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For Colored Girls Who Considered bell hooks When Kendrick and Drake was Enuf

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Dedicated to the legacy of prof. bell hooks. Happy Mother’s Day.

This essay will be available in Black Girls Are From the Future VL II. Pre-order here.

Sign up for my newsletter here. Sign up to receive future essays directly to your inbox here.

Last week I watched with curiosity as rap music discourse seemed to approach what I call the “All About Love” moment. The All About Love moment is when a person or a group of people confronts the staggering realization that love and abuse cannot exist in the same relationship. In All About Love prof. bell hooks (RIP) argues that someone cannot love you and abuse you at the same time. People tend to have a hard time with this concept for good reason.

People have a hard time with this because it forces you to either roll your eyes and ignore her OR confront the fact that someone who abuses you and claims to love you is running game on you.

So what is a colored girl to do?

There has always been a tension between how Black women have been treated in rap music, and Black women’s desires to be included and acknowledge in rap music and hip hop culture. We been here. There is no hip culture without us. Will always be here, the question is at what cost?

I honestly did not plan on saying anything about this, as I feel that it is up to the current generation to make sense of Black gender politics. I blogged about rap and feminism for years, and my stance has been it is now time for the younger generation. It is their time to figure out their questions, their answers.

BUT. I had too when I saw someone imply that “well rappers were youth” as if to explain away the misogynoir. Peace to Moya Bailey. Misogynoir is a choice, just like White Supremacy. Tighten up. When I saw that someone said “well rappers were youth” I asked does being young give an emcee the right to ignore violence against Black women? Being violent towards Black women is a rites of passage? Oh Word? Where they do that at?

If the issue was race rather than gender, there would be more of an honest engagement.

I was a Black girl reading bell hooks and The Source. I was young. I was there. I was outside. I also had no choice BUT to acknowledge the fact that I was a Black girl in the hood listening to rap music that called me one thousand b-words. Here is the uno reverse. It was also a music that recognized that I was Black from the hood, and that I mattered in a world that said I didn’t. So rap music said that I was Black and young and important despite being from East Oakland California.

The Black feminists said ahght, aght, aght, just because you are a Black girl, nobody got the right to abuse you, we don’t care who they are.

It was tricky.

The truth is that Black women are to be used and discarded in both rap music, rap music beefs AND in some Black community spaces. Some families. Some schools. Some churches. It can be hard to confront this as a baseline truth but WITL? Historically women and land have been considered the spoils of war, so in this way rap music is part of a broader historical global tradition, at what cost?

How can Black women make the culture and be despised in it at the same time. Ain’t that something? Yet, a whole litany of Black women gave us maps on how to navigate this.

So if Prof. Angela Davis was interviewing Ice Cube in 1992. If 2 Live Crew was fighting supreme court cases over lewd songs and free speech with. If bell hooks was interviewing Kim in 1997. If Joan Morgan was writing “When Chickenheads Come Home to Roost” in 2000. If Moya and the sisters at Spelman was challenging Nelly and Tip Drill in 2004. If the Crunk Feminist Collective was going toe to toe with rappers, academia and errybody from 2010-2013. If I was deep in my Thugs, Feminism and Boombap bag from 2008-2013. If prof. bell hooks was writing fifty-eleven books about Black people, Black masculinity, and love then it was possible to both listen to rap and interrogate how Black women were treated in it. This is settled fact.

In fact, not only did some Black women give us maps but some brothers did too. Kevin Powell was writing about his challenging how he saw sexism is own life in Essence Magazine in 96? 97? The title was “Reflections of a Recovering Misogynist.” The same Powell who wrote the Biggie and Pac covers for Vibe.

Yet, the conversation last week is evidence that some of us listened to the music, clocked the violence and continued to create the culture.

To say “Oh they were youth” is both ahistorical and disrespectful.

It is disrespectful to the legacy of all these Black women culture makers, artists, entertainment industry Black girls, and writers, and to some brothers,  to say “well they were young.”

Just say that you think that rappers have a right to disrespect the women around them and go. If somebody calling you a b-word and a h-word every five minutes, then they don’t see you as human. You are just being tolerated. The first step to dehumanizing someone is calling them something other than their name. This is why the All About Love moment is a moment of radioactive confrontation.

We acknowledge that Black women have always had something to say, we was always there and often getting abused on in the music and in our communities. And that’s it. That’s the All About Love moment. Can they love you and abuse you in the same time? Can they abuse you and can you belong in a community with them at the same time? To answer that question is to open the door to other various questions about love in our families and we have a hard time with that for good reason. Most ignore it in order to survive.

It is debilitating to come to the conclusion that someone in fact DID not love you.

Well, last week some Black women on social media were really close to get acknowledging the fact that they are often not only pawns in Black men’s rap wars,  but that many of us we live in a day to day culture that says that we are pawns in some Black men’s lives. Here to be traded, discussed, ranked, used and dismissed. Ya’ll see the young men “choose to marry a Black woman or get electrocuted” viral video?

Black women need our communities in order to survive even if members of that community are abusive towards us. This is the heartbreaking and true situation I saw young people grappling with last week. They got close.

I don’t think that many old heads are ever going to admit, if they already don’t, that what is true in the music is also true in some of our homes, churches, and community spaces. But the young people will. They were well on their way to putting two and two together last week. I saw them grappling in real time.

I am proud of us. We have come far, and we have a long way to go. I will tell you this, ten years ago, this conversation would not even have happened on Twitter.

We have Michelle Wallace, bell hooks, Ntozake Shange, Dee Barnes, Drew Dixon, Joan Morgan, dream hampton, Tricia Rose, Moya Baily, The Crunk Feminist Collective, and myself to thank for maps towards love.

This essay will be available in Black Girls Are From the Future VL II. Pre-order here. Thank you for supporting me.

Questions:

Ya’ll think I am wrong? Lmk.

Can someone love you and abuse you?

What did you learn from reading this piece?

You ever had a bell hooks moment?

Am I over simplifying something that is really complicated?

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Happy Birthday Jonzey

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Girl. Where do I even began.

I love you how Sula loved Nel. In fact teaching Sula for all of these years has helped me to better understand our friendship. Time.

Especially seeing that you have been there for every major break up I have ever had in my life. Morrison’s Sula made our friendship make even more sense.

I think about you every day. I oscillate between wishing you were here and being grateful that you don’t have to navigate this piece of shit assed world.

Often times I just settle on the fact that God saw to it that I was fit to be your friend through so many cross country moves, so many apartments, so many holidays, so many summer plans and so much advice. So much advice. Time.

Do you know that you are the only person in the world who could tell me the truth and I would never second guess it?

In part it is because you held pregnant pauses where most people rambled. You remembered everything.

I remember when I was deciding whether or not to leave my ex and I asked you, “All things aside, give me your advice on whether I should stay or go. Tell me the truth but don’t be mean to me.” You said “You are either going to have to develop thicker skin or be okay with being miserable because you both get mad at one another and speak terribly to one another. It does not look like he is going to stop.” I will never forget hearing that information from you.

There is no one else in my life who could have said that to me without me swinging on them. There is also no one else in my life that I would have even trusted enough to ask that question. I knew that I could ask you and I knew that you would never weaponize it against me. A once in a lifetime friendship.

After you said that I knew I needed to leave and I did.

I went to Brooklyn in March and I sat in Moes and thought about you. Someone said “you talk about her like your partner died.” Honestly the way you know me. It does feel that way at times. Everyone thought you were fantastic. People adopted me because I was missing you. I was in mourning. (Ft. Greene look atrocious by the way.)

Remember that time we were there during Afropunk and you told me we have to go and I didn’t even question you? I just finished my beverage and left. YOU KNEW that the person sitting next to you was getting ready to start something with me, and East Oakland don’t play. I didn’t question you.  I just paid and left. We just dipped. Hood rules. I never second guessed your judgment.

But it was not just the way that you knew me. I knew you. I knew that you always asked for your salmon to be cooked hard at Sharaku which made my eyes roll.

I knew that you would always over plan on vacations. Queen of doing too much because you had to squeeze every activity in. Then you would turn around be tired after having had a vacation.

I knew that your treat after a bad day is that white mocha at Starbucks and fries from McDonalds or Wendy’s.

I knew that you missed your grandmother tremendously.

I knew that you loved all of the work that the Girl Trek ladies were doing because they focused on community and health. I knew

I don’t even dare give myself a pity party because I think it is an affront to God. How many Black women even get to know someone like you? I can’t even bring myself to spend the Chipotle card you sent me in the “girl get your degree” care package you sent me in 2020.

A positive patty. Always down to help. To work. To listen. Painfully empathic.

Who loves Black women in this world? In word and deed? Very few people especially when it comes to not valuing us BASED on what we do for others.

Who loves us simply because we believe we have a right to exist in this world?

I think that the thing that we both admired about one another is that we both had immense courage in a world that simply was not kind to us. We made a way out of no way. We were happy when people understood us and took it on the chin when they didn’t because we had each other.

Here is the thing about you. You were weird. Proudly weird. One of my nick names for you is Black girl Daria. Because Daria was weird, precocious and nerdy with these over sized glasses but she knew who she was on the world.

In fact, the newest Netflix version of the Adams family focuses on Wednesday and she is dead pan, aggressively dark humored, done with this world and, dedicated to building her own internal universes- just like you.

I will never forget when you told me you had four degrees. FOUR. A JD and an MFA. You was going to write the contracts and make the movies? BOFFEM? You did. You did. Why do Black women go to school so much? Because we like rainbow wigs, good food and we like to help the children in our family. We know what it is like to be smol and need help. We don’t believe in pulling up the ladder after we got on. We believe in mitigating the horror.

It was a gift to simply observe your light.

We was girls together. Happy Birthday Marquette Jones.

 

I cannot believe I have to live in this world without you.

Love,

Renina

 

A version of this letter will appear in my forthcoming book “Black Girls Are From the Future vl II.” Available for preorder here.

I am also fundraising for my sabbatical here.

Thank you for reading and supporting me.

The holidays are thick Ya’ll. Take good care of yourselves.

————————————————

Are you missing anyone this holiday season?

What do you think makes a good friend?

What do you think is the most remarkable aspect of friendship?

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My Play Little Brother

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oakland-mapTW: SUICIDE

Death changes you. No matter the kind of death.

It can unravel you, it can unbuckle you, in the face of death you can learn who you are.

You probably WILL learn who you are.

5 years ago, my play little brother took is life. Matteo.

I helped to raise this child, and the most peculiar thing about it, or perhaps not, is that no matter what I accomplish, I will never see his flesh face. I will never see him get married, I will never hold his baby, I will never see him graduate from college. I will never, I will never.

I help to raise Mat, or as I called him Matteo, because if you know me online or afk (away from keyboard) I have a special affinity for names and naming.

There are are a variety of kinds of death. Murders, Cancer,  Natural Death, HIV Aids, drive-bys, structural racism being mapped onto your under/un-insured body. He took his own life.

He was tall, lanky, handsome, White, with a cleft in his chin, his “hella’s,” his handsomeness and Love for our favorite Thai Restaurant on Grand Ave, the last place I took him to eat after he picked up from the airport after a work meeting in New York. His astute awareness of being a young White man in Oakland. His gift of poetry. His alto voice. His willingness to work. His ability to make me laugh at things I should not laugh at. His loyalty to his friends.

I couldn’t grieve his death for a year.  I paid the price for this. It cost me, in part, a very important relationship. Once I began to grieve and continued to, I learned how to do it. I did it with videos, with art. I dedicated my first book to him. I made a painting about Oakland and the book and I included him in it.

I got to a point where his death became a part of my day to day life. It just was. Not that I thought about it, or that I  felt sad about it, his Life like his death became a part of me.

In making the video in Oakland in 2012, I came to conclusion that it wasn’t for me to say what he should or should not do with his life. It is what it is, and it was what it was.
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One of the things that I am most proud of  in life is that in the few months before his death I was very insistent  about texting him to make a time for us to talk. This was before it was common knowledge that young people prefer to text, rather than talk on the phone. It took me a few days to schedule it, and we finally spoke and it was a lovely long conversation. We talked about home, his school and grad school desires, his friends, his family, how grad school was going for me and the fact that I had fallen in love recently.

He died 2 months later.

Death changes you. HIS death changed me.

I will say that 5 years later, I still see his face in children. And I mark it as well. Their round faces, their soup bowl haircuts. I look for and see his face in the crevices of their smiles, in the shape of their hair cuts, in the lankiness of their gaits.

One memory I will always have is of me taking him on the 15 bus  from the Berkley pool to Oakland while listening to Illmatic on my walkman. Me listening, and being protective. Him looking out the window at all of the activity on the streets. Me negotiating the stares from Black men wondering what I was doing with this White child.

I helped to raise him.

The thing that I know know that I did not know then is that the suicide of a young person is something that you do not get over. It is something that you learn to live with; hauntingly. Today, it is NOW something that I know that I don’t ever WANT to get over. I relish in the opportunity of ever getting to know his spirit.

Amen.

I Love you Matteo, Always. I see you every day.

Your Sister.

Renina

What Prince Taught Me: The Importance of Ownership

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Prince Post

Prince, our new genius ancestor, taught me the sheer importance of Being a Black woman creative who owned as much of my work as possible. He taught me by example that in order to own my work that I would have to fight, and that the stakes were high. Black women’s work is often undervalued and stolen.

I know this is true because our genius ancestor Ms. Zora Neal Hurston died in penniless in an unmarked grave.

As a teenager, who Loved hip hop I read The Source avidly. I will never forget an interview that they had with Prince’s then attorney, Londell McMillan, where he discussed the politics of Prince’s relationship with Warner Brothers, the inability of Prince to use his name and the impact that it had on his creative process.

It is from Prince that I learned that it was okay to be absolutely clear about the value of my creative work in a world that says that Black women’s labor is worthless. He was also a fierce champion of Black women artists. See WEAREKING. See Misty Copeland.

Here are Eriq Gardner and Ashley Cullins of The Hollywood Reporter on Prince:

The story of how Prince — full name Prince Rogers Nelson — changed his name to an unpronounceable “love symbol” in the 1990s during a contractual fight with Warner Bros. is legendary. Rolling Stone magazine ranked it as the fourth-boldest career move in rock history. The story goes that the artist wanted to release more music and wanted to own his masters. The record company wouldn’t let him. When that happened, he began appearing in public with the word “slave” written across his face. The change of name even had Warners scrambling to send out font software so that reporters could incorporate the symbol into stories. Many of those writing about the musician just found it easier to speak about him as “the artist formerly known as Prince.”

To value yourself in a culture that says that you are invisible is the embodiment of being a Black girl from the Future. #blackgirlsarefromthefuture
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To be able to dictate the terms under which your work will be consumed is a damn near miracle.

Prince taught me that I would have to be clear on the value of my work and continue to tell the people who desired the work the value of it over and over and over and over and over again.

Is it labor intensive? Exhausting and a fucking shit show. Yes. Everything has a cost. And my rational is that this is the cost of doing this kind of work for Black people in general Black women in particular.

Do you value your creative work?

How do you demonstrate that you value the creative work of someone else?

Who is your favorite Black creative and why?

#Blackgirlsarefromthefuture Podcast, Book Club and New Product Shops

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BGFTF Book Club

I am very happy to announce the brand spanking new #Blackgirlsarefromthefuture podcast, book club and shop. I  have been busy!

 

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For this podcast we discuss Their Eyes Were Watching God by Ms. Zora Neal Hurston. I also talk about Dear White People the politics of the digital and mainstream distribution of Black films.

Podcast Segments:

  • Book Club: 2:50-13:00

  • Level Up of the Week: Justin director of Director of Dear Black People: 13:00 -17:54

  • Shout Outs: 17:55- 27:00

  • #AskAllCity: 27:00- 29:00

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Mentioned in the podcast:

Here are my shops!

Shop: @TeeSpring – Until May 27th

Shop: Tote bags, pillows iphone cases, pencil pouches

Shop: Notebooks, coffee mugs, the Book

Facebook: Facebook.com/Blackgirlsarefromthefuture

Instagram: @Reninawrites

Twitter: @Reninawrites

 

Thank you for listening and sharing. I hope you enjoy it. ~R

Let me know. Did you enjoy it? Do you LOVE Their Eyes as much as I do? What else are you  reading?