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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?

Leave a Comment

A Black Feminist Note on the 50th Anniversary of Hip Hop: #Blackgirlsarefromthefuture

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This is dedicated to all the Black girl feminists and the people who love them.

This is dedicated to East Oakland, California.

This is dedicated to SBee who loved me so much that he was a reader in the  2006 blogspot days and when prof. bell hooks died in 2021 he sent me a *HOTMAIL* email asking me if I was okay and telling me that he knew that I loved her and blogged about her and hip hop all the time.

This is dedicated to Britini Danielle who was a day one reader from 2006, a cheerleader, AND she contributed to my Gofundme for my community self-funded sabbatical. Money is my love language and I love you back.

 

I became a writer, in part, because I was trying to make sense of being a Black girl feminist, who loved rap music and hop culture from East Oakland, California.

The music made sense to me because it described, and helped me to make sense of the world I lived in. The violence, the drugs, the Black people living and loving and raising their children to the BEST of their ability. Rap music helped me to develop a language to understand what it meant to be Black in the face of White supremacy. It did not speak to my Black girlhood in a wholistic way.

Plot twist. Rap music was also very homophobic, AND laden with misogynoir. Misogynoir, a term created by Prof. Moya Bailey was just added to the Merriam Webster Dictionary. Moya and her crew at Spelman held Nelly accountable for the Tip Drill video. Black girls been in trenches.

Let me be crystal clear, Black girls was outside too. We had YoYo, McLyte, Queen Latifah on the national rap scene. Still. It was masculine and often hostile space for Black girls.

How was I able to listen to music that called me fifty million hoe’s? Well, very carefully.

So, I blogged. I blogged and blogged.

My name is Renina Jarmon and I was a Black feminist blogger from 2006 to 2013. I was one of the bloggers that created the think piece. Legacy.

I wrote about masculinity, I wrote about patriarchy, I wrote about Nate Dogg, I wrote about bell hooks,  I wrote about Black Women’s Sexuality, I wrote about The Clipse, I wrote about heternormativity.

I wrote about how people listened to rap music in order to feed something dark inside of them.

I wrote about the White consumption of Black death.

I wrote about the Black consumption of Black death.

I wrote about my daddy and feminism.

I wrote about Black men and patriarchy.

I wrote about Buffy the Body as Venus Hottentot who is actually named Saarah Baartman.

I asked what “What if Rakim had the internet?”

I wrote about Barry Michael Cooper, the creator of the movie New Jack City. He then found me and TOLD ME to keep writing and continues to encourage me to this day.

I was writing to save my life, to create my voice and to find my people,

You have to remember that blogging arose right at the imminent decline of magazines and newspapers, and many of us were young. So we were able to use the internet to find each other.

My peers at the time were Unkut, NahRight, and The Smoking Section.

This summer marks the ten year anniversary of the publication of my first book. This book is in part, created because I my blog readers said that they would buy it.

I went on to blog with Black feminist Collective titled the Crunk Feminist Collective in 2010-2012 because Prof. Moya Bailey kept asking me to until I relented. Her most persuasive argument was “Girl, you already writing, just take your stuff and bring it over here, and I did.”

Writing at Racialicious was life altering because my words were exposed to people across race internationally who actually cared about what I had to say and left comments of praise, support and sometimes a combination of both.

So on the 50th Anniversary of Hip Hop and the 10 year anniversary of my book, I reflect on what I have contributed to the game and how blogging helped me shape myself and find my people.

Just like the rap world, the rap blogosphere was a masculine space. What I mean by that is while it celebrated Black youth culture, and music and storytelling, it also routinely portrayed women’s as whores who should be seen and not heard.

As you can imagine this was rough for me because I from East Oakland, California and I got a smart mouf.

There were two early moments that shaped my writing voice. I was in law school in 2005 and I wasn’t writing, writing yet. I was aggregating articles and giving little snippets.

Then ish changed. I cut Con Law to write about Jena Six and the title was “More Jena Six and Less Michael Vick” and readers found me and supported me. In that moment I began to wonder, if I am cutting Con law, to write about Black culture then maybe that is what I need to be studying. I ended up going graduate school at the University of Maryland AND teaching African American Studies there. FULL CIRCLE.

The second moment that had an impact on me was a moment with rap blog Nahright. I will never forget. The owner the blog called Karrine Stephans, the video vixen and author “a slore.” Very casually. I was one of a vocal few women on the site, and I said “Why she gotta be all that? If she is a slore then what does that make the men who sleep with her?” I paraphrase but that was the energy, and I was not being heard.

The third moment is that the Duke rape case dropped and I raised my hand during my evidence class to talk about the case and the entire room got quite. I was one of four Black women in a 130 student evidence course. TO THIS DAY I still remember the rule of law. It was the federal evidence that prevents a rape victim’s sexual history from being admitted because it is seen as unfairly prejudicial. I blogged about that and I felt community, on the blog that I did not have in the classroom.

The fourth moment occurred when Chris Brown beat Rihanna Fenty. A blogger posted the beaten face of Ms. Fenty and I was livid. Not only because he posted it, but because it felt like a betrayl. This right before smart phones and video phones dropped, so we didn’t really have celebrity media access then the way we do today.

This moment changed me because what I learned is that while the rap blogosphere may support me when I am critiquing White supremacy and tell me that I am a great writer with a distinctive voice, they did not want to hear my mouth when I talked about Black men being accountable for violence against Black women. Period and on sight.

So in 2010 with the birth of the #hashtag, community and brand #Blackgirlsarefromthefuture I was about to find my home and find my people.

So in some ways writing about hip hop culture and my life publicly brought me to this beautiful culture that we have created. I sell hoodies, books, journals, and most recently guided journals that you can buy for 19.99. I have 85 left so get one for you and your friends. Community is all we got.

Girl You Ain’t an Imposter helps you to feel capable and spectacular at work.

Women of Color at Work will help you go from feeling dismissed and ignoring to thriving and collecting your well earned bag.

Pause, Rest Pivot is the journal you need when you are in a rut. You know you need to make your next move. Pause Rest Pivot gives you a space to create your own map to what is next. I congratulate women when they quit. It means that they are taking action in their lives to be their own superhero and we need more of that. #quittingseason

Death to Strong Black Women is a safe space for Black women to fall apart, be messy and vulnerable, take off the superhero cape and ask for help.

The Joy Jar is for a sister who needs a little bit more joy in her life.

Black Girl Love Notes is a journal that has love and appreciation notes for Black women. Most people appreciate Black women for doing things for them, Black Girl Love Notes appreciates Black women for existing. Period.

Fragile and Fearless celebrates the complexity of Blackwomanhood. Most people see Black women as sterotypes but this journal is a space for Black women to discuss how they see themselves. The call is coming from inside the house, not Hollywood.

Black Women Need Grief Doulas is a space for Black women to recognize, make sense of and make SPACE for their grief. Grief can be deadly if you don’t make space for it. It is sneaky, it can creep up on you one day and take you out .

 

I am an award winning African American studies lecturer and I believe that much of success as a teacher comes from writing publicly for so many years. People don’t like to be challenged, and writing online about race, class, gender and sexuality forced me to learn how to talk to people how did not agree but STILL engaged with the material. It is really something.

On this 50th anniversary of Hip Hop and the 10 year anniversary of my first book, I would like to think that my time spent in the trenches going to toe to toe with the rap blogosphere, advocating for women, asking Black men to interrogate Black patriarchy, enjoying new music together, and affirming that a Black girl from East Oakland had something to say.

Navigating the rap blogosphere and being a hip hop head taught me a very important lesson. When you are being called names, or you don’t like how you are being treated it is my right to leave and find a place that loves me.

Writing during those years really helped me to understand that some of these spaces would not accept of all of me, and that was okay because I had the ability to use my voice and find my place in the world and sometimes it would within hip hop culture and sometimes in would be in the future.

You can pre-order Black Girls Are from the Future: Memoir and Manifesto.  Spring 2024 here.

My podcast is here. My news letter is here.

Black Girl Hip Hop Head Feminist Starter Pack (listed by release year)

Black Macho and the Myth of the Superwoman by Michelle Wallace

Feminism is for Everybody by bell hooks

When Chickenheads Come Home to Roost by Joan Morgan

“Hip Hop Beyond Beats and Rhymes” dir by Byron Hurt

Black Cool: One Thousand Streams of Blackness ed by Rebecca Walker

Black Girls Are From the Future: Essays on Race, Digital Creativity and Pop Culture by Renina Jarmon

 

Remember the blog days ya’ll. I took it back.

Which sites did you use to visit in that era?

Did I bring back memories with this post?

 

 

 

Leave a Comment

For Kathleen Collins With So Much Joy: A Syllabus for the Losing Ground Film Screening Saturday July 18th 2015 @AFI Silver Spring

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On Saturday I along with some friends will be attending a screening of Losing Ground (1982) directed by Kathleen Collins and you are welcome to join us.

I LOVE this movie. I saw it earlier this year at Lincoln Center as a part of the “Tell it Like it Is” program featuring Black film in New York from 1968 – ’86. I also saw it in 2011. I wrote about it on my blog here and in my book.

I’ve befriended Collins’ daughter Nina Lorez Collins, and I sent her a copy of the book on some ZOMG I LOVE YOUR MOMMA BUT YOU KNOW YOUR MOMMA BETTER THAN ME SO YOU KNOW WHY I LOVE HER.

Girl. The movie features a Black woman philosophy professor searching for the ecstatic experience. A Black woman hunting for ecxasty in the passionate sense, in the religious sense, in the embodied sense.

The colors are rich, and luscious, the writing is funny, and we get to see two heterosexual Black married creatives sort the through the messiness of being Black, creative, quirky, and artistic.

I didn’t find Ms. Collins. She found me. I am so grateful this opportunity. Join us if you can on Saturday or try and catch the film before it leaves AFI.

Of course I have background reading because that is what I do. So here is a little syllabus for her screening.

The Kathleen Collins Syllabus:

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I thank Carmen Coustat for making sure that a 16MM version of the film was available for me to find, had I not located it there, I would not have found this work when I did. (Ironically I sent her an e-mail thanking her for providing access to the film last week right before I learned about this screening. #WatchGod.)

In the spirit of my old posts, I’ll end with a few questions:

1.  If you like Black women filmmakers have you SEEN Beyond the Lights? Girl. Get up on that work. It will speak to you.

2. Haven’t you noticed the shift in terms of Black women being centered as both protagonists and directors in pop culture in a way that WAS NOT the case as recently as five years ago. So many sacrifices have been made for this historical moment. I am excited about this work! What have you seen lately that you like?

3. Is you rollin’ on Saturday?

Black Girls Are Certainly From the Future…Book Update…(Tentative)Table of Contents List

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Strap in your seat belts, because this list is a doozy and it is completely me, and a record of our long relationship as a community!!! Can you believe that it is happening!?!?!
Race
1. On the Steve Harvey Industrial Complex (Blog Post)
2. Twerking, Ratchet and the Politics of Black Respectability: What Exactly Can We Teach Black Girls About Black Women’s Sexuality? (New)
3. Ta-Nehisi Asks If for Colored Girls is a Classic, My Response (Blog Post)
4. Gabby Douglass, Black Women’s Natural Hair and Standing Straight in a Crooked Room (Blog Post)
5. The Miseducation of All City: An Essay  on Race, East Oakland and Prep School (New)
6. A Black feminist Response to Sheryl Sandberg’s Lean In (New)
7. Thinking About the Possibilities and Limitations of Teaching Black Girls to Code (New)
8. The Politics of Teaching Kids of Color How to Fail (Blog Post)

Digital Creativity

1. How I Used the Internet to Find My Voice, Claim My Tribe And Build My Brand (New)
2. 5 Key Business Points for Artists: 5 Minute MBA for Your Brand (New)
3. Rafi Kam x Okay Player x Community (Blog Post)
4. In 2009 I asked ‘Is a Black Web Browser Racist’? What About Algorithims in 2013? (Blog Post Revisited)
5. Black Women, Digital Creativity and Entrepreneurship (New)
6. On Claiming My Voice as a Writer and Business: The Politics of Getting in Front of Your Story (New)

Pop Culture

1. Whitney Houston and Genius (Blog Post)

2. Are Black Men Really That Homophobic? Thinking About Conversations on Kanye’s Attire (Blog Post Revisited)

3. Arielle Loren Asks Whether Beyonce is the Contemporary Face of Feminism: My Response (Blog Post)

4. Viola Davis’s Natural Hair At the Oscars (Blog Post)
5. And You Even Licked My Balls: A Black Feminist Note on Nate Dogg (Blog Post)
6. Yes Black, White, Asian and Latino Men: Feminism is Here for You Too! (New)

7. Thinking About Need, Desire and Politics of Naming Beyonce a Feminist (New)

8. Musing on Makode Linde and That Cake (Blog Post)

The Black Girls Are From the Future & Friends Meet and Greet is in the final planning stages for July 20th, 2013. Sign up here to receive an invite. I will never spam you 🙂

This is an epic undertaking. However I knew it was possible last winter when I began to COMPILE the blog posts, and I was able to see, in Black and White,  how much I had written. The issue then became, not the process of writing but actually conceptualizing what this book would look like, how I would organize the various essays and creating a process and space to get it done.

Thank you for traveling with me. Leave a question or comment below.

Love,

Reneens

A Thin Line Between Protection and Domination: Thoughts About that Cleveland Bus Video

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Last week, I reached out to @sassycrass and @dopegirlfresh because I wanted to write about the thin line between protection and domination for Black women. Lo and behold, it appears that the opportunity to write about the issue has made itself known sooner than I expected.

When I talk about the thin line between protection and domination I am thinking about many things including gender roles, race and street harassment.

Ultimately, the thin line between protection and domination rests on the reasoning that if a person states that you deserve to be protected because of the body that you come in, then it stands to reason that that same reasoning assumes that you can expect to be dominated because of the body that you come in. This kind of thinking has to be taken to its logical end.

As a Black woman who doesn’t take shit off of anyone I deal with a whole of street harassment in DC. For me street harassment is a kind of racial profiling because when I am in a White area of DC (Du Pont Circle in particular) and I see how Black men fuck with me in ways that they do not attempt to do so towards White women who are nearby, it is so clear to me that this is a racialized and gendered act.

I cringed when I saw how the bus driver hit the woman in the video largely because I am reminded of how Black women are, in the streets and in pop culture are often times hyper masculinized, rendered as men and dominated by default if they step out of acceptable gender roles.

Full stop. If she was talking shit to him, and she hit him, she should have been taken off the bus and handed over to the authorities. Bus drivers already have enough bullshit to deal with.
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Hitting her was wrong not because she was a woman, it was wrong because you do not have a right to put your hands on anyone. Nor did she. As the person of authority in the situation it was his job to descalate and contain the situation and continue to get the folks on the bus from point A to point B.

In choosing to hit her the way that he did, the image read as “I will teach this Bitch a lesson.” And he did. Based on the way that he hit her, I am led to think that if he had a gun, he would have shot her.

Thoughts?

Do you ever think about the thin line between protection and domination?

Why does it matter what size she was?