White Feminism: Disturbia Rant + Happy Ending

The battling discourses between Black feminism and white feminism are nothing new. But, being a black feminist in a world full of white feminism makes me tired. Black feminist scholars, artists, celebrities, bloggers, musicians, and youth have been promoting the radical notion of loving Blackness. I've never felt more blessed to be a Black woman. But in academic settings (or even online) I always feel a cold tensity come over me when I enter a dialogue about intersectionality and cultural studies with my white feminist colleagues in the room. 

White feminists having been inserting themselves in the critique of Black issues for too long. Being unhelpful as fuck. Trying to merge Black women's issues with all (meaning white women) women's issues. And I'm like how? Tell me how you know what is best for me? Yes, you read some amazing supplement journals and articles that introduced you to race, class, and gender, but that is it. That is not connecting, or living the true experience. White feminists have about 2 friends of color-- probably from a upper/ middle class and met them in college. White feminists who are queer think just because they possess that marginalized identity, that they have every right to critique the problems in the Black community. Nope sis, you get called out, too.

Your input is not only irrelevant, but violent. Black people cannot "just be vulnerable" Or whatever exclusive mechanism you find appropriate that has your privilege value on it. It is more than "just do it" solutions when there are systems of racism in play that do not allow us to "just be vulnerable" in any space. Any space determines the next breath of our lives. We don't need your comments or solutions, we need solidarity.

Buuuuut, this morning I was in the warm embrace of true accompliceship at the LGBTQA annual breakfast at my university. And the speaker, J Mase III, poet, educator, and founder of AwQward Talent, left the audience with some tips about what solidarity actually looks like:

Solidarity is

• Backing up
• Redistributing resources
• Asking how support is needed
• Understanding and owning your privilege
• Being more invested in justice than your own comfort

So please, take this bomb self with you in peace. Embrace the side line, girl it ain't that bad!

Creating Love Wherever You Go

During the winter, life seems to slow down,

like our bodies require more self care and maintenance. The type of care needed during the transition from a fast paced Chicago autumn to slow inconsistent winter is taboo in our culture, there is no need to discuss the importance of it. For example, how we just dive in Winter break after a busy academic semester. We go from socially enjoying good weather in a variety of engagements to confining ourselves to the lonely indoor heat of our houses. Even more lonely if you don’t have a car or Uber funds for days.  And like routine, I too dived quickly into the transition. And I knew I was rushing something, because even though this time is was given to me to relax, I still craved to be in the company of people, lovers and associates, just as if school was in session. The problem with this was that I was repeatedly finding myself sad and disappointed in others for not reciprocating the love and affection I was conditioned to receiving during the school year. I did not know how to experience love by myself or with other things/people/places. 

Limiting My Love, Constraining My Freedom to be Happy 

So I meditated to really face this challenge within me. I realized that I was limiting the love within me. The reality was, I was abusing myself by only allowing my opportunities to love to be with a few people. I was putting so much energy in being sad and disappointed in those few people who could not provide me happiness in the roughness of winter. I was failing to realize that I am not truly mad at folks for doing their lone thang embracing winter break… but REALLY I was obsessing over the way love makes me feel, happy and blessed. And if God is love, and we have God in all of us, I can experience that love whenever and wherever I want! 

Creating Love 

Once I realized, love was inside of me, it was over with, lit. The pain was over, and the healing began. So, what if Tyrone stood you up, he is a Tyrone and you cannot limit him to the only opportunity you experience of love. I went outside, and found love in places I never expected. As I walked out the door, I instantly submerged in the immense gratitude this cold winter had to offer. This whole Earth is experiencing a time of deep healing and rejuvenation. The cold air embraced me with kisses, and I felt warm inside, I felt so in love. And then, I experienced more love at a yoga session as I saw the reflection of my genuine spirit reflected in all the smiles of the other beautiful people in class. 

Say Goodbye to the Lies

The way society romanticizes relationships, really confuses us to understanding when and how can you experience love. It is not true, that you need to be with another person to experience or strengthen your love. When I am alone, I always try to empower myself to experience love in new places and spaces to aspire a closer relationship with all things created by God. That is just the beginning of my gratitude. That is the being God intended me to be.
Psalms 23: 2-3 "He lets me rest in green meadows; he leads me beside peaceful streams. He renews my strength. He guides me along right paths, bringing honor to his name."

Can One Truly Pull Themselves Up By Their Bootstraps?

An Essay

Walking off the Fullerton bus stop, I see my homeless friend. We’ve sat, talked, and connected with each other before on various occasions usually just sitting outside of Whole Foods. I would say we definitely developed a friendship.We laughed, and made jokes about being Black in America, but the truths of his reality haunt me every night as I lie my head on my pillow. Closing my eyes, I pray to God to continue to use me in ways to service of others. His reality is he is a homeless Black man trying everyday to pull himself up by his bootstraps. And he is mimicking how European immigrants once did it, but the reality is white supremacy in America targets to annihilate Black men in vulnerable positions like impoverishment. His reality soon became K 9 Unit officers harassing him and arresting him for not having state issued ID. My friend later tells me the story, he tried to reason with the officer, explaining that he was simply trying to get money to catch the train to church. But the K 9 Unit Officers proceeded to emasculate him further by forcing him to stop everything he wanted to do that day to take him to the police station and figure out who he is exactly. Five hours in a jail cell, my homeless friend was finally regurgitated back into the world. Pulling up his bootstraps maybe for the 5th or 6th time that day, he makes it back to Fullerton where I see him again. Before I approach him, I see another Black man taunting him. Telling him that he too was homeless, and that he should not be outside of Whole Foods begging for money. The other Black brother was telling my homeless friend that he feeds himself and pays for his own bus fare, lastly he was telling him to get up and just do it. From my position all I could see on my friend’s face was sadness as his head hung low covering his sign, gazing at his bootstraps. Not a word, but all I hear was him cursing his broken bootstraps in his head over and over again. But in his hands, my friend was reading a book called “Finding Hope”. I walked up to him and all I could say is “It’s a beautiful day to be reading.”

America functions in the favor of white supremacy and patriarchy by enforcing violent hierarchies within different social constructions like race, class, and gender. My friend does not have the same bootstraps as the European immigrants or any other token person. Intersectionality makes our experiences and the shoes we walk in specifically different. Different as in needing different philosophies and resources other than “pulling yourself up by your bootstraps” and “just do it”. My friend was experiencing invasion and violence from racist and classist officers as well lack of cultural support from another Black man who has been a similar position. My friend is 22 years old, and trapped in a reality of being pushed back on the cold ground every time he attempts to use his agency to find that opportunity America “offers.” He is homeless, he has nowhere to grieve and reflect on these traumatic daily experiences. So when he is sad in public after he just got released from jail, he becomes a target of more humiliation. I do not agree with the reinforcement of the philosophy “pull yourself up by your bootstraps”, it is a violence, it is a crime to say. But the book “Finding Hope”, my friend was midway through. I peeked on a page while he was talking to me about his situation and saw Hebrews 4:15-16 written before a very long passage. After we parted ways, I looked up the verse in my Bible App on my iPhone. “The High Priest of our understands our weaknesses, for he faced all of the same testings we do, yet he did not sin. So let us come boldly to the throne of our gracious God. There we will receive his mercy, and we will find grace to help us when we need it most” Hebrews 4:15-16 NLT. Pursuing African and Black Diaspora studies, I have been exposed to various ideas of love by Black leaders. Martin Luther King Jr. practiced and preached, agape love. In his work, An Experiment in Love, he talks about agape as a love in action and how it manifests from the needs of your neighbor. It is a disinterested love that cannot and will not discriminate between societal definitions of “worthy” and “unworthy” people. To practice agape love is to take courageous lengths to restore our broken communities. I believe in my friend’s liberation from his situation, because I believe in the work that has to be done by myself and others to help him. And when he is no longer homeless it will be because he sought knowledge in the worst of conditions. Then he made connections with people sharing his story and listening to theirs. When that day comes, I do not think either me or him will consider that “pulling himself up by his bootstraps”, because it required humanity to recognize and value his differences to actively deliver him from the violence of homelessness.

Poetry Lounge: Orange Moon

ORANGE MOON

And I found myself.

The utter reflection of who is me.

Ridged insides stand out because

As a species it is only natural to first acknowledge something’s faults

First.

And as a people we only care about one’s intentions.

Do I fear her or is she kind?

Orange moon.

So rare. Or maybe

We don’t watch closely enough.

Goddess, Orange Moon.

My strange queen.

You are hurt, but the illuminate strength of your love

Is magnificent.

All those ridged craters, but

You are still so beautiful.

So different. So you.

In the purple sky you stand.

I found myself through you.

No I am not

No we are not perfect.

What source of energy is?

Yet you are still worthy of love orange moon.

For we will always be above them.  

From Brother to the Night to Loving Black Man

An Essay

Darius Lovehall and Nina Mosely quickly jump into a steamy relationship after exchanging poems, music, photographs, and sex. The movie, Love Jones takes place in the urban city of Chicago in the early 90s. A common theme throughout the movie is lust over love. And from the movie, it seems like it's the Black men rather the Black women who prefer lust over love and vice versa. The miscommunication about this often led to loveless lives. But, even though bell hooks would argue that during this time these Black people were submerged in a consumer culture that greatly encouraged dishonesty, she would also argue that love prevails in Darius and Nina’s relationship as in the last scene of the movie, Darius Lovehall illustrates the Black love practice of honesty as he finally admits in the pouring rain to Nina that after a year of absolutely no contact, he is in love with her.

In the beginning of the film, Darius Lovehall proudly calls himself “brother to the night”, he does not fall in love, but he wants everything to do with sex. He is reducing his capability to love to simply what his sexual organs can do. When he meets Nina Mosely for the first time, we see him allured by her beauty and elegance. He vigorously chases after her, asks for a date and proceeds to spend ample time with her. From the audience’s point, it looks like the beginnings of a loving relationship. But, after Nina tells him that she has some unfinished business in New York with her ex boyfriend, Darius finds himself hurt. To protect his feelings, he lies to Nina claiming he does not care what she does. The audience see Darius actions toward Nina not lining up with his words. This only leads to more confusion in their relationship. In All About Love: New Visions by bell hooks, hooks says “The heart of justice is truth telling, seeing ourselves and the world the way it is rather than the way we want it to be” (p 33). Darius and Nina’s relationships’ downfall was the lack of honest communication. Darius lied and danced around the truth when it came to Nina for months. He only does this to satisfy the pimp identity of “Brother to the night” And when Nina was finally done with his lying, she was gone. And that is when the audience see Darius growing and coming into self realizations about his actions. hooks talks about in her book how men lie early from childhood as a way to spare people’s feelings, mask their own, avoid responsibility and confrontation, and to obtain power over people. She also discusses how consumer culture encourages men telling lies through movies, advertisement, and other forms of media. Men are constantly seeing other men advance and glorified for their manipulation of women, children, and other men! This “characteristic” is consumed as an exertion of manhood, but it is dangerously spreading lovelessness all over the world. In the very last scene after Nina finishes her poem to Darius at Sanctuary and goes outside to catch a cab home when she thinks Darius is not at the club. But, Darius finds her and stops her. In the pouring rain, he confesses his past mistakes and tells Nina for the first time that he is in love with her. hooks also says in a motion toward true love, “To be loving we willingly hear each other’s truth, and most important, we affirm the value of truth telling” (47).  Despite their past verbally abusive encounters, when Nina hears “I love you” for the first time, we see her embrace Darius mutually, not punishing him for any mistake he made in the past.

Darius and Nina are not a perfect couple, but that last conversation in the rain illustrated the Black love practice of honesty that no matter what happened in the past, love can progressively heal anything. And to truly love “we must learn to mix various  ingredients-- care, affection, recognition, respect, commitment, and trust, as well as honest and open communication” (p 5). Because of the consumer culture we live in, Black people are often entering relationships knowing nothing about true love, but they are subconsciously driven away or toward love by what they have seen and how they’ve experienced love at home. Lovelessness because of lack of open and honest communication are our reality, but this film is important, because we see a redemptive, Black love at the end.

Works Cited

Hooks, Bell. All about Love: New Visions. New York: William Morrow, 2000. Print.

Poetry Lounge: Shedding Light

April 2, 2016

11:43 AM 

How do I feel? 

My body is calm-- I am not worried in any sense. 

Chicago weather is inexplicable, for it is truly a subjective experience. 

Currently, I think it is a blizzard. But the Sun keeps popping out in the midst of the snowy gloom. And of all the surprise, I anticipated each revealing. 

For the Sun always makes the most dramatic entrance and exit.

 I feel so one with the Sun on this day. 

As it keeps sneaking in and stealing kisses as my eyes are closed. 

The way Grandma does. Spreading warmth across my forehead. 

Cradling all the battered thoughts consuming my innocent brain. 

That's all we want, but find ourselves to afraid to ask for. 

Neglecting our hands to write the poems and prayers that burn inside us.

Every time we see the Sun, 

We cannot sit on the Sun.

Physically, you will burn. 

Mentally, you cannot fully grasp its science. 

Spiritually, it is blasphemy. 

When we try to possess the Sun, we suffocate and block its radiance, only to burn ourselves in the process. 

You can only celebrate the Sun. Embrace its kisses when they come and be satisfied when they go. 

For it gave you the light in your life. 

Giving you the glow to be the light for someone else. 

John 1:9 The one who is the true light, who gives light to everyone, was coming into the world.(NLT)