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If You Want to Change Society, Close Your Legs

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Yes. David Banner said it.

Talk about colored girls, homicide and patriarchy.

You would think that Capitalism, the fall of the stock market and the price
of rice were controlled by who we had sex with.

What if a white man sat on that stage and said that? R.I.O.T.

David goes on to say that “Most of these men sell dope because
they want to impress you”. So wait, if we stop having sex with D-boys
then they are going to get jobs at Mc Donalds?

I think we need more labor and gender theory.

It Ain’t My Fault
Whats incredible to me about this video is two things.
David Banners and to a certain extent Kweli’s response is
indicative of an unwillingness to acknowledge the ways
in which our music affects our kids.

Why is that so hard?

We don’t want the rappers to have any personal responsibility
because we don’t want to hold ourselves accountable.
The minute we hold them accountable we have to hold
ourselves accountable.

Its like this, if your momma is telling you not to smoke and drink,
but she smoking and drinking, you ain’t gonna listen to her.

If we start talking about the rappers and their music and
the effect it has on the kids, then we have to start looking
ourselves, the fact that we buy and listen to the music
and the message that this sends to the kids.

We don’t criticize the rappers because then we would
either have to stop listening to it, or think about
why we get enjoyment from listening to “It Ain’t No Fun,

If the Homies Can’t Have None”.

Do you know how hard it was to write that listening
to Mobb Deep was nurturing the dysfunction in me?
Type difficult.

But knowing what I know about crack, Oakland,
and crack in Oakland, it would only make sense
that there would be a part of me that would find
tales of murder and crack entertaining.

We try and turn the dysfunctional ‘ish entertaining as
as a way to cope. And many times it works. But we are

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conflicted over it. Think of the art, music and theater
associated with The Holocaust. However, there is conflict
within the Jewish community over whether art about
whether it is appropriate for something so terrible can
serve as a basis for art, be it comedy, drama or a musical.

Listening to Mobb Deep reminds me that I am not living
in the 1989 war on drugs zone. It’s a reminder
that I survived.

However the words have an impact, perhaps an unintended
impact but an impact just the same.

For example, at the Spinna party last Saturday, I was singing alone with
Snoop and I turned to Filthy and said, “If my dad repeatedly telling me over
the years that I could do anything had an impact on my self esteem,
what impact does listening to and singing Ain’t No Fun have on
esteems of both men and women?”

You Wouldn’t Get Far
Hip-hop in many ways traffics in the Black sexuality and the availability
of Black female bodies as tools for sex.

No one wants to admit it, talk about it or analyze it.

What would these rappers think if their daughters were vixens,
and their sons murdering and hustling?

In a culture where Karrine Steffan’s is a slut, but being a pimp is revered,
where R. Kelley marries Aaliyah, is a known longtime pedophile in Chicago
and is acquitted of child porn charges, there are some serious issues with
how we view Black female bodies.

Its much easier to call Video Vixens tramps rather than analyze patriarchy.

Hip Hop’s Identity Crisis
While watching this video, I also thought of Hip Hops conflict within itself.
On one hand folks say that Hip Hop is “just music” on the other hand
folks say “that hip hop is revolutionary and political”.

What is it gon’ be? Just music or revolutionary?

As far as I am concerned, most of it is just another
form of employment.

In fact Birkhold wrote recently about how Hip Hop
isn’t the child of The Civil Rights Movement but is in fact
the child of Black youth unemployment. He writes,

I?m tired of people calling hip hop the child of the civil rights and black power movements. Everyone from hip hop artists, hip hop activists, hip hop scholars, and regular everyday listeners have called it that and all of them are wrong. I believe this error is made for two fundamental reasons, as a nation we don?t understand the civil rights or black power movements nor do we understand labor in a capitalist society.

If we did, we would understand that hip hop is the child of unemployment.


Parents Raise Kids Rappers Don’t
Not only do we fail to understand how Hip Hop isn’t

“revolutionary” but we also fail to understand how
rappers sound like neocon Republicans
when they say “Parents need to raise they kids”.

Yesterday, I began do wonder, do these negros sit around reading

In fact, I know d-boys that take more responsibility for contributing to
the down fall of the hood many of these rappers do.

Why is it so difficult to care about children other than our own?

We know better. Pre-crack we certainly weren’t raised like that.
Ms. Johnson down the street would tell your momma if she saw
you doing something out of pocket. I have written about it here before.
This extra parental intervention stopped during the crack era because
while Ms. Johnson would say something to Hakeem, now that it was ’89,
he had a 9(mm) and she wanted to keep her life.

We Just Need More Money and Programs
If the solution is economic then our people should be in better shape.
Black people have more money than ever before, and their children
are STILL underemployed and in prison in record numbers,

If the solution is economic, how many people you know have
cake and still decomposing on the inside?

An after school program and a fund raiser is not going to change this.
After school programs and fund raisers are apart of the problem.
We can’t party our way to social justice, reduced unemployment,
reduced drop out rates or lower AIDS rates.

Many people who work these jobs, like their work, but are scared of the hood.
Non profit jobs serve as a stepping stone for folks. Its like an urban boot camp.
If you can survive with the darkies you can work anywhere.
They are far more interested in keeping their jobs than changing
society so that the children who are in these programs can have
lives full of options, dignity, humanity and power.

There are a lot of mortgages being paid off of managing Black and/or
White poverty.

I am not dissing afterschool programs. Afterschool and summer school
was my salvation when three and four hundred cats were getting murdered
a year in Oakland 89-92. What I am saying is that it is important to keep
an after school program in perspective and to understand the extent
to which some folks care more about getting a grant, then deciding what
their organizations mission will be. This method of thinking enables them
to put their personal mission ahead of the needs of the people they are serving.

Black children in the hood know that there is a war on drugs. They know
it because they are in the middle of it. They know that we won’t, can’t
protect them, so they protect themselves. They also know that we care
more about our music than we do standing up for them.

Every time an emcee says “Parent’s raise kids” not rappers, the kids are
reminded of this.

We don’t also don’t understand labor and power, and until we do we will
be on stages saying things like “If You Want to Change Society, Close your Legs”.

For Colored Girls who Considered Homicide When Patricarchy was Enough

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These days and times are trife for Black women. You will rarely hear
me speak from the stance of victim-hood, as i try my hardest to keep
agency on mines.

My rationale is that as long as you are reactionary, someone else
will always be setting your agenda and you will not gain any sustainable
traction.

However the skin issues, sexual access issues have been on
my bird lately. The sexual access issues arose at the Spinna
Party on Saturday. I was standing with Filthy near the bar debating how
long it is going to take Spinna to play Shook Ones or Who Got the Props.
There were two clusters of white women there. In each group
there was one women wearing a veil. They were toasted.
Light-weight Girls Gone Wild toasted.

For the past six or seven years, New York City clubs have been making
extra cake by throwing bachelor/ette parties earlier in the
evening from 8-11pm with the regular party running from 11-3am.
However there tends to be carry over, which is what I think happened
Saturday. My homie K-boogie confirmed this later that night as she
went to a bachelor party at the same spot last week.

So, I am standing there, minding my own business and a woman walks
by me to order a drink. She apparently was a bachelor/ette party
attendee, stripper or both. Either way she was lit, blond, and hootered out.

The first time she passed me she complemented my earrings.
(My earing game is mean.)

Second time she rubbed passed.

The third time, I was leaning over talking to Filth, so his ear
was toward me, and she kissed me near my other ear. I was Frozen like a Robot.

Then she turned to me and said something inaudible.

Filthy caught on and was like awwwww sh*t. Here we go.
What went through my mind both how patriarchal that shit is and
how the club is a space for people to try and do what they think
about doing in the streets. I was reminded of a post that I came
across when I wrote the Mobb Deep and Patriarchy piece I wrote a month ago.
The piece is titled Dance Floor Studies Feminism and Booty Base.
The comment by Benjamin Mako Hill caught my attention
because he articulated the notion of sexual access and the role that the
club plays. He writes,

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.

Back to what was running in my head. That good old fight or flight.
I didn’t want no war with her. The Oakland in me says put my elbow in her throat.
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assault and battery. It just gets real tiring to be constantly defending your body
and your space against strangers, against both men and women, who presume
that they have access to your body. I don’t know where she as been and I
am paranoid. Herpes is the package that keeps on giving, don’t touch me.
1 in 4 people in New York city has it. Don’t touch me.

I asked him why did she do that? He responded simply , “Patriarchy”.
She probably thinks that its cute and she enjoy’s being the aggressor.

I responded saying, “if that was a dude, I wouldn’t have though
twice about turning his skin purple or shoving him off of me, and
letting it do what it do”. The woman played off her femininity and
the likelihood that she would get away with it, because she was
a woman and not a man. Alcohol played a role as well.

Then I thought, why should I give her a pass? Its the behavior,
not the gender that matters.

She is just as bad as the Black men on the street that treat
me like property.

Bringing bell hooks to the Spinna party is not what the streets
wanted.

Which brings me to the skin issues. Last night I listened to Phonte’s
podcast and he has a segment called the Light Bright
list. What he meant was “Light Bright and Damn Near White” as my
momma would say. The Light Bright list is a list of light skinned Black women
that he finds attractive. In the podcast he went down the line naming the
greatest light skinned Black women ever, Lena Horn, Jennifer Beals, etc.

I am yellowish-red, and more copper in the summer time. As you will see
in the video above that skin color shit is no joke for Black people. Especially
the children. The whole time I am listening to Phonte, I am thinking about
the little black girl, at 4:30sec, who said that the black doll is the ugly doll,
then when asked which doll does she look like, she hesitates, and
reluctantly choose the black one.

That shit was heart breaking.

While I haven’t recovered from the “black doll is ugly” and the “light bright
list” the Michelle Obama ain’t feminine shit came to my attention. Recently,
feminist were in arms over Hillary being portrayed as a “ball buster”,
“masculine” and un-lady like.

It wasn’t clear to me how this related to Michelle, so I asked Filthy
why. He responded saying that, Hillary was being called masculine,
and the feminists came to her defense.

So the question is where is the defense of Michelle Obama
when the same criticism are being lodged at her?

I immediately thought of Phonte’s list and the video with the inference
being drawn from that dark equals ugly, and presumably
unfeminine.

Can you imagine the kind of Black Girl Fatigue this shit produces?

The skin issues, the sexual access issues are enough to make a
Black Girl Consider Homicide when Patriarchy is Enough.

The Removal of White Feminists

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Earlier in June Linda Hirshman wrote a piece in the
Washington Post about the feminist movement is fracturing
by paying too much attention to the “other”, and that the movement
needs to focus. Hirshman writes,

A movement that uses intersectionality as a lens but banishes white, bourgeois, corporate older women might be a vehicle to glue what remains of feminism together, but it will struggle to achieve social change for women.

This piece resonates with me for three reasons.

First, historically, I like Hirshman’s work. She wrote a book a couple
of years back titled, Get to Work about women, working,
gender and relationships. Looking back, I realize that she had
no critique of capitalism, but the book has it’s merits as it is a
book about working and our ability to take care of ourselves
financially.

Second, I have been combing the internet for the last two days
for an article on Jstor about why there has never been a sustained
National Black feminist movement. I saw the article
last week, but for some reason I can’t find it. However, I have
come across articles that mentioned how the Black Feminist Movement
suffered because it had a difficult time deciding what its agenda
would be and it also had to get over its own lesbianphobia to sustain
traction as a movement.

Thirdly, Hirshman’s piece resonates because of a conversation
I was having as I walked to brunch with Fillthy yesterday. I mentioned
to him that I just learned about a non profit that is against the jail
that is scheduled to be re-opened in downtown Brooklyn. I had
the idea that the prison reform folks and the and anti jail folks may be
able to form like voltron.

Soon the wind would be let out of my sails when he mentioned that
he had already spoken to anti-jailers, as he had the same idea.
He concluded they were not anti-prison, they were just against
the opening of the prison in their neighborhood because of the impact
on their property values.

The anti jail folks were the classic Single Cause Activist (SGA’s)

As Americans, I think we have a knee jerk aversion to
understanding and admitting how things are connected.

We would be better off as a humans if we acknowledged
and approached life from the perspective that everything is
connected or damn near so.

For example, Corn prices go up, beef goes up. Over-fish the
Salmon, salmon become extinct. Spend Trillions on a war,
less money for State infrastructure. Fewer jobs in post industrial
cities for teenage Black men, more teenage black men sell crack.
The analogies are crude, but you get the picture.

In thinking about the SCA’s, I wondered how the notion
of SCA’s related to Linda Hirshman’s resentment of the in
“intersectionality” that she see’s in some of today’s feminism.

Is Hirshman advocating for Single Cause’s Activism within feminism?

In response to the single cause activism in feminism,
bell hooks is clear that if feminism is a lifestyle choice, then it will not
mean shit to the masses of women and will consequently be
irrelevant to them as well. hooks critiques Barabara Bergs definition
of feminism which is ” a broad movement embracing numberous
phases of womans emancipation.

In response to this definition, hooks writes,

This definition of feminism is almost a politcal in tone, yet it is the
type of definition that many liberal women find appealing.
It evokes a very romantic notion of personal freedom that is more
acceptable than a definition that emphasizes radical politcal action.

It is easy to make feminism a lifestyle as there is no commitment
to eradicating racial or sexual oppression in “a lifestyle”. hooks
explains this when she writes in Feminist Theory, quoting French
feminist Antoinette Foque,

The actions proposed by the feminist groups are spectacular, provoking.
But provocation brings to light a certain number of contradictions…The feminist claim that they do not seek equality with men, but their practice proves to the contrary to be true. Cardiovascular disease, ocular conditions, sickle cell anemia are the diseases that can cialis professional no prescription result in severe side effects of unprescribed ED medications can be hearing loss and longer lasting erections for more than 4 hours. Epimedium viagra online in kanada or Horny Goat weed is another herbal remedy that has caught on in recent years. Insoluble bile acid can viagra sales france lead to ulcers and eventually can cause cancer. The branded cialis tadalafil 10mg has lots of ads and at the same time they are appointing a lot of medical representatives. Feminist are a bourgeois avant guard that maintains , in a inverted form the dominant values…Since women are becoming men, in the end it will only mean a few more men. The difference between the sexes is not whether one does or doesn’t have a penis, it is whether or not one is an integral part of a phallic masculine economy.

I kept the notion of a few more men in mind when I read Jill’s response
to Hirshman. Jill gets it in when she discusses, with candor, the ways in
which whiteness operates within the feminist movement. She writes,

I am tired of a feminism that assumes to be built and maintained by middle-class white women. I am tired of a feminism that, when challenged, falls back on the same old excuses and knee-jerk reactions that men have long relied on when faced with feminist critiques.

But my main concern comes at the way the issues are split into authentic ?feminist? issues and those ?other? issues that those ?other? women are trying to integrate into feminism. It?s a question of who feminism belongs to, and who is entitled to set out its goals and concerns.

And it seems to me that white middle-class feminists shouldn?t be doing the same thing that the white guys have always done: We should not be telling other women to forgo their issues for the ones we deem important. We should not be telling other women to wait their turn. We should not construct a movement that assumes ?woman? to only represent one narrow construction of womanhood.

The question is whether the women in positions of greater power ? women who tend to be white and middle or upper-class ? are going to emulate existing power structures, or whether those women are going to recognize the diversity and richness of feminism and try to represent that by challenging the very structures that gave them power in the first place.

What appears to be operating the the crux of the conflict within
the Black Feminist movement and at Linda’s beef with
intersectonality, and Jills critique as well is an inability to
agree on what being a feminist is.

I observed that Linda’s working definition of feminism is
“social changes for women”. Jill’s working definition is
that “..feminism isn?t an issue ? it?s an umbrella
movement that should encompass and represent
women?s interests”. bell hooks says it best when
she that there is a difference between saying that
you are a feminist and saying that you advocate of feminism.

Those who say that they are feminist tend to have more
leeway in terms of how the term affects their day to day lives.
Vague terms tend to have a vague impact. No Child Left Behind
anyone?

In Feminist Theory, hooks offers a working definition
stating that those who advocate feminism are committed
to the eradication of sexual and racial oppression.
This covers Black, White, Latina, Asian families across class.

Approaching the issue from this point of view means having a
more clearer goal and a clearer strategy. There is no easy, or single
solution to how this looks on the daily. What matters, I believe,
is the daily struggle with how this issue lives in our lives,
the lives people that we impact and have the potential to impact.

Other Links
Brown Femi Power
Guns, Lawyers & $

On Vulnerability

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Vulnerability came up not once, but twice yesterday, and I had the
feeling that it would come up again this morning.

Yesterday, one of my homies, S.bot confided some crazy shit to me.
She basically said that she recently learned that she had
an issue with being vulnerable to the extent that she worked
diligently at not allowing any of her friends get to know each
other, for fear that they would put two and two together
and begin to see shit in her that she wasn’t prepared to
see.

Talk about mind blowing.

This was key for me because the last two years I have
tried to give her a birthday get-together, and she was super
negatory on that idea.

Now, I have a better understanding of why.

Vulnerability came up again with Flybug Starski last night. She was talking
about being okay with being vulnerable with dudes. It wasn’t a fear
that she would get hurt, but that she would hurt the dude.
She said based on some shit that recently happened, she didn’t want
to walk around with that on her heart.

I commented that that was an interesting way of going about
life, and that she should call *Dave, as I was on my way out the
door to surprise Filthy with some fried fish, plantano’s and steamed
broccoli.
*A dude of interest

So there was dinner, and a conversation about the weekend.
Filthy feels about his time the way most dudes feel about their money.
His time is everything. I find it challenging to figure out
how to dance with it sometimes.

For example. There is a big party taking place Saturday.
I went last year and left without a stitch of mascara or
eye shadow and the back of my hear was puffed up from having
danced so hard. Boot Camp, Nas, EPMD, The Roots. All that.
When I learned about this party in May, I was like cool, there goes
my summer, once I go to that, I’m set.

Filth and I had beef over the weekend plans.
The beef was over me “asking” for Saturday. Every since last year,
my position has been that if I tell you I am checking for you then it is
your responsibility to let me know when you are free.

It ain’t working like that y’all, because he has asked me
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for not being able to do the same. In my mind I thought there was
an understanding because I let him know that I was checking for him.

Negatory.

While I asked him if he wanted to go on Saturday night, I didn’t speak
on hanging out on Saturday itself.

This morning, both time and Saturday day plans came up and
and he mentions to me that when he has said “Yo, I really enjoyed
hanging out with you today” that I say nothing in return. In my
head, I am like, I enjoy spending time with you as well, but, I don’t say
it out loud.

I was stuck and felt like an ingrate. I confided, “you know how much
I enjoy spending time with you, most the time, its hard to leave, and I do
mention that”. He was like “Yeah, but that’s not the same as responding
to me saying that I had a good time with you today”, and he was right.

When he said that I was brought back to a moment when I was talking
to S.bot yesterday and she mentioned how we all need reassurance.

How reassurance is the grease that keeps the relationship wheels turning.

She concluded that ultimately, needing reassurance makes us
feel uber vulnerable.

I was stuck.

It dawned that me that M.dot has a problem with being vulnerable, to the extent
that I don’t like asking for the time. ***Looks in mirror, like who knew?

What I ended up saying out loud to him, in an urge to be fearless and
vulnerable was that I saw, “Every date as being precious”.

His eyes lit up.

After saying that and talking to him further about a current project
where I am writing about feminism, patriarchy and hip hop,
I ask him if hip hop’s inability to be vulnerable is tied to the shit that
we are collectively going through?

He just looked at me, and said you may be on to something.

I realized that I didn’t want to ask for Saturday day, not just Saturday
night for the Spinna jawn, because I didn’t want to feel vulnerable.

With all of this squared away, I feel relieved. I have the fly oufit
planned for Saturday, and a meal on the agenda that may impress
both my momma and Martha.

When was the last time you were vulnerable?

Why?

How did you handle it?

You regret it or are you proud?

Congress Got a Problem with Nas?

by

Remember when MC hammer was considered a sell out because
he endorsed so many products?

My how things have changed.

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difficulty in buying ads with an album titled N-gger.

Nas, oddly, appears to find comfort in the industries discomfort.

Doesn’t Congress have better things to do then worry about
Nas’s lyrics?