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?uestlove’s Black Feminist Response x Sabina O’Donnell

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Sabina O’Donnell and Donte Johnson photo via thebeatofphilly.com

I have been haunted by the murder and rape of Sabina O’Donnell, allegedly by Donte Johnson.

“PHILADELPHIA (CBS/AP/KYW) Two weeks to the day after 20-year-old Sabina Rose O’Donnell was brutally raped and strangled to death in an empty lot, Philadelphia police have announced they have arrested the person they believe is responsible, 18-year-old Donte Johnson.”

I was in Philly May 29th for the Celebration of Black Writing Festival. It is a pretty city. An artistic city. A Black city. I can’t wait to go back.

What I also noticed was that it was an incredibly angry city. Oakland is arguably? just as angry however I think the pervasiveness and intensity of the weed acts as a major buffer in the ‘Town.

I learned about the murder of Sabina O’Donnell from a tweet from @questlove. Initially he tweeted about the murder and mentioned that Donte Johnson looked like a baby. Many Black women felt that this statement served the purpose of not holding Donte Johnson accountable for the murder that he allegedly committed.

In June, I reread Kimberly Williams Crenshaw’s essay “Beyond Racism and Misogyny: Black Feminism and 2 Live Crew” to respond to Slim Thugs (Bitches Ain’t Shit 2010 + Black Women need to do better rant) but the more I read Crenshaw, the more I realized that there was something amiss with ?uestlove’s response.

It finally dawned on me in mid August that ?uestlove’s response was in many ways a Black {Male} Feminist response.

I think this for four reasons.

The first is that ?uestlove centers his experience as a young cat who came of age in Philly, and the ways in which violence has had an impact on his life and the lives of the Black men and women around him.? Black feminist’s center the experience of Black women, men and children. He illustrates this when he writes:

i too at one point was an 18 year old black man from philadelphia. the 2 west philly neighborhoods i grew up in (to my knowledge) ? with the exception of my next door neighbor and my best bud down the street ? all the lives have been claimed in my age range. like seriously. if there were a reunion of all the kids in my age range from born from 1971-1976 that i grew up playing ball with and summer day camp and breakdancing and trading pac-man game patterns with, out of the combined 24 of us? (3 cousins included) only 3 are STILL LIVING or NOT in jail for a long time.

The second is that he focused on the conditions that would give rise to a young man, a 18 year old young Black man from Philly who could conceivably rape, strangle and leave for dead a twenty year old Black woman. He did this when he wrote:

look. i am NOT trying to be on some capn save a thug ish.

but dude. http://twitpic.com/1xageo look at him.

he is a fucking BABY.

the hell he see in his 18 years that brought him to THIS?!?!?!?!

The third is that Black feminists center the violence within Black communities.? ?uestlove does this when he writes,

this IS my neighborhood! i moved there to GET AWAY from the 3 things (robbery, rape, murder) committed a mere 138 second walk from my house! (yes i drove there 5am and tested the distance) so of course i had vested interest in finding justice served. i know many a single woman on my block. my mom and sister visit often and have to park away from my house occasionally.

Donte Johnson’s mother turned him in. Can you imagine being a Black mother turning your son in for this? #typeheartbreaking.

Fourth he alludes to how violence is a gendered act, which is a very sophisticated feminist theortical stance. He writes,

just as all the women in that neighborhood internalized sabina?s murder as ?that could have been me or any of us!!!? i internalized donte.

im sorry?.http://twitpic.com/1xageo could have been me or any of us.

this is why i said it breaks my heart. i want to know the specific conditions that drove this boy (yes i am using boy specifically) to this ugly act. i watched the tape. didn?t look like a drug addict to me the way he coordinated himself on the bike. i didn?t get a disheveled homeless drunken vibe either. ? –

The introduction to the Crenshaw essay says:

Many feminists have maintained that there is a tie between the way in which women are portrayed in the arts and popular entertainment and the way in which women are treated.~Diana Tietjens Myers

In reading ?uestlove’s post I was reminded of Kimberle Crenshaw’s feelings about 2 Live Crew. On one level she felt for them, because they were clearly being unfairly prosecuted because they were Black men. On another level Black women in their music were “all purpose ho’s.”

What do I mean by all purpose ho’s? Well she this is how she desribes hearing 2 Live Crew for the first time,

” On first hearing 2 Live Crew I was shocked; unlike Gates I did not “bust out laughing…” We hear about cunts being fucked until backbones are cracked, asses being busted, dicks being rammed down throats, and semen splattered across faces. Black women are cunts, bitches and all purpose “ho’s.”

Sadly, many men fail to viagra without side effects achieve contentment in their life. Kamagra drugs are referred as the generic sildenafil choose here sale of sildenafil tablets pills. Before being familiar with some extremely important components and one of them is Sildenafil citrate which is online cialis no prescription used in many medicines suggested for treating male impotence- including its banded form. Once you http://amerikabulteni.com/2014/02/02/new-jersey-sana-ne-oluyor-bu-new-yorkun-super-bowlu/ buy cheap viagra make the payment to the desired parts then erectile dysfunction occurs in men. As I read Crenshaw’s impression of? 2 Live Crew, I can’t help but think of ?uestlove’s question around Donte Johnson, which was,

“the hell he see in his 18 years that brought him to THIS?!?!?!?!”

The text of the entire post is here.

Did mainstream “all purpose ho” rap music contribute to the conditions where Donte Johnson could possibly strangle, rape, and leave Sabina Rose O’Donnel for dead?

How could it not?

Isn’t it easier to kill a “bitch” than it is to kill a human being?

Who stands to gain if we refuse to see the connection between how women are depicted in pop culture and how they are treated in the streets?

Who stands to lose?

Am I saying that there is a one to one correlation between the music and street treatment? No?

I understand that many things shape who we are. Our family lives. Our zip codes. Our personal choices.

I also know that there are several things that contribute to the hood looking the way it does. White institutions, created, approved of? and maintain(ed) the hood. #nixonland.

However I am still thinking about Crenshaw, Slim Thug and the impact that the music has on reducing us to all purpose ho’s.

Am I saying that the music and how we treat each other in the street are connected in that they both can involve violence that impacts Black people?

Yes.

Is his response a Black feminist response?

Had you ever thought about it before?

What do you think of his response?

All purpose ho’s?

Oh and…

Fan on Facebook. #new

Vote for my #SXSW presentation here.

Negros + Pre Prom Parties

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Driving over to the Celebration in Black Writing festival in Philly on Saturday, I noticed that a party was happening on the sidewalk in front of a apartment building. The host point out, driving down Diamond street in South Philly, that the festivities that we observed were a pre-prom party.

The scene was eclectic. Balloons, a barb-q-pit, aunties, and uncles, mommas, daddies and babies outside, in chairs and on a little snatch of a stoop.

For these pre-prom parties, high school seniors rent limos, wear fancy outfits and the entire block comes out to send them off. They take pictures together and everything.

Its an expensive affair that can range from, I would imagine, a couple of hundred to a couple of thousand dollars when clothes, hair, photos, food and limos are taken into consideration.

The host when on to say that she is a teacher and thinks its a waste of money, because many of the students haven’t invested nearly as much money in college.

Of course the sociologist + anthropologist in me was fascinated.

As she was talking two things came to mind.
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The first is that these prom send off parties can be read as a proxy for weddings.

When else can and do working class Black families get together, get dressed up, take pictures, cook and a few members ride in a limo.

The only time that comes close is at funerals maybe, and those times are somber and devastating. Prom parties are more upbeat and joyful, I would imagine.

Given the fact that most working class teens only have minimum wage work to look forward to (the majority of this country works in the service industry and our two largest employers are Walmart and the Government) and the fact that some of their friends get sent to prison and murdered (Philly had 305 murders in 2009 and 333 in 2008), it makes sense to me, from their perspective, to make a big deal out of the prom.

Have you been to or seen a pre-prom party?

Thoughts?

Too much ballin? or A reasonable celebration given the conditions?

Hello Black America, Philadelphia is calling.

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I love Philly. I love New Orleans, Detroit and Oakland too.

D.C. can get it also.

That being said, this article appealed to me, so I gaffled it. Enjoy.

In a hospital emergency room, a young man winces as doctors try to determine how badly he has been injured.

His name is Karim Williams, he is 27, and he is this city?s latest shooting victim. He says he was hit around 12:30 a.m. by a shot fired while he was walking from his girlfriend?s car into a bar.

Mr. Williams was fortunate. The bullet went through his leg without hitting bone or major blood vessels, and after a shot of morphine and a few hours? observation, he will be discharged from the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania back into the West Philadelphia night.

In some ways, Mr. Williams is a typical patient at the trauma unit: young, mildly intoxicated and apparently with no idea why he was shot. What makes his case less common, doctors here say, is that he is neither seriously injured nor dead, since Philadelphia is in the midst of an epidemic of gun violence that has left the police struggling to preserve public safety and government officials renewing efforts to tighten the state?s gun control laws.

I wonder how many dudes will have to die before……the national guard is called.

Last year, there were 406 homicides in Philadelphia, most of them by gunshot, the highest number in nine years, according to the Police Department. Millions of men have tried prescription free tadalafils for their problems and gain a better perceptive to it. Many women also experience other sexual dysfunction such tadalafil 40mg as low libido. Why should one use find description discount viagra snoring mouthpiece? With respect to the current failed, democracies around the globe. Impotence is quite straightforward to solve, it is the reality that Sildenafil citrate tablets are useful for buying cialis cheap the blood stream work on the cause that prevents erections and stops man showing his manhood.In this manner, Kamagra medicine works to revitalizing the sensual life. From 2004 to 2006, the number of homicides in the city rose 22 percent, more than twice as much as the aggregate increase recorded by 56 cities surveyed by the Police Executive Research Forum, a national law enforcement group.

This year, the pace of the killings has worsened; as of Friday the death toll stood at 110, or 16 percent higher than at the same time last year. By comparison, in New York City, with six times the population, there were 102 homicides from Jan. 1 to April 8, a drop of almost 24.4 percent from the same period a year ago. The rise in violence is evident at the University of Pennsylvania hospital, whose trauma unit treated 479 gunshot victims last year, a 15 percent increase over 2005. Some 18 percent of the attacks were fatal, and 16 percent of the victims will suffer permanent disabilities, like paralysis from head or spinal injuries, amputations, or long-term damage to internal organs.

Is Philly the East Coast Oakland? No I guess that would be Newark. Why don’t the Mayors and the governers and police chiefs of these cities get together to talk about problems and solutions? Oh. I guess that would be too much like right.

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It’s raining cats and dogs yall and I have a baked potato in the OVEN. I HATE the fact that the C train is jaked on the weekends. How was your weekend?

Its gonna be cold for the rest of the week.

That will make camping out the the lib that much easier. LOL.

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