Barack Obama’s “dwindling sex appeal”: the penis and the POTUS

Two years and some change (or, depending on who you ask, nearly three years and NO change) into his presidency, Barack Obama’s policies have upset and disappointed me. I had high hopes for a President who had spent so much of his youth abroad, who was brilliant and refined, an elegant and unapologetic intellectual. In spite of Obama’s initially robust and repeated promises,  my government is still heavily embroiled in simultaneous wars for profit in the Middle East and only recently began military pull-out in Iraq. Military drone strikes – part of the increasingly nebulous Bush Administration legacy dubbed the”War on Terror”  – continue in Pakistan, killing civilians and allies. Guantanamo Bay is still open, and doesn’t appear to show any serious signs of closing, either.

I have watched the president I helped vote into office soft-pedal domestic issues like increased border security, tighter immigration restraints, and basic social services for undocumented immigrants, all in the name of reaching out to an ever-obstinant group of conservatives.  A group who had decided in November 2008 that he could do no right, and stood aside as their supporters proclaimed Obama a chimera of a bogeyman: closet socialist, fascist, and a Nazi. I have watched blatant and arguably racist acts of disrespect aimed at Obama take place on the Congressional floor.  I have watched as Sarah Palin stepped down early from her governance post in the midst of a national economic crisis, and trotted around the country with the Tea Partiers,  openly admonishing the President to “do your job.” I have watched with frustration and growing anger as Obama, seemingly in the name of diplomacy and “getting along”, pandered to folks who didn’t vote for him the first time around, and absolutely will not be doing so in 2012.   I know what it is to feel at least a little let down by the President, a man whose mind I so admire. Simply put, I voted for his brain. (Want more? Sure, ya do! Go here and read the rest.)

That is SO not post-racial!

You may have heard of Bethany Storro, the White woman in Washington State who, in August, claimed that she was attacked by an unidentified Black woman “with an athletic build” who threw acid in her face.  In spite of serious holes in Storro’s account of the incident (just for starters,  her eyes were protected by sunglasses that she was wearing at night) this story made national headlines.  While police searched for a suspect, sympathy cards came flooding in from all over the country to the hospital where Storro lay recuperating from her injuries. 

 This week, Storro confessed that she made the whole thing up, and that her injuries are self-inflicted. The Black female assailant everyone’s been looking for?  Completely fabricated.

Unbalanced White criminals blaming fictional Black perpetrators for offenses they have committed is (regrettably)nothing new. Susan Smith did it in 1994, and Charles Stuart did it in 1989…the list goes on and on. What seems to be a relatively new twist on everybody’s favorite go-to lynch mob meme is the addition of self-inflicted injuries to the roster.  Remember Ashley Todd, the McCain supporter who in 2008 claimed that she was robbed at knifepoint by a Black assailant who carved a “B” (for Barack) on her face?

Oh, and then there’s Sergeant Robert Ralston, the Philadelphia cop who shot himself and blamed it on a Black man with cornrows.  

Black men with any manner of hair were stopped and questioned by police in the Overton section of Philadelphia for about a week after the incident. Fortunately, no arrests appear to have been made in relation to the falsified report, but the potential for harm was substantial.  I mean, just imagine something like this happening with the NYPD! Oh, wait.

What fascinates me about all this is that the key to making these offenses plausible has been the addition of an imaginary Black offender. The perpetual  troping of Black people as violent and criminal (among other things) creates a myth of  constant potential White victimhood, and the more damaging and sinister countermyth of the necessity of unrelenting vigilance against Black criminality.  What troubles me more is that some White people are willing to actually invent a crime in order to have a Black person to blame it on.  Ralston, Smith and Stuart dumped their crimes at the doorstep of unidentified Black offenders to throw the police off their guilty trails. Todd and Storro made shit up with the specific intention of  vilifying Black people.  Ya know, because we don’t have it hard enough as it is. SIGH.

As saddened and outraged as I am about this, I’m not surprised. There’s bound to be at least one more case like this before the year’s out. World, get better.

I guess you had to be there.

(Before you read this, please read my friend Joseph’s powerful recollection of that day and all that has happened around it since. It’s really just amazing.)

New York City, November 16, 2001. I was walking from the Astor Place stop on the 6 train, on my way to dinner with  one of my oldest friends from Florida and her serious boyfriend – whom, she’d confided, she was positive was THE One. The gift bag I held swung enthusiastically from the crook of my elbow as I walked. In it, one of my most prized possessions: an exquisite mask, purchased three years earlier at the Artisan’s Market in Dakar, Senegal. I loved the mask, but it made a wonderful gift,  and it was small sacrifice for a friend I hadn’t seen in years.

The freezing air that stung my bare face and hands carried the surprising but unmistakable bite of winter. I shivered and pulled my stylishly useless military coat’s flaps closer to my chest, thankful that I’d at least had the sense to wear a turtleneck. The sound of my own heels hitting the pavement bounced off the walls eerily, unmuffled by traffic and street noise. On a Friday night in a neighborhood packed with bars, clubs, restaurants and shops, the streets were deserted. I looked behind me towards Union Square, where I could see the lights of the theater where I’d had my very first New York kiss.  And further south on Lafayette, the body art and piercing shop where I’d gotten my tattoo, and the coffee shop where my friends had toasted my courage with a cup of chai right after. I knew this place, had walked its streets in every season, at every hour, and in every degree and brand of inebriation. I even knew the restaurant she’d chosen, a popular Texican with forgettable food, weak drinks and insulting price tags.  The giant neon sombrero lured them in, I thought.

I knew this quarter. Before It Happened, this chunk of Manhattan had been my weekend stomping ground. Before It Happened, on a weekend night I couldn’t hear myself think over the background noise: blaring car horns, buses ambling clumsily past, women like myself in groups clad all in black and laughing, angry and joyous shouting, the inevitable crying baby. The silence hanging around me was funerary in its weight, not merely the absence of sound, but its erasure, like a muted scream.  Like the dust that rained down when It Happened, that awful September snow, the silence  covered everything, cloaking all it touched in sorrow.  The stunned hush that followed that sudden obliteration. I could feel my city grieving as she held Herself, and struggled to hold Herself together. No, I decided, sighing deeply as I passed a third lone  individual at the restaurant entrance. No, it was too much. I would not ask Her to smile for me.

My friend and her guy were waiting for me at the bar when I arrived. In a flurry of high-pitched hellos, tight hugs, and exchanged gifts, we reconnected while her boyfriend found someone to seat us all. At the table, we  sipped flyweight margaritas and caught superficially up.  Why yes, I did like my new job and apartment, living and working in the Bronx was kinda cool.  Well, they’d been together for eleven months and weren’t sick of each other yet. No, it didn’t work out with that guy from work. No, they were going to spend Christmas with his family this year. Yes, I missed Florida sometimes. Yes, they were having a wonderful time here.  The cadence of our banter fell into its familiar, girlhood rhythms. A comfortable glow had shaken my months of melancholy loose.

“So,” I asked them, smiling at their entwined hands on the table’s top, “what did you guys do today?”

“Well,” she replied, her smile mirroring my own, “we went to see the towers.”  I blinked, nonplussed. I didn’t know what to say.  Surely, this wasn’t my friend, who had lived through the devastation wrought by hurricanes her whole life and hated tourists who came to gawk at the horror and return to the safety of their own lives. Surely this wasn’t the compassionate woman who in high school had argued brilliantly and relentlessly with more than one misguided teenaged conservative about social justice.  This woman, easily one of the finest people I know, whose mother is like my own, who my mother loves like her own, and who has known me since before I had breasts, had not done that. The icy beginnings of dread and outrage materializing in my guts confirmed grimly that I had, indeed, heard her right. 

“You…I…you guys went…what? Why?…”  I stammered. She nodded, still smiling. Her boyfriend piped up: “Yeah, and you wouldn’t believe the lines!”

“No, I don’t guess that I would,” I murmured,  lifting my glass to my lips and draining it. The dread turned to disgust and mingled with the outrage. I made a study of studying the menu. On the other side of the table, in an exceptional display of coupled oblivion, the two of them chattered merrily away, giving me details I never needed.

“It was a good thing we bundled up, it was freezing down there. You know, it’s right near the water, so there’s all that wind. It’s just so odd because it’s never this cold here in November!”  my friend said.

“Yes, it has been an extraordinary year,” I replied, dazed.

Her boyfriend nodded, and held out his hands for my inspection. I peered down at his chapped, red knuckles. ”I don’t like gloves, and we were in line for like, three hours, so I was dying!”  You were dying? I thought nastily. Please. You earned those knuckles. My eyes shifted to the festive bag with the mask sitting in an empty chair. I very much wanted it back.

My friend leaned in, whispering, “It’s still burning, you know. The rubble? Some of it’s still on fire. Did you know that?” Yes, I knew that.  One of my roommate’s siblings, a paramedic who’d assisted with rescue eff0rts, had sadly verified this.  Another friend who worked within walking distance of the site directed tourists looking for it thusly: “The Trade Center? Oh, you mean ‘the smoking hole of death’? Follow your nose. Yeah.” Our server came. I placed my order woodenly, praying that the server hadn’t overheard this discussion and was planning to spit in our food.  Sipping my second margarita, I desperately tried to think of polite ways out of this excruciating conversation.

“Have you been down there?” the boyfriend asked me.  Sweet, merciful God. I took a long, slow swallow of my drink before I answered.

“No,” I replied flatly. “I have not been down there. This is as far downtown as I’ve been since It Happened.   I have absolutely no desire to go down there. But I guess you had to be here to get that”  And you weren’t, I thought, but didn’t say. The sentiment hung in the air just the same. Suddenly, they were the ones with more information than they’d ever needed. It made them uncomfortable, I noted, smiling darkly to myself.

But they needed to be. Why shouldn’t they be? Their touristy lack of sensitivity was salt in a deep and constantly worried wound. Fear and stress, already a part of an urban dweller’s life, had increased a hundredfold when It Happened.  After It Happened,  I avoided the trains, tensing up whenever I had to ride south into Manhattan,  unsettled at seeing my anxiety mirrored in the faces of fellow riders. After It Happened, I stopped bringing my Discman on the train with me, lest I miss important announcements or instructions. After It Happened, I didn’t see the laughing face of the Syrian coffee vendor I visited every morning again until that December. After It Happened, I’d watched with mute helplessness as a woman sitting across from me on the D train panicked when we stopped in the tunnel, weeping because she said she felt like It was Happening again every single day.

The boyfriend shifted in his chair, splotchy color staining his face and neck. At some point it had sunken in that he wasn’t making the best impression on someone’s whose opinion mattered. “I’m sorry,” he said earnestly. “It can’t be easy, living here now.” My friend smiled at him reassuringly, then looked at me.  I sighed inwardly, and took the proffered olive branch.

“Well, a hard city just got harder. But feel free to inject some money into the local economy!” I said, stretching my lips back and showing my teeth and hoping it passed as a smile. It did: the two of them laughed and visibly relaxed in that way that people who didn’t live in New York in November 2001 could. With the conversation ball in my court, I asked if they’d caught any shows this time around, and the awkwardness was waved away.

On the way home that evening, I thought deep and long about spectator’s grief. The September 11th attacks were acts of terror. They had worked. I was terrified. Everyone I knew and loved was terrified. My whole city was fucking terrified. My friend, her boyfriend, and the rest of the world, on the other hand, were entertained. My own September 11th story, blessedly uneventful and comparatively drama-free, has drawn looks of disappointment from people outside of the city. I’m just glad that I’m here to tell it.

For many, the horror of that day was never quite three-dimensional, so the reluctance on the part of some of us to relive it in even the smallest of ways is baffling.  Five years after It Happened, I got a job on Wall Street, where I was stopped at least once a month by someone asking for directions to Ground Zero. (I’d put on a big friendly smile and point them in the direction of South Street Seaport.) The morning before It Happened, I’d sat down with my roommate for our morning coffee, singing out, “Who doesn’t want to go to work todaaaaay?” We’d both raised our hands, classroom-style, giggling. I never uttered that sentence aloud again. The outfit I was going to wear that day was removed, washed, folded, put away in a bag for charity. I knew I’d never wear it again. The saddest part about all of this is that it only sounds neurotic and superstitious if you weren’t there, in that nightmare of a day that we couldn’t wake up from, when It Happened.

The orgy of politicized grieving around September 11th is something that I naively never thought would come to pass. I am too disgusted at this point to really comment about it, but it seems to me that the people who have the most to say about it all didn’t lose a GOTdambed thing when It Happened. I see a lot of people coming in to protest the “Ground Zero Mosque,”  on buses and motorcoaches reeking of Tea Party politicking.  I see skyrocketing rates of violence aimed at South Asians, Arabs, Muslims or people who look like they might be any of those things. I see my country becoming hopelessly racist, xenophobic and reactionary,  commandeered by fearmongerers who claim that “taking America back”  means taking America backwards.

And once again, I don’t know what to say.

A Dream Deformed: Glenn Beck marches on Washington

   

 Saturday, August 28, 2010 was an extraordinary day here in the United States.  The date marked the 55th commemoration of the lynching death of Emmitt Till. It also was the 47th anniversary of Martin Luther King’s incredible “I Have A Dream” speech, which was arguably the single most important moment in the Civil Right’s movement of the 20th century.  And on Saturday,  Glenn Beck,  Sarah Palin, and a host of other conservative politicians and political  figures including   Michele Bachmann  and (sigh) Alveda King gathered with hundreds of thousands of their conservative supporters for a “non-political” rally on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.  (Beck insisted that the date selection was purely coincidental.)  I watched with equal parts outrage, sadness and amusement as the Restoring Honor march/rally/hullaballo-making unfolded on Saturday. With so many politicians spear-heading and keynoting the event, if promoting a political agenda wasn’t the goal, then what was? (Do you want more? Heck yeah, ya do! Go, read, enjoy!)

Every time Glenn Beck cries, an angel gets its wings. So kick him in the shins.

Laughing Racism: Beyond the #browntwitterbird

Last week, an article in Slate entitled ”How Black People Use Twitter: The latest research on race and microblogging”   caused a  bit of a stir and some moments of sheer hilarity on Twitter and in the Black blogosphere.  The piece’s incomplete research and (unintentionally) racist and insulting tone  was noted and brought to the attention of the author himself both on Twitter and on personal blogs.  Author Farhad Manjoo’s 6-month surveillance of the Twitter habits of young Black people smacked of virtual cultural tourism.   (By the way, Manjoo defended his article, stood by his theory and flawed research, and as of this write-up, hasn’t changed his tune one whit. )

Adding insult to injury, Manjoo’s piece featured a brown redux of the classic blue (but possibly racially White, apparently) Twitter bird as a brown, oversized-cap wearing bird holding a mobile device.  (Wanna read more? Of course you do!  Click away!)

DAMN, that’s racist!

 

Pasttime Paradise: Down-Home Racism In “Post-Racial” America

I recently had the pleasure of visiting New Orleans for the very first time.  Having grown up in South Florida,  the city by the river was intriguing, but not as big a draw for me as the metropolises that grace the Eastern seaboard. Going to New Orleans – with its similar swamps, oppressive torpor, casual appropriation of local Native American culture, and alligator jerky – sounded about as appealing as hanging out with a rowdy, sweaty cousin. However, years of being regaled with tales of every manner of fun that could be had in the Big Easy had intrigued me. NO ONE comes home without an epic anecdote.  More than one jaded and well-travelled New Yorker in my circle got that faraway look in their eyes talking about New Orleans.   My recent desire to explore the regional diversity of Southern cultures (I blame True Blood) and shake off some one-horse-town dust pretty much sealed the deal.  So, with a deep breath and a few mouse clicks, I was ready to go.   

And New Orleans didn’t disappoint. From the start, I was smitten: by the architecture, the streetcars, the museums, the sweetness of the regional drawl, the overpriced souvenir shops, the heavenly food, the decidedly French celebration of debauchery, and (sweet merciful McGillicutty!) the take away cup.  By the second day of my trip I was calculating moving and living expenses. (Really. I was.)  These were the thoughts that danced merrily in my little tourist head as I strolled down Chartres Street on my way from viewing the grounds of the Saint Louis Cathedral.  I was feeling better than I had in weeks, maybe even months.  So I was most unprepared to meet one resident of New Orleans who I would not soon forget.         

This is Nola Mae.        

        

 Nola Mae is the “flagship” doll of the Big Lips: “The Better To Kiss You With”  New Orleans Doll Company collection by New Orleans-based artist Jamie Hayes.   The Big Lips dolls, which are “inspired by Nola Mae”, come in a range of flesh and hair tones. They all feature large round eyes and brightly colored outsized lips, sometimes with teeth.  There are brides, grooms and even tux boys.  Hayes, who counts Vincent Van Gogh among his influencers,  favors unusual designs and exceptionally bright tones and shades in all his work.  His unique style lends itself beautifully to just about anything with a Mardi Gras theme.  The sense of childlike whimsy evident in the prints almost made me smile.           

Inside the gallery

"King Mardi Gras" by Jamie Hayes

"Star Kitty" by Jamie Hayes

 Almost.          

       

To make sure I wasn’t imagining this upsetting showcase of non-malicious racism*  I decided to get some outside feedback.   I attached a picture of the Nola Mae doll and sent it via IM to a friend who I value for his cool-headed objectivity. His response:   

Him: WHAT THE FUCK         

 Him: Where did you find that at           

Me: Yeah…           

Me: At a gallery.           

Him: was it a Klan gallery             

Him: that’s some racist shit             

Him: is this something you bought             

Me: ROFF! No, an artist here makes them.             

Me: And get this: dude is colorblind. So I feel like an ass for feeling like this is kinda really racist.             

Him: bullshit             

Me: No, he is. He can’t see color.             

Him: BULLSHIT             

Me: It’s really bugging me.             

Me: I don’t want to think about it while I’m trying to enjoy my stay here.             

Him: knock something out when you get home             

Him: DAMN that’s racist            

Although I agreed, it would have been facile for me to dismiss some of these works as deliberately racist.  I decided that it was a good idea to see what I could learn about the man behind Nola Mae.    

    

 Hayes’ simultaneous assertion of color blindness and admission of being “a bit of a fibber” notwithstanding, I do think that subconscious, non-malicious racism is responsible for the more racially troubling visual elements of his work. Hayes, a son of New Orleans, in all likelihood grew up with these images all around him, on products and in advertisements.  Hayes may have absorbed – but never bothered to critically examine – these images.  So while Hayes genuinely have no clue as to where his inspiration for Nola Mae came from, I think I have some idea.   

Sigh.

 With her large round eyes, exaggerated lips and beribboned braids, Nola Mae is a textbook example of the classic pickaninny caricature, our very own stateside version of the Golliwogg.  There’s even an accompanying children’s book cataloguing her adventures. (I couldn’t bring myself to buy the book, not even for research.  Apparently, Nola Mae does three special things in it, and if those things have anyting to do with singing, dancing, or chicken and watermelon, my head will explode. It’s worth noting that, per Hayes himself, Nola Mae came years before the book.)  I wasn’t surprised to discover that the Big Lips and Voodoo dolls are  best-sellers. I heard more than one coing visitor describe the dolls as “adorable”  and ”precious.”  An interesting and telling theme that has coalesced around the pickaninny is the idea that these images - grotesque, dehumanized and occasionally sexualized images of Black children - are “cute.”   Not offensive, not racist, not disturbing and unwholesome.  Cute. Similarly “quaint” and “charming” postcards with images of Mammy, Tom and Rastus  litter just about every souvenir shop in the French quarter, and according to one of the store owners I asked, they’re quite popular with tourists.**     

The fact that there has been a healthy market for the consumption of these images since their inception almost two centuries ago belies declarations  of  a “post-racial” modern society.  What has emerged instead is a diabolically sophisticated narrative that combines tenets of  “color blindness” and “tolerance” with post-racialism.  The result: a system of rhetorical gaslighting that permits individuals to indulge in the most blatant kinds of old-school racism  while simultaneously denying its existence. Postcards featuring stereotypical depictions of Black women, men and children aren’t racist, toxic and harmful; they’re “cute” and enjoyable, a nice takeaway for nice hard-working folks who probably voted for Obama, and might even have a Black friend.     

The more things change…     

 

 *I define non-malicious racism as unintentional, subconscious, and/or non-violent racism. This isn’t to suggest that its effects are neutral – they clearly aren’t.    

** The owner I spoke with also informed me that, while her store doesn’t carry “lynch” postcards, they are often requested by tourists.  Read more about them here.

Big Brother is watching. And he’s posting AIPAC ads on your blog.

According to friend and friend of the blog Joseph, yesterday a Google-sponsored ad for the America Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) showed up on this post. After some enlightening (albeit upsetting) discussion with him about hasbara and new media, I discovered that WordPress does sometimes place ads related to a post’s content on a page.  WordPress is a free service; this is how they sometimes pay the bills:

Note: To support the service (and keep free features free), we also sometimes run advertisements. We’ve tested a lot of different ad providers and currently use Google AdSense and Skimlinks. We try hard to make the ads discreet and effective and only run them in limited places. If you would like to completely eliminate ads from appearing on your blog, we offer the No-Ads Upgrade.

 I guess I can’t really finger-point. I’ve done things I’m ashamed of for money, too. Now, those things typically involved flirting and some nudity as opposed to, say, compromising my ethics and personal integrity…but okay. 

Who knows? Maybe I’m being unfair, judging AIPAC this way.  I wouldn’t necessarily write off a kind and brilliant person with crippling body odor, and by the same token, I shouldn’t necessarily dismiss this organization because of a little surface stench. Really, there’s got to be more to AIPAC than its decades of relentless obfuscation and creepy air of menace, right?

Or not. o_O

Can we talk about how the Israeli government’s on some bullshit now?

We didn’t talk about it when this happened. Or this. Or this. Or this. Or this. Or this.  Or this.  And now, we have this.

So can we talk about it now? I mean, really. Can we talk about how condemning the actions of the Israeli government is common sense? Can we have this discussion without having it all boil down to ridiculous polarization and accusations of anti-Semitism? And can we openly condemn anti-Semitism when it does appear -because it will - and remain confident that doing so only strengthens the case for right? Can we just come the fuck out and say it when we see shit is WRONG, know that its WRONG, and call it what it is? Can we do that?  

I know that economic sanctions are just not going down (it’s a nice thought, though, isn’t it?), but appalled citizens are welcome to join the ongoing ethical boycott.  World, get better.

Tea Partiers. STILL about the stupidest motherfuckers who ever lived.

::: blink, blink :::

I know I talked about this before, but it bears repeating. I read this sign a few times with my mouth hanging open…proof positive that one can become stupefied by stupidity. Maybe that’s what these folks are going for? I don’t know. I DO know that these were the same assholes who sat with their thumbs up their apolitical butts whilst the previous administration initiated and escalated two concurrent wars-for-profit that made a small cadre of elites rich at the expense of several countries, including this one. I also know that they are LARGELY responsible for this chick’s continued relevance. 

Sarah Palin, pre-$50K makeover, no doubt in the middle of saying something incredibly stupid.

Sarah Palin stepped down from governing Alaska in the midst of a national economic crisis to hitch her moosey wagon to the Tea Party’s star and publicly admonish the President to do his job. Seriously. THAT was her plan. She quit to criticize Obama and promote her book.  Here’s what I said about that on Teh Twitteh. Parenthetically – if she insists on not fading quietly into obscurity (and she does),  can we at LEAST stop calling Sarah Palin a “pageant queen”? She won Miss Congeniality. MISS CONGENIALITY. Hell, I could win Miss Congeniality, right now, sitting here in my funky ole t-shirt and pajama pants with the hole in the crotch. I’m just saying. (Oh, and here’s the sister woman who beat her ass swept the talent portion of the Miss Alaska pageant and was crowned  Miss Alaska 1984.  Go on ahead and smirk. I am.)

Maryline Blackburn. Singer. Model. Democrat.

 One thing I’m glad about? It took the tea baggers and their more violent, extremist ”fringe” (I’d say “core” was more accurate, but okay…) to shock mainstream media out of its reluctance to call them what they are: xenophobic, anti-intellectual, racist, reactionary, anti-progress and most emphatically un-American. Oh, and stupid. Really, REALLY fucking stupid. Did I say that already? Eh. One more time couldn’t hurt.

Oh, Skip Gates. You silly bitch.

I’m at capacity for Teh Stoopid right now, so please read this summation, this hilarious take-down, and this excellent dissemination of this piece of poo.  Enjoy!

The Talk.

I’ve been staring at a  title and a blinking cursor for almost three whole weeks now. It’s time to write. I know it’s time to write. Hell, it’s been time to write. Unfortunately, that’s harder than it sounds. Even now as I type, the ever-more-pressing importance of what I’m about to relay here grows, spurring on something that feels like courage and rage and a whole bunch of stuff that I can’t quite name yet all mixed up.  I’m literally forcing deep, steady inhalations just long enough for me to get this shit out.   I’ve gotten up to pace about a hundred million times in the last couple of hours. My hands, thankfully, stopped trembling about ten minutes or so ago.  (You don’t even wanna KNOW what my stomach’s doing.  Let’s just say it’s…musical. And athletic.)

Alright, here it is. For almost two years now, I’ve been actively engaged in healing as an adult survivor of childhood sexual abuse.  This healing has taken many forms, from hearing stories of other survivors who have spoken up, to lending an ear and a shoulder to survivors who have come to me,  to one-on-one and group counseling.  For years, out of necessity, I had actively suppressed memories of my abuse.  The traumatic physical disconnect and sexual aversion dysfunction that many survivors of abuse experience was starkly evident in much of my very early adolescent behavior. I didn’t become truly comfortable with my sexuality until I was about seventeen, ten whole years after the abuse started.  The man who abused me, a relative 19 years my senior who is now a father, has been out of my life for nearly two decades. It’s not as good as him being dead, but it helps.

So. We’ve established that I had a shittier childhood than a lot of people, and like every other adult survivor of childhood sexual abuse on the planet, I am now tasked with the monumentally unfair burden of repairing damage to my spirit that I did nothing to incur. It’s a sad and tragically common story. Since I’m not particularly interested in throwing myself a pity party, recounting it here doesn’t undo the mess, so what’s the point? Glad you asked.  According to my favorite survivor-founded online resource and help center, April is Child Abuse Prevention Month and Sexual Assault Awareness Month.  And the man who hurt me has direct proximal access to at least two little girls in our family. 

Though she doesn’t know it yet, I have enlisted one of my relatives-by-marriage, the mother of one of the little girls, as an ally. As you can imagine, this has been tricky. For the past couple of weeks, she and I have been exchanging emails. I have invited her to my home, asked her out for lunch, the whole nine. While my relative-by-marriage likes me well enough, we’re not “hang out and chat” comfortable, so my low-key but frequent urging to talk with her about “something really, really important that absolutely should not wait” is probably annoying at best and creepy at not-best. (I can’t really say “worst” because, to me, worst would be my doing nothing and standing by as history repeats itself. I’m also struggling to put aside my own frustration at her evasiveness; I hate when people put me off when I need to discuss something important, knowing that if it wasn’t important, then I wouldn’t fucking bother.) There’s also the matter of her husband, who, because of his relationship to my abuser (an immediate relative of his), would need to be lied to minimally informed about this exchange. I am not sure who knows what happened beyond myself, the man who abused me, and my mother.

And there is perhaps the most poisonous legacy of this brand of silencing.  When and if a survivor does find the courage to tell their story, it’s like a dam breaking.  It all comes rushing out. I’m wary of face-to-face discussions about this with anyone who isn’t a survivor themselves.  Victim-blaming happens all the time with child sexual abuse; for adult survivors like myself, this can be incredibly triggering. Although protocols and suggestions from resources abound for this topic, I confess that I really don’t know what to tell, and what to keep to myself.  My abuse, like that of so many children, was covered up.  By the one person in my child universe who I knew for certain I could trust to make everything alright.  Like a lot of children, I didn’t  know right away that what my abuser was doing was bad, but I suspected that it was wrong because it was a secret, it only happened when we were alone, and it made me ashamed.  Before I was even in double digits, I knew what so many adults actively force themselves to forget: that the line between a secret and a lie is finer than peach fuzz and just as hard to see sometimes.  So one day I gathered every scrap of courage in my little body and told my mother.  And she said, “That’s not the truth.”  And she said, “I don’t believe you.” And how that night she didn’t tuck me in, kiss me, or even look at me. And how that night I lay wide awake in my bed, watching dry-eyed and numb,  as my world with the giant crack splintering the center shattered.

I don’t think I can tell her that. I think that I’ll save for my therapist. But you might need it one day, so take it with you. What to say? I can tell her how my visits home were infrequent after college.  All the reasons I hated being in my mother’s house. The slumbering rage that had a source I vaguely recalled but couldn’t quite name.  Eh. Maybe not. I can tell her how the “Fiqah’s soooo strange”  narrative that this side of my family created and insisted on clinging to served to heighten my loneliness and isolation and make me vulnerable to the abuse.  How I was lavished with gifts and attention by my abuser.  How it felt like love.  How I craved love because my little brother’s special needs ate up my mother’s energy and left me emotionally untended to a lot. How I missed my daddy so, so much. How my abuser, an amateur photographer, had a 100-page photo album of just me.  How someone, SOMEONE should have been just a little bit fucking suspicious that a 26-year-old man was devoting THAT much time and attention to a 7-year-old girl.  How my family decided for themselves that my natural brightness and curiosity about the world around me made me strange and possibly ”fast.”  How I despised them for aiding and abetting the murder of something bright and good in me and, in what has to be one of life’s most painful ironies, calling that shit “raising” me. Already I’m biting my tongue here. I’ll save that for Oprah. It’s a lot to dump on someone carry.

I can tell her how my mother’s denial of my abuse calcified through the years.  How my she never ceased contact with my abuser, who she’s known his whole life and who she - and I quote – loves “like a son.” How just a few months ago she called him to wish him a happy birthday while I was in the room. How she mentions him in passing like  it never even happened. I can tell her how this admission, made in the sterile quiet of a hospital waiting room while my mother comforted my abuser’s mother as he was undergoing an organ transplant, made my tweenaged heart ache, then go cold in a way that I would come to recognize as my fury manifesting itself. How when I go cold this way I’m capable of  causing extreme emotional pain to others without remorse or regret.  Maybe not. Okay. Well, I can tell her how I would quietly sneak away to the hospital’s chapel, and (standing next to people fresh from the ER and shaken) pray fervently for God to please, please kill my abuser.  How I would visualize air bubbles traveling up through his IV tube, or a scalpel slipping, or a heavy-handed anesthesiologist, just in case God needed suggestions and He didn’t want to dispatch my abuser in a suspicious manner.  Surely the life of the four-year-old who had wandered into traffic, and whose mother and father sat sobbing in the pew behind me, was worth more than his.  Apparently, God thought so too, but then possibly in a fit of Old Testament capriciousness changed His mind – my abuser had several dangerous complications around the surgery and almost didn’t make it. Although I felt bad for his mother, the prospect of attending his funeral filled me with a dark, satisfying joy, and I was very disappointed when he pulled through. No, no. Probably best to leave that out. I had and have every right to feel this way, but every time I’ve talked about it, some asshole well-intentioned but misguided assholey assHOLE person tells me that I shouldn’t, and that I should forgive my abuser, conveniently forgetting that my own mother was the first person to introduce me to the underside of that bus my healing does not necessarily center around forgiveness. Or maybe they just don’t know.

I could say all that. I know that I won’t relay a fraction of it.  I’ll tell her exactly what she needs to know: that my abuser must be constantly monitored if he’s around any child, including his own.  That she should watch and be aware of certain patterns and behavior. That it’s almost never a stranger who hurts a child.  That she shouldn’t trust anyone around her little one.  That she is her first line of defense. That I will never forgive my mother for dropping the ball on this, and that now, all these years later, she can never forgive herself.   That all it takes to prevent child sexual abuse and all the horror it comes with is a word from an adult.  That prevention is so much easier than healing.  That being a survivor is a life sentence for a crime committed against a child.   That damaged children become damaged adults like me. That it is okay to do or say things that are socially awkward or uncomfortable if  those actions insure the safety of a child. Any child. EVERY child. And there is no real protocol for that, because the only way to talk about this shit is to talk about this shit.  That’s a lot to carry, but a child you love  might need it one day. So take it with you.

(Special thanks to friend and friend of the blog Joseph Shahadi, whose courage has been more of an inspiration to me than he knew. Well, until just now. Warm hugs of thanks as well to my dearling, Mizz Awesomesauce herself, dopegirlfresh. )

 

Quit tryna jack my Black Black Blackity Black.

Dear World:

Please pay close attention, because I am only going to say this once.

I am Black. In spite of some less-enlightened protestations to the contrary, we don’t got Indian in our family; however. slave-owner/sharecrop boss runs rampant on both sides. I’m not bigenerationally biracial, or mixed-up-with-something else, or maybe-Ethiopian, or kinda Samoan, or Domini-Rican or whatever else people come up with. If I WERE any of those things, I’d be just as proud.

But I’m not. I am Black. BLACK. Southern-born and bred. Product of generations of countless other surviving and beautiful Black people.

I get my Arabic name from my mama, just like you got your white bread one from yours.

I borrowed my grandfather’s eyes and hair, my daddy’s lips and resilient skin, my grandma’s melodious voice and  laugh, and my mama’s flat butt and ridiculously sunny disposition. 

Nothing about me is imported beyond what is now known as the United States. My mama from here. My daddy from here. They mamas and daddies from here. 

It doesn’t make me any less gorgeous, brilliant and fly than I was five seconds ago when you thought I was “more” than “just” Black, and if it does then that’s because you’re an asshole.

If you crossed the room, tried to get my number, held a door for me, smiled too long, and stared too hard because something about me told you I wasn’t Black, then that’s because you’re an asshole.

If my charm,  intelligence and general awesomeness – things that I see everyday in Black folks – are something you find to be “uncommon,”  then that’s because you’re an asshole.

I’m not trying to escape my Blackness. It is part of me. It belongs to me. Further attempts to separate us will be met with violent resistance. If you’d rather not catch a beatdown, do yourself a favor and cut that shit out.

Smooches!

Me

Trading That “Good-Good”*: Placing Slave Rape On The Consent Continuum

PREAMBLE:   I’m neither a fan nor a follower of Touré, the person whose online shenanigans inspired this post.  I’ve said before that Twitter is gonna ruin quite a few public images and careers before it goes the way of the virtual boneyard known as MySpace; this certainly seems to be the case with him. In the span of about a year he’s gone from being a journalist I liked and respected once upon a time ago to an attention-hungry jerk  a provocateur who agitates for agitation’s sake.  If one wanted to make the argument that Touré goes out of his way to irritate Black people  they’d have quite a bit of supporting evidence.  Between referring indirectly to Michelle Obama as a “ghetto girl”,   compiling a list of sex symbols for the “thinking man” that was oddly bereft of Latina and Black women (Touré’s schoolboy gushing over “stunning blonde”  femme d’un certain age Governor Jennifer Granholm and omission of brilliant and sexy  Shakira  struck me as particularly odd - buuuuut alright), complaining on Twitter about alllll the criticism his interracial marriage (his wife is Lebanese) receives from Black folks,  asking for tips on caring for his son’s “Black” hair  because he and his wife   just don’t have the foggiest about it,  and most recently his statement that self-identified Black Latina Zoe Saldana plays “Black” (he later stated that he meant African-American), he’s drawn ire from a lot of people  - including yours truly.  Touré’s clumsy race dialogue tweets and half-assed, hyper-defensive apologies have become something of a running joke in my Twitter stream, inspiring everything from snarky hashtags  to virtual halibut smackdowns.  And there you have it, some background on “Not-Quddus.”               

Touré . Who has no idea of how to properly care for "Black" hair. (Yes. That's an Afro.**)

  Here’s where  things get interesting (and relevant to the title of this post): On March 1,  Touré  posted a series of  eyebrow-raising tweets about sexual relations between enslaved Black women and White masters. These tweets were first attributed  to his wacky, “Ph.D. candidate” cousin, who had somehow gotten a hold of his Blackberry and was causing a Twitter ruckus.   Realizing that raising the spectre of slavery-era rape by invoking the trope of the Jezebel and juxtaposing this image with contemporary prejudice faced by Black male-White female relationships was inaccurate and offensive,  Touré  wisely deleted these tweets from his feed altogether and had his “cousin” apologize - but not before said tweets were screen-captured on several sites.    

Watching the whole mess come to a rolling boil on Twitter, I noticed a disturbing theme emerging in the dialogue around the tweets.  Rape,  a sex crime typically defined by the absence of non-coercive adult consent, was redefined before  my very eyes in 140 characters or less.  A surprising (to me, anyway) number of people did not consider sexual congress that took place without the threat of immediate violence (brutal coercion) rape.  Because visuals help me think, I hastily assembled a linear color spectrum to better understand this new information. 

Child—————————————————————————————————Adult     

Enslaved——————————————————————————————Free     

Rape ———————————————————————————————————Sex   

   

The Consent Continuum. (Not great at visuals. Sorry.)

  While my idea of  consensual sex rests firmly  in the purple-indigo area of the consent continuum above, other folks seemed to veer towards the yellow-green part of the spectrum (where I’d place things like absence of physical resistance or encouragement of advances, ability to solicit favors on behalf of self or other enslaved individuals, and so on.) I read comments that argued that the legal age of consent has long been a point of contention; that people didn’t live as long back then so it made sense to become sexually active earlier; that Black people mature faster sexually (yes, someone took it there); that slaves sometimes loved their masters and so it wasn’t RAPE rape, etc.  

 The re-imagining of master-slave sexual relationships is nothing new. It is part-and-parcel of the romanticism that accompanies certain forms of revisionism in the analysis of American history.  Predictably,  Sally Hemings was raised. Hemings’ relationship with Thomas Jefferson is often touted by revisionists as the quintessential slave-master love story. During the discussions, I was dismayed to discover that most people aren’t aware that Jefferson began engaging in sexual congress with Hemings when she was in her early teens, that their children were never officially freed while Jefferson was alive, and that she herself was NEVER freed by Jefferson – not even on his deathbed. In fact, records indicate that Hemings and at least one of her relatives were sold to a nearby plantation in order to settle Jefferson’s significant gambling debts. I argued that Jefferson – by having sex with Hemings when she was a child, by being her owner, and by never freeing her – was a rapist on multiple counts. I also argued that Hemings frequently visited Jefferson’s grave after his death, and that the Abermarle county census of 1833 listed her as a free woman (she died in 1835).  I closed by stating that while it is extremely likely that Sally Hemings loved and was loved by her rapist Thomas Jefferson,  her love for him did not absolve him of his crime, because whatver benefits Hemings or any enslaved women enjoyed by virtue of her relationship with her master were entirely relative to her status as human property.*** 

With all of that in mind, let’s compare this:”…[Some enslaved women] were cunning and brilliant enough to use their bodies to gain liberation thus fooling massa.” 

To this:  

 A stereotype persists of African American women as immoral and therefore less deserving of protection from violence or sexual exploitation. In 1744, Edward Long, in an attempt to support slavery, published his conclusions about African women. He characterized them as “ignorant, crafty, treacherous, thievish, and mistrustful.” 

And this: “Of course most were raped, we know that, but some were sharp enough to trade that g00d-good for status or liberation.”   

To this: 

 Slave women were property; therefore, legally they could not be raped. Often slavers would offer gifts or promises of reduced labor if the slave women would consent to sexual relations, and there were instances where the slaver and slave shared sexual attraction; however, “the rape of a female slave was probably the most common form of interracial sex.” A slave woman explained, “When he make me follow him into de bush, what use me to tell him no? He have strength to make me.” 

Without the aid of actual documentation, musings about the daily survival of our enslaved ancestors are pure speculation. My foremothers were absolutely survivors – I’m living proof. And while I don’t like to think about everything they had to endure, I absolutely believe that in order for this country’s race relations problem to be well and truly healed, we’re gonna have to acknowledge  this and EVERY horror-filled aspect of our national legacy, square-on and courageously. This discussion and the others must take place, and they must be handled with the intelligence,  nuance, sensitivity and historical perspective that they deserve.

 

*Good-good? Really? REALLY really?

** Yes. An Afro.

*** What tends to be forgotten in these discussions is that enslavement was not a natural, immutable condition. A slave’s owner had the power to grant a slave their freedom at any time they wished - if they desired to do so.  Viriginia law did not allow freed slaves to remain in the state, and Hemings, as a free (if kept) woman would have to move to a neighboring state, away from Jefferson.  I strongly believe that Jefferson’s decision to allow Hemings to remain enslaved – in spite of his own grave concerns about the fundamental immorality of the  institituion of slavery –  was tied to his desire for her company, excluding any other possible White suitors. Your woman could leave you; your slave could not.

THIS dude.

BWAAAAHAHAHAHA! Ahhhh, it’s funny ’cause it’s true.