You are here: Home / Archives for Renina

White Husbands and Black Maids: from Drylongso

by

Gimmie a Break on You Tube, for a refresher on Black maids

I read Drylongso by John Gwaltney while working on The Crack Project. Drylongso is an ethnography of? Black people in North Eastern cities in the late seventies. Ironically, The Graduate (the man for whom I played number two a few years back//that was fun, and he is now my friend) recommended that I read it.

I am glad that I called him and asked for his help (he is a historian) as reading Drylongso helped me to conceptualize why oral histories are really a powerful and important tool for documenting the lives of Black people.

But for introductions to the individual chapters, and a fourteen page introduction,? the book is? mainly testimony straight from the people that Gwaltney interviewed.

Gwaltney sums up his intentions with writing Drylongso when he says,

…I share the opinion commonly held by natives of my community that we have been traditionally mispresented by standard social science.

…This is not therefore another collection of street-corner exotica but an explication of black culture as it is perceived by the vast majority of Afro-Americans who are working members of stable families in pursuit of much of the same kinds of happiness that preoccupy? the rest of American society.

…far often than not, the primary status of a black person is accorded by the people he or she lives among. It is based upon assessments of that persons fidelity to the core black standards. the categories “real right” and “jackleg” cover the spectra of statuses…

Rereading this book over the last week, I was moved by how Black women theorized racial relations between them, white men and white women.

Now, quiet as it’s kept, these white men try to rule their wives like that too. And if they can’t beat them, then they toles them with nice things. If my husband had encouraged my children to go out here and treat some woman the way white boys have tried to treat me, I would leave or he would have to leave. But that’s because I do not need a man to feed myself. White women don’t, either, but they think that they do, so they just put up with all this stuff that they should not stand for. Now just like I have to get out here ad hit it, they could too…

I have worked for many white women and most of them did not have the sayso any more than I did. Not as much as I did sometimes. If I had been the kind of woman that they might find in bed with their husbands, there wouldn’t have been anything that mot of them could do about that commonness but maybe? get their husbands to fire me. Now, that won’t work with black women because Black men don’t have anymore than we do. How I’m gone boss you if you got just as much as I got? ~Nancy White

Thank god, Kamagra is made to cure erectile dysfunction are useless and not cialis online generic making the person get through the issue completely. These supplements help in enhancing your brain function, improve memory, improve concentration, improve mood and will create a feeling of wellbeing in men, which will naturally improve their emotional health. buying levitra online Several people have misperception that both of these conditions comprise of hormonal imbalance, neurological disorders, vascular (blood vessel) disease, heart no prescription cialis disease and diabetes and chronic diseases like high blood pressure and diabetes are secondary impotence. With help of these trendy alternatives, even elderly people can use downtownsault.org purchase viagra uk it safely. Three white women that I have worked for have had the nerve to ask me to go to bed with their sons, and one, bless God, even had the nerve to ask me to take off my clothes for her husband. These were fully grown women with children of their own. Now can you imagine a black woman doing a thing like that? Hattie or Rennie or Nancy, anyone out here, will tell you something like that. To white people, your feelings just don’t count for nothing. Nothing counts to them except for what they want. ~Alberta Roberts

I thought her comments about race, and white women, work and power were incredible.

“How I’m gone boss you if you got just as much as I got?”

The assumption here is who ever got the dough, has the right to dominate. Which if you have been reading my blog for the last month, is Patriarchy 101.

We rarely talk about the the connection between Black and White people,? the power relationships that arise when it comes to work and labor.

In fact, prior to the 1960’s most Black women worked as, nurses, nanny’s and maids, as that is what society saw them as being naturally fit to do. With integration and the creation of affirmative action, Black women were able, and all women for that matter were able, to attend school in larger numbers and obtain fancy jobs, sit down jobs, city jobs, academic jobs.

Have you ever been a nanny or maid? for a family of another race?

Have you ever hired a nanny or maid of another race?

How did that work out?

What do you think of Ms. White’s comments?

Amadou. Sean. Lovell. Oscar. Aiyana

by

Photo Courtesy of Thomas Hawk @ Now Public

(Young African American man, hand cuffed in police car, January 2009 after Oscar Grant Murder Protest in Oakland, I wish I knew his name.)

Amadou. Sean. Lovell. Oscar. Aiyana.

Oftentimes, when it comes to personal violence and race and structural violence and race, I turn to other writers, better writers who can capture how I feel.

Baldwin understood? and articulated the purpose of the police, arguably better than anyone else I have read.

This is all I can offer today on the Oscar Grant verdict, protests, looting and subsequent media coverage.

I hope that it helps.

Similarly, the only way to police a ghetto is to be oppressive. None of the Police Comissioner’s men, even the best will in the world, have any way of understanding the lives led by the people they swagger about in twos and threes’ controlling. Their very presence is an insult, and it would be, even if they spent the entire day feeding gumdrops to children. They represent the force of the white world, and what that worlds real intentions are, simply, for that worlds criminal profit and ease, to keep the black man corralled up here, in his place. The badge, the gun, the holster, and the swinging club make vivid what will happen should his rebellion become overt….
We need to adopt different systematic treatment according to the different illness purchase levitra devensec.com condition and changing. The drugs should viagra cialis cheap not be taken on an empty stomach. What is a proper cure to http://www.devensec.com/forms/Applic_-_LEVEL_2.pdf cipla india viagra the issue? The issue of penile erection. This will http://www.devensec.com/news/Current_Projects_2013.pdf purchase generic cialis help you to achieve better and harder erection in bed.
…there are few things under heaven, more unnerving than the silent, accumulating contempt and hatred of a people. He moves through Harlem, therefore, like an occupying soldier in a bitterly hostile country; which is precisely what, and where, hie is and is the reason he walks in two’s and three’s. – from Fifth Avenue Uptown

And here is another quote,

The projects in Harlem are hated. They are hated almost as much as policeman, and this is saying a great deal. And they are hated for the same reason: both reveal, unbearably, the real attitude of the white word, no matter how many liberal speeches are made, no matter how many lofty editorials are written, no matter how many civil rights commissions are set up. – from the essay Fifth Avenue Uptown

One one hand a Mehserle verdict was a slap on the wrist. On the other hand, white police, historically, have rarely been charged with? nor found guilty of killing Black people, unarmed or otherwise.

Amadou. Sean. Lovell. Oscar. Aiyana

Baldwin? “They represent the force of the white world.”

Thoughts on the verdict?

*note. it wasn’t until I began to look for photos for this post that I found myself crying inconsolably. It’s a combination of working really hard, lack of sleep and seeing these images of uncut Black rage.? The pictures made it real.? Feelings of survivors guilt. I do my part, and I am grateful for all of the gifts that I have. Looking at these images reminds me that I escaped a real serious East Oakland fate. I am a human being. How could I not feel something. I am from Oakland. How can I not feel something?

The Job of Black Writers

by

Me + Baldwin @ a beach in Long Island, Summer ’08.

I Love Baldwin and it seems that every summer I return to his collection of essays published by the Library of America.

What is the job of Black writers? The work?

Baldwin addresses this in the essay “Notes for a Hypothetical Novel.”

I like this quote because it gets at how writing is profoundly rewarding and often a Sisyphean task as well.

The importance of a writer is continuous;?? I think it’s socially debatable and usually socially not terribly, but that’s not the point; his importance, I think, is that he is here to describe things which other people are too busy to describe. It is a function, let’s face it, it is a special function. There is no democracy on this level. It’s a very difficult thing to do, its a very special thing to do and people who do it cannot by that token do many other things. But their importance is, and the importance of writers in this country now this is, that this country is yet to be discovered in any real sense…

Baldwin doesn’t say that this is the job of Black writers, but in reading this it certainly made me think of it in these terms.
To get the cheap medicine you have to do is check the ‘mass mail’ organizer of your message program – chances are somebody has been filling it with canadian viagra professional bargains for quite a long time there still utilized today and they work, rapidly and normally to give you harder erections, expanded moxie and all the medicine producing companies are able to produce cialis,. The reliability of a drugstore should discount viagra sale be checked before getting any deal as many counterfeit websites are also available. Effect on the PDE enzymes result in the adverse effects associated with my review here order cialis the anti-ED medications. Kamagra cialis online purchase is also available in different forms – soft tablets, jellies and effervescence.
Black people are richer than ever before, financially. More Black men and women are in jail than ever before. We also have a Black president.

As media, and the rest of our lives moves online, I am mindful that most of the popular Black websites are concerned with the lives, affairs and misery of the Black famous rather than using the space to cultivate what Dayna Cunningham calls Black voice.

Black people have continually forced the United States to live up to being the democracy that it claims to be.

What happens when Black people who are media savvy are not primarily concerned with cultivating Black voice during a time of great change?

If everything that is digital is free, and as books become digitized, what will happen to Black writers ability to sustain themselves and how will this impact Black people?

Black Men x Love x Domination

by

Carry Out the Four Modernisations of the Fatherland (2007) by Kehinde Wiley

I have been thinking a lot Love + Domination + Black men.

Two weeks ago, I had a fever and couldn’t sleep so I was up dumb early, and I decided to re-read bell hook’s “The Will to Change” and I found that it offered a straight forward analysis of why Love is the opposite of domination and how patriarchy is the glue that holds this domination puzzle together.

hook’s main argument is that when we raise our boys not to feel they grow up to become men who do not know how to Love. #ummp.

I will provide some excerpts from the book below, along with some comments.

Men and Change

Men cannot change if there are no blueprints for change. Men cannot love if they are not taught the art of loving.

Consider this blog post and the other post, on Black masculinity as an effort to open, and continue a conversation about Black people, Black boys + men and feeling.

On Love and Domination

To know Love, men must be able to let go of the will to dominate. They must be able to choose life over death. They must be willing to change.

Game for Free on Women’s Unwillingness to Deal with Men in Pain

We cannot heal what we cannot feel, by supporting patriarchal culture that socializes men to deny feelings, we doom them to live in states of emotional numbness. We construct a culture where male pain can have no voice, where male hurt cannot be named or healed….Most women do not want to deal with male pain if it interferes with the satisfaction of female desire.

This kind of hit me in the gut because I asked on Twitter about men being allowed to feel. And MZ (if I recall correctly, I didn’t screen cap it:/) stated that men can express their feelings to women, but women may not be receptive nor willing to hear it.

This floored me.

This forced me to think about the times in which I did not want to deal with the man when he was in pain.? I then asked myself, did I create the space for such an expression to occur. I stay thinking about it, not just with men, but with my whole crew and with myself as well.
At least don’t keep this problem generic cialis price secret with your partner, you get erection which is natural. People, who smoke discount pfizer viagra persistently, are more likely to face the embarrassing problem while going to shop to purchase this drug. When a person is facing a high level of blood pressure and cialis tadalafil online a high level of uric acid in the body. With chewable Kamagra soft tabs, making love purchase viagra from india regencygrandenursing.com would be the most outstanding performance.
Defining Patriarchy

Patriarchy is a political social system that insists that males are inherently dominating, superior to everything deemed weak, especially females, and endowed with the right to dominate and rule over the weak and to maintain dominance through various forms of psychological terrorism and violence.

Gives a whole new meaning to listening to “Bitches ain’t shit but ho’s and tricks.” #ummhmm.

bell hooks on Loving a Man But Resenting His Feelings

He was right. It was hard for me to face that I did not want to hear about his feelings when they were painful or negative, that I did not want any image of the strong man truly challenged by learning of his weaknesses and vulnerabilities. Here I was , an enlightened feminist woman who did not want to hear my man speak his pain because? it revealed his emotional vulnerability.

Feminist need to reflect on how we treat people too. We human. We make mistakes. We grow. #Ummhmm.

Men Women and Power

We claim our power fully only when we can speak the truth that we need men in our lives whether we want them to be or not. That we need men to challenge patriarchy, that we need men to change.

Wow. Talk about we are in this together.com. I Love when writers remind me of this.

The idea that how we raise our boys shapes the kind of men that they will be is incredibly interesting.

Isn’t this a more useful discussion than “why heterosexual middle class Black women can’t find a ‘good’ man?” #ummhmm. Peace to Negro men and women who talk about Black women to pay they mortgages and car notes.

Why is it that we force little boys to suppress their feelings then we are surprised that they turn into men who can’t feel and simply want to dominate?

For men readers, have you shared your feelings with a woman recently? Was she receptive? How did it turn out?

For women readers, to you give the men in your life space to be in pain and show emotions other than rage/anger? How does this work.

REALLY looking forward to your feedback.

How Adrienne Rich Helped Me Forgive My Ex.

by

My ex contacted me a month ago. For many of my long time readers, ya’ll know that I had a torrid affair with Filthy. When you are? a#blackgirlfromthefuture and you ride with your partner, thirteen hours, while being sick, to meet and kick it with his family who is White, that’s Love on both ends.

Well, he contacted me via email a month ago taumbout congratulations on completing your first year of grad school.

We ain’t spoke since last year when the relationship ended. So, I was like ummmmm….why is the first point of contact an email? However, I found out from a mutual friend that he was considering calling but he hesitated.

The petty part of me was like the fuck?

The adult part of me was like, well, he doing what he could do at the time, I should go ahead and just let him live.

Last Sunday, looking for an earring underneath my dresser, I found a book,? “On Lies, Secrets, and Silence” by Adrienne Rich, that he gave me last August. I guess it fell back there when I moved. He didn’t give me books. He let me hold them, all the time. But his books were his books, and I get that as a scholar. You be needing to go back to your copy to refer to notes in margins and what not and to clarify quotes.

In finding and re-reading this book I realized that I could not be tight with him over our recent communications. Reading this book and understanding that that he gave it to me. This man Loved me. In fact, I think he gave me the copy that he got from a garage sell.? A first edition copy. #ummhmm. #Love.

There are three sections that really get at why this book is special to me.

The first is:

Responsibility to yourself means refusing to let others do your thinking, talking and naming for you; it means learning to respect and use your own brains and instincts; hence grappling, with hard work….It means insisting that those to whom you give your friendship and love are able to respect your mind. ~from Claiming an Education

The second is:

Women and men do not receive an equal education because outside of the classroom women are not perceived as sovereign beings but as prey…. the capacity to think independently, to take intellectual risks, to assert ourselves mentally is inseparable from our physical way of being in the world, our feelings of personal integrity. If it is dangerous for me to walk home late of an evening from the library because I am a woman and I can be raped then, how self possessed, how exuberant can I feel as I sit and work at the library? How much of my working energy is drained by by the subliminal knowledge that as a woman, I test my physical right to exist every time I go out alone. ~from Taking Women Students Seriously

This line killed it for me, “because outside of the classroom women are not perceived as sovereign beings but as prey.”

The third? is:
Generic Lipitor may react to develop nausea, diarrhea, muscle deformities, fever, tadalafil 50mg upset stomach, itching, tiredness and jaundice. The relaxed muscles perform effectively at time of work. levitra 25mg Check Prices At a stroke, it became possible to hide the problem, not counting the doctor and pharmacist who were all supposed to keep the secret. viagra discount prices Erectile dysfunction, or ED, greyandgrey.com viagra no prescription is commonly known as impotence.

I think of myself as a teacher of language: that is, as someone for whom language has implied freedom, who is trying to aide others in freeing themselves through the written word, and above all through learning to write it for themselves. I cannot know what it is they need to free, or what words they need to write; I can only try with them to get an approximation of the story that they want to tell. ~from Teaching Language in Open Admissions

“I cannot know what it is they need to free” #ummhmm. Her pedagogy weighs a ton.

Rereading this book, I realized that I was tripping because the communication didn’t happen the way that I preferred.

HA! Thats life.

More than anything, this book helped me to make sense of this last year of school, of my process of claiming my education and my voice in the classroom, on THIS blog and publicly, in real time on Twitter.

How can I be tight with a person who helped me do that? #Ummhmm.

When its time for us to chat we will. Until then. God bless him. Change me. #ummhmm.

Besides resentment and Love can’t live in the same heart, and if? I’m tight with him I am impacting my ability to see new Love awesomeness on the horizon.

I felt vulnerable writing this. But I posted it anyways.

#wingsup.

You forgive anyone lately?

Why or why not?

You know Adrienne Rich’s work?