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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?

Marsha Ambrosius’ “Far Away” + Black Masculinity + Violence

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There are three videos circulating that have me thinking about Black men and masculinity and violence.

The first is the new Marsha Ambrosius video, Far Away, we see a story where a young man, who interacts with Marsha, is gay (desires men sexually) or queer (operates outside of the heteronormative ideas of sexual desire). He is beaten by a group of Black men, presumptively, because he is gay and he subsequently commits suicide.

I am delighted that Marsha is leveraging  her major label power to tell a story that needs to be told. This video is powerful because it speaks to the psychological costs of being oppressed because of who you desire sexually, and being open with that desire.

Honestly, I can’t believe the men embrace and kiss in the video. Black men who are intimate with each other simply isn’t allowed in pop culture. I don’t know if Black men can BE intimate with anyone in pop culture for that matter. Yes, they may have sex, but to be intimate, not so much.

In fact, when I saw For Colored Girls in a movie theater filled with Black women in DC, there was a huge range of hissing sounds that came out of the mouths of the women when the Carl character revealed to his wife the Lady in Red (Janet Jackson), that he was bisexual. Yet, the women were quiet during the rape scene between the Lady in Yellow (Anika Rose) and the man she was dating Bill (Khalil Kain). The point that I am trying to get at is that this experience showed me how conservative Black people can be around issues of sexuality.

In a post “On (Black) Masculinity: It’s Fragile + Illusive” earlier this year I wrote about Black masculinity and masculinity in general.

Quoting Global Gender Issues in the New Millennium,

“…Heternormative masculinity is an extraordinarily fragile and unstable construct and identity that leaves men having to prove repeatedly that they have “it”. They are put in constant fear and anxiety that they will be dubbed less than real men and therefore, be demoted down the gender hierarchy and be subjected to greater violence by other, higher men.”

This has me thinking about how men are subjected to violence in way similar to how women are, but under difference circumstances. It all turns on “conform to the way its done” or get smashed. For women its gimmie your number, or imma call you a ______ and slap you. Act like a man or imma sock you in the face and call you a _____. You get my drift?

The second video is the Ted Talk by Tony Porter where he talks about black masculinity. The most relevant parts are:

1:12 – The man box and socialization of men

2:35 – On teaching a 5 year old how to be a man.

4:11 –  On how his father apologized to him for crying in front of him.

6:50 – On deciding whether or not to participate in a gang rape as a teenager.

The “man box” is a powerful way for describing how sexism works, it takes the focus off of individual men and places the focus on social forces (how people in schools, churches, families think about gender roles).

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Keep this in mind while I talk about the next video.

In this video I just watched today a Black Uncle whoops his presumably 13 or 14 year old nephew with a belt for “Fake Thugging” on Facebook. He then forced the young man to put the video on Facebook. #triggerwarning.

I have long been reluctant to talk publicly about Black parents beating Black children, however, it needs to be done. Honestly, its one of the things that I have been scared to write about and I don’t scare easily.

bell hooks has said Black feminist’s lack of writing about how some Black parents, spank, whoop and beat their children is one of the ways in which Black Feminist have failed Black families.  We analyze domination between men and women and Black folks and White folks and even global violence but we don’t closely analyze how parents dominate children.

This is important.

For the most part globally and locally it is assumed that women will do the lion share of child rearing. Whether or not this assumption is legitimate is a WHOLE OTHER blog post. But because women do most of the child rearing,  disciplinary parental violence is something that I have been looking or a language to articulate.

For me, the violence done to the young man in the Marsha Ambrosius video is similar to the violence done by the uncle to the nephew, why? Violence or the threat of violence is used to get results from a human being, to force them to do something, to dominate them.

Is the violence connected for you?

Why or why not?

Do parents have a right to beat their children? #backtoBackBeatings

Does beating your children teach them that People Who Love You Have a Right to Beat You? If no, how?

Isn’t beating children as a much of a behavior deterrent as sending someone to prison?

The Gender Politics of the Dance Floor

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I am a dancer.

I have been since I can remember.

When I was 8 years old I won the dance contest at the California State Fair on 4th of July weekend.

#yup.

Dancing on a stage in front of thousands of people, and an audience comprised of mainly White folks and my parents.

Dancing earlier this week had me thinking about how space is gendered. And by gendered I mean ideas about “men’s” and “women’s” roles are so powerful that  they shape how men and women interact AND  the roles become amplified in certain spaces.

The streets and the dancefloor are two space that come to mind, but in this post I am going to focus on the dance floor.

Dance Floor Experiences.

Well, last week, my cheek brushed passed a heterosexual identified gentleman’s. He responded, “YO, your cheeks are mad soft.” They are, I have cubby cheeks, they run in my family. He then leaned in to touch them again.

I leaned back matrix style then responded saying, “You have to get consent first.” He then asked.

This reminds me of how much negotiation goes in Black women’s bodies simply BEING in public spaces.

I think that the dance floor is the first place were I was comfortable claiming my autonomy and space even as a dancer kid and teenager.

As a good dancer, people naturally GIVE you space, because they enjoy the performance.

I am now only beginning to put all these pieces together.

In fact it wasn’t until I was dancing in August that Green Eyes, pointed out to me that I am a space clearer. It makes sense, because I need space to dance.

But the reality you simply need space to BE.

Because I am a dancer, I am not really the kind of person you want to stand next to and hold your drink and watch woman’s asses move.

You will get pushed out. Static energy on the dance floor blows my steez.

I move deliberately like a New Condo in a working class Black and Latino neighborhood.  #pow.

The party dance floor is a politicized and gendered space because of the  alcohol, darkness and music. In some ways it creates an environment where men feel entitled to grab, touch and feel without consent.

This behavior is not innate, they are not born like this, they are socialized to think that it is okay. It is not.

Two years ago I wrote about the politics of the dance floor where a White woman felt comfortable enough to kiss me. In that post I quoted Benjamin Mako Hill who states,
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Booty bass is not just playing around with the idea of the dance floor being highly sexualized. In practice, it?s about serving the sex market and all about glamorizing and making palatable, laughable, and perhaps even justifiable everything that happens in that market.

Sometimes it’s not just about making fun of, toying with, or hinting at sexual domination in a safe context like the dancefloor but about creating, quite literally, a soundtrack for the real thing.

Thinking back, that was some radical shit for a White dude to say. #ummhmm.

Negotiating Space and Bodies

Last night I had a dance partner that wore my ass out. Like. Wo’ out. And that rarely happens.

There was two stepping. A little Bachata. The wop.

We danced through an ENTIRE Prince set. In fact I think I mentioned that I was a dancer… after that I remember being spun around in the air. #yup.

Nothing like a hand in the small of your back spinning you above the crowd.

However, I do recall a moment where I was like “Imma need you to move your hands two inches higher.”

He did.

Hands on my ass is not tolerable unless I consent. Full stop.

Dancing  Sexy is “Ho” Shit.

Because I dance passionately, it is often misread as being sexually accessible, which means that ostensibly, I cannot just dance with anyone.

Dancing passionately is really about  me having a conversation with the DJ.

As Professor Imani Perry says, Black dance is discursive, a conversation. I agree.

The question for me is who is conversatin’. <<<< I am wrong. I know.

Hope

Oh, there was also a moment last night that I will never forget when the DJ played Nirvana’s Teen Spirit. Honey.  An entire room of Negro people jumping.

I am not one to say that hip hop can solve problems as a “culture.”  People committed to solving problems solve problems.

What I will say is that I felt the power of a room full of folks jumping. The energy was …I don’t know, it just gave me hope.

Dance floor politics?

Women, how do you deal with this?

Have any gendered dance floor experiences recently?

Misogyny and Genius: Assange + R. Kelly

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Image via New Black Man.

During my birthday a couple of years ago I was posted up in Philly with Filthy in that awesome Barnes and Nobles on U Penn’s campus.

The Roman Polanski rape charges were being debated in the New York Times and some folks were defending him saying that it wasn’t “rape-rape”, that happened so long ago, or the alleged rape victim retracted her statement etc.

I was perplexed, why was this White man not in jail for raping an underaged White girl?

I thought, if she couldn’t be protected than my ass was grass.

I said this to Filthy and he looked at me, paused, stared at me for a minute, then said, well you know that’s a real working class Black woman’s perspective. I didn’t really know WHAT he meant by that at the time, but I remembered it, because it felt like I was going to need to remember it. Feel me?

Black men have been lynched and Black women have been raped, historically, in the US to maintain the hierarchical, racial,  gendered, social order. This terror was particularly acute 1880’s-1920’s in the south, as the US tried to figure out what a post slavery nation would look like.

Historically Black women are seen as UNrapeable. Naturally lewd, lascivious, fast and promiscuous. The social system of slavery needed us to be seen this way to normalize the domination of our reproduction and our manual work during US chattel slavery.

Because Black women were the two-fer, we worked in the fields and gave birth to enslaved workers, our sexuality was and in many ways still is looked at in a very particular way, even in 2010.

My understanding of this comes from two books.  The first is Terror in the Heart of Freedom: Citizenship, Sexual Violence, and the Meaning of Race in the Postemancipation South by Hannah Rosen and At the Dark End of the Street: Black Women, Rape, and Resistance–A New History of the Civil Rights Movement from Rosa Parks to the Rise of Black Power by Danielle McGuire.

Back to Polanski. Filthy explained to me that in Western Europe prominent, artists, writers, filmmakers, philosophers and thinkers  are placed on a pedastal.

I was like word?

Then peep game, he said for this reason, he holds these folks to a higher standard WHY? Because they have a platform where they can both influence society and consequently play a large(r) role in changing the world.

Louder voice, conceivably bigger impact.

This bugged me out.

How do I get to Assange and R. Kelly?

Well, I was really interested in three things in terms of how the Assange narrative was emerging:

The lack of a clear narrative around the facts of what actually occurred during the week in question. (h/t to @shoutcacophony for the link.)
The fact that people didn’t have the language to talk about both his genius/subversive actions AND the rape allegation against him.

The fact that Naomi Wolf’s stand point on Interpol as the dating police.

The fact that a group of largely White feminists got Keith Olberman and Michael Moore to apologize after being dismissive of Assange’s rape allegations. More here @ the  #moreandme hastag.

    Whats the Assange/R. Kelly connection?

    In 2008 R. Kelly was found not guilty on 14 counts of child pornography charges with a thirteen year old African American who was suspected to be his Goddaughter.

    A couple of weeks ago, on The Facebook a homie made a comment about R. Kelly’s genius, and a conversation ensued about just sorta being conflicted over him.

    I responded:

    It’s bugged. In terms of R.Kelly, if the issue were Race/Rather than Gender, I don’t think we would be so ambivalent.

    To put it another way:
    Could we really rock to some music made by a Brilliant Racist, rather than a Brilliant Pedophile?

    …R. Kelly Married Aaliyah when she was 15. We *Been* knew he was wrong.

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    Why is sexual domination acceptable for men artists who are labeled genius?

    Then again, sexual domination often goes unchallenged on the day to day, so I just kinda answered my own question. 0.O

    In someways its a part of the success package and that troubles me.

    What makes people short circuit when it comes to holding artists and other genius folks accountable for their janky gender politics, pedophilia, rape allegations?

    Because artists influence people, large amounts of people via their art, shouldn’t they be held to a higher standard, not a lower one?

    Why or why not?

    A Response to Jeff Chang and Brian Komar’s “Culture Before Politics.”

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    In a new article on the American Prospect site Jeff Chang and Brian Komar argue that:

    The Democrats are hurting in a big way after the 2010 mid term elections because they failed to grasp the importance of shaping the narratives through using artists the influence “culture.”

    Democrats think that they can focus on policy to move hearts and minds.

    “Culture is the space in our national consciousness filled by music, books, sports, movies, theater, visual arts, and media” and that “Cultural change is often the dress rehearsal for political change. Or put in another way, political change is the final manifestation of cultural shifts that have already occurred.”

    “When artists tell new stories, they can shift the culture and make new politics possible — cultural strategy is about understanding that fact and empowering artists to do what they do best.”

    I couldn’t put my finger on why I was troubled by this article. Talking with Rob helped me to clarify it over email.

    Here is what I agree with:

    Yes artists have a place in society.

    Yes artists can help to create narratives that can help us see new possibilities. The most awesome presentation of “narrative” or a story that I have seen is Danny’s blog “The People’s District” where he goes around DC interviewing people and posting them on his blog. Narratives across race and across age and class, it is one of the freshest things I have seen in a while.

    However, what troubles me about the article is that it assumes this kind of top down model of social movement change, instead of a circular one or one of push and pull.

    In many ways I see that it is saying, The Democrats need more people, and those people are artists rather than the Democrat’s need to be engaged with basic relationship building and maintenance and doing the things that impact the conditions of the lives of their base (African Americans, Latino’s, LGBTQ folks, Progressive White folks, union folks etc.)

    Rob pointed out that in many ways Jeff and Brian’s argument is both pragmatic and rather conservative. Pragmatic because it looks at using existing channels to advance the “Democrats need more people, artistic people” agenda, conservative because it is assimilationist in many ways.

    Meaning Jeff and Brian also argue that culture changes first and then electoral politics change.

    Whereas I contend that art informs electoral politics/ legal actions and electoral politics and legal actions inform art.

    This is what The Culture Wars was about, right?

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    Mapplethorpe and the NEA and censorship? (Financial and Government action)

    Cheryl Dunye’s Black lesbian film Watermelon Woman and censorship? (Financial and Government action)

    Wasn’t an exhibit censored at The Smithsonian last week because of sexual content?

    We can even take it back to the Birth of a Nation. I would argue that the hearts and minds are where they are, and then the art comes out of that. The art captures where the hearts and minds of folks are first. This is a real Leroi Jones/Baraka reading of art production that I take from Blues People. The audience then shapes what the artist creates. Keep in mind that corporations/the free market also play big role in shaping what artists produce. Dave Chappelle walked away from $50 million, lets ask ourselves why? A question we should always ask is why are these the stories being presented to us?

    Another example that we can take it back to rap music, and NWA specifically. NWA because it represented this moment where Black men, living in post-factory cities, who were swooped up in the crack game, were talking about THEIR day to day lives, their narrative, without the explicit intent on getting rich because back then rappers didn’t get “rich” in the way that some are known to be in Forbes magazine listed today.

    I had NWA in mind when Rob asked “where is the counter culture that can push back on the main narrative” because “we used to have countercultures and counterpublic spheres that could operate outside the dictates of the market’s logic, everything is within the confines of capitalism now.”

    I thought of rap music, skateboard culture and even some blogs. Where is the counter culture?

    Art and music, film, books, television are ALL used to help us make sense of our lives.

    But honestly, what good is a counter culture or books, art, film, television when half your hood is unemployed? You have a job but you STILL need foodstamps? The bus or subway is crazy expensive and you can’t get to work? You can’t pay your rent or mortgage. You have no money for Christmas presents.

    And, what good is a counter culture or culture when, simultaneously the Democrats and Republicans are looking at giving bailouts/tax cuts/wealth redistribution to billionaires and millionaires and other members of the college educated elite when you are barely making the rent, or your child’s college tuition is due, or you need more post-op physical therapy but all your sessions have run out, or you are working but you don’t have enough money to pay back Sallie Mae for your school loans and they are calling you twenty times a day.

    Perhaps what we need isn’t just “more artist’s” changing the narrative but the political will to invest in the food, clothing and sheltering, education, and health caring of human beings.

    Do Democrats need more artists?

    Why not focus on the fact that bailouts for everyday working people is what is needed?

    How can Democrats use culture when the free market will take anything, repackage it and sell it right back to you? For example Ice Cube going from NWA to Disney.