AS LOVELY AS APHRODITE – AS WISE AS ATHENA – WITH THE SPEED OF MERCURY AND THE STRENGTH OF HERCULES – SHE IS KNOWN ONLY AS WONDER WOMAN.

Dear privileged Hollywood women,

We need you. It’s time. You can no longer remain silent. You must act. You must step up. White men alone cannot decide the fate of the Wonder Woman movie.

As I write this, I understand the sad truth that many people (ie too many of our young) today do not know Wonder Woman: her power, strength, ideals or her significance to women’s empowerment and history. So, strap up. I’m about to blow you away with some knowledge.

In 1941, a psychologist named William Moulton Marston began writing comic books under a pseudonym.  Marston, a respected Harvard-trained lawyer and Ph.D. was one of the few men of his era that believed in the untapped potential of comic books to teach children right from wrong and elicit positive change. He asked, “If children will read comics, why isn’t it advisable to give them some constructive comics to read?”[i] Marston, known as a flamboyant opportunist/marketing guru, also had very controversial beliefs about human psychology and was utterly obsessed with the ability to determine when a subject was not telling the truth. He was convinced that one could test for deception by studying subject’s physiological reactions (primarily changes in blood pressure) and is credited with the invention of one of the first lie detector tests.

Along with this obsession for the truth, Marston loved Greek mythology and believed in women’s overall higher moral compass. He alleged that women were innately “less susceptible than men to the negative traits of aggression and acquisitiveness, and could come to control the comparatively unruly male sex by alluring them.”[ii] This controversial ‘girls run the world’ prediction was very much ahead of his time. In a 1937 interview with The New York Times he claimed –

“The next one hundred years will see the beginning of an American matriarchy–a nation of Amazons in the psychological rather than physical sense,” adding that, “women would take over the rule of the country, politically and economically.”[iii]

Marston, a complicated man, was very much interested in bondage and the relationship between dominance and submission. He believed that the fairer sex would basically be able to control men through sexual governance. In his wildly sexist and heterosexist worldview, the world would be a better place if women ran it — mostly through the use of their sexuality of course. Sexually satisfied men would then happily submit to women’s power and we would all live in peace. [Side note, I don’t really hang with many white men, but this one definitely would have been invited to some of my parties. Did I mention he was poly? In 1941?].

Marston’s vision ultimately led him to work for DC Comics, home of Superman and Batman. He is credited with the invention of Wonder Woman – In Marston’s words:

Frankly, Wonder Woman is psychological propaganda for the new type of woman who should, I believe, rule the world. There isn’t love enough in the male organism to run this planet peacefully. Woman’s body contains twice as many love generating organs and endocrine mechanisms as the male. What woman lacks is the dominance or self-assertive power to put over and enforce her love desires.

I have given Wonder Woman this dominant force but have kept her loving, tender, maternal, feminine in every way. Her bracelets, with which she repels bullets and other murderous weapons, represent the Amazon Princess’ submission to Aphrodite, Goddess of Love and Beauty. Her magic lasso, which compels anyone bound by it to obey Wonder Woman and which was given to her by Aphrodite herself, represent’s woman’s love charm and allure by which she compels men and women to do her bidding.[iv]

And, that my friends, is the origin story of Wonder Woman. [Side note: Marston somehow still failed to see that none of those qualities (dominant/tender) are mutually exclusive. He just didn't get that memo.] Wonder Woman’s story line debuted in the #8 All Star Comics (December 1941 – January 1942) issue. She was even given an invisible plane to assist her on her many fantastic journeys. Throughout the years, (and especially after Marston’s death) her adventures, agenda, love interests and wardrobe have undergone many unique transformations. At one point, she even had an uber popular TV series in the 70s [I Heart you Linda Carter]. Filmmaker Kristy Geuvara-Falanagan’s Wonder Women! -The Untold Story of American Superheroines is a wonderfully fun and informative documentary that chronicles Wonder Woman’s unique history; her resurrection during the women’s movement of the 60s & 70s; and the ultimate tragic fate of other super heroines. Please watch it. You won’t regret it.

I’m sorry, I got excited. You see, the more I learn about Wonder Woman, the more I want to know and the more I feel the need to share her story. Lets get back to the whole point of this post. Starlets of Hollywood, we desperately need a Wonder Woman movie. Frankly, as much as I love the 100^th incarnation of the Superman, Batman, Spider Man and Iron Man movies, I’m extremely worried about our young girls and boys. If boys know that they can be heroes, then girls need to learn that they can be too. [Side eye to Marvel comics. I see you.]

I’m not calling for a Marston style matriarchy where women rule men only with their feminine wiles. Though that would be intriguing, I’m a lesbian and ultimately am not interested. I’m also a feminist and deeply invested in gender equity. What I am interested in, however, is a film with an awesome plot, X-men awesome. An action packed, empowering film with a multi-racial and multi-ethnic cast of women represented as intelligent, physically powerful, resourceful, capable, strong, independent, complicated, vulnerable, flawed, compassionate and beautiful. You know, human.

I want the only gratuitous onscreen shots of pectorals, thighs, abs, and gluteal muscles to represent the extraordinary physical strength of these female protagonists. During the publicity tour, I want for the actresses starring in the film to be asked about their physical transformations and the amazing training that they received from Jeannette Jenkins. I want them to brag about their 300 style training; how hard they worked out, how difficult it was, and how much protein they had to include in their diets. I want them to boast about the amazing and powerful community they felt on set: how they all got along; their shared vision of the amazing things that happen when you portray women as full human beings; how they brought their sons, daughters, nieces and nephews to the set; and how amazing it felt to be inspired and in the presence of women from all over the world.

I want Paradise Island to portray a land where women of all races, ethnicities, abilities, ages and sizes are valued and contribute to their society in meaningful ways. I want for Linda Carter, Angela Davis, Rita Moreno, Michelle Yeoh, Gloria Steinem, Pam Grier, Sonia Braga, S. Epatha Merkerson, Betty White, Whoopi Goldberg and Jane Fonda – to serve as the elder council that advises and deliberates on the ultimate fate of Princess Diana. I want Lucy Lawless, Linda Hamilton, Sophie Okonedo, and Angela Bassett to be the physical trainers of the Paradise Island Amazon army.

I want them to scour the globe for Wonder Woman: the talented and newly discovered actress that will carry the franchise, and it will be a franchise. I want them to show scenes of this young Amazon training for battle with her comrades: Michele Rodriguez, Adepero Oduye, Emma Stone, Jessica Alba, Zhang Ziyi, Zoe Kravitz, Dakota Fanning, Selena Gomez, Blake Lively, Gabrielle Union, America Ferrera, Naya Rivera, Raven Simone, Emma Watson, Freida Pinto, Harmony Santana, Ellen Page, Camille Winbush, Aubrey Plaza, Keke Palmer, Jessica Biel, Melonie Diaz, Mya, Sarah Shahi, Dania Ramirez and Hayden Panettiere – all engaging in intense competition for the Wonder Woman title and chance to return Steve Trevor to the “Patriarch’s world.”

I want Wonder Woman to experience an amazing adventure that forces the audience to really consider and critique all of the oppressive ways in which women and men experience their lives within the patriarchy. I want her to Holla Back! at the fools who try to cat call at her on the street; teaching them a lesson they will not soon forget. I want her to come to the defense of a woman who is being abused by her partner and make them pay. I want for WW to inspire confidence in all of the women she interacts with throughout the film; and for all her enemies to be in awe of her, considering her a formidable opponent. I want it to be an action packed thriller of a film. During the epic and final battle when the audience is at the edge of their seats and believes that Wonder Woman is about to be finished, I want all the Amazons of her land to appear out of the sky to support their sister and wreck shit, because the evil dwellers messed with the wrong Amazon. I want little girls and women of all ages to come out of the movie theaters thinking, “I am Wonder Woman.” I want little boys to ask their parents to buy them Wonder Woman costumes for Halloween.

I want for Meryl Streep, Julia Roberts, Hillary Swank, Reese Witherspoon, Anne Hathaway, Nicole Kidman, Kate Hudson, Susan Sarandon, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Sandra Bullock, Reneé Zellweger, Angelina Jolie, Rachel Wiesz, Sarah Jessica Parker, Jessica Chastain, Diane Lane, Charlize Theron, Kristen Stewart, Jennifer Lawrence, Julianne Moore, Clair Danes, Diane Keaton, Drew Barrymore, Demi Moore, Annette Benning, Jodie Foster, Jennifer Anniston, Mila Kunis, Cameron Diaz, Michelle Williams, Katherine Heigl, Tina Fey, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Jennifer Garner, Scarlett Johansson – and all the other established/prominent (lets us not forget white & privileged) Hollywood women who have been critically acclaimed for their talents; received numerous awards; and/or leads in commercially successful movies to step back and financially fund this project. Make sure that it is an empowering film. Please do not let the white man fuck it up.

Use that privilege and let other women shine.

I want Kerry Washington, Sofia Vergara, Gabourey Sidibe, Neha Dupia, Rosie Perez, Quevenzhané Wallis, Jennifer Lopez, Jaclyn Smith, Halley Berry, Eva Mendes, Amy Poehler, Viola Davis, Sara Ramirez, Sigourney Weaver, Jada Pinkett-Smith, Geena Davis, Sanaa Lathan, Lucy Lui, Sheetal Sheth, Aisha Tyler, Judy Reyes, Nia Long, Sandra Oh, Penelope Cruz, Melissa McCarthy, Zoey Deschanel, Taraji P. Henson, Miriam Colon, Hannah Simone, Queen Latifah, Rosario Dawson, Loretta Devine, Lauren Velez, Eva Longoria, Aishwarya Rai, and Amandla Stenberg to make cameo appearances as Amazons, goddesses (J. Lo you will always be my Aphrodite), political figures, lawyers, doctors, law enforcement, emergency responders, techies, surgeons, chief executive officers, journalists, reporters, scientists, teachers, engineers, illustrators, stay-at-home moms, professors, damsels in distress, cooks, painters and even villains.

I want M.I.A., Alicia Keys, Beyoncé, Adele, Azalea Banks, Shakira, Mary J. Blige, Tina Turner, Janelle Monae, Nicki Minaj, Ani DiFranco, Jennifer Hudson, Peaches, Tracy Chapman, Jill Scott, Lady Gaga, and Janet Jackson and to put out a kickass soundtrack.

Shonda Rhimes, Gail Simone, and Jodi Picoult I need you to write the screenplay. Dee Rees and Kathryn Bigelow please team up and direct this. Salma Hayek, you made Frida happen, go on ahead and produce this one.

Please and thank you,

Crunkista

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.

1. What is Truth. Be. Told.?
Truth. Be. Told. is an episodic TV series documenting the lives of Queer Black Visionaries. Each half-hour episode features an intimate conversation with a noteworthy interviewee as they discuss their lives, loves, and personal callings, as well as the experiences, realities, and identities that fuel them. 

To date more than 50 people have committed to being interviewed. Confirmed participants include: Emil Wilbekin, Editor-at-Large for Essence magazine; Dr. Alexis Pauline Gumbs, Co-Creator of the Mobile Homecoming Project; Patrik-Ian Polk, Creator of Logo TV’s Noah’s Arc; and Dr. Kortney Ryan Ziegler, Filmmaker & Transgender Activist.

Executive Producers for Truth. Be. Told. include Carol Ann Shine, who produced Noah’s Arc for Logo TV as well as the feature film Noah’s Arc: Jumping the Broom, and Jennifer MacArthur, National Engagement Consultant for Independent Television Service (ITVS) and former Director of TV & Digital Media Engagement for the National Center for Media Engagement (NCME).

I direct and produce Truth. Be. Told. I am also an instructor at the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University. Peace Process, an award-winning film that I made about transforming youth violence, airs regularly on The Documentary Channel.

2. How did the project start? What inspired you to make this documentary series?
Truth. Be. Told. is an outgrowth of my experiences while working at the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) as a Communications Strategist. There, my primary objective was to create visibility for Black LGBT issues in mainstream media. When I began at GLAAD, there were only a handful of Black LGBT people who were willing to speak publicly – and intelligently – about our issues. Over the years, I logged thousands of miles spokesperson-training more than 500 Black LGBT issue experts in New York; Washington, DC; Atlanta; etc. In the process, I came to know intimately the network of courageous pioneers who have chosen authenticity over fear, and met many of the bold young people who are poised to take us into the future.

Now, 8 years later, I can see the impact of the work that I did in conjunction with a few other pioneering communications strategists – holding editorial board meetings that pushed major media outlets to be more inclusive of LGBT people, empowering local community groups to pitch and tell their stories to area press outlets, and fostering opportunities for national media exposure with The Oprah Winfrey Show, CNN, etc. But we have only scratched the surface when it comes to visibility for Black LGBTQ people. While our stories are told more frequently than they used to be, our lives are shared in sound bites, book-ended by the editorializing of journalists. We don’t get enough prime time real estate (in media or in formal community spaces) to engage in full dialogues about who we are and what we stand for.

Truth. Be. Told. tells our stories of transcendence and triumph by positioning the cultivation of personal identity and transformation as a mark of innovation.

3. What makes this project so necessary right now?
Clearly, Black LGBTQ people need the space to tell their stories – and we’ve needed it for some time. I can’t possibly sit on or sit through another panel, over-crowded by LGBT issue experts of every persuasion, who have been given the task of summarizing all of our collective issues in 90 minutes or less, i.e., coming out, homophobia in black churches, transphobia, Black LGBT images in media, the impact of HIV/AIDS on Black gay men, bullying, gay as the new black, etc. I’m tired of Black people being blanketly characterized as homophobic, whenever marriage equality gets major media heat. The nuanced and explorative conversations that so many of us have with our loved ones deserve elevated visibility so that others who don’t have immediate access to our circles of influence can be included. And we deserve to be strengthened by a show that captures our resilience, our complexity, and our commitment to change.

4. How do you define “Queer Black Visionary”?
For the purposes of Truth. Be. Told., a Queer Black Visionary is someone noteworthy, but not necessarily famous, who has a compelling personal story to tell. Per the life experience of each person interviewed, the testimonies cover a broad range of topics, but generally center around the interviewee’s journey towards self-discovery; important moments that defined them; love lessons they received; how they came into their vocation(s); exploring, naming and elevating cultural/spiritual practices; and navigating bias – all against the backdrop of the community, family, and friends who support them.

We use the word “Queer” to describe the plethora of gender identities and sexual orientations represented by those who’ve agreed to be interviewed; however, within each interview, participants are encouraged to use the self-identifiers with which they feel most comfortable. Those identifiers may include: queer, gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, genderqueer, same gender loving, two spirited, intersex, cisgender, etc.

5. Why are images and representations of Black and Queer people so important to you?
There was a time when I felt so isolated that I considered taking my life, when it was easier to be a drug addict than it was to be me. I was clueless about how to be an out, queer Black woman. I believe that my coming out experience might have been less chaotic and self-destructive if I had seen more people who looked like me, who thought like me, or who had healed enough to serve as a living example of the possibilities that were ahead of me. I want to widen the path for those who have already come out, who are in the process of coming out, who are friends and family of those who are LGBTQ, and in order to do that, we need to see affirming images of Queer Black people. By telling our stories, we create spaces where more of us can bring all of who we are, wherever we go, all the time.

6. What is your wildest dream for Truth. Be. Told.?
I plan for Truth. Be. Told. to go 5 seasons. I want to create 122 episodes in collaboration with 122 Queer Black people who have done the work to show up as authentic in their own lives and the lives of their loved ones. We plan to distribute the show via a major network like Showtime, BET, or TVOne, and to reach people through digital platforms like Hulu Plus, Netflix, and iTunes.

7. How can people get involved?
Currently, we are on a mission to raise $10,000 by 11:59pm, PST on Wednesday, April 17 to fund a pilot episode, which will be used to:

• Secure a world premiere at the OUTFest Film Festival in Los Angeles (July 2013). OUTFest is the oldest LGBT film festival in America, having screened over 20,000 films and having reached over 1 million people in its 31-year history;
• Secure digital platform distribution via HuluPlus, Netflix, iTunes, and Amazon Video on Demand;
• Secure network distribution via either Logo, Showtime, BET, or TVOne;
• Screen at pride festivals, film festivals, fundraisers, and LGBT events throughout Fall 2013.

Donations start at $5. Perks include digital downloads of the pilot, postcard sets, signed posters, and producer credit. To view more info about the Truth. Be. Told. IndieGoGo campaign visit: http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/truth-be-told-pilot-fundraiser-take-two

8. What’s next for you?
For the next few years, I will be landing this mother ship known as Truth. Be. Told. By the end of summer, Lord willing/Creek don’t rise, the first season will be fully-funded with distribution deals in place for network TV and digital platforms. Getting there is a process and a serious commitment. First, we have to get the pilot cut and out into the world so that people can see just how fly the show is. Then there’s raising the money. And once we have the money, there’s production, editing, and finally distribution and marketing. It’s a process, but it’s so worth it. This series will be one for the books. Legendary, I tell you.

9. What truths do you tell through the work that you do?
Most of my work is about the healing powers of love, self-care, self-reclamation, compassion, and forgiveness. I believe in others the way I believe in myself.

Three essential themes in my work:
1) Your search proves your love.
2) People grow and people change.
3) Talking is loving.

Credit: Atlanta Blackstar

I’ve been trying to wrap my mind around the situation with Kimani Gray, but it just doesn’t make sense. I mean, considering the unceasing frequency of U.S. American police brutality, the story is “simple” enough. Ten days ago, sixteen-year-old Kimani, known as KiKi to his loved ones, was out late, returning from a gathering. While out in East Flatbush, Brooklyn, Kimani and his friends were approached by two men, apparently plainclothes undercover police officers with records of brutality and excessive force, who sidled up in an unmarked van. While those close to Kimani claim the youth was simply adjusting his belt or waistband, the police have claimed that Kimani pulled out a .38, which caused the officers to unload eleven rounds of ammunition into his body, killing him there in the street.

Credit: Todd Maisel/New York Daily News

Simple, right? Not even close.

For every Black and Brown person I’ve spoken with, this is so clearly another example of our communities’ ever increasing militarization that not only marks our bodies as inherently deviant and always guilty, but that is also hell bent on killing and/or imprisoning our people with impunity.

Although they are little more than half the population of New York, African Americans and Latinos were subject to almost 90% percent of the incidences of stop-and-frisk in the city in recent years. Stop-and-frisk policies are not only morally unsound, but statistics have clearly shown that they are also expensive and inefficient. The New Yorker reports “As for the effectiveness of stop-and-frisk, since Bloomberg doubled down on the program, in 2002, murder attempts, robberies, and assaults have fallen by less than one per cent. Arrests are made in about six per cent of the stops, and a firearm is found in about one per cent” (Source). Likewise, Vincent Warren notes:

Every first-year graduate student learns that correlation does not prove causality, but the NYPD routinely claims that the city’s falling crime rates are caused in part by their stop-and-frisk practices. There is not a single published study providing evidence for this claim. The truth is that no one knows what has caused the city’s drop in crime, but given the fact that only 6% of stops result in arrest and the vast majority of these are for so-called quality of life violations, it seems improbable, to say the least, that crime rates are going down because of stop and frisk. (Source)

Then again, cost is no object in a police state, right?

Credit: Atlanta Blackstar

Credit: Colorlines

Reading about Kimani’s story, takes me back to my own youth in Fort Lauderdale, Florida where I witnessed police negligence and violence firsthand. While they could never be counted on to come when someone was going upside your head or stealing someone’s car, they for damn sure would show up and show out in other moments, making my already unsafe hood even less safe. I learned to be more afraid of the police than my dopefiend neighbor who bashed my bedroom window open to steal or the pimps that stood just outside the gate of middle school everyday at 3pm. They were treacherous, but I knew how to deal with them. But the police—they were a wild card. They could come into your house, disrespect you, put their hands on you, talk to you any kind of way, and you’d just be standing there contemplating the virtues of taking a cast iron frying pan to their skulls but remembering your duty to your family.  But, for some people, sometimes that cast iron pan would win.

Twenty years ago, something happened with the police that I’ll never forget. I was an eighth grader, walking home from school. A big crowd had gathered to watch two girls, two of my classmates in fact, tussle. These sisters were rolling around and around in the dirt. Look, I wasn’t a fool. I wasn’t really trying to be all up in this altercation, but the crowd was so big that I couldn’t get through or around it. So I watched, shaking my head, knowing that one girl was jealous of another and that some knucklehead dude was at the center of this drama. It wasn’t until they separated that I saw how horrible the fight had been. The sister that initiated the fight had carried a razor blade in her mouth and sliced the other girl on her face and neck. This young sister stumbled past me, her face and neck swollen and bloodied, her white t-shirt splattered with her own blood.

I could not believe my own eyes. I had just watched someone get stabbed. I was appalled. I was disgusted. I was worried for my classmate. Would she bleed to death? (She did, in fact, live). She lived a block away from me, but despite her injuries, seemed to be making a defiant walk home. I looked around to see if anyone was there to help. There were mostly other teens like myself, standing there with a mixture of curiosity, disbelief, and horror.

Then, I spotted the police. They had been in the background all along. I mean, they were always there along my route home, apathetic observers that never stopped when drug transactions were made brazenly, out in the open or when twelve-year-old girls were propositioned for sex in broad daylight. But on that day, they really jumped the shark. As I scanned the crowd, looking for an adult to help—my go to adult helper has always been older Black women—I saw the police pointing and laughing at my bloodied classmate. I’m not talking about a nervous giggle or an uncomfortable chuckle, but some of that old bent over, clutching your stomach, and wiping your eyes kind of laughter. Rather than going to the aid of an injured young woman (who was wounded by another injured young woman), these fools were laughing. It was as if we were all slaves in a Roman gladiator’s ring, killing each other for their amusement. The image of their laughter haunts me to this day.

Years later, when I read Toni Morrison’s Beloved in college, I came across this line that has stayed with me, haunting me, ever reminding me of the constant dehumanization Blacks endure under white supremacy. After the novel’s protagonist, Sethe, is abused by the whites that run her plantation, she remembers, “they handled me like I was the cow, no, the goat, back behind the stable because it was too nasty to stay in with the horses.” I felt that way, felt that way for my classmate, on the day I saw her stabbed and no one rushed to help her.

So, when reports allege that Kimani Gray pulled a .38 on the admittedly plainclothes officers, I do not think of black-on-black crime or an out of control urban Black youth population that are menaces to society. I think of a kid who lived in a war zone, a kid who could not only not count on those who vow to protect and serve to do either of those things, but who could also expect the police to be the major perpetrators of state sanctioned terrorism.

Let me be clear. I do not think systemic violence is strategy that is going to liberate our communities. And I do not actually think Kimani had a weapon. However, I would understand why a kid would think he was in danger if two random dudes rolled up on him in a car and jumped out yelling. And I do understand the pain, anger, and frustration the protestors in East Flatbush have been expressing. And I wish that stories like this were not a constant unbroken loop in our communities, continually traumatizing us into silence and submission.

What are your thoughts on the situation surrounding Kimani Gray and his murder?

Credit: WNYC/Stephen Nessen

My favorite biographical description of Alexis Pauline Gumbs is included in her Conscious Campus profile:  “Dr. Alexis Pauline Gumbs is a queer black trouble-maker and a black feminist love evangelist. She walks in the legacy of black lady school teachers in post slavery communities who offered sacred educational space to the intergenerational newly free in exchange for the random necessities of life. As the first person to do archival research in the papers of Audre Lorde, June Jordan and Lucille Clifton while achieving her PhD in English, Africana Studies and Women’s Studies at Duke University, she honors the lives and creative works of Black feminist geniuses as sacred texts for all people. She believes that in the time we live in, access to the intersectional holistic brilliance of the black feminist tradition is as crucial as learning how to read.”

Future Famous Black Woman

Dr. Gumbs is not just a brilliant teacher though–she is also a visionary, a community organizer, a black feminist powerhouse, an activist, a catalyst, a world-shaper, a publisher, an un-coverer, “a quirky black girl,”  a creative genius, a writer, and a poet.  She describes her latest ebook project 101 Things That Are Not True About the Most Famous Black Women Alive as, “a vaguely epic book of list poems that consider what it is possible to know about the most famous Black women alive including Oprah Winfrey, Condoleezza Rice, Michelle Obama, Beyonce Knowles, Serena Williams, Venus Williams, Halle Berry, Tina Turner, Gabby Douglas, and Aretha Franklin. Part prayer part polemic this project is an intervention into the consumption of Black women.”

These powerful poems punctuate the necessity and significance of the interior lives of famous black women, reminding us that like us (everyday folk) they have feelings, families, concerns, and emotional requirements.  In what can be described as love poems, 101 Things captures the humanity and versatility of lives the media sells us as one-dimensional.  Dr. Gumbs’ poems allow us to imagine, ever so briefly, what it might be like to be a black woman whose strongblackwoman mantle is put on display for the world to see, interrogate, and try to define.  She offers our larger-than-life women back to us as a reflection of ourselves:  vulnerable, regular, and seeking/needing/deserving sister love and protection.

The poems are thoughtful, soulful, analytical, beautifully written accounts that make you think deeply about what it might mean to be these women and what they share in common due to their race, sex and visibility.  Her focus on what is not true about these women challenges us to consider what might be true.  She shares in this interview that her poetic call is “for pause.”  She urges readers to take the time to interrogate what we are told about these women.  Dr. Gumbs also talks about why she loves black women, what inspired this project, whether or not she considers the women in this ebook to be feminist, and how she is learning to love Condoleeza Rice.  The truth drips from her lips and her words echo honesty and care.

For a brief Q & A promotional video about the project check out this interview… and by all means GET THIS BOOK!

You can download the ebook for a small donation to Eternal Summer of the Black  Feminist Mind by clicking the following link.

To learn more about APG and her current work and projects, visit her personal website , or this one, or this one, or this one!

Get Crunk!

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.

Some spoilers ahead, but mostly I’m  just feeling all my feelings…

Growing up, I had to deal with my mother’s love for Westerns. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen The Outlaw Josie Wales. One of the many joys of expanded basic cable (besides the Cooking Channel, of course) is that I get Encore Westerns. Between that and reruns of Walker, Texas Ranger, I know that when my mama comes to visit she will be thoroughly entertained.

I don’t get her love for the genre. I mean, I get it on one level. I know my mother appreciates a good revenge tale and she likes it when the bad guys grovel at the end. But Westerns? Really? Then again, I unapologetically look forward to watching The Real Housewives of Atlanta and all the iterations of Love and Hip Hop, so who am I to judge? We all hold contradictions, not to mention shamtastic and raggedy entertainment choices.

So, when I saw that Django was coming out during the holidays, I thought this would be something that we could watch together. I mean, I do “enjoy” an episode of Walker, Texas Ranger now and again but I’m not sure that that counts. Django would definitely give us both something to talk about.

I did have some apprehension about watching Django, though. For one, I am not a fan of Tarantino at all. At all. Generally, I find his work contrived, overly self-conscious, and, frankly, boring. Plus, to me he’s like the worst kind of hipster racist, a grown up version of Justin Timberlake desperately trying to affirm his black card at all times, while thoroughly proving himself to be white as hell. The living worst.

But, I was still intrigued by the movie.  As a scholar of African American literature, I’m always interested in how we understand and talk about slavery today.  Besides, I love Kerry Washington with a fiery burning passion and would watch her read the phonebook.  (Too bad she had like five lines in the movie. She did have that lip quiver though. Can’t forget about the lip quiver).

Sex appeal and slavery. Hmm…

I ended up watching the movie and it exceeded my admittedly low expectations. I won’t do a formal review here, largely because I think the film has been discussed elsewhere in brilliant ways and who needs to reinvent the wheel? (On that note, check out discussions of the film by Salamishah Tillet and The Feminist Wire if you haven’t already). What I do want to talk a bit about was my movie going experience.

I decided against seeing Django while I was spending the holidays at home in Fort Lauderdale. I anticipated that my little heart couldn’t take it. I imagined some irreverent scene involving slavery and being in a movie theatre filled the laughter of whites who, in their next breath, wouldn’t hesitate to remind me of how postracial we are and how Tarantino has every right to create art as he pleases and how brilliant he is and on and on and on. I figured I might have a slavery flashback and go Nat Turner up in there and that’s not how I’m trying to go out, folks.

Instead of that unfortunate scenario, Mama and I headed to the movies in Atlanta on a Friday afternoon. Since my mother is a stickler for time we got there early and I did a lot of people watching as the theatre filled to capacity. Our fellow viewers were Black—pretty much everyone as far as I could see—and largely grown. I’d say middle-aged and older. There were couples on dates. Clusters of homegirls and homeboys. Church sisters and ladies who lunch. Not the crowd that generally thinks Reservoir Dogs is awesome, interestingly enough.

I immediately felt at ease. I felt like I was at a family reunion where something dubious was about to happen but that, nevertheless, it was going to be ok because my auntie and my mama were there. Weird, perhaps, but true.

So we all sat there in companionable (semi) silence, watching Tarantino’s comedic spaghetti Western slavery action-comedy, cheering when racist slaveholders came to their timely and explosively bloody ends, sighing in satisfaction when Django finally got his girl, and laughing out loud at the absurdly funny scenes involving shit that is generally not funny at all.

This movie will also extinguish whatever love you have left for Leo. Sorry.

Take for instance a scene involving some night riders (aka the forefathers of the KKK). The group arrives to kill Django and his white companion but before they can get to the lynching, there’s a whole discussion about how their outfits (namely the poorly shaped eyeholes on their white hoods) are getting in the way of their appointed task. It goes without saying that lynching is not funny. I mean, really. But laughter reverberated throughout the theater. Not uncomfortable, tinny laughter that rings hollow and dies quickly in your throat. But genuine “people can be so damn foolish,” “you got to laugh to keep from crying” and “ain’t this some shit?” laughter thundered, yes, thundered throughout the theater. I don’t know that I could have laughed during this moment in another theater, but I laughed heartily on that day.

When the movie was over I asked my mom what she thought about it. She said she loved it. She loved that Django went about avenging people for his wife and that all the bad people got killed, especially Samuel L. Jackson’s old Uncle Ben looking ass. For her, it was the best kind of Western. When we went out to dinner that evening she expressed several times how satisfying it was to watch racists get cut down. I could only agree.

F@#% you, Stephen!

So, what’s my verdict on Django? It’s interesting, frustrating, (at times) funny, violent, limiting, problematic, thought provoking…it’s doing a whole lot. I don’t regret seeing it, but it’s not in my top 10 list either. I think it is inciting interesting discussion, but I’m not naïve enough to think that this will necessarily translate to a bunch of nuanced portrayals of Black folk in slavery. What I do know is that my viewing experience was connected to where I saw the movie as much as it was connected to the film’s content and that, among other things, underscores my general ambivalence about the movie.

Have you seen Django? What are your thoughts on the film?

A few weeks ago, a young Indian woman went to the movies. On her way home she took a bus on which she was raped and brutally assaulted by six men. We don’t know the name of this 23-year-old student.  We do know that  she was tortured so badly that she lost her intestines and needed numerous operations. Six people – including the bus driver – have been arrested. On Friday, December 28 she died.

I don’t know her name. I don’t have an adequate response, but I feel I should say something. Because I was born in the city where she were assaulted. Because so many, too many, experience such violence. Because I spend most of my waking hours thinking about how we can create a world where women are safe. Because she wanted to live.

●●●

This is both about and not about men. Here are some statistical knowables, true across most societies (just take a look at the extant research at both the global and national levels).

• Violence against women and girls occurs primarily at the hands of men and boys.
• Violence against men and boys occurs primarily at the hands of other men and boys.
• Nations, statistically speaking, commit far and away, the most of the world’s violence via war and conflict. This involves military forces comprised largely of men and boys, who are both perpetrators and victims of this violence.

Gender, then, rises up as an undeniably important variable in regards to understanding violence. And though we might not have a shared understanding of this fact, sex and gender are different and there are more genders than two. Further, people who are gender-non-coforming, genderqueer, trans and/or those who complicate the gender binary experience violence at disproportionate rates.

In my work at Men Stopping Violence, our focus is on ending male violence against women. Far and away the most common first response to my explanation of our work goes something like this: “Yes, violence against women is a problem but, don’t women ALSO commit violence?”

Let me answer that question now: Sure, yes. Women are also perpetrators of violence. As are people of all genders, sexes and sexual orientations. But to refocus the question on women’s violence is to obfuscate the real problem. And that problem is violent masculinity. If all the above data has not convinced you yet, please note: According to the National Academy of Sciences, in the US, “Male criminal participation in serious crimes at any age greatly exceeds that of females, regardless of source of data, crime type, level of involvement, or measure of participation.” I say this not to pathologize masculinity as inherently violent, I certainly don’t believe it is. I say this to move us away from wringing in our hands in despair about a seemingly intractable problem (male violence against women) and move us toward naming the fact that this problem is deeply structural, rooted in patriarchy and colonialism.

The point here is this: violence in general and sexual violence in particular, like all social ills, is best approached with a multi-faceted and intersectional perspective.

●●●

“Power corresponds to the human ability not just to act but to act in concert. Power is never the property of the individual: it belongs to a group and remains in existence only so long as the group keeps together. When we say someone is “in power” we actually refer to his being empowered by a certain number of people to act in their name.” –  Hannah Arendt, from On Violence

What is the function of violence?

Resisting essentialist notions about sex and turning to think about gender, there is something in pervasive understandings of masculinity or masculine identity that accepts if not encourages violence.  This begs the questions: Is masculinity itself violent? Is there a way to be a man/masculine without being violent? What causes violence? What sustains it? These are questions that I think about daily and with my colleagues around the country. At MSV we work with many different men who join in this conversation with us. For us, that involves honing in on the problem of men’s violence against women.

Let me be very clear here, because this is the bulk of my point: we fail at answering these questions if we think of violence as merely a symptom of something else. If you listened to the NRA press conference last week in response to the shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, you might be lead to believe that the perpetration of violence is some elusive phenomenon, committed by the criminally insane, or at the behest of video games and violent movies. If you watched some of the Indian coverage of the Delhi gang rape story you’d hear lots of speculation that the young men who perpetrated this gruesome act, must have been intoxicated by drugs. I wholeheartedly disagree with this assessment of violence. It’s not merely a tragic happenstance. It is not something only done by those who have ‘lost their right minds.’ Violence is functional.

It is a means of asserting and securing power. When violence targets women in the dark of night it ensures, among many other things, that women stay out of the streets. When violence against trans women goes largely unreported in studies of violence against women, it is tacitly legitimated. When violence against white school children raises a national furor and violence against an innocent black teenager wearing a hoodie doesn’t provoke a national conversation about legislating guns, we can see the fault lines.  When a football player kills his partner and then himself and we find ourselves knowing his name but not hers, we see which victims matter.

Violence is functional and our response to that violence is also functional. Violence is functions by silencing those whom it targets. Let us not forget that most cases of rape and sexual assault go unreported. Let us not forget the stigma that survivors face. In the US only 24% of rape allegations result in arrest, never mind conviction. Whether it is perpetrated by an individual or made invisible by our social, cultural and political institutions, violence has an aim – to remove power and instill fear.

●●●

The numbers can tell us most of what we need to know. But not all. What is lost in the statistical knowables, is the lived reality of women, LGBTQ people and others of us whose stories don’t make it to the headlines. Women’s lives bear out patterns, and patterns tell a story. If we ask intentional questions about trends – we can learn something about our social orchestration. Looking to recent stories, we might learn something about this functionality.

Kasandra Perkins was killed by her partner, a professional athlete, who had threatened to shoot her weeks before he did. No one was able to protect her despite the fact of his threat.

CeCe McDonald, a trans woman, faced violence in the form of a hate crime and for her retaliation was sentenced to serve her time in a men’s prison, denied the right to name a very basic fact of her existence.

Victoria Soto was a school teacher with her students in the classroom one day when she was killed in a massacre by a lone gunman with easy access to assault weapons.

Savita Halappanavar sought refuge from the horror of a wanted pregnancy gone awry at an Irish hospital which (legally) refused to save her life.

And then a few weeks ago a young woman in New Delhi took the bus home one night after watching a movie with a friend and was brutally raped and died, 12 days later, from her wounds.

When something horrific happens, near or far from home, we tend to ask the same questions: Why? How? So, what, then, are the ‘whys’ and ‘hows’ in these cases and in inumerable others? There are few actual similarities in these cases, but there are many potential points of convergence: laws that do not protect, credibility that is denied, legislation that is missing, stories that are made invisible. If we are to change things, our belief systems, social structures, and institutional practices must come under the spotlight. And that is because these stories complicate the statistical knowables.

Interpersonal violence usually belies a whole host of social conditions that are hard to qualify and quantify (i.e. privilege, race, poverty, gender, oppression, resistance, wealth, cultural norms, etc.). In this, as in most things, historical context is key. The US has a long history of state sanctioned violence. Consider the genocide of Native and First Nations people, the ever-present legacy of slavery, the internment, without due-process, of those considered a threat, be they Japanese immigrants or detained in Guantanamo via the War on Terror.  These factors complicate our understanding of who perpetrates violence and against whom and why. Knowing the statistics is important. Knowing the stories, unearthing the legacies, speaking aloud the names of the victims and the survivors is just as important.

●●●

Women’s bodies serve as battlegrounds: metaphorically and practically. “Western” feminists look toward the “East” and see beleaguered women facing oppression at the hands of savage (read:black and brown) men. Never mind that staggering and horrific violence happens in the “West.”  Never mind that the US has never taken a stand to ratify the global Convention on the Elimination of Violence Against Women. Never mind international conventions, the US is not able to muster the political will to pass the Violence Against Women Act, or gun control legislation. Never mind that we all have remained  unable to effectively address the phenomenon of rape as a tool of war, so as to prevent women’s bodies from serving as the actual sites of war and conflict.

Despite all these facts, in the wake of this story, outrage began seeping out from the US, the UK and Europe (which I am loosely defining as the “West” – the demarcations of and within these places could be a topic of a separate blog post) at the problem of patriarchal “Eastern” cultures. The narrative looks something like this: Those poor women suffering at the hands of those horrible men. We must loudly proclaim our empathy for those people, who either know no better or are unable to live by our enlightened social standards.

This narrative is racist, homophobic, sexist, heteronormative and imperialist.

And to step away from all that politicalese: it is quite simply just wrong.

Violence is global. It pervades all cultures and communities. Yesterday, in a brilliant conversation, Kavita Krishnan, Secretary of the All India Progressive Women’s Association and one of the main organizers of protests against sexual violence in India and Elora Chowdhary, associate professor of women’s studies at the University of Massachusetts in Boston, joined Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzalez on Democracy Now to talk about the case and the way it’s being discussed here in the US as well as in India. Chaowdhary says,

So, on the one hand, we see in the Western media some reporters taking this moral high ground and pointing fingers and demonizing Indian culture, as though sexual violence against women is pervasive in only certain parts of the world and that it’s somehow reflective of deeply inherent cultural traditions of that part of the world. Of course, what that obscures is that both rape and domestic violence are pervasive in the United States, and domestic violence being one of the leading causes of injury to women, and exceedingly high numbers of rapes that, in fact, mostly go unreported in the United States. So, I think embedded in these kinds of reporting is a certain colonial mindset, of course, there’s a long history of that. And this kind of mindset that women are the measure of the progress of a society emerges from colonial practices, that these ideas were used to legitimize both colonization and also imperialism.

I don’t say all this to discourage global dialogue. Very much the opposite, in fact. We have much to learn from each other, by sharing our struggles and our victories. Such exchange is key to our success. What we cannot abide however is the reductive and disempowering narrative that allows some folks to offer no local, national or global context. What will not help is an essentialist narrative that paints all (or even most) Indian women as victims and all (or even most) Indian men as perpetrators, by virtue of their culture. We must banish these spectres of our colonial legacy if we aim to build an intersectional, transnational and transformative movement to end violence in our communities.

As I’ve said, violence, here in the US and abroad, is functional. Violence against women, is rooted in colonialism and patriarchy, in their varied and sundry iterations.  We’d do well to keep our eyes on that, and work like hell to dismantle the belief systems, social structures, and institutional practices that support it.

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The 2012 elections will culminate with President Obama being reelected or replaced as President.  Some people have decided to vote in this election; others not to vote.  Whatever your decision I urge everyone who is eligible to register to vote by the October 9th deadline.

Every citizenship right we have has come after a protracted struggle: Pressure created by direct action and mass movement organizing provided the momentum for a successful vote in the halls of Congress, state legislatures, or polling places across the country. Not registering to vote feels like speaking passionately on the issues at hand; but on Election Day, placing our hands over our mouths.

After the Civil War the struggle for equality moved from the battlefield to the ballot box, as centuries old violence and intimidation tactics against Black people continued.  During Reconstruction, in 1866, the Radical Republicans took control of Congress.  Before the War ended, Rev. George F. Noyes had expressed his support of them, and restraint of former Confederates, during a sermon to the Union Army in 1862:

“When a man puts a knife at my throat, and I succeed in conquering and hand-cuffing him, shall I be so foolish as at once to restore him to his former position, knife and all? Let every man’s own common sense answer this question. The idea with some even at the North is that the South is to be acknowledged as an equal nation if triumphant, while, if she is subdued after the great and fearful struggle, she is at once to be invited into a front seat, and at once admitted to all her old privileges.”

In 1867, Congress replaced Southern civilian government with military districts, and enforced the enfranchisement of Freedmen.  Of the 22 Black members of Congress, elected during Reconstruction, 13 were Freedmen; all were Republican.  Of the 1st 20 elected as Congressmen, five were denied their seats.  Others had their terms interrupted or delayed.

At the 1888 Republican Convention, a new faction emerged within their party. Norris Wright Cuney named this group, the Lily-White Movement: An anti-civil rights response to African-American political and economic gains.  Their goal was to eliminate Black progress and get white voters back from the Democrats.  As it grew to an organized nationwide effort, most Blacks were prevented from seeking office.  Democrats and Republicans erected legislative barriers for Black voters: In the form of poll taxes, literacy tests, and grandfather clauses.  George White was the last African-American in Congress for 28 years when he delivered his final speech in the House on January 29, 1901:

“This is perhaps the Negroes’ temporary farewell to the American Congress, but let me say, Phoenix-like he will rise up some day and come again. These parting words are in behalf of an outraged, heart-broken, bruised and bleeding, but God-fearing people; faithful, industrious, loyal, rising people – full of potential force.”

That drought was ended with the election of Oscar De Priest: the first African-American of the modern era and the last Black Republican representative for 56 years.

The 20th Century civil rights movement built on work begun during Reconstruction. Direct action changed and engaged our national conscience as we the people gathered and shone a light on unjust laws, rogue municipalities, and flaws in our Union. Our votes sent those we elected to represent us into the rooms where laws are made and changed.

African-American voting strength blossomed across the South from 1960-1966: in Mississippi – from 22,000 registered Blacks to 175,000, in South Carolina – from 58,000 to 191,000; and in Alabama – from 66,000 to 250,000. The number of Blacks in Congress doubled from five to ten as the 1960s drew to a close. The Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) emerged from that fertile ground in 1971, followed by the 1976 arrival of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus. For the first time in this century, a presidential veto on foreign policy was overridden. When the CBC joined others in opposition to President Reagan, they helped bring about the extinction of South African Apartheid.

History reveals that laws enacted to create justice do not make justice happen. And that political party support, at best, is transient. Further struggle is required to make existing laws function – for example: penalties, criminal charges, and sanctions for noncompliance or violations. The thunder of feet marching and ballots dropping on Election Day; oars pulling together as our boat presses forward. Knowing that our need for justice is immediate, it is frustrating that our progress tends to be incremental. That is why I urge you to register to vote. We need you.

The nautical term is, “All hands on deck.” Something that you say when everyone’s help is needed, especially to do a lot of work in a short amount of time. If you have ever changed your mind, reconsidered a decision, or just like to keep your options open; consider registering. If you do register, you can still decide not to vote.  The decision of whether to vote or not just moves to 7:00 pm, November 6th when the polls close. But if you don’t register, that option, that oar, is left behind.

Rough waters and big waves have kept us from the shores of full equality and have tried to swamp our boat, relentlessly. It has required every tactic at our disposal, some created on the journey, to keep us afloat. Pack both oars: Direct action and the vote. Those who never had the right and those who lost it have needed us to pull that oar for them.

Election Day will mark our progress, lull, or decline; but not the end of our journey. Tsunamis of regressive, racist, mean-spirited political candidates and policies have raised the call for, “all hands on deck.” We need all who are able to give a two-fisted pull toward equality and our own visions of a just world. In the tradition of our struggle, join us.

*Prepare for battle (beat = beat the drum to signal the need for battle preparation).

Pat Hussain is a part of the We All Count campaign and participated in the Southern Movement Assembly two weeks ago in Lowndes County, Alabama. The Assembly brought together 25 delegations from over 40 organizations around the South. Pat is a beloved movement elder and one of six founders of SONG, Southerners On New Ground, an LGBTQ organization working for racial and economic justice. In 1996, Pat co-founded Olympics Out of Cobb County to bring attention to a resolution the city passed in 1993 condemning LGBTQ people. The successful organizing forced the Olympic Committee to remove all officially sanctioned events from the county.