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And You Even Licked My Balls: A Black Feminist Note on Nate Dogg

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So I have been thinking of Nate Dogg in general but rap music in particular and the difference between how I as a Black woman and how White men relate to rap music.

While I understand that sexism and patriarchy is systemic, that we LEARN and are taught how to be “men” and “women,” how to be racist, how to be sexist as well as  how to Love, how to forgive.

What I am getting at is, to be crude, we don’t pop out of our mommas knowing how to be men and women, we are taught from infancy on through blue and pink clothing,  girls being told to sit a certain way that is lady like, boys being told crying is weak, and not manly etc.

I also know that there are several structural things impacting the lives of Black men and women such as archaic drug laws, mandatory minimums, three strikes, the underdevelopment of public education, gentrification, police who shot and kill Black people with impunity, and the lack of good grocery stores in working class and low income neighborhoods. All this shit matters.

Culture matters as well. Culture meaning,  music, books, websites and films.

Culture is hegemony’s goon.

Which brings me to Nate Dogg. The recent coverage of his death clarified for me why some issues that I have thought of about rap music but didn’t have the language to articulate.

I am a little troubled over how White mens investment in Black mens misogyny in rap music isn’t interrogated. And how that shit impacts me and the women who look like me.

Society is organized by and for men.

And our lives in the US are hyper segregated racially.

By and large Black people don’t live around White folks, so most White men can experience the pleasure of singing “and you even licked my balls” in the comfort of their cars, homes and apartments, whereas a young Black man said to me nearly two years ago on 125th street that he wanted to “stick his dick in my butt.”

On the street, in broad daylight.

That shit was so absurd I thought HE was singing a rap song initially. No, he was talking to me.
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Consequently, largely, White men are  not subjected to the kinds of violence and sexism that is sung about in the songs that Nate sang the hook on. As a Black woman, I am.

As a woman, as a Black women who Walks like she has a right to be in the street, this means my ass is toast.

For example, there is an officer in my neighborhood that harasses me so fucking much that I am now on a first name basis, Peace to Officer Anderson. Typically he stops me because there is apparently a 11pm curfew in DC for children under 18 on week nights. He normally asks me from his car, “Hey, how old are you.”  Dead ass, the second time he did it, I responded saying I was grown. o.O

After the third time, I was like “Mr. Officer whats your name because this is either the second or third time you have asked me that, and seeing as we are going to keep running into each other, I thought we could just on speaking terms.” He smiled. Doesn’t MPD carry 9mm’s too? Sassing officers of the state who carry legal weapons?  Ummhmm. And, he told me his name.

My clarity on this issue came about after I read a excerpt of a post on NPR about Nate Dogg by Jozen Cummings. He writes,

“There’s also “Ain’t No Fun (If The Homies Can’t Get None),” a song that was never chosen as a single from Snoop Dogg’s debut album, Doggystyle but has become a favorite for many DJs trying to work a room. The song is a tour-de-force of misogynistic lyrics, but only Nate Dogg can make a verse about dismissing a one-night stand sound so sensitive and endearing.”

“Remembering Nate Dogg, Hip-Hop’s Hook Man”

by Jozen Cummings, NPR.org,  March 16th, 2011

(via beatsrhimesandlife)

Then I reblogged and responded on tumblr saying:

In some ways, Cummings comments re Nate Dogg remind me of why I think The Chronic and Doggy style are the Devil, in terms of rap music. Men in general and White men in particular have a different relationship to the kinds of violence that I am subjected to as a Black woman who WALKS like she has a right to be in the street. Shit…two weeks ago I told two dudes to kill me or leave me alone. Dead ass. This ain’t for play. This is our lives.

Have you ever thought about White men’s investment in rap lyrics by Black men that are hella outta pocket?

I went to look for Cummings racial identity and I learned that he is African American, Japanese and Korean, so I am not saying that he is White. What I am saying is that his writing about Nate Dogg’s misogyny reminds me of how when the misogyny bomb is dropped, people who look like me tend to get hit with hella sharpnel. Whereas White men get to live out their thug fantasies singing along with Nate “And you even licked my balls.”

The Chronic and Doggystyle are sonically genius, however, did they up the ante on allowing White men and even some Black ones live out their Black sex fantasies?

Do you see the connection between Black women and White men that I am trying to make, why or why not?

The Politics of Making a “Black Film” in Obama’s America

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Image of director Kasi Lemmons courtesy of Professor Sussoro’s Blog

Last fall I tweeted that a barometer of Black women’s freedom would be their ability to control, tell, and distribute their own stories.

Having seen Push, and now For Colored Girls, two movies based on texts written by Black women about Black women, but directed by Black men, I am incredibly mindful of who gets to tell which story and why. Story telling is powerful because it is through stories that we come to see who we are in the world. Our stories define us. Stories tell us what is possible.

Consequently I was really excited when I learned that Pariah, directed by Dee Rees had been acquired by Focus Features last week.

A story, by a Black woman, about a Black girl. #Awesome.

In thinking about Pariah I was reminded of a Professor Michelle Wallace’s commentary on Spike Lee nearly fifteen years ago and what it means to make “Black Films.” In the article “Doin’ the Right Thing” she writes,

” …implicit in this formulation of Blacks having their own films was the nagging question as to whether such representations would somehow make black
peoples lives better overall. Regardless whether representation weather a film has value as any value as art, it can , if it chooses closely mirror or reflect the problems
and inequities of society. People make the mistake of thinking that a film can therefor correct inequities. This because we as a culture, are still trying to figure out what representation fully means in still new and exponentially expanding forms: what such forms can and can’t do, what we should and should not ask from them.”

She also say’s something in the article that has stuck with me which speaks to the idea that,

“we can now see that the notion of blacks making their “own” films presupposed the existence of a monolithic black community, unified enough to
posses a common ideology, ethics, morality, and culture, sufficient to override such competing and divisive interests as class, gender, sexuality, age and
education.”

This morning @tkoed Sent me a link from Ta-Nehisi’s blog where Neil Drumming, a screen writer and journalist, talks about about whether he would make “Black films.”

The article talks about how films by several NYU alums made it to Sundance this year. Full disclosure, as a little bear I worked for several years at NYU’s film school as an office manager. NYU’s Black film making culture is a part of me. It is in seeing grad and undergrad student filmmakers grind to make their dreams work that, that in some ways I developed the courage to openly pursue being an artist. Filmmakers taught me the power of story and how to analyze a film.

My homie Jase has just came back from Sundance after working on a doc on Harry Belafonte, Sing Your Song, #wingsup.

My homie’s Marquette Jones and Qwesi Davis both have films in the San Diego Black Film Festival this month.
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I also found this article to be interesting, in that it speaks to how hyper segregated both Hollywood AND the art world is. Furthermore, it is related to a conversation that I was having last week with a Black woman journalist friend about how segregated Washington’s journalism corps are, and what this means for the careers of Black people in general and women of color in particular. It appears that one can operate in the White circle or the Black circle, but not both. Where does this leave people who are neither White nor Black? o.O

Work mirrors life?

Was it this rigid in New York? I don’t recall.

What is material to me is that Neil never disclosed his race. I read the article again, looking then I asked @tkoed if Neil was White. @Tkoed says that this is because regular readers know who he is, and that may be true. But I am not a regular reader, so I finished the article wondering is this a White, mixed race or Black person analyzing what it means to have negro characters in their movies.

Perhaps given how marginalized Black films are, to choose to make Black movies is a choice to have your work live on the margins. This can be tough to reconcile for some.

The homie Dame also sent me a link to an article titled “Can Revolutionary Films Hinder Social Action.” Read it here. This article looks at how the top 1% can use the medium of film
to transmit messages to the masses that then absolve the masses from taking action. For example, if you know that “The Matrix” exists, are you obligated to do something about it?

Oh and Rob has a piece up at The Liberator about the Black Creative Class. He makes some interesting points about who makes up this class and although his timeline throws me a bit, I like
the idea of inter-generational Black struggle that’s not linear and impacted by art. In some ways I think our posts are in conversation with each other.

Excited about Pariah?

Why did we assume that having more Black Films would change the lives of Black people?

Can we have a conversation about the forces that create a “Black Film” genre in the first place?

Race and racism are draining.

The Hyper Marginalization of Black Fiction

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Publishers Weekly cover from Dec 2009

The other day I was reading an interview with Ishmael Reed and he said some things about Black fiction that got me to thinking.? The interview was with Jill Nelson for his new book, “Barack Obama and the Jim Crow Media: Return of the Nigger Breakers.” Tell me how you REALLY feel Mr. Reed.

There is one part of the interview about Black art that stood out to me:

Jill Nelson: Why were you unable to get this book published in the United States?

Ishmael Reed: This is attributable to the state of black letters. Serious fiction and non fiction by blacks are becoming extinct, except for that which upholds the current line coming from the media owners and the corporations that all of the problems of Africans and African Americans are due to their behavior. This is true not only for literature but for black theater, film, art galleries and opinion columns as well. I saw a show of Kara Walker?s work at the Brooklyn Museum. I feel that this young brilliant artist?s growth is being stunted by museum curators, and big money capitalists. Even some white intellectuals support her most mediocre work and pit her against the great Betye Saar who uses a variety of materials and subject matter and whose work contains more depth.

This gave me something to think about, in terms of the serious, capital F fiction vs. hood lit conversation.

A little about my book background. I am a long time book list keeper. My? book list weighs a ton. And I don’t really get to read fiction often, so quirky fiction is special to me both because of my lack of time for it and its scarcity.

In fact, looking at my book list I realize that I have always had the eye and mind of an archivist (I have been working on a database of Black women artists which will be a link page on NMM then a site in its own right eventually.)

@Blacksnob Tweeted about Paul Beatty. Then @janie_crawford saw it, and I tweeted her a link to my post on Paul Beatty’s Slumberland.

Then @janie_crawford and I had a conversation about the fact that Paul Beatty needs to be on Twitter. Say? Word. I was beginning to think about where are these Quirky Black Fiction writers who have published in the last ten or so years, as newcomers?

There is a range of “Black experiences.” We are heterogeneous as shit, even if mainstream media would have folks think we are either the Cosby Show or The Wire, I know better and I would imagine that you do too.

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There is some shit that we are subjected to because of how whiteness as a social system dominates, but yes, Virgina, we are all different.
Truth be told our lives are a mixture? and we need to have a range of art that captures the variety.
The hood lit vs. official lit argument is binary, doesn’t serve our interests
and is hyper counter productive.
However, I know that certain niggafied images of Black people serves the interest of maintaining White Supremacist Patriarchal Capitalism.
More that that here, here and here.
So. It is in that spirit that I make a list of Quirky Black Fiction Writers.
Here are ten. Please add more in the comments, if you got ’em.
Danyel Smith– More Like Wrestling
Carl Hancock Rux– Pagan Operetta
Ernesto Quinonez -Bodega Dreams
Junot Diaz –Drown
Matt Johnson- Hunting in Harlem
Nichelle Tramble– The Dying Ground
Paul Beatty – Slumberland
Percival Everett – A History of the African-American People (Proposed) by Strom Thurmond, as told to Percival Everett & James Kincaid (A Novel)
Victor Lavalle – Slap Boxing with Jesus
ZZ Packer– Reading Coffee Elsewhere
Zadie Smith– White Teeth

Looking forward to your comments.
Read anything good lately in general?
You have names for the list?

“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

The Futility or Perhaps the Profoundness of Whiteness

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I searched for a Black and White image. I found Bobby K.
You know I LOVE Bobby.

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Blackness can only be understood in terms of Whiteness.

I came to this conclusion after reading Elsa Barkley Brown’s

She writes,

We are likely to acknowledge that white middle class women
have had a different experience from African American, Latina,
Asian American,and native American women; but the relation, the fact that
these histories exist simultaneously, in dialogue with each other, is
seldom apparent in the studies we do, not even in those studies that perceive
themselves as dealing with the diverse experiences of women. The overwhelming
tendency now, it appears to me, is to acknowledge then ignore the differences among women.

Barkley Browns general argument is that we can only
understand Black women’s history if we look at White women’s

history because the two require each other to work.

Whiteness ONLY works in relationship to Blackness.

This kinda shook me up.

Because I believe this to be true, I am struggling with

the Sociology readings that I have. Shit, its even hard for me
to read news paper articles or even to have conversations

with people about race.

Because a conversation about Blackness without mentioning Whiteness can

only be half right.

In the same way that a conversation about Hip Hop without mentioning capitalism

can only be half right.

Much of the discourse around race treats Male Heterosexual Whiteness

as the norm and everything else deviates from that.

Part of my ideas around the futility of Whiteness stems from reading work

by Black people, about race, that either implicitly or explicitly ask’s

for White folks to see our humanity, to include us.

I arrived as an intact human in East Oakland over 30 years ago.

Whether or not a group of people SEE or validate my humanity is none

of my business.

I haven’t always been this way. Growing up in East Oakland, it was difficult

to remain an intact human being, especially after the crack epidemic.

Having just started graduate school, it has become clear to me the

ways in which my education has played a role in my ability to remain

intact because many of us don’t make it and we simply charge it to the game.

Its difficult for any one who isn’t a White Heterosexual Male (WHM) to remain intact,

because both our laws and our mainstream culture presume that WHM is

the norm.

This norm in our society is reflected by the need to have a Civil Rights Movement,
a Women’s Rights Movement, a Gay Rights Movement, an Equal Opportunities
Council Commission, a Civil Rights Bill and Health Care Reform.

All of this brings me to a conversation I had on Twitter Friday with, @BlackNerds

about saving hip hop.

Normally I don’t respond to these statements, because most likely

they prove to be futile. But I engaged and I am glad I did because I made a

connection that I hadn’t seen before.

I asked him:

Saving hip hop from what?

Why is there such an investment in it?

What does it mean to “save hip hop” when most artist want

Black kids respect and white kids money?

As a result of our conversation, I then tweeted and this the important
connection that I made. The tweet said, “In some ways, I think our
desire to like hip hop is connected to our need to have White folks
recognize our humanity.”

I am still working this out. What I do see today, is that both instances
involve looking for validation in places that have clearly stated they it
has not, and will not be offered. It can be struggled for, but it will
not be handed over. To struggle for it, would mean a new society.

You see the connection between Blackness and Whiteness?

Why is it so hard to accept that Rap music is now a tool to sell

products?

Why do we want to save it so badly?

It feels good to be back. Thank you for reading.