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On Kim Kardashian’s Empire and Race

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On Clutch Danielle Belton has an excellent and problematic post titled, “Celebrating the Black Beauty on White Women”. She discusses in general the politics of race and women’s bodies as well as the politics of White artists performing what has historically been seen as Black music (see Eminem, Elvis and Adele).

I am really interested in the politics of race and Black women’s bodies AND I have been wanting to write about Kim Kardashian every since that I learned that there were some black communities (notice I used a plural because we are not all the same) who felt that she did not deserve to be in a Tyler Perry film.

The post is awesome because Belton interrogates the different ways in which some Black men may desire say a curvy Black woman with light skin who looks like Kim Kardashian versus how some Black men may desire a curvey White woman because she is just that; affluent, curvey and White. Belton writes,

If society tells you, from birth, that you should dream of marrying Blake Lively, but dream of screwing Nicki Minaj, a woman with Blake’s face and Nicki’s ass is going to trade high on the “male gaze” market.

Which brings us back to Kim Kardashian. (And by proxy, her sisters, Ice-T’s wife Coco, Angelina Jolie’s lips who are gorgeous on her, but “ordinary” on every other black girl in America, etc.) This goes beyond just physical beauty.

Belton then goes on to discuss how “everyone likes Black stuff when it isn’t on Black people”. Which brings me to another thing.

We need to talk about race.

Race is an unstable category and identity marker. So is gender. Race is unstable, dynamic and always changing. Read Omi and Winant for more about this.

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If race were a fixed category and identity marker we could never have a conversation about whether President Obama is  “really” Black. 

Race is a moving target. So is sexuality and gender and this makes people hella uncomfortable.

In fact, it is precisely because ideas of race, and markers of race are unstable and dynamic that we have these conversations in the first place.

So, the title of the post doesn’t reflect the actual content of Belton’s post but I want to address it because it is problematic. To say that Black beauty equals curves suggests that there is only one kind of beauty on Black women.

Ideas of beauty are subjective. Meaning that they are personal value judgements based on individual standards that vary from person to person.

And.

Black women’s bodies and beauty come in a variety of shape and sizes. We are not all the same.

We have to be very mindful of the kinds of beauty standards that we set up.

In fact, I think that with regard to Kim Kardashian the issue isn’t so much that she is an attractive White woman who is curvy, the issue appears to be that she is an attractive White woman who is curvy who enjoys dating Black men and who has leveraged her sexuality into a multi-media empire.

I mean, didn’t the folks complaining about her being in Tyler Perry’s new movie because she is “a bad influence” on Black children because of her sex tape etc. How many of these same folks bump R. Kelly hard (Trapped in the Closet series and all), despite his penchant for teenage Black girls. Remember ya’ll he married Aaliyah.

Why is Kim Kardashian a “bad influence” but R. Kelly gets a pass. No I am not saying that they are trafficking in the same material, nor am I saying that she is as talented in the same way that he is. I am, however, asking why some do Black people’s moral respectability police come out for Kim Kardashian and not for R. Kelly?

Young girls are taught from a young age that their most important value is how pretty they are. In some ways, in a society that devalues women over men, a society that teaches women that their primary value is their beauty, a society that emphasizes the visual, the rise of a woman who embodies Kim Kardashian’s beauty makes sense.

What Awkward Black Girl and Trans Women Have Taught Me About Black Gender Politics

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Where in the hell do I begin? I will just start with me and the two questions that have been on my mind since Moya (and I believe a loose collective of folks) wrote the criticism of Awkward Black Girl‘s usage of transphobic and homophobic language in a recent episode of the web series Awkward Black Girl. I am a huge cheerleader of Black women filmmakers, to that extent, I am a fan of the show. I haven’t seen as many episodes as my homies, however I have been thinking recently about coordinating screenings of episodes as a kind of Black girl film/video night.

Let me be clear. This post isn’t about their exchange per se, but it is about how Black women interact with each other online when it comes to Black gender politics. This post is also about the significance of words, questions of solidarity, and issues of critique within the Black girl blogosphere.

I stayed off the internet in Wednesday. Largely because I was busy but also because I sensed an intra-racial shit storm brewing and that I wanted to observe, collect my thoughts and then offer my perspective.

As I watched the blog posts fly hella questions came to my mind.

The first question is what responsibility does a Black woman who is a digital cultural producer have to her audience? This is related of course relates to Issa Rae, Moya’s letter and the subsequent feedback and comments on blog posts throughout the Black girl interwebs.

My second question is what responsibility does a Black woman who is an editor at a Black girl publication have in terms of setting the tone for a post about how Black LGBTQ politics are represented in a cultural production created by a Black women. This relates to a conversation that I had on twitter with Britni Danielle, an editor at Clutch Magazine and a post that she wrote about Awkward Black Girl. After a conversation and some prodding she ultimately concluded that editors do have power to shape conversations and that she would try to be mindful of the tone that is set in blog posts.

I also need to take a moment and state my stand point. I have been blogging for hella long. This puts me at a particular social location because I know where “the bodies are buried” if you will. Second Black girl creatives, especially those of us on the internet, all know each other. And if we don’t know each other it is one degree of separation. This means that I know Moya, I know Britni I am also a member of The Crunk Feminist Collective. Perhaps most importantly, I subscribe to the idea that the shit that I write, I am going to probably have to answer for, to someone’s face. This makes the prospect of  getting hot in the mouth with someone on the internet really real, in that I know that it is a human being behind that keyboard. Not a robot. We are human beings.

Shortly after Moya wrote her post, Issa Rae responded with a tweet saying, “Respectfully, “Awkward Black Girl” was never meant to be politically correct. We poke fun at ignorance. Response letter coming soon”.

I cringed, but I also thought, this could lead to an interesting conversation.

Then, Britni wrote her post at Clutch, Moya wrote another post on Crunk Feminist, Jamilah wrote her post at The Root and Issa Rae released her statement.

I frequently tweet that sex and sexuality are the third rail of conversations about race. Meaning that when some Black folks get together to talk about the intersection of sexuality and race, their heads like to explode. And I understand why. Because of how racism works, we don’t want to air our “dirty laundry” about sex and sexuality because we have historically been read as savages, as deviant, as loose.

Our silence will not protect us.

I personally was troubled by some of the comments on Britni’s Clutch Magazine post because of the ways in which some women, who I assume to be Black because it is a Black girl space, stated that “I am not trans or LGBTQ” so that issue does not apply to me.

I found this standpoint problematic for two reasons. Do we really need to be a “member of a community” in order to call spades? When my friends say things like that to me I respond saying “I am so glad that it ain’t 1850 and you aren’t on the US abolitionist committee, because left up to YOUR ass, I would still be picking cotton”. What I am saying here is that when people say “that shit don’t apply to me” the space is created for minority folks to suffer and or be dominated.

For me here, the issue is of social power, and who has the right to say things about members in racial, sexual minority groups. And when racial minorities say harmful things about racial and sexual minorities should they be held accountable? And if so, how?

Second, is the issue of being “politically correct”.  Four years ago, if Don Imus fixed his raggedy mouth to say “You all are being too sensitive when I called the Rutgers basketball team nappy headed ho’s” we would have been like you need to sit that ass down.

Saying derogatory shit about Black women hair and sexuality on a national radio show is wrong. Here is the blog post that I wrote about Don Imus and the Duke Rape case in 2007 titled “My Duke/Imus Moment“.

What I am trying to get at, is that we need to be mindful of what people, who are in positions of power and by this I mean those of us who have the capability to convey ideas through blogs, or digital cultural productions, have to be mindful of the language the we use, who we are willing to throw under the bus, and of the impact of language if it causes harm.

Four years ago, I was not down for throwing Black cis women under the bus when Don Imus called the Rutgers basketball team nappy headed ho’s.

Today I am not going to throw Black trans women under a bus.

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So let me take a step back and make the connection between connection between racial and or sexual slurs and physical violence.

The first step to treating a person like they are not human, like they are not shit is in calling them a slur. This goes for Black folks, Mexican Folks, Native American folks, Japanese folks, Muslim folks, low income White folks, Gay folks, Lesbian folks and so on.

People tend to get this with race, but it is harder for them to get it with gender.

#Hang in there with me.

Slurs are real because they are the first step in creating the conditions to treating a person like they are not a human being. See Jean Kilbourne’s video Killing Us Softly @2:09-2:20.

Heterosexual Black women are human beings.

Cis Black women are human beings.

Trans Black women are human beings.

Lesbian Black women are human beings.

Full stop.

The violence that trans Black women are subjected to has a particular resonance for me, because as a cis Black woman, I watch in particular how they deal with the violence of street harassment in DC.

Writing at The Advocate in August of 2010, Julie Bolcer states that,

According to a report from the National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs released in July, transgender women of color experienced hate violence far disproportionate to their actual numbers in the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and HIV-affected community. People of color represented 70% of all LGBT-bias-related murder victims in 2010, and some 44% of LGBT murder victims were transgender women.

The violence is real.

One of the reason’s why the violence that trans women face is also important to me is because of the threat of violence I constantly deal with both because I am a woman, and because I am a Black woman who walks around cities like I have a right to be here. My most recent post on street harassment, “Kill Me or Leave Me Alone“, speaks to some of my experiences with the threat of violence that underpins street harassment.

Ultimately this conversation about Awkward Black Girl and trans women have taught me that there is space for Black girls on line to engage with each other. Mostly constructively, sometimes not so much.

It also has taught me that conversations like this create the space for us to talk about how there are multiple and various communities of Black women online. I personally am happy about this because I when I first started blogging, there was not.

I honestly enjoyed seeing some of the conversation online for two reasons. First, because of my understanding of the future of the mobile internet, the popularity of web series as a whole is bound to grow so it it is important for us to have a feed back loop with regard to representations of Black women on the internet in cultural productions. Let’s not recreate what happened with television.

Second, we seemed to be having a conversation between and amongst each other about how Black women are represented. I think this represents an important historical moment. This isn’t a presentation of Black women that we saw on BET, this is an independent production, created by a Black woman and supported by ostensibly a multiracial audience that includes a huge portion of Black girl supporters.

#Blackgirlsarefromthefuture AND we are not all the same.

Thoughts?

On Cyd the Kid’s Video for “Cocaine”

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I have contended that in a world premised on oppressing women, openly Loving a woman is probably one of the most radical things you can do.

The homie @danyeezy, just put me on to the new Syd the Kid, the only woman member of OFWGKTA . Her video titled “Cocaine”  reblogged a link from the blog Life is Fair Game.

I watch videos with the sound on and with the sound off because it helps me to focus on the images.

I also teach my students do so because a music video combine text with images, which makes them very  powerful.

The song, the instrumentation of it is hot. Sounds like Pharell with…I don’t know a funky Fiona Apple.

I also enjoyed the non-normative gender presentations of Black girls IN A MUSIC VIDEO.

Queer Black girls are not featured in music videos.

However, as I listened to the song, I thought, is she saying “I wanna, I wanna, Do you wanna do some Cocaine?”

Why yes, she is.
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I get it, sex, drugs, and rock and roll.Historically young people in general and young artist in particular have said and done outlandish things to stand out and rebel against their elders.

However, bodies have histories, and Black girl’s bodies certainly have histories.

Which brings me to a point.

In order to see masculine and feminine identified young Black women in a music video, the narrative is going to pivot on them “doing cocaine” together?

Given the history of both crack and cocaine in Black communities throughout the US historically, is “doing coke” something to sing playfully about?

Is this cost of entry to high of a price to pay? In other words, if the trade-off for having queer young women of color being represented in pop culture is the that they are performing “do you want to do some cocaine” and talking about “slapping bitches” is it worth it?

Is the trade off for being vulnerable and willing enough to grab a woman’s hand in a video that you to also be willing to say that you like “slapping bitches”, is that too high of a price to pay to BE visible in the first place?

Perhaps it is easier to talk about slapping “Bitches” than it is to be vulnerable. ~#allcity

On whose terms should Black girls be represented? And why?

 

Will Learning How to Pole Dance Keep Your Hetero Man Out of the Strip Club?

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The homie Britni Danielle @ Clutch has an interesting article up, “Please, Baby Please” about the politics of Black heterosexual relationships.

The piece starts off in response to an article by Janelle Harris “Whatever it Takes to Please a Man”.

Janelle discusses how she considers that when her boo snack goes to the strip club that it is right up there with cheating. I appreciate her post because it is honest. It is not easy to write publicly about things about yourself that you are not proud of. I have done it before. It is not a game.

I also find Janelle’s piece interesting for two reasons.

First, she assumes that she can satisfy her boo snack by learning how to pole dance, and this will keep him from going to the strip club.

The thought that came to mind is paying a woman to allow you to touch her is an act of power in an economy that does not pay women the same as their male counterparts. If women earned the same as men for doing the same jobs and if women were trained and allowed and supported to do high income earning jobs, there would be fewer working in strip clubs. (Goldy and I tried to go to a strip club two months ago, they would not let us in. There is a post collecting dust in the drafts section about that excursion. o.O)

Second, Janelle is acutely aware of the fact that she is trying to be superwoman, she knows that it isn’t achievable, but is trying her damnedest to do it anyway.

During comps, at night I would read parts of Siohban Brook’s “Unequal Desires: Race and Erotic Capital in the Stripping Industry” which is a book about how race, skin color and body size impacts the money that women earn as strippers. She actually goes into the strip clubs and interviews men. I am inspired by and influenced by her work. Reading her work kept me going.

The whole time I am reading Janelle’s piece I am thinking of the fact that Brooks went into the strip clubs in the Bronx and in Midtown in New York city and asked men why they go. I also wondered what does Janelle’s gentleman friend think about her ideas around pole dancing and cheating. Because baby let me tell you, people buy what makes them feel comfortable.

So, in Britini’s post she says it makes sense that someone does the things that they need to do to make their boo snack happy. If this means, for instance, taking a cooking class to make the kind of food that your boo thang likes; then, this makes sense.

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 if they thought it was necessary for both parties to cater to one another in a relationship, and if they looked at women who seemingly went above and beyond the call of duty to please her mate any differently. To their credit, all of my brethren confirmed that they love to both please and be pleased by their woman. The guys felt giving was a necessary part of a relationship because it showed that both parties valued each other. But with one caveat. While they would like their woman do whatever freaky, sneaky (or otherwise) thing they desired, they overwhelmingly agreed that she should never do anything that made her uncomfortable just because he might like it, because they, for damn sure, wouldn’t either.

I thought that there was a bit of posturing here because of the issue of oral sex. I theorize that Black women are reluctant to perform it because of “the ho tape”, peace to Josephine. If I were Britni I would have asked them, if their lady friend does not perform oral sex, does this change how he see’s her? I would have also asked them if they would reciprocate.

She then goes on to conclude that,

On the contrary, today love is seen as something relegated for chumps. If a man does something nice for his woman/wife, he is called “whipped,” a “punk,” or less than a man. And if a woman wants to go out of her way to try something new to please her man, she’s sometimes called “desperate,” “thirsty,” or charged with having low self-esteem.

While I do agree that there is some cynicism and skepticism around Love, I would conclude that before we can talk about, or while we talk about the politics of gender relations between Black men and women, we also have to talk about how we Love ourselves.

For a fact, dead assed serious, the more I have come to Love myself over the last four years, the more it is reflected in not only the kind of person that I attract, but also the kind of person that I choose to date and remain with.

Notice the distinction between attract and choose to date.

Last year, while dating a giver, it upended me, because while I was interested in the relationship, I wasn’t ready to go whole hog. It was a bugged out experience to have someone be so daggumit nice to me, and for me not to want to run off and get murried. To just be able to sit still and enjoy being doted on was lightweight revolutionary not only for my sense of self, but also in terms of setting the standard for all future boo snacks.

I do think that there is a reading of being invested in someone as being willing to be vulnerable. I also think that being nice can be perceived as being “whipped” or “thirsty”, but I think we need to rethink both how we see Loving others and Loving ourselves as well.

In fact, earlier this summer a friend, a little bear who is younger than me, suspected that her girlfriend was doing some shiesty shit. She said she wanted to stay with her. I asked her, dead ass, “What does loving yourself look like in this moment?” #Ummhmm.

What I am getting at is the ability to Love ourselves is connected to our ability to Love other people. Trust, having loved a selfish one or two there is a world of a difference.

Being vulnerable doesn’t mean being someone’s rug. The goal is to be vulnerable y fearless. #boom.

What’s the Difference Between a “Ho”, Housewife and Your Sister?

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Nothing.

I woke up thinking about the way the women are put into categories and are ranked hierarchically.

For example, on any given Sunday in a barbershop, you can hear hetero African American men saying, “You can’t turn a “ho” into a housewife”.

Or on any given Friday night you can find hetero Black women saying “Girl, he wants a lady in the sheets, and a freak in the bed.”

I am sensitive to how women are put into the sexual binary (ho/housewife) than ranked as Loved/ain’t worth shit because I am currently in the thick of creating the arguments for a paper on Black women’s sexuality.

I am also teaching gender theory, so to watch how my students are either uncomfortable, or comfortable with being made aware of how they rank and treat others is enlightening.

In productive meeting with my boss last Wednesday  I said that I included a section on “Naming, Hearing and Seeing Black Women’s Sexuality” because “being read as deviant has fractured the space for Black women to discuss their sexuality.”

She then turned around and said she was going to contradict me. And while she did not contradict me, she forced me to see how powerful the word “fracture” was in that sentence.

By using fracture, I meant impacted and broken. She read it to say that a fracture does entail small breaks, but fractures create space, small spaces. And if a fracture doesn’t heal, like a bone, then it breaks completely; there is a big space.

I was like holy shit.

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This was riveting.

She finally said that I was “reclaiming deviance.”

Context. In order for US chattel slavery to “work” Black women had to be described as subhuman and “natural” whores. We were lewd, lascivious and deviant.

I mean really, in order to enslave a woman, and her children, and rape her, and have her work in the fields picking cotton, slave owners had to figure out a way to make us “natural” whores.

While I know that in my day to day life, there is a reclamation of  “being deviant”. I had not idea that the shit was in my work as well. #Ha.

With regard to reclaiming deviance, I still didn’t know what she meant. So she used the example of how “Queer” has a history of being a derogatory term.

Light bulb.

I then said, wait the implications of this are huge because by saying this, it is almost like the “Slavery in the US benefited Black people argument”, you know the one about the “happy slave”. I also said that I am not comfortable defending that publicly.

She said that I didn’t have to be, but I should just think about my ideas of deviance and Black women’s sexuality and what that can possibly mean for my work.

It isn’t so much of being deviant, as it isn’t allowing white and black historical generated ideologies of what “proper Black femininity” (ho/housewife) looks like shape how I roll.

So, what’s the difference between a ho, housewife an your sister? Nuffin.