bring back memories with this post?

 

 

 

For Kathleen Collins With So Much Joy: A Syllabus for the Losing Ground Film Screening Saturday July 18th 2015 @AFI Silver Spring

On Saturday I along with some friends will be attending a screening of Losing Ground (1982) directed by Kathleen Collins and you are welcome to join us.

I LOVE this movie. I saw it earlier this year at Lincoln Center as a part of the “Tell it Like it Is” program featuring Black film in New York from 1968 – ’86. I also saw it in 2011. I wrote about it on my blog here and in my book.

I’ve befriended Collins’ daughter Nina Lorez Collins, and I sent her a copy of the book on some ZOMG I LOVE YOUR MOMMA BUT YOU KNOW YOUR MOMMA BETTER THAN ME SO YOU KNOW WHY I LOVE HER.

Girl. The movie features a Black woman philosophy professor searching for the ecstatic experience. A Black woman hunting for ecxasty in the passionate sense, in the religious sense, in the embodied sense.

The colors are rich, and luscious, the writing is funny, and we get to see two heterosexual Black married creatives sort the through the messiness of being Black, creative, quirky, and artistic.

I didn’t find Ms. Collins. She found me. I am so grateful this opportunity. Join us if you can on Saturday or try and catch the film before it leaves AFI.

Of course I have background reading because that is what I do. So here is a little syllabus for her screening.

The Kathleen Collins Syllabus:

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I thank Carmen Coustat for making sure that a 16MM version of the film was available for me to find, had I not located it there, I would not have found this work when I did. (Ironically I sent her an e-mail thanking her for providing access to the film last week right before I learned about this screening. #WatchGod.)

In the spirit of my old posts, I’ll end with a few questions:

1.  If you like Black women filmmakers have you SEEN Beyond the Lights? Girl. Get up on that work. It will speak to you.

2. Haven’t you noticed the shift in terms of Black women being centered as both protagonists and directors in pop culture in a way that WAS NOT the case as recently as five years ago. So many sacrifices have been made for this historical moment. I am excited about this work! What have you seen lately that you like?

3. Is you rollin’ on Saturday?

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

MYMC_MARCH 22nd FLYER_Book Covers_Final_Friday 3.28

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.

Here are 5 Things You Can Do Before the Event

5 Things you can do before

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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.

MEME_Questions Discussed

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.

 

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

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?