CF Jalylah’s Aunt Pearl and mother, Julie                    Photographed by Cynthia Burrell

call it our craziness even,

call it anything.

it is the life thing in us

that will not let us die.

Poet Lucille Clifton’s language for lineage was cherished. “roots,” a poem from her  1974 collection An Ordinary Woman named it light and I choose to liken it to mothering.

it is the light in us

it is the light of us

it is the light, call it

whatever you have to,

call it anything

I call it mom. I call it a practice of unconditional love that this weekend calls us to celebrate. To all who mother, thank you. Such living is love.

the light of us: a mother’s day mix

“My Mother, My Father, and Love” Duke Ellington
“Mother’s Theme (Mama)” Willie Hutch
“Mother’s Prayer” The Dynamic Gospel Flames Of Griffin, Georgia
“Aja’s Mom” Kindred The Family Soul
“Easy Goin’ Evening (My Mama’s Call)” Stevie Wonder/ “Always There are the Children” Nikki Giovanni
“Mother’s Song” Gregory Porter
“A Mother’s Love” Aretha Franklin
“Thinking About My Mother” Little Richard
“For Mama” Linda Lewis
“Synopsis Two Mother’s Day” 24 Carat Black/ “Mother To Son” Langston Hughes
“Mama’s Soul” Gary Bartz NTU Troop
“Give Thanks” Sizzla
“Universal Mother” Don Cherry

[STREAM/DOWNLOAD]

*Last year’s inaugural CFC mother’s day mix, a praise song for mamas, is still available here.

But can I be real with y’all? Sometimes being the one to wave the red flag is tiring as hell. I’m down for the struggle. I got serious Black Girl Freedom Dreams, like most of the sisters I know.

But sometimes you just need to twerk!

So now that I’ve done the requisite acknowledgements, I’m ready to get a little ratchet and hip you to three new songs that have me feeling optimistic about what Black girl pleasure can look like.

First, there’s the homie K. Michelle of Love and Hip Hop ATL fame:

Check this lyric: “Cuz I just wanna fuck and not fall in love/I’m over all the pain that love can bring/tonite I want sex that doesn’t mean a thing/ that don’t make me no slut/A woman has her needs”

Now despite what you may think of the actual song, two things are true: 1st, the chick has an amazing set of pipes. She can seriously blow. 2nd, these lyrics are powerful, and kind of ironic in a song that sounds like it’s going to be a love ballad.

Oh yeah, and all I’ll say about her love interest is I guess she figured if she was gonna put out a video objectifying a dude she might as well flip the script entirely.

Anyway, this song is a statement of Black female sex positivity, and as I’ve called it elsewhere “Ratchet Feminism” that we shouldn’t overlook.

(So stop clutching your pearls.)

*****

Second, there’s post-Destiny’s child Kelly Rowland. She’s found her niche, making sexy, grown Black girl music like “Motivation,” “Ice,” and this newest joint “Kisses Down Low.”

Some of my homegirls are mad that she has limited herself to putting out sexy songs. And that’s a legitimate critique. But I’m more interested in the unapologetic nature of the music she’s putting out, and her willingness to ask for what she needs.

Check this lyric: “I like my kisses down low/makes me arch back/when you give it to me slow/baby, just like that”

Then an autotuned masculine voice (maybe Bey from I Been On — J/K!) repeats the lyrics as if to make sure he has the instructions just right.

All Black feminists need to know how to give instructions! And you need a partner who can follow directions!

As someone who definitely likes her kisses down low, I ain’t #hatin.

*******

Last, but Best, is the new Janelle Monae’ joint! Now y’all this is pure fiyah! It exemplifies what Renina Jarmon is talking about when she says #blackgirlsarefromthefuture.

“Is it peculiar that I twerk in the mirror?” is an existential question of the highest order in my estimation. And it’s a question you should ask while you twerk.

“Testify: The Booty don’t lie.” This line bespeaks another truth that Black girls need to tell: the radical truth that Black girl’s asses are not merely archives of pain, but active sites of pleasure. Because of the ways Black girl booty has been treated at least since the days of Sarah Baartman, we’ve engaged in a collective, respectable kind of denial about these other truths that Black girl ass can tell. But here’s the point: they tell the truths that are true for us, to us, when we twerk in the front of the mirror, by ourselves or with other Black girls.

What I love is that while we can acknowledge that the mirrors (and hands and policies) of others have been quite brutal to us, we can also tell a different story about what the mirrors in our own lives say to us. But my mirrors are not only stationary pieces of decor. I also have human mirrors, in the form of other Brown girls who reflect my truths back to me, often when my own view has been distorted.

Sometimes that distorted view keeps me from reveling in Black girl joy. But I’m so glad that Janelle Monae’ won’t be denied!

And for those of you who are mad that I would put Kelly and K. Michelle in the same stratosphere as a talent like Janelle Monae’, I say simply to quote my homegirl Kaila Story, “there is no singularity of Black girl truths.”

And quoting my damn self: “there is no justice without pleasure.”

So enjoy, Crunk Family!

And feel free to weigh in:

Do you think we need a pleasure politics in Black feminism?

Are these songs examples of what feminist Black female pleasure might look like?

For more on Black Feminist Pleasure Politics, check out this latest work from Joan Morgan, yours truly, and the Pleasure Ninjas.

Thought #1:  When I first saw the name of this song go across my Facebook feed a few weeks ago I didn’t know what to make it of it.  I assumed, at first, that it was an unfortunate spoof or offensive rant.  I was disinterested in either so disregarded it.

Thought #2:  When I realized, some days later, that Accidental Racist was a song by Brad Paisley featuring L.L. Cool J., my curiosity got the best of me.  When I listened to the song and read the lyrics I had back and forth feelings, at times finding it awkward but well meaning, at others feeling utterly offended and angry.

Thought #3:  Can we talk about why this song is a problematic failure with good intentions?

Let me start by saying that I honor the spirit from which it was written.  I get that we (as a nation) are ill-equipped to have these conversations publicly, and I can appreciate that in defense of the song Brad Paisley said, “what we’re trying to do is explore what happens when two people have a dialogue.”

I teach classes on diversity in the deep South so I am painfully aware of how difficult it is to have difficult dialogues, especially about race and racism (and difference in general).  For example, while honesty and transparency is important, so is context and accountability.

L.L. said in an interview that some people had a shallow understanding and hyper-sensitivity (of the song’s lyrics).  Hm… I don’t think that people of color (or any marginalized group for that matter) can be accused of having a shallow understanding of or hypersensitivity to racism.  It is something we live with every single day of our lives.  And I personally think it is irresponsible for anyone to try to police someone else’s feelings in situations like this (however you feel in response to discrimination: angry, sad, disillusioned, numb…is legitimate and justifiable).  When you are constantly bombarded with offensive and dismissive attitudes and responses for simply existing, and when you are regularly exposed to racial micro and macroaggressions but then told, when you notice and/or acknowledge them, that you are overreacting…it is disrespectful (and this is true of those who experience discrimination on all fronts).  We can do better.  And this song could have done better.

Thought #4:  I don’t understand how no one, not one person, white or black or brown heard the song in the studio and was like, “hmmmm….”  I know that I don’t always fully think out/through everything I say before I say it, but damn.  If the point of the song was to take someone else’s point of view, how did they miss the problems in what was being said?  Did they not think to ask, say, one extra black person what they thought?

Thought #5:  Most of the time if and when people talk about race they have intraracial conversations behind closed doors.  It is considered taboo and impolite (two things that are rarely violated in the South) to have these discussions (about race and racism) out loud and in mixed company, even though those are the conversations that will instigate change (of thought and focus).  So I can appreciate what Paisley and LL were trying to do.  However, that does not give them a pass for doing it so badly.  Hopefully, once the shock of the song wears off the intention behind it can be redeemable enough to spark important and necessary discussions about race and racism.  I can appreciate the fact that they wanted to initiate dialogue about this open-secret topic, but unfortunately the conversations being had are less about how we can talk with and about difference and more about what is wrong with the song.  What we need are some ways to redeem the intention of the song (what is right) without getting caught up in what is wrong with the song.  We don’t have to throw out the baby with the bathwater.

To redeem the song and move to useful dialogue we have to admit a few things:

1) We are all socially conditioned to be prejudiced against difference.  This includes race/ethnicity, ability, gender/sex, sexuality, age, standards of beauty, etc.   And we have to consciously resist what we are taught (consciously and unconsciously, in our households and friend circles, media and music, etc.) about engaging people who are different from us. The tone of the song in some ways reminds me of the well-meaning racism of students, over the years, who have prefaced a racist comment or declaration by saying, “I’m not racist, but…”  And that is what the song felt like, a half-assed apology, an excuse, a cop out.  In most cases racism is not accidental (though you will be hard pressed to find someone who will openly admit to being racist, sexist, classist, etc.,) it is a purposeful measure of hate passed down like an inheritance.  However, in some cases, I think racism (and other forms of discrimination against difference) is circumstantial (based on who you are, where you live, how you were taught).  But if/when you know better, you do better!  It starts with one conversation.

2)  White privilege is a real thing, and because of that privilege it is not necessary for people of color to ever “walk in a white person’s shoes” to understand a white person’s perspective.  The hegemonic, social, cultural, ubiquitous perspective is a white person’s perspective (to be exact, it is a white male Christian able-bodied, heterosexual, financially secure, educated perspective).  As Leonard Pitts, Jr., explained in his article in the Miami Herald, blackness is not an alien position, it is simply different from whiteness.  And pretending to not see color, and/or to say that being “like” someone is the only way to understand them is misguided.  You can know and learn about someone’s experience by exposure (how do you think POC are so familiar with whiteness, we can’t help but “know” it).  You don’t have to be marginalized to understand that privilege exists and it benefits some groups and not others. (I re-watched Another 48 Hours over the weekend and in it Eddie Murphy has a brilliant line in response to class disenfranchisement…he says, “if s*it were worth something, poor people would be born with no asshole”—I’m paraphrasing, but you get the point).

3)  There are ways of having honest conversations that take responsibility for our pain and issues, that acknowledge our history and legacies, and that leave room to move forward.  Forgetting and/or pretending the past didn’t happen is not the answer.  Trading conditional forgiveness (if you don’t stereotype me for this, I won’t stereotype you for that) is not the answer.  Victimizing (or victim-blaming) is not the answer.  Listening (to people about their experiences) and believing them is a good start.

4)  Paisley and LL don’t speak for all white and black people.

5)  We should be having honest conversations about race in the fullness of its complexity, not picking and choosing the sanitized parts that make us feel most comfortable.

As per usual, the range of responses to the song mimic how people react to discussions of racial discrimination all the time.  People are said to be “too sensitive” or too insensitive; we go from wanting to pretend it’s not relevant to making it more relevant than it supposedly deserves, and then people take sides with the race they identify with.  We need to move past ambivalence and blame… this song gives us the opportunity to have some very transparent and visible conversations about race and racism in the South and the triggers attached to it.  It can’t be about assuaging guilt, finding fault, or picking out who is to blame.  It needs to be about acknowledgment, understanding, and talking it out.  It is a conversation worth having on purpose, not by accident.

Sonia Sanchez and CF Jalylah at the Spelman College Women’s Research and Resource Center

But we knew. And
our knowing was like a sister’s embrace.

Sonia Sanchez, “A Letter to Dr. Martin Luther King,” homegirls and handgrenades (1984)

I first sat at the feet of Sonia Sanchez at Spelman College where I was assiduously loved and educated. Sanchez was invited by the Women’s Resource and Research Center to help train us up as scholar-activists in the Toni Cade Bambara way. She sipped water green with liquid chlorophyll while she spoke with us. It became my habit soon after.

Sonia Sanchez and Spelman College’s Toni Cade Bambara Scholar-Activists

Last winter when she was welcomed by the good folk in Yale’s Department of African American Studies, I nipped at her heels. I was seated at the back of a minibus of Black Studies-waymakers and sprinted after her when she politely beckoned the driver to stop so she could offer greetings to nearby Occupy New Haven activists. Later that night she retraced her footsteps as a founder of the field of study and not without critical reflection. She ended the evening by calling all assembled into a hand-clasped circle of gratitude.

Sonia Sanchez at Occupy New Haven December 9, 2011  (Photographed by Jennifer Leath)

Just yesterday I recovered a portion of my sense at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in Harlem. I went there to finish reading an out-of-print anthology of short stories by black writers that I had begun at Yale’s Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library. I had been working through anthologies of African American literature when I was interrupted by a major depressive episode. Three weeks into a successful medication regimen and in the thick of therapy, I am now returning to the privilege of this work. We Be Word Sorcerers, published in 1974, witnessed Sonia Sanchez assembling writings from the seas of black genius. Her careful curation said that the river has always been turning to paraphrase a poet I will always be carrying.

“My people, black and black, revile the River.
Say that the River turns, and turn the River.”

Gwendolyn Brooks, “The Sermon on the Warpland,” In the Mecca (1968)

By introduction Sanchez wrote, “The stories in this book are about us during our long journey to tomorrow.” The songs on this mix approach that arc that Black Studies enables, that Black Feminisms always extends. A distiller of language, Sanchez did not belabor the task. A page later she punctuated her introduction with these words:

We Be Word Sorcerers. Indeed. For we are the disenchanters of the gospel of inferiority, the exorcists of hatred of self, the enchanters of our renewed circle of Blackness where the love of self and each other has no Beginning or End.

Sonia Sanchez, “Introduction,” We Be Word Sorcerers: 25 Stories by Black Americans  (1974)

This is for the word sorcerers, chiefly my mother Julie.

always arriving: a black scholar’s mixtape

“Frederick Douglass Afro Sheen Commercial” (for geneva)
“Cloud 9” Donnie (for moya)
“A Different World Season 6 Theme” Boyz II Men 
“Breakthrough” Tia Fuller/ ”Black Studies” Sonia Sanchez (for spelman)
“Black Scholars” James Williams (for joe, kyra, daphne and ferentz)
“Abbeylude” Les Nubians
“Caged Bird” Abbey Lincoln
“Crow Dance” Zora Neale Hurston (for dr. gayles)
“Work To Do” Carl Allen and Rodney Whitaker/“Whoo” Sonia Sanchez (for elizabeth) 
“No Time To Play” Guru feat. Ronny Jordan, Dee C. Lee and Big Shug
“Work” Barrington Levy
“The American Promise” RAMP
“Bicentennial Prayer” Richard Pryor (for my dad)
“Ever” Zora Neale Hurston
“Women’s Love Rights” Laura Lee (for all my black feminist kin)
“Sweet Sister Funk” Ramon Morris (for the cfc)
“Black Enough” Galt Mac Dermot and Melba Moore
“Prelude Welcome” Francisco Mora Catlett/”Poem for July 4, 1995″ Sonia Sanchez (for yale afam)

[STREAM/DOWNLOAD]

If you ask me who held up the light, I could write a book. From Lakeside to Li Po Chun to Spelman Lane to Washington Square to 81 Wall Street but today on my radio program There Ought To Be More Dancing  I will call many of their names. Tune in from 4-5 pm EST on WYBC Yale radio.

CF’s Moya and Jalylah at The March for Women’s Lives on April 25, 2004 in Washington, D.C..

“You are magnificent.” So read the final line of an email I received from the CFC’s Moya Bailey the first Friday of 2012. The subject line was, “Love for you in the new year!” It recalled the summer we became friends and its consequence on her journey. She offered thanks and called me by a name I still shrink from.

We met ten Junes earlier in Harlem. We both were attending Kevin Powell’s HipHop Speaks! event at Riverside Church. She wrote I said hello. I remember that being the first of many summer days we sat together. Wee hours talking on the steps of Union Square are what I mostly remember and dancing to Donnie at Brooklyn Academy of Music’s R&B Festival at MetroTech. She insisted on the genius of his debut, The Colored Section. I remembered the roar of Atlanta’s Yin Yang Café when he sang and underage-I checked IDs at the door but I was dismissive. I have always preferred pretend aloofness to exclusion.

We both had our dragons to slay. A few remain at my neck and, to their fiery breath, I will attribute my recent hair loss. To Moya, I will attribute unconditional love. Ever open to people and process, she has modeled courage. Ever-embracing, she has made me feel like enough even when I was a mess. It is good to know Moya and I call her name in celebration of sisterhood. I call her name because she constantly calls me and you to justice whether in her blessed company, in her brilliant classes, in this crucial collective, in her activism, in her writing or her epic good-time making.

This is how I celebrate Women’s History Month. I call magnificent the women who have worked miracles in my life from Mom to Moya, Geneva to Aisha, L’Erin to Kristel, Iquo to Simone, Sunanda to Courtney, Brooke to Amy, Devin to Marcia, Kimerie to Maxine, Gabby to Xenia, Jane to Velma, April to Kristen, Frances to Lynn, Nzingha to Elizabeth, Ebony to Malika, Alysia to Teresa, Evans to Jamila, Camara to Kandia, Ruby to Roberta, Sister Bisi to Tarshia, Kyra to Lyneka, Taneya to Tiona, Sabrina to Laylah, Ana to Adom, Gwendolyn to Georgia, Spelman College to Imani House and the gratitude goes on. The full can never be told but I will not stop trying and I invite you to do the same in the comment section, in an email, a blog post, a Tweet, a Facebook status or even an old-fashioned phone call. Spread love, it’s the feminist way.

thank you: a women’s history month mix

“Miss Celie’s Blues” Tata Vega
“Giving Something Up” Amel Larrieux
“Lag Time” Ani DiFranco/ “Crutches” Nikki Giovanni
“My Crew” Jean Grae
“Apple Tree” Erykah Badu/ “Apple Tree” [Live at Black Girls Rock] Erykah Badu
“Bad Girls (Switch Remix)” M.I.A. feat. Missy Elliott and Rye Rye
“Run The World (Girls)” Beyonce
“Estragen” Apani B-Fly Emcee feat. Ayana, Helixx, Heroine, Lyric, Pri The Honey Dark, What? What? & Yejide Apani B-Fly Emcee
“Grandmother And Mother’s Legacy” Radmilla Cody
“Black Mona Lisa” Lamya
“Star” Janelle Monáe
“Cinderella” The Cheetah Girls
“Making Friends: Episode 1” Chelsea Peretti
“You’ve Got A Friend” LaBelle
“Kind & Generous” Natalie Merchant

[STREAM/DOWNLOAD]

*Special thanks to Eesha Pandit. It was after receiving her International Women’s Day tweet of gratitude to members of this collective that I decided to make this mix.

We’d initially planned to post this the monday after the Oscars but other things were more pressing.

*Trigger Warning for expletives, misogyny, and violent lyrics*

Courtesy of FAAN Mail

In the remix to Future’s Karate Chop, Lil Wayne sings the “very unfortunate” (really, Fader?) lyric that compares sex to the beating of Emmett Till.

Pop a lot of pain pill’

‘bout to put rims on my skateboard wheel’

beat that pussy up like Emmett Till

“I just couldn’t understand how he could compare the gateway to life to the brutality and punishment of death,” said Aricka Gordon Taylor, Spokesperson from the Till Family. We can though. It’s happened before, from Wayne, and friends.

People are mad. Real mad. They’re even talking about it on the radio here in Atlanta, while simultaneously continuing to play the song with Emmett Till bleeped out. Folks are calling for a boycott of Clear Channel and the removal of the song from the airwaves. There’s Twitter activism in motion as well from Dream Hampton to shame LA Reid (who should be shamed, for this and more) because he should know better. Epic, Future’s label not Wayne’s, has apologized saying that this lyric won’t appear on the final version of the song and the Family has written an open letter to Wayne.

We understand why folks are mad and in no way want to diminish this important call to action. One of the things Moya hated about other media activism she’s been involved in is the question, “why you mad about this and why now?” We want to think about these lyrics in the context of calls by feminists of color to interrogate the problems of violent sex metaphors before the name of a slain civil rights icon was invoked. With this in mind, we want to add some thoughts to the growing conversation.

1. We need intergenerational conversations- “beating the pussy up” is a hip hop metaphor for sex that’s not new. We need and have been trying to have a conversation about the violence this metaphor (and others) conjures but folks using it don’t understand themselves to be talking about intimate partner violence when they use it. It is used by men and women to describe sexual prowess, not violence, despite its employment of the violence of “beating”. In reading the framing of the outrage we see elders taking issue with Till being compared to the “anatomy of a woman” and “domestic violence.” That’s not quite what’s happening and we wonder if intergenerational strategies can help alleviate some of these misreadings. Rather than domestic violence, perhaps we can shift our frame to think about sexualized violence and violent sexualities more broadly, which, to be clear, are not always practiced in the context of traditional understandings of intimate partner violence or under duress or coercion.  Patricia Hill-Collins already hipped us to the violence that undergirds many discussions of black sexual prowess in her incisive reading of black colloquial usage of the term “booty” and it dual meaning/invocation as both the spoils of war and conquest (i.e. violence) and as the long standing icon of black women’s sexual desirability.  Too much connection to be coincidental, no?  This framework might allow us to see how violent sexual prowess acted out on the bodies of women of color is a staple of hip hop and popular culture more generally.  The issue is not just the ill-informed invocation of Till’s brutal murder but the normalization of brutality acted on women’s bodies.

Additionally, what does bleeping out words on the radio do? Particularly when it’s part of a rhyme scheme? The absurdity of radio editing is just more than we can fathom sometimes. You want to protect children from hearing the words “Emmett Till” and “pussy” but not the “beating up” they are used in conjunction with?  Not to mention any other songs that have other violent metaphors that don’t have curse words in them that are perfectly fine for radio play. Can we talk to children as opposed to shielding them from certain words? Why are words bleepable but problematic concepts aren’t under review?

2. Is it because it’s Emmett Till? Perhaps we are bugging but doesn’t it disturb people that sex= “beating the pussy up” in the hip hop landscape already? Like “beating the pussy up” is only offensive insofar as Emmett Till is implicated through Wayne’s simile? In no way are we excusing this lyric but it’s interesting to us that the invocation of Till seems to move people in ways that regular misogynoir does not. Perhaps it’s because folks understand the dangers of the US’ ahistorical forgetting, a result of which is that many younger folks might not even know who Emmett Till is (even MTV had to assume the ignorance of their young audience when they first reported the fiasco). What a shame for those who will first come to know of Till through Wayne’s verse.  Yet, what shame for us all that we are yet again confronted with violence to women bodies and our outrage seems limited only to the context of its description.   We are not surprised by the lyric as it seems to follow the logic of “shock” that we see in verses by Wayne, Odd Future and others. Perhaps this outrage is a way to capitalize on people’s reverence for the freedom struggles of Black people but it makes us incredibly sad that the most women can hope for are comparative politics that attempt to equate our humanity to someone elses for it be understood as valuable. I shouldn’t have to be your sister, mother, cousin, daughter, Emmett Till for you to care when I say your words grate on people’s understanding of me as a person.

3. We don’t like the way people apologize for their critiques of hip hop and hip hop artists. We are conscious of the ways hip hop is denigrated but shouldn’t our work and carefully crafted statements be enough for folks to understand that a critique here is not a wholesale condemnation of the genre? We too find some of Wayne’s lyricism captivating but we shouldn’t have to say that before we say, “Dude, WTF?!” In the radio interview speakers go out of their way to talk about their critiques coming from a place of love and not from a place hate (while simultaneously calling the music poison; y’all should listen to this; there are layers). It reminds us a bit of what we are attempting to do with Feminist Care Packages. But it does make us wonder what do you do when you’ve said it all? When you’ve tried to remind people of your humanity and the humanity of other marginalized people and folks refuse to listen? Are there limits to the strategy of affirming before a critique is levied? Does that help artists hear their audience better?

We recognized that Hip Hop gets singled out for misogyny. But as Seth McFarlane, The Onion, and many others have let us know, white folks can handle that all by themselves.

4. Can we talk about what else is happening in these lyrics? Hip Hop’s love affair with weed isn’t news nor is its relationship to crack as means of commerce. However, the types of drugs referenced are changing – We’ve moved from Mary Jane to Molly, crack to codeine.   Where is the collective concern over these new narratives of addiction and the ways in which they might point to depression, PTSD, apathy, nihilism, etc.? Recreational drug use seems to be replaced with self medicating and binge activities. Moya is looking at some of these questions in her work on nihilism in the music and the ways in which Black mental health concerns are prevalent but go unacknowledged. In Wayne’s latest track, “pussy, money, weed, codeine” are rattled off as equivalent substances, raising more questions about the reduction of women to anatomy and object, consumable goods for self medicated consumption.

What do you think about this moment in music? What questions do you bring to the conversation?

We are always interested in the creative ways that hip hop fa(a)ns engage the music they love. Check out the latest such engagement from our friends at Colored Girls Hustle, with their version of All Gold Everything.

Rapper Azealia Banks

Recently, the media has exploded with news of a Twitter battle between rapper Azealia Banks and gossip blogger Perez Hilton. After Hilton inserted himself in an altercation between Banks and fellow female rapper Angel Haze, taking Haze’s side, Banks denounced him as a “messy faggot”. She then went on to say that she used the word to describe “any male who acts like a female”. Rumours have since abounded that Banks is being dropped from her record label as a result of her speaking out against Hilton. Rather than taking sides, I believe it is most important for us to examine the context within which this media escalation has happened. Instead of writing off Azealia Banks, herself a queer woman, as homophobic, we should instead be exploring the femmephobia and racialized sexism at play in the public’s response to this debacle.

The public spat between Azealia Banks and Perez Hiton must be understood within a larger context, beyond the binary logic of right and wrong. It is profoundly problematic that much of the cultural criticism framing this fiasco is couched in the “two wrongs don’t make a right” argument. This  narrative rests on the flawed assumption that wrongful conduct on both sides of a conflict functions on an equal playing field. The lens through which we view wrongful conduct on either side (Azealia Banks vs Perez Hilton) must take into account the overarching power imbalances that frame interpersonal experiences of epistemic violence. We cannot dislocate public figures from their sociopolitical locations. The Azealia Banks/Perez Hilton debacle has absolutely nothing to do with right and everything to do with white gay cis male privilege.

White gay cis men have cultural access to the bodies of black women and black femmes, cultural access that black women and black femmes do not have in relation to white gay cis male bodies. This cultural access allows white gay cis men to caricature black femininities, through mannerisms and voice intonations, as rambunctiously depraved and outlandish. It is a form of ontological mockery that reinforces dehumanizing narratives and racist tropes about black femininities. Perez Hilton, who personifies a homonormative politic, has systematically tapped into the cultural access to which I refer at various points in his career. Indeed, the sassy lexicon he, and so many other upper middle class non-disabled white gay cis men like him, employs rests on the commodification and appropriation of black femme identities. Hilton interjecting himself in a social media dispute between two black women, Azealia Banks and Angel Haze, precipitated the Hilton/Banks altercation, which is emblematic of his (problematic) cultural access.

Because our society subscribes to an insidiously misogynistic sociocultural paradigm, to insult someone, notwithstanding gender, is to invoke the feminine. So what better way for Banks to cut Hilton down to size than to call his masculinity into question? The Banks/Hilton feud had absolutely nothing to do with sexual identity (read: homophobia), but rather, gender power dynamics (read: femmephobia). Azealia calling Perez a “messy faggot” suggests an attempt to assert her status as a no-nonsense, hard ass femcee in a largely masculine of center dominated hip-hop industry. Masculine of center queer men, notwithstanding race, appropriate the word bitch. Very often, they use it pejoratively, and with impunity. They’re seldom called out on the ubiquity of their misguided misogyny. Yet, when it comes to Azealia’s use of the word faggot, she’s quickly characterized as homophobic, reinforcing the dominant narrative that people of color are somehow inherently homophobic, to echo Janet Mock’s recent sentiments. Although Azealia Banks is queer, she is not part of a population that would have this slur used against her. That being said, there are other words that are deeply entrenched manifestations of oppression that go unchecked each and every day. Ironically, many gay men who are up in arms over Azealia’s use of the word faggot are the same men who render femme-identified men invisible and undesirable.

Azealia Banks’ career allegedly hangs in the balance and Perez Hilton’s remains firmly intact. She’s now regarded as the ratchet, violently homophobic black woman. By virtue of his white gay cis male privilege, Hilton did not have to contend with the implications of calling will.i.am a faggot several months ago. This isn’t two wrongs make a right, but rather, one wrong is minimized, and the other, pathologized.

–
Born to a South African freedom fighter mother who fled from the Apartheid regime to Namibia under self-imposed exile, Edward (Eddie) Ndopu is a politically conscious (dis) abled queer femme Afro-politan living in Ottawa, Ontario. Named by the Mail and Guardian Newspaper as one of their Top 200 Young South Africans, he is a social critic, anti-oppression practitioner, consultant, writer and scholar.

Gordon Parks, 1942

Thursday we feast. We who have it good enough to put a turkey on the table and lament the tryptophan-induced ‘itis with loved ones over card tables. And that we won’t include me. I won’t be home for the holidays but here in Harlem and I haven’t done turkey for more than a decade. I’ve done vegan field roasts, the palate-spoiler that is Tofurky (rebuke it family), the delightful but not vegan Quorn Turk’y Roast, tofu cutlets, Sophie’s Kitchen extraordinary vegan calamari, the list of faux meats goes on and on.

But my outsider status is a privilege–I could partake of the slain bird (yes, I’m judging) and cough up the small fortune to fly home to Seattle–and that we is a lie. It doesn’t cover my behind much less the choppy waterfront. That presumptive we excludes folks whose holidays evince neither Hollywood’s disarming dysfunction nor the heartwarming diabetes of the black cinematic tradition. Not to mention the rent remains too damn high and just getting by too damn prevalent. But there is a we that works. A we that will order our steps nowhere near Wal-Mart this Thursday or any other day of the week (consider sponsoring a striker). A we that raises ruckus about public housing conditions in the immediate wake of Superstorm Sandy and long after. A we that can keep someone from falling. Better yet, a we that with work finds us all on our feet. A we like my family, bound not exclusively by blood but intentional, inclusive and beloved community. Thursday I’ll miss the comforting grip of their hands during the marathon that is Thanksgiving grace but if anything they taught me there are always hands that need holding and it is all of our charges to find them. When I think about that we. I give thanks. I also get all up in my digital crates.

we: a cfc thanksgiving mix

“Ain’t It A Lonely Feeling” Camille Yarbrough
“Big Brother” Vijay Iyer Trio
“You’ll Never Rock Alone” Tata Vega
“Love Is Plentiful” The Staple Singers
“Brothers & Sisters (Get Together)” Kim Weston
“Brother’s Gonna Work It Out” Willie Hutch
“Sister Matilda” Stu Gardner
“Painted on Canvas” Gregory Porter
“Word Called Love” Brian and Brenda Russell
“People Make The World Go Round” Marc Dorsey
“You Are The World” Donald Byrd
“Don’t You Forget It” Glenn Lewis
“Home” Stephanie Mills
“You’ve Got A Friend” [LIVE] Donny Hathaway
“Keep On Movin’ On” Martha Reeves & The Sweet Things

[STREAM/DOWNLOAD]

Girl on fire is a punchline in the ‘buked wail of Alicia Keys’ failed instrument, a dirge when we get stuck, when we forget Smokey’s advice. Just last week it was a black woman’s willful hell, an extreme, yes, and emblem of other private purgatories. But let’s call it our ignition and start: “sail through this to that” by Lucille Clifton’s consecration, by recognition of our own peerlessness. I heard a soprano lift Clifton’s “Blessing the Boats” in a New England parlor last week and I teared up despite my liquid eyeliner. My teacup tottered on a saucer at my boots and for those few minutes I threw it all away. It can all be better with a song. This is what I know, why I push the fader. Well, I also like to dance.

When Dilla refigured Junie’s “Tight Rope,” I’d like to think he was broadcasting more than his genius. “You have come so far, you’ve got so far to go” respects the process, the jerky choreography of our time. These songs wobble something similar. Try and catch the beat.

so far to go: a cfc mix on finding your way 

“Ghost” Alecia Chakour & The Osrah
“Popular/ Count’s Coda” Van Hunt
“That Girl” Esthero
“So Far” Georgia Anne Muldrow
“Find A Place To Live” Newban
“Find Your Way” Dionne Farris
“Love Me Instead” Melinda Camille
“Lost Where I Belong” Andreya Triana
“The Song of Loving/Kindness” Gary Bartz
“Long As You’re Living” Elizabeth Shepherd
“It’s Our World” Gil Scott-Heron
“I Know Myself” The Sylvers
“Faith” Faith Evans
“Devotion” Ledisi
“Beautiful” Joy Jones

[STREAM/DOWNLOAD]

Several have written about the potential impacts of a celebrity naming their struggles with eating disorders – some think it’s helpful, others don’t and others find it complicated. There’s something both valuable and limiting about a celebrity like Lady Gaga coming forth. On the one hand she embodies a relatively conventional ideal of beauty, being young, thin and white. On the other hand, it’s notable that these extremely narrow conventions of beauty are insufferable by almost ALL people, Lady Gaga included. I won’t (re)litigate the conversation about the value of her admission here. Generally, I find that anything that breaks into the mythology of celebrity is at least minimally useful, because it allows us to disrupt the damaging messages that come from and through our obsession with fame and fortune as measures of worth. (Here, I mean “worth” the existential sense, as well in the context of capitalism. Lady Gaga is very well compensated for her art, which is entangled with her “image.”) So, yes, a “body revolution” in which we flaunt and expose our “perceived flaws” and  “make our flaws famous, and thus redefine the heinous” in order reclaim our sense of self from the media machine is a good thing.  But there’s something else going on here.

In this charged context, what does it mean to be beautiful? And what does it mean to be ugly? And another question, to complicate the binary between beauty and ugliness, because binaries never serve us well: what does it mean to be invisible entirely? Or hyper-visible?

We, as the social creatures we are, long to see and be seen. And to be seen as valuable, worthy of love, and affection, and deserving of care, personal, interpersonal, social and political. There are many measures of value, and they all depend upon being “seen.”  So, this question, of what it means to see and be seen, is rooted in understanding the pain and agony of people around the world who struggle to see themselves and to be seen by others as valuable. This is about those little girls, who look at themselves in horror and anguish, feeling worthless if nobody calls them beautiful. And in the cases of young girls and women of color, seeing themselves as inherently less valuable. In this context, answering the question “what kind of body revolution do we need?” is urgent. A lot is at stake.

Jessica Valenti’s argument in favor of embracing “ugly” comes from the notion that we must confound traditional notions of beauty and the social value that comes with them. In light of the emergent trend in which young girls get plastic surgery so as to avoid bullying and shame, Valenti argues that there are virtues cultivated from resisting these notions, and embracing the anger and dispossession they engender. We fashion the world in our own image, then, and refused to succumb. I find this argument compelling, to be sure. I am routinely pissed off about the way beauty is defined and described so as to exclude me, and so, so many others. And I certainly derive strength from that rage.

But then, I also have to pause. I notice my discomfort begin in earnest whenever we have conversations about beauty and body image that do not include in intentional analysis of beauty as something that lives right at the intersection of race, age, ability, gender and sex. It’s not an expendable luxury here, to name these things. For women of color, the notion of embracing and seeking the upside of ugliness is a complicated task in the fight against invisibility on one hand and hyper-visibility on the other. Think of how transgender bodies are erased by the various industrial complexes in which we are mired. CeCe McDonald’s very identity is rendered irrelevant when she, a trans woman, is incarcerated and placed in a men’s detention facility. Think about the double-sided scourge of Islamophobia and misogyny that Middle-Eastern and South Asian women face daily. Think about the legacy of slavery in which black women’s bodies were treated as commodities with categorically dehumanized desirability, worth and beauty. Think about the research telling us that women with disabilities are more likely to suffer domestic violence and sexual assault than women without disabilities. Think about the incessant slut-shaming and victim-blaming that characterizes our national conversations about violence against women.

In these contexts, what is the upside of ugly? Or as Lady Gaga beseeches us to, how do we “redefine heinous?” When “ugliness” carries the threat of violence and disenfranchisement, what does it mean to embrace  “ugly?” For a person whose body is dehumanized and positioned as the very definition of undesirable, is it possible to “redefine heinous?” Perhaps, but its not neat. To do so we have a lot to dismantle. To do so we have to dwell in the intersections. Beauty and ugliness are not two sides of a coin, they are the same side of the same coin.

To dismantle them involves thinking through what the other side of that coin is. What does is mean for us to see each other as fully human? And as singularly and collectively valuable?

This project is different than the project of asserting that we are all beautiful in our own way (like those Dove “Campaign for Real Beauty” campaigns implore of us). It is different than embracing the character building elements of being seen as “ugly.” It involves conversation about what makes us human and valuable. And it must also include a re-definition of both “beauty” and “ugliness” alike.

Maybe THAT is the body revolution we need.

Pic via.