Halloween man...effin Halloween.

(click to enlarge)
it took everything in me to say it that nicely.

it's all so new and great until you realize it's just all the same crap over and over and then you drop dead.

at the beginning of the year, i was online looking at people dancing in their own videos and stumbled across a video of three women dancing to a beyonce song i'd not heard before.

i thought the song, Ego, was the usual (theatrical) beyonce crap but what really brought it home for me was the badly shaped afro wigs the dancers were wearing. plus they were doing their thing, working it out for the love of their beyonce.

welllll just today i was reading a blog that had a link to beyonce's "new" video for her song Ego. i wasn't really surprised to see the same video as before with some notable changes (like the fact that the cheap afro wigs were replaces with stylized naturals and...well...boobs and buns).

but the thing that really got me? beyonce's eye make-up. the fact that they gave her a much more almond shaped eye. kinda like the natural eye of the girl in the first video!

nooooo, i'm not trying to say beyonce copied the other girls' video, not at all. i'm just saying i saw the amateur video first then say beyonce's "new" video today. and if the first video was just something produced by the choreographer, fine fine fine.

but WHAT DOES THAT HAVE TO DO WITH THE SHAPE OF BEYONCE'S EYES!!! why is her make-up done to give her a more Asian appearance?

canya help me with this?






and yes dammit, i get the fact that "ego" is a euphemism! you don't have to keep giving up the coochie shot to clue us in!

Look! It's a Witch Parade!!

you can tell they're witches because they're using three different types of font on that sheet.
pure witchery.

you mean we're not even doing Contemporary American Negro right??

the summer before my senior year in high school, i had the opportunity to study music at a prestigious boarding school in massachusetts. this trip not only marked the first time i'd been on an airplane, the first time i'd been out of the state, and the first time i met native americans, it was also the first time i was in a position of not only finding myself a racial minority, but a socio-economic minority as well.

the only way i could go to this school was because i qualified for a scholarship which paid for my tuition, room and board. but i was attending summer session with many, many kids who didn't need anyone but mommy and daddy to write the checks to get their tuition paid.

while there studying violin, i had classes in individual performance, chamber groups, and voice and spent quite a bit of time with the kids who were there for the same reason. We ate together, saw each other all day in the same classes over and over, and performed in recitals and full concerts together. i was feeling pretty cozy with my mostly white and asian cohorts, palling around during breaks in class. and during one of these breaks, i got schooled. and i mean SCHOOLED!

one of my classmates, a cellist with long straight blond hair and hilfiger/lacoste gear was talking about an issue near and dear to her heart and the heart of her sister and mother: apartheid.

now i wasn't stupid, i knew what she was talking about. i'd heard of stephen biko. i'd heard of nelson and winnie mandela! but here's where i was slipping in my pimpin. apparently, that wasn't GOOD ENOUGH.

my classmate looked at me while telling a group of us about an anti-apartheid rally she and her family had attended and asked if I had been participating in such rallies. I said no. and then, i got chided: "YOU don't participate in apartheid rallies? don't YOU care about AFRICA??"

no, i'm not kidding you.

i was truly, seriously taken aback by her statement and at that time i couldn't really get past my reaction of "no this rich white girl did NOT just tell me i'm less black because she cares more about africa than i do!"

oh, yes she did.

and all of this brings me the curious case of Asher Roth. recently Asher, whose music is crap, made the news when he went to Rutgers for god knows what and decided to twat about it on Twatter...

"At Rutgers stirring up a ruckus. Been a day of rest and relaxation, sorry Twitter - hanging out with some nappy headed hoes..."

after getting chopped almost immediately for talking crazy, Asher apologized by stating he was just making fun of Don Imus and was sorry if he offended anyone!

let's follow Asher on the wild and wacky ride he calls logical reasoning:

in order to make fun of Don Imus, Asher decided to repeat that fucked up shit Imus said about the women's basketball team. because by doing that, it's going to cause people to laugh at IMUS.

oh. okay.

Asher has since used his dominant intelligence to shed some light on what exactly is wrong with black rappers today:

"When I dropped [the 'A Milli' freestyle] I thought, 'You guys are always going off about how much money you have. Do you realize what's going on in this world right now,'" Roth said. "All these black rappers - African rappers - talking about how much money they have. 'Do you realize what's going on in Africa right now?' It's just like, 'You guys are disgusting. Talking about billions and billions of dollars you have. And spending it frivolously, when you know, the Motherland is suffering beyond belief right now.'" (Canadian Press)

oh, yes he did. the white kid who hit the charts talking about how much he loves college is calling out black rappers...i mean...African rappers...for acting like life's a party while the MOTHERLAND is suffering.

just in case you're confused...because he can be confusing...dude is not talking about actual, literal, African rappers. no, no! he's calling black american rappers African. as if Baltimore is a township in Mozambique.

and with all this focus on the black/African/rapper problem of enjoyment of material things while the "Motherland" is suffering, why does he not look inside and wonder "why am i talking about how wonderful and carefree my life is in college when my brothers and sisters are suffering without educations and teeth in APPALACHIA" instead of chiding black people for not being more humble in solidarity with the entire continent of Africa, which is suffering, and i mean, suffering greatly.

what is this thing...this thing that causes the children to talk this way? where do they get this insufferable position of authority and knowledge from?

Jay Smooth and Dan Charnas had a talk about it, like to hear it, here it go:



i can only hope that Asher is arrogant enough to google his name everyday and will therefore stumble across this video. if so, i hope it sparks some self awareness. someone has got to stop him before he starts schooling black chicks on why it's a sad expression of self-hatred to relax our hair.

you dizzy yet?

so, yesterday i was reading a blog on the website Jezebel in which one of the writers responded to a lambasting written about the site and it's writers by Linda Hirshman on Salon's new offshoot feminist blog XX.

in Hirshman's piece, she discusses her problem with Jezebel, its impact on its readers, and how the attitudes and behaviors they seem to advocate actually do more harm to the feminist movement than they may realize. one sticking point in particular for Hirshman is the Jezebel writers' stance that a woman who is raped is not obligated to report the crime but yet rail at institutions for not doing more to decrease instances of rape:

"Moe Tkacik was apparently date-raped and says she has had unprotected sex, and Tracie Egan, in her words, 'decided to go home with someone I never would have, had my vision not been impaired by 14 hours of drinking.' Jezebel editor Megan Carpentier was raped and did not report it to the police. ...How can writers who justify not reporting rape criticize the military for not controlling…rape? It’s incoherent."

"Suggest that women report the men who rape them for the sake of future victims, say, or that women should be asked why they stay with the men who abuse them, or urged to leave them, and the Jezebels go ballistic. Judgmental, judgmental!"

Megan wrote for Jezebel in response "Sigh. As many know, today a Slate writer offered that someone assaulted at the age of 17 who didn't report it should never be taken seriously or, really, allowed to write about the subject. What?"

she then goes on to discuss the problematic conclusions Hirshman comes to based on her readings of Jezebel and basically concludes:

"I assume that Hirshman's attack — based solely on my experience with sexual assault and my audacity to suggest that haranguing victims of violence to leave their abusive partners might not be helpful — isn't meant to show the Jezebel audience that I'm not to be trusted to speak about sexual assault in the military or anything else. I assume it is an attempt to shut me up. And as much as she throws the occasional firebomb at Ross Douthat or Chris Matthews, she seems to save her real rhetorical ire for women with opinions different than her. "

i love how smart women duke it out in a tsunami of words instead of razorblades and high heel shoes...

so to sum up: a writer on a blog wrote about writers on another blog, saying they didn't have the right to write about the problem of rape because they'd been raped and didn't even report it.
and the writers of that other blog said "hey, just because we all got raped and didn't report it don't mean we can't talk about the problems of rape! get it right!"

i can dig it....and yet....

via Jezebel, same day, in the post How Hair Affects African American Girls' Self-Esteem:

Taking a cue from Chris Rock's documentary Good Hair, today's Tyra examined how black women — including little girls — feel about their hair, and the (at times painful) lengths they go to alter it.

I have no idea what it's like to have hair that's considered difficult to manage (aside from flatness), but it was easy to empathize with the little girls on this show because, as women, most of us are subjected to the idea that we're not measuring up to certain standards of beauty, whatever they may be. And while I could understand Tyra's outrage over a mother who chemically relaxes her 3-year-old daughter's hair, TyTy's stance on the hair issue was confusing, since she's just about the weaviest person on the planet; in fact, she regularly gives white women weaves on America's Next Top Model.

you still with me? ok, once again from the top:

a writer who blogs about writers on another blog, saying they shouldn't be talking about the problem of rape because those writers were raped and didn't report it is TOTALLY OUT OF POCKET.

but then those same writers write about a women on a tv show who's topic is loving your hair texture, stating she shouldn't really be taken seriously because she wears a weave.

being raped, not reporting it, and then complaining about rape, according to Hirshman, is "incoherent."

having a weave, giving white women weaves, then hosting a show whose topic is hair's impact on african american girls' self esteem, according to Jezebel, is "confusing."

to quote Megan: "what?"

why, that's just plain old hypocrisy, ammiryt?! stop it right now.

just an fyi...erm....just because you see a black woman wearing a weave, it's not an automatic that she's doing it because she hates her own hair texture or believes straighter hair is "good hair." and i certainly don't think it disqualifies her from stating her opinion about what the western standard of beauty is doing to the psyche of young black girls and women in this country.

but we all knew that, right? .........ammiryt?

My Archetype Precedes Me

i went to lunch today with a coworker at an indian restaurant. this is one of our favorite restaurants in our city because the food is fabulous, the decor of the place is really cute, and the price is always right. so as we sit down and continue our conversation, we are joking and laughing about something. the waiter came over and laughed and laughed and laughed as well. then he looked at me and told me "you are very funny."

odd.

i'm pretty sure he didn't understand why what i was saying was funny since it was specific to a topic my coworker and i know about. and he wasn't a party to the conversation, so he couldn't have gathered the meaning by context. and yet, here he stood smiling eagerly in my face telling me i'm very funny.

and this continued throughout lunch. he would come by the table with water refills or to see if we needed anything, he'd make little comments to me about how funny i was if he saw that we were laughing. so very FUNNY!

and it didn't matter who had said the funny thing which caused us both to laugh; he would look at me and tell me i was funny. SO VERY FUNNY!!

during my trip to the restroom, he informed my coworker that she looks JUST LIKE a former neighbor of his....even told her the neighbor's name....and then asked her if that was HER name.

and this is one of the many reasons why some of us are pissed so often: nobody likes to feel like they are a fuckin template. do you see that i can't even go to lunch sometimes without being reminded of my station, based on what someone thinks they know about you because of your race?!

see this type of prejudice is really tricky. i am aware that his intentions were not to offend or make his customer's uncomfortable. he was merely demonstrating that he has accepted certain notions about other people of color as the gospel and was trying to relate to us based on those notions. i am positive that were i to have reacted negatively to what he perceived as compliments, then i would have downshifted from Funny Black Girl to Angry Black Bitch.

and if i'd asked why i was so funny, i would have been Crazy Black Bitch.

but while he was flailing about trying to relate to us, he didn't understand the shift within me caused by his words. because frankly, while i like being a funny black girl, i did not want to be The Funny Black Girl Archetype.

i just wanted some tikka masala, shit!

Tea Baggers taking to the streets April 15th!!

i found this nice little gem earlier today on Crooks and Liars. i had no idea how much fun tea baggers are. there's an extra warm spot in my heart for the dude who, while talking about Obama, almost said "criminal record" rather than "college record."

*sigh*...he's so dreamy.

Do You Know what You Think You Know?

about a year ago, i had a conversation with a friend about the oft-reported stats regarding black women and the chances we have of marrying and having children compared to other women of other races. the stats we discussed, of course, were pretty grim. Yet, my friend in all seriousness said "yeah, but i don't know if i even believe those numbers. who's to say they are accurate?"

whaaaaaat? what is this crazy theory to spout? question STATISTICS????

her statement led to a greater conversation about how the "negro condition" is more usually viewed through a lens of dysfunction rather than positivity and how people just accept the negative information as if it's gospel. this week i was made aware of an amazing example of this phenomenon in action.

how many of us have heard the statement "In the United States, there are more Black Men in Prison than there are In College?" and how many of us have said to ourselves and others "That's a Shame and We MUST Find an Answer to this Problem!"

now what if i told you that that particular "fact" about black men is based on data which was skewed?

what if i told you that, using comparable data to include other variables other than just race, the ratio of black men in college actually overshadows those in prison?

"The numbers in question from the Justice Policy Institute report come from the Bureau of Justice Statistics and the National Center for Education Statistics. The report indicates that there were an estimated 791,600 black men in jail and prison in 2000 and a count of 603,032 in college in 1999. Mr. Morton agrees with the jail and prison number but asserts in his blog that the more reliable U.S. Census Bureau reports that there were 816,000 black men in college in 2000. In the film, he makes comparisons using the same data sources for 2005 and states this number to be 864,000. Furthermore, he argues that it is bad practice to use the entire age range of black males when making these comparisons, because the age range for college-going males is generally 18 to 24, not the 18 to 55 (and up) range of the jail and prison population. Viewed this way, the ratio of black men in college compared with jail and prison is 4-to-1."
- Michael Strambler (Baltimore Sun)

now what i'm not going to do is get into the possible conspiracy theories that could explain how and why the popular "fact" came to be part of our everyday knowledge. but i do find it curious that something as simple as drawing comparisons between two groups which are not exactly alike, something that would get a freshman called to the carpet in an entry level college statistical analysis class, could get past data analysts and peer reviewers.

and i find it sad that most of us accepted that information as fact as soon as we heard it. many of us didn't even bat an eye and thing to ourselves "now what a minute!"

it's caused me to take a second look at many facts i have internalized throughout my life. and it's made me committed to not just accepting negative information as unequivocal fact just because it's supported by statistical data which may or may not have been manipulated to support the fact!

i'm not saying i'm going to turn into a homeless, deranged conspiracy theorist. i'm just saying: i'm gonna look a little bit deeper from here on out. and i invite you to do the same.

oh, come ON!

caption say "let the kids build a better world."

boca flaca say "...what the fuck is he hiding in his other hand?!"

i got no problem with interracial dating but giiirrrrl, you went too damn far THIS time!

one of these things is not like the others

i took my girls out to visit with two friends this afternoon to enjoy the warm weather and relax a bit. during the visit, one of my friends took Trixie with her to an ice cream parlor while i allowed Dixie the opportunity to walk around and show everyone her pretty face.

when i made my way back to our table with her, a man came over and said "excuse me. that baby is so pretty. she is really really pretty! what's her nationality?"

to which i responded "she's american." because i mean, really? nationality? what the fuck?

but instead of backing off, he pressed on: "no, i mean i know that." and then, while looking at my friend who is biracial, he asked her another question to which she responded "those aren't my kids. they are her kids."

he looked back at me, made this face:

:O

and said "they're YOUR kids?? REALLY?!"

the only thing missing from his response was the follow-up question of "now, how in the hell did your black ass do that?"

i recently read a book called Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together, in which Dr. Beverly Tatus discussed how race is treated as a topic and social construct in our society. In one section of the book, she recounts how her then 3 year old son asked her why a little girl in his pre-school class "didn't match" her mother. Dr. Tatum gave her son a thoughtful answer to why the child, clearly biracial, looked different than her mother. i was really impressed with how, rather than shy away from the issue of race and appearance, she met the topic head-on and didn't give him the impression that talking about race and something that must be avoided or whispered about.

but the idea that I'M that mother and my children and i are going to be answering these questions makes me feel weary.

so during the interaction, i didn't clock out, go crazy, or get mean or angry. i was just taken aback by the assumption that was made based on my appearance and that of my kids as well as what he amazed response really meant in regards to his notions of race and color.

i'm sure this is only the beginning of the many, many questions yet to come. should be fun...