The other day I had a conversation with a young woman. We grew up together in the same church. So we know each other. But we don’t know each other. She is a recent college grad, wants to pursue a Masters in Public Policy and a PhD and then probably teach on the university level. Coolness. And she is one of those let me read and learn everything about Black folk, let’s talk about Black folk & they issues, and politics and poverty and classism, quoting Pedagody of the Oppressed type people. Now, there’s nothing wrong that. As I myself have engaged in a ‘what Black people need to do now’ convo from time to time. And I be reading and shyt, so I I can "quote" too.
But as we were talking, we got on the subject of Dave Chappelle. She LOVES him. I like Dave Chappelle like the next person, but I don’t think everything he does is the hotness. And then we get on Aaron Macgruder. She LOVES him. And I read the Boondocks, watched the show, but uh, sometimes Aaron be too much for me. And then I say, “I don’t like when Black people all the time be talking that Black shit.” Ok. I know right there I sound like a crazy Black conservative who can't speak English. But stay with me.
“How so,” she asks.
“I just mean, Black folk who are mad all the time. At erythang. BET. Al Sharpton. Bob Johnson. Condoleeza Rice. Baby mamas. Bill Cosby. The white man. Fried chicken and watermelons. The racist, white, media. Some shyt ain’t changing. Al Sharpton ain’t going nowhere. You can’t stop him from talking that mess or permin his hair, so you should probably just let it go. It might make your pressure go down.”
And then she just looked at me. Curiously. Like she was trying to figure me out. Was I a bougie, educated, out of touch, Negro who wasn’t down for the cause? Mayhap. Until I mentioned that my mother was a Black Panther in Chicago. And since we’ve already established that she loves all things Black, she went crazy.
“Like for real?”
“Yes.”
“Like she knew Fred Hampton?”
“Yes.”
“What did she do with them?”
“Um the breakfast programs, health clinics, go to meetings. Told the men that these ho’s they were sleeping with were infiltrating the party and they needed to watch they back.”
“Did she know Angela Davis? Did she know Huey Newton? Did she carry a gun?”
“Uh… Yeah. I don’t know alladat. You may have to ask her.”
“Oh I will. Believe me. I can’t believe that about your mom. I never would have guessed.”
That’s right. You never would have guessed. Because 40 years later, my mom is a woman who has birthed two kids, had several careers, received a PhD, is prominent in the church. She’s not the typical old head revolutionary with salt and peppa locs down to her shoulders, wearing pseudo African garb, calling everyone brotha and sista, spouting conspiracy theories to anyone who will listen. But she loves her some Gil Scott Heron. And she wore her black for the Jena 6. And if the revolution came tomorrow, she’d be right up front, ready to fight and die for the cause.
Last night as I talked to my mother, because ol’ girl did grill her yesterday about her old days w/ the party. I learned that she did know Angela Davis and the Cleavers and Bobby Rush. And that she was incredibly active, more than I ever really knew. And that she told ol’ girl that the issue was that whenever the down trodden try to rise, the system is always going to fight against it. Because they make too much money off keeping the down trodden, down. And trodden. Power to the people mama. And then she said, “And I told her look at Bobby Rush. He used to fight against the system. And now he’s working in the system. Trying to do what he can. Because that was a lifetime ago. And people change.”
Yes they do. And yet some of them stays the same. My mama wasn’t a hardcore revolutionary when we were coming up, but she made her beliefs known. We didn’t go to Afrocentric schools. And we didn’t call our daddy Baba. And we didn’t find racism in everything. But we knew we were Black. And we knew what that meant in America. To other people. And we knew that while our parents had made it, we still had family members who hadn’t. Still went down South every summer as a reminder of where we came from.
And so sometimes I shake my head at some foolishness that is up for discussion – that dumb shyt that be bothering us, annoying us, frustrating us to no end, making us wanna fight. Ignoring the bigger issues and focusing on the stupid stuff. And I don’t feel the need to debate every, single, minute, thing that happens in the Black community. Or prove my downness. Or hear Cornell West, Michael Eric Dyson, n'em speak everytime they come to the city. I got my "Blackness" down. I get it from my mama.
That's my time y'all! Happy Rum Punch Friday!
Showing posts with label being black. Show all posts
Showing posts with label being black. Show all posts
Friday, April 24, 2009
Friday, March 13, 2009
Life in Black and White
Last month, in celebration of Black History Month, Amaretto and I headed to AFI Theatre and saw a fabulous film, titled Nothing but a Man. We went in with very low expectations, and come out in awe – realizing that we had witnessed a cinematic jewel.
Filmed in 1964 and set in a small town in Alabama, the story followed a Black man trying to find his manhood, his sense of place in the segregated South. He started off working on the railroads, then fell in love with the daughter of a pastor (she taught at the local Colored school). During their courtship, he revealed that he had a son living somewhere in Birmingham. She being the woman that she is, said, “you need to see your son.” And so finally he sees his son, only to learn that baby mama had married someone else and left the child to be raised by a neighbor. He leaves the son where he is, in a dilapidated building, only to go find his own father, who doesn’t even know or recognize him. This gives us a glimpse, a little understanding of the beginning of the reality of the single parent home that too many Black children find themselves in today.
He marries the teacher, has to quit the railroad job, takes a job at the sawmill, mentions to the Black folk that maybe they should try to stick together – that’s union talk – so he is fired. Never willing to cow tow to the white man, he is constantly battling them, trying to maintain as much pride as possible. Trying to just be a man – love his wife, provide for their unborn child, make a home for them, and be respected by society. He leaves his wife in search for something else, his father dies, he realizes he knows nothing about him, goes to get his son and brings him home. It was a quiet, dramatic, powerful film, just totally beyond words.
Like seriously, this film needs to be played in classrooms around America, so that children can truly understand what racism and segregation were like. It’s one thing to see people getting beaten by clubs or sprayed with hoses, creating a dramatic effect. But imagine seeing what segregation can do on a day-to-day basis. To realize that for white folks hate and discrimination went with their morning coffee. To understand living in fear, because in reality your life was not your own. It could be taken away or ruined on a whim. Because you didn’t laugh at the white man’s “joke”. Or you didn’t entertain him. Or you looked at his woman wrong. Or just because you were a Black man breathing air.
If more people saw a movie like this, maybe they would understand what Obama’s election truly means to Black folks of a certain age. Maybe they would understand that Black people can’t simply “get over it,” because the feeling of being less than, of being not good enough, of felling and being treated “unequal” can permeate past one’s bones, into one’s marrow, nestle deep inside one’s soul, get all up in one’s psyche, mutate into a DNA gene and travel from generation to generation.
I could go on, and on and on about the film because it was just that good. So good that it made you wonder, “how come we don’t have movies like these anymore?” This is not to knock Mr. Tyler Perry and the Madea money making machine, but this is to say that we need some more depth and range in our films.
But then as I researched the movie I learned that the film was produced by Whites (not surprising), but also written by Whites. Also, not surprising for that era. But what I do find interesting, and maybe this is because Caucasian artists have more license to do so, is that the movie was a real story – with developed characters, a real plot, chracters who seemed genuine, not stereotypes, but just real, everyday people, trying to make a living and create a life. And isn’t that what art is supposed to do? Hold a mirror up to society and then try to understand and interpret it all?
I recently got a call from an aspiring filmmaker/producer who needed help with a script. It seems that the whites who were writing lines for Black people, had them speaking bad English, using crazy slang, cussing up a storm, and she said to me, “Can you just make the Black people sound, you know, normal?” But of course. Because we are normal. Regular. We do everyday shyt. We know about subject-verb conjugation. We might do things with a different kind of swagger. But for real, we’re just trying to live like the rest, cause we too are nothing but people.
That’s my time y’all! Happy Rum Punch Friday!
Filmed in 1964 and set in a small town in Alabama, the story followed a Black man trying to find his manhood, his sense of place in the segregated South. He started off working on the railroads, then fell in love with the daughter of a pastor (she taught at the local Colored school). During their courtship, he revealed that he had a son living somewhere in Birmingham. She being the woman that she is, said, “you need to see your son.” And so finally he sees his son, only to learn that baby mama had married someone else and left the child to be raised by a neighbor. He leaves the son where he is, in a dilapidated building, only to go find his own father, who doesn’t even know or recognize him. This gives us a glimpse, a little understanding of the beginning of the reality of the single parent home that too many Black children find themselves in today.
He marries the teacher, has to quit the railroad job, takes a job at the sawmill, mentions to the Black folk that maybe they should try to stick together – that’s union talk – so he is fired. Never willing to cow tow to the white man, he is constantly battling them, trying to maintain as much pride as possible. Trying to just be a man – love his wife, provide for their unborn child, make a home for them, and be respected by society. He leaves his wife in search for something else, his father dies, he realizes he knows nothing about him, goes to get his son and brings him home. It was a quiet, dramatic, powerful film, just totally beyond words.
Like seriously, this film needs to be played in classrooms around America, so that children can truly understand what racism and segregation were like. It’s one thing to see people getting beaten by clubs or sprayed with hoses, creating a dramatic effect. But imagine seeing what segregation can do on a day-to-day basis. To realize that for white folks hate and discrimination went with their morning coffee. To understand living in fear, because in reality your life was not your own. It could be taken away or ruined on a whim. Because you didn’t laugh at the white man’s “joke”. Or you didn’t entertain him. Or you looked at his woman wrong. Or just because you were a Black man breathing air.
If more people saw a movie like this, maybe they would understand what Obama’s election truly means to Black folks of a certain age. Maybe they would understand that Black people can’t simply “get over it,” because the feeling of being less than, of being not good enough, of felling and being treated “unequal” can permeate past one’s bones, into one’s marrow, nestle deep inside one’s soul, get all up in one’s psyche, mutate into a DNA gene and travel from generation to generation.
I could go on, and on and on about the film because it was just that good. So good that it made you wonder, “how come we don’t have movies like these anymore?” This is not to knock Mr. Tyler Perry and the Madea money making machine, but this is to say that we need some more depth and range in our films.
But then as I researched the movie I learned that the film was produced by Whites (not surprising), but also written by Whites. Also, not surprising for that era. But what I do find interesting, and maybe this is because Caucasian artists have more license to do so, is that the movie was a real story – with developed characters, a real plot, chracters who seemed genuine, not stereotypes, but just real, everyday people, trying to make a living and create a life. And isn’t that what art is supposed to do? Hold a mirror up to society and then try to understand and interpret it all?
I recently got a call from an aspiring filmmaker/producer who needed help with a script. It seems that the whites who were writing lines for Black people, had them speaking bad English, using crazy slang, cussing up a storm, and she said to me, “Can you just make the Black people sound, you know, normal?” But of course. Because we are normal. Regular. We do everyday shyt. We know about subject-verb conjugation. We might do things with a different kind of swagger. But for real, we’re just trying to live like the rest, cause we too are nothing but people.
That’s my time y’all! Happy Rum Punch Friday!
Friday, February 27, 2009
A Different Black List
Tomorrow marks the end of Black History Month and it has been asked, if in this post racial, Obama world, there is even a need for Black History Month. I mean we finally got us a Black President, therefore us coloreds are no longer marginalized.
If you’re a frequent reader of the 5 Spot, then you can probably guess where I stand on this issue. I’m all for Black History Month. Like totally all for it. And while I know that we should teach our kids, shit all kids, Black History, 365, I like the notion that for a moment, (even if it’s forced or required or seems like a chore), that the country has to stop and recognize and honor and reflect on the contributions of black people not just to this country, but to the world.
But maybe we need a different kind of Black History Month. I have gotten hooked on HBO’s The Black List. And at the beginning of the series, they said they wanted to take something seemingly negative - being black listed and turn it into something positive. And they have indeed done so.
Volume One aired last year and Volume Two aired last night. The Black List is a compilation of interviews featuring famous, well known, and under the radar but still doin the damned thing, “Black folk” sharing their stories. Featured are: actresses, writers, activists, nurses, preachers. People you’ve heard of. And people you probably never knew, but who are impacting the community in a positive way. Some of those interviewed include: Toni Morrison, Susan Lori Parks, Chris Rock, T.D. Jakes, Bill T. Jones, Richard Parsons, Maya Rudolph, the list is endless.
In some interviews the issue of race is prominently discussed. In other interviews the person provides his/her personal story of struggle or triumph - how they made it over. In other interviews the person discusses an aspect of their job or career and what they have done for th communit. Every story is different. Unique. Its own.
But collectively, you get a sense of what it might mean to be Black in America. And that it’s different for everybody. And yet there are recurring themes. The importance church played in so many people (especially the older folks) lives and that maybe that’s a crucial thing that’s missing in this generation. The importance of perseverance and endurance when trying to reach a goal. How tight the Black community used to be and what that meant to people growing up in that era - the notion that you could do anything, be anybody. How to stay true to yourself and live the best life for you.
I love watching these stories, because it makes me think that everyone has a story. And that Black History Month can be more than Rosa Parks and Dr. King, it can be stories about: an older Black man, native Washingtonian who started walking tours of famous U Street, or a mama down the block who was also a Freedom Rider, or a grandmomma who went against convention and defined her own destiny, or an uncle who was at the March on Washington, or the first cousin in the family to graduate from college setting a standard and hopefully sparking a trend.
And so as Black History Month comes to a close, I leave you with some clips of the program! Catch it on HBO On Demand if you can and enjoy!
That’s my time y’all! Happy Rum Punch Friday!
If you’re a frequent reader of the 5 Spot, then you can probably guess where I stand on this issue. I’m all for Black History Month. Like totally all for it. And while I know that we should teach our kids, shit all kids, Black History, 365, I like the notion that for a moment, (even if it’s forced or required or seems like a chore), that the country has to stop and recognize and honor and reflect on the contributions of black people not just to this country, but to the world.
But maybe we need a different kind of Black History Month. I have gotten hooked on HBO’s The Black List. And at the beginning of the series, they said they wanted to take something seemingly negative - being black listed and turn it into something positive. And they have indeed done so.
Volume One aired last year and Volume Two aired last night. The Black List is a compilation of interviews featuring famous, well known, and under the radar but still doin the damned thing, “Black folk” sharing their stories. Featured are: actresses, writers, activists, nurses, preachers. People you’ve heard of. And people you probably never knew, but who are impacting the community in a positive way. Some of those interviewed include: Toni Morrison, Susan Lori Parks, Chris Rock, T.D. Jakes, Bill T. Jones, Richard Parsons, Maya Rudolph, the list is endless.
In some interviews the issue of race is prominently discussed. In other interviews the person provides his/her personal story of struggle or triumph - how they made it over. In other interviews the person discusses an aspect of their job or career and what they have done for th communit. Every story is different. Unique. Its own.
But collectively, you get a sense of what it might mean to be Black in America. And that it’s different for everybody. And yet there are recurring themes. The importance church played in so many people (especially the older folks) lives and that maybe that’s a crucial thing that’s missing in this generation. The importance of perseverance and endurance when trying to reach a goal. How tight the Black community used to be and what that meant to people growing up in that era - the notion that you could do anything, be anybody. How to stay true to yourself and live the best life for you.
I love watching these stories, because it makes me think that everyone has a story. And that Black History Month can be more than Rosa Parks and Dr. King, it can be stories about: an older Black man, native Washingtonian who started walking tours of famous U Street, or a mama down the block who was also a Freedom Rider, or a grandmomma who went against convention and defined her own destiny, or an uncle who was at the March on Washington, or the first cousin in the family to graduate from college setting a standard and hopefully sparking a trend.
And so as Black History Month comes to a close, I leave you with some clips of the program! Catch it on HBO On Demand if you can and enjoy!
That’s my time y’all! Happy Rum Punch Friday!
Thursday, February 5, 2009
saturday school
a few weeks ago I was chatting with rum punch about what it was like growing up in the south and how I wondered if my as yet unborn youngins would have the same experience. heck will my as yet unmet huzband have the same experience. having attended THE hbcu for black women, i've learned that black folks come in all kinds of varieties depending on where they or they people hail from: west indian, african, west coast, and the urrreaaa. and while at a majority white grad school, i encountered time and again black folks who had no idea about my experience growing up in the south. no clue about what it meant for me to know only that my peoples came from st. helena's island south cakalak and be unable to trace my heritage no further back.
so then i got to thinkin' dammit i want my kids to KNOW! cause what if i settle back in the northeast with my future family and my kids don't grow up in the south. or what if my husband doesn't share my story altho he might be "black" like me. what if he's second generation real african american or what if he's british black or grew up in laid back cali. how will i make sure that my kids will laugh when auntie rum punch wants to tell them about the world and the way things RRRRRRR.....dit dit dit dit!
every saturday morning i'm wakin' my kids up bright and early for a lil lesson.
The Arts
Pedagogy of the oppressed
the autobiography of malcolm x
the 23rd psalm and reciting it before school every morning
Attending a Black college homecoming (preferably the Marching 100)
Harold Melvin and the Bluenotes
The Elements
Learning the bus stop
Sparkle
The wiz
Five heartbeats
Boys in the hood
Amistad
Rosewood
School daze
Different world
Cosby show
Roots
Queen
the color purple
Life Skills Training
Cornrows with beads on the end
killing a flying cockroaches
Vacation bible school
Easter speeches
Walking in the mlk parade
Seeing a Klan robe up close and personal
Getting baptized in that secret compartment under the pulpit
Learning how put the needle on the record player
How to identify the nearest exit in .3 seconds when folks start runnin
how to play spades and how not to renig
Watchnight and candlelight communion
Singing in the junior choir with them hot robes
Going to Sunday school
Staying at Grandmama house for at least a weekend with no cable and no air conditioning
How to open and eat blue crabs with no utensils and no help from ya mama nem
Knowing what "mamanem" means
How to hit the floor when folks start shooting
Field Trips
Martin Luther the King Junior historic site
Bainbridge Georgia
Memphis tenn
st Helena's island
Family reunions
Cooking Class
Fish fry
oyster roast
low country boil
making a thrill
waffle house after the club
for my folks who were raised in the south or spent some quality time there, what would you add?
so then i got to thinkin' dammit i want my kids to KNOW! cause what if i settle back in the northeast with my future family and my kids don't grow up in the south. or what if my husband doesn't share my story altho he might be "black" like me. what if he's second generation real african american or what if he's british black or grew up in laid back cali. how will i make sure that my kids will laugh when auntie rum punch wants to tell them about the world and the way things RRRRRRR.....dit dit dit dit!
every saturday morning i'm wakin' my kids up bright and early for a lil lesson.
The Arts
Pedagogy of the oppressed
the autobiography of malcolm x
the 23rd psalm and reciting it before school every morning
Attending a Black college homecoming (preferably the Marching 100)
Harold Melvin and the Bluenotes
The Elements
Learning the bus stop
Sparkle
The wiz
Five heartbeats
Boys in the hood
Amistad
Rosewood
School daze
Different world
Cosby show
Roots
Queen
the color purple
Life Skills Training
Cornrows with beads on the end
killing a flying cockroaches
Vacation bible school
Easter speeches
Walking in the mlk parade
Seeing a Klan robe up close and personal
Getting baptized in that secret compartment under the pulpit
Learning how put the needle on the record player
How to identify the nearest exit in .3 seconds when folks start runnin
how to play spades and how not to renig
Watchnight and candlelight communion
Singing in the junior choir with them hot robes
Going to Sunday school
Staying at Grandmama house for at least a weekend with no cable and no air conditioning
How to open and eat blue crabs with no utensils and no help from ya mama nem
Knowing what "mamanem" means
How to hit the floor when folks start shooting
Field Trips
Martin Luther the King Junior historic site
Bainbridge Georgia
Memphis tenn
st Helena's island
Family reunions
Cooking Class
Fish fry
oyster roast
low country boil
making a thrill
waffle house after the club
for my folks who were raised in the south or spent some quality time there, what would you add?
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