Martyrdom...Spare me!

Today the United States' House of Representatives voted on President Obama's stimulus package. Not one Republican Congressman voted for it and it passed anyway! Isn't this the equivalent of falling on a knife for no real reason?Wasting an incredible  show of solidarity on a battle -long lost in the arena of public opinion and further painting oneself into a public relations pickle whilst the President basks in the glory of a 70% approval rate and the good karma of putting forth an effort in the realm of bipartisanship. 

Failures and silent martyrs the lot of them...As I sit here watching CNN, I can not resist the urge to contextualize them in the confines of a conversation I had with a good friend earlier this week.  She lives in southern Africa and works as an upper level assistant to the leader of an advocacy org/ NGO- A man that I might add like most intellectuals is eccentric to say the least. He, she informed me is on a hunger strike in solidarity with the citizens of Zimbabwe which might seem quite sensitive and empathetic if it were an organized effort with others or if any one outside of his office was aware. Perhaps if by his sacrifice a small child in Zim would receive a meal due to the incredible pressure by outside forces- alas none of the above are true. He fancies himself a contemporary Gandhi unfortunately the rest of the world has yet to receive the memo. Thus, this is little more than  an egotistical, self important man playing the martyr....I must appoint him in all my power as a U.S. citizen to an honorary seat in the House...he would fit right into the Republican demagogy and lord knows they could use the extra vote.

Working again

Its been a few weeks since I've created a piece...so this felt good!

 working title :

"Wedding album: Jitters"

3 Dollars & 6 Dimes

If it is at all possible to be a dreamer and a cynic wrapped in one that would in fact be me.  I never owned a pair of rose colored glasses and often wanted to snatch them off of the eyes of family and friends without warning. However, at this moment I find myself at an impass...too many people reaching for the glasses they perceive me to be wearing and actually digging at my eye balls...scratching my natural lens...I'm not bleeding yet but it is, I fear, inevitable.

Yesterday a loving family member offered me a cup...to use to stand outside of the metro station and beg because clearly I am too blind to the fact that I am wasting my time tryin to build up some ridiculous business when I need to go and get a "real job," so that I can eat...

I can't help but thinking that food would taste so bitter.

 

I am not blind to the skepticism swirling around the impetuous manner in which I have co-founded my soon to be nonprofit organization or the fact that I am very young and that although numerically older than me, my business partner is younger because he's a man...and um, well, he's a man. Nevertheless, we have a sound business plan and are achieving small victories everyday. Perhaps our methodology is unconventional but never have I heard it uttered that there is one path to success. What we aren't doing is waiting for a pot of gold to land in our laps! waiting to hit the number! Waiting for someone to hit us with their vehicle so we can sue ( and yes I know plenty of people that are not opposed to this scenario)! 

It seems to me that Black/African American people...WE...as a people are often so wrapped up in the faith of the ridiculous and farfetched.Dreams have to be cloaked in some kind of mystical improbability to be credible. I think its the certainty of knowing that they will most likely never come into fruition which makes them acceptable. Why can't we  fathom of merely stepping outside of the box? owning our own destinies? investing in our birth rights? Our divinely appointed talents? 

 To quote Erykah Badu "I was born with three dollars and six dimes" and I don't know about you but I'm going to invest mine...

Economics and America

Comfort...whipped chocolate icing so thick it weighs the cake down

Indulgence...the taste of dark chocolate layer cake dancing around on your tongue

The cost of comfort and Indulgence...$4.00/Slice (a big thick slice)

The indignity one suffers when you realize you can't afford comfort or indulgence...Priceless

Oh Johnny!

I have never been one to be dogmatically pro-black. I believe that to ascribe to any such movement is to dismiss the nuances and complexities that define "blackness". Okay sometimes you can catch me caught up in a pan africanist thought perhaps even enthralled in the idealism of the theory but overall I understand that it in many ways is far too utopian and one dimensional to ever really subsist in this society. I try to stay a little left of center but I am being pushed and prodded to my socialist roots and pan africanist dreams today. I was really really trying but in my best ghetto speak I must admit that "people always wanna say dumb shit and then be mad when you have to school them"- I plead with you forces that be please stop pushing me.

I was minding my own business -literally this morning when I logged in to my facebook account to check on the Facebook group I set up for More Black Art about More Black ish.. an FB chat message popped on my screen from Johnny...a random kid that attended middle school and a portion of high school with me. He was promoting something or the other and asked me to become a fan of the page- i bartered for him to join our FB group.  He said the name of my organization bothered him and then we started sliding down the slippery slope of a quasi political discussion that I knew I didn't want to have but he kept prodding " More White Art about More White ish would be racist tho rt?" He asked...Of course it would you prick! Mainstream America is white and therefore doesnot need to make such distinctions...the entire pie is theirs we just have a little slice of it and we have to put it in the fridge with a label on it so no one else will eat it! 

 Next thing I knew he was telling me -A BLACK MAN IN AMERICA- was telling me that police brutality is almost always justified. And not only that but it is necessary in order for police to protect and serve the citizens of this country...I threw up a little in my mouth, several times actually because he actually believed what he was saying wholeheartedly. Sean Bell (NYC) was a bad dude otherwise why would he have been at a strip club in the first place he typed with no lol or lmao behind it. He was dead serious and I could feel my blood about to boil as I picked my jaw up off the ground I informed him that the police didnot have the moral or legal power to make such a judgment and that they don't get to decide who lives and dies...my mistake was trying to reason with crazy. This fool responded by saying yes they do, thats their job and all I could think is right that makes sense fuck the courts and the judges and the entire legal system - the police have autonomy...They are judge, jury, and executioner on the street and thats okay because there is a war on "crime" which everyday becomes more and more synonymous with little black boys.  Everytime they show a wanted poster on the news its the same sketch of some ambiguous looking negro...a big nose, big lips, and brown eyes and black hair or a do rag with a different height and weight is that not an amazing truth to anyone else that every black criminal seems to look exactly the same?  

But all of this paled in comparison to his next announcement "you need to relax, we can relax, didn't any one tell you we are on top now?"

I didn't say much other than that 's how we stay exactly where we are my brother...that type of complacency. When did Obama gather up the entire African American/Black population and profess to be the messiah.  Did I not get an invitation? I'm hurt man is it cause i'm a coconut? 

All wrongs are not suddenly righted because "one of us is on top now" or is it? is police brutality somehow justifiable now because the commander and chief is black? are poverty and economic disparities amongst the races instantly erased? I don't know but it is certainly a hard pill to swallow for me.

 Even harder as I was pushed even further into the arms of pro-blackness as my business partner and friend sent me (still reeling from the FB chat) a link to a news article about a bakery in NY - my hometown and one of the most liberal cities/states in the country - that was selling "Drunken Negro Face" cookies. And all the work is done huh Johnny? We can relax?

Of Fearlessness

As a child I stubbornly declared my independence at every waking turn. Fresh out of the womb two months early...I wouldn't be rushed to gain the two and half pounds I needed to meet the five pound  requirement for release. And peer pressure meant little as my twinsister met her quota in a matter of days and I was left to fend for myself in the neonatal ward with family members whispering undertones of possible death as I lazily sipped on hospital issued milk like one savors every sip of an ice cold drink in the sweltering heat of a summer's city day.  At one yr old- fattened up on the truly "coconut" baby food diet of  farina and porridge barely able to balance my own weight on horribly bowed legs, I ran not walked but ran past my parents toward the unknown of a large 747 airplane...forgoing the commonplace parent-toddler separation anxiety laced, tearful parting with not one look back... to Trinidad! I was fearless.

I was sitting in Cramton Auditorioum at Howard University on Monday January 19th 2009, the eve of the United States' 44th presidential inauguration and I heard that word being  bandied about quite a bit at a symposium particularly within the confines of a session called "Refresh Hip Hop." Panelists insisted that Hip-Hop had become a global force through its sheer fearlessness. And here I was  all the while thinking it was the advent of cable tv and the seemingly narcissistic impulse for mainstream western society to impress its norms and mores on the defenseless popular culture of the third world. Not to mention the unbelievable gall and audacity to not only inundate these socities with an never ending media onslaught but to then package it and sell it for higher than market value to gullable children and their poor unprepared parents. Don't get me wrong I loved Biggie more than the next guy - of this I am positive and you couldn't construct a bigger fan of Mos Def and Talib Kweli or Tupac-I mean I did grow up in Brooklyn. I'm just saying when I'm in Capetown or Port of Spain I'm not exactly amped to hear hip-hop over Kwaito or Soca.   Nonetheless, I digress because I thought that the use of this word was extremely telling of so many things for me...Black twenty-something woman entrepreneur in America in the age of its first African American President. 

However, as I dissect this notion of 'Fearlessness ' and its intrinsic value to propelling a culture, a people forward...I am instantly struck by the urge to say Bullshit and I would hope to hell not! Abolition, Civil Rights, Women rights, genocide, the Holocaust...all of these atrocities and battles were pushed forward by fear. The transatlantic slave trade ended because White Americans were scared of being left behind in an antiquated society- Slaves were frightened of living another four hundred years as livestock. The Holocaust was ended because the world feared that if Hitler wasn't stopped he would spread his movement to terrorize  and slaughter many more ethnic groups. The African American civil rights battle was fought and won because black Americans feared that they would perpetually live as a permanent underclass in American society.

Fear is the greatest motivator for change that I could ever imagine. I pray to god that Barack Obama is absolutely terrified that if he messes up there will never be another Black man elected to the office of the president.  And I hope it motivates him to continue his meteoric rise with eloquence and grace.  Fearlessness is best left to children and fools.