defining we. my thoughts on capitalism: a love story and related rants

so it’s no secret that there is a default of whiteness in normative culture. that is: unless otherwise noted, people are white. i think this default can be challenged in communities that are predominantly of color on an everyday level (telling stories with an anonymous “she”), but when we engage with the popular sphere (movies, tv characters, in other words “visible people” in narratives created by others and passed down to the masses), people are – generally speaking – expected and assumed to be / imagined as white.

so, knowing this, why was i still disappointed in the white-middle-class-ness that tainted the narrative of michael moore’s capitalism: a love story? is it because he’s touted as a progressive filmmaker, and to interrogate capitalism without also challenging the normativity of whiteness is to basically suck at understanding the intersections and complexity of oppressions? a shortcoming that results in merely symbolic and short-falling attempts at being subversive. because he knows about other stuff, is he supposed to also know how to make a film that doesn’t indulge in the usual habit of seeing things through a white historical lens?

the problem i had with micheal moore’s film was that the “we” he constructed often translated into white middle class people. and this wasn’t something i can pretend was glaringly obvious, because it was mostly subtle. noted in the use of “we” and the implication that follows of who “they” were.

for example, there’s a part where he’s talking about “the good old days”. he talks about how women didn’t have to work if they didn’t want to and we see a typical blonde 50s housewife walking around straightening things up (not to be mistook for actually cleaning). i thought to myself: really michael? because last i checked this was only true for a bracket of white, suburban, middle-class, married women. working class white women and black women were working outside of the home during these good old days and they had been for decades. then he goes on to talk about how things were just better then (red flag), you know, when there were industrial jobs. we could deal with a little bit of this, he says, as we see a quick flash of black folks being hosed and/or attacked by police dogs (i can’t remember which), and a little bit of that. again: really, though?

when i brought this part of the doc up to a friend, i was reminded that it was supposed to be “facetious”. and i mean, i’m sure micheal moore isn’t trying to say that the huge problems of racism, systematic violence, etc are small worries. but even the fact that these issues, which were (and are) an inescapable everyday reality for a lot of people, could be compressed into a sarcastic flash on the screen, says something about who is telling the story, and for whom.

the fact is — all wasn’t peachy-keen for most of us. to create the impression that life was good when dick worked while and jane shopped for dresses is to basically reiterate a dominant, class-, race-, and location-based narrative that delusionally relegates a lot of people to the fringes. history didn’t look like that. period.

i’ve noticed a similar issue in children’s books, especially with this whole organizing elementary school libraries thing I’ve been doing which I mentioned in the last post. How easy it is to assume and even assign ignorant/privileged positionality within a paradigm that is obviously influenced by race (i.e. living in 19th century America). For example, author Ann McGovern has a whole series of books that depend on the default of whiteness in articulating a historical “we”. She has books like …If You Lived in Colonial Times, with questions on the back like “What kind of clothes would you wear?” “Would you go to school?” “What would you do on Sunday?” and “What would happen if you didn’t behave?”. A few of her other books are If You Grew Up With Abraham Lincoln, If You Lived 100 Years Ago, and If You Sailed on the Mayflower in 1620. The gist of all of them is like.. you would’ve dressed funny and had to use your hands sometimes. by golly, the olden days.

I’m looking at these books like, actually, if I lived in colonial times, I wouldn’t be eating mutton and porridge at a table on a terrace with my white mother and father. More likely, i’d be the other person in this picture — that person of color whose narrative has no place in a book like this directed at the general public — placing the chicken on the table. iffff i was even so lucky.

the default of whiteness is not only untrue to most people’s realities and obviously problematic on the basis that white (in)visibility necessitates erasing all other persons, but it’s also, frankly, not entertaining. if, as a creator of sorts, you claim to tell ‘our’ history, then do us a favor and tell what really happened. or, make up something completely fantastical that doesn’t depend on an already played-out assumption about who the audience will automatically identify with, and ultimately, create a new narrative.

Red Flag on Nostalgia

I’m not sure if it’s because I’m around a lot of music, hip-hop, and (as seldom as possible) poetry crowds.. or if it’s just the times we’re living in — with the omnipresence of YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter.. or if it is a tendency of human beings in general, whenever they encounter unanticipated change and new things .. to be nostalgic.

And by nostalgic, I mean to have a romantic notion in your head of how the past was, and to want to have whatever was in the past be in the present. For example, you may hear a lot of people talk about “real hip-hop”. They’ll refer to “the good ol’ days”.. you know, when A Trible Called Quest was mainstream and hip-hop was about parties in the park and cyphers on the corner in The Bronx. They’ll say now all we have is commercialized trash and the people who are really saying something don’t get enough promotion because they can’t get signed to a major, or people won’t listen because they’re ignorant and all they want to hear about is cars, clothes, money, and sex.

Nevermind the fact that the parties during Kool Herc’s days tended to end in violence. Or the fact that 2 Live Crew and N.W.A. existed alongside Tribe and De La Soul, or that shit was complicated and groups like Boogie Down Productions had songs like “9 Millimeter Goes Bang” on the same album as “Poetry”. Also nevermind the fact that people will listen to what they want to hear, and if a bedroom beat with an already played-out “conscious” message about like.. ma’at or something on it is not going to cut it, then someone needs to step THEIR game up. don’t be bitter, be better.

I’ve also run into a lot of people who have a lot to say about their feeling that human beings don’t even really interact with each other anymore because we have all these other ways — thanks to technology — to contact one another on a surface level. These people basically feel like technology is at odds with human nature. The internet is to blame for the fact that no one writes letters to each other anymore. Text messages are the reason communication is abbreviated and cell phones prevent us from having tea or sharing a meal. Twitter lets us broadcast our lives to whoever will follow, gives us a false sense of celebrity, and also a misleading sense of connectedness to people we don’t really know. YouTube has facilitated the triumph of the soundbite and media’s need to compress everything into a quick, easily-digestible tidbit. And Facebook has eroded personal relationships altogether with wall-posts posing as a real effort to hang out with someone, and comments, “likes”, etc allowing people to be “in touch” without really being a part of each other’s lives.

comic by robert sergel

My response to all of this is: Puh-lease. As difficult as it may be to make this concession: technology is a part of life. And you can determine the degree to which it is in yours. Having e-mail is not preventing you from writing a letter, if that’s what you want to do. Twitter existing does not mean you have to join and joining doesn’t mean you have to tweet (twit?) every 5 minutes. “chillin in my car”. “pullin up to the street @jdoe is here.” know what i mean?

And in a bigger picture, things change. I’m sure when the car was invented there was some radical anti-car group fulminating about how now people will be able to get to one place to another without the deliberation that comes with deciding to go somewhere and getting there. Or that the exhaust from the cars would ruin the ozone layer and surely, it’d be the end of the world. Also, what were horses to do now? Just sit and eat hay?

The issue is not missing things, because we miss things when they’re not around anymore. The issue is not even wishing we could go back to a time when things were a certain way… The issue is wanting to transplant that time, or that thing, or person, or whatever we are feeling nostalgic about, into the present. This does not work because the present was not made for that subject/object of our nostalgia. There are new things now, but more importantly, there are new ideas to be had. Creating the future has to entail creating new ideas from fantasies, imagination, intellect, gut.

Furthermore, we often misremember things. We “remember” times we never experienced, like hip-hop’s “golden age,” and we think to ourselves that we would love that now. But we weren’t there then, and our vision is tainted by an intellectual or sentimental desire to be in the past — where things were by default, better. We “remember” when people sat down and talked to each other instead of texting, and we want that now. We want to put everything that we have experienced between “now” and “then” — internet, cell phones, pagers (?!), — into a hole and pull things from old picture frames and have them come to life to be a part of our present and future.

But I think we need to be more creative. We need to be more imaginative and inventive. Communication has been revolutionized. Broadcasting, “news”, and reality itself have all been revolutionized. I mean, you’re reading a blog right now. It would serve us well to embrace this change. To think of what will be next. Based on people’s untapped desires and fantasies, based on what we think society could use. Stop longing for the way something was, and make yourself a part of the way things are and will be. If nothing is unimaginable then anything is possible. Make the world and re-name your reality.

Kwanzaa is Not the Black Christmas

Okay, good folks. PSA for the day – please, spread the word. Tell your kids, tell your students, peers, parents — Kwanzaa is NOT the black christmas!

I don’t know how many times growing up, when wintertime would come around, the white children would be wishing each other a merry christmas and then get to me and be like ‘happy kwanzaa!’ and I’m like ‘um’.

Also, the commercials, billboards, and everything else, in their effort to be all-inclusive, multicultural, and politically correct always throw kwanzaa into their conglomeration of otherwise religious holidays. “Happy Chrismakwanzika!”

What?

So this is my brief ‘get it right’ post about Kwanzaa. Not intended to be a comprehensive learning guide nor anything of the sort – just to give my perspective on the holiday, as someone who celebrated it growing up and doesn’t anymore.

First, Kwanzaa is not a religious holiday. It has absolutely nothing to do with yahweh, allah, parsva, oshun, or whomever else from wherever you’re coming from on the belief spectrum. It is not meant to replace, compete with, nor destroy christmas or any other holiday for that matter. Many people who celebrate Kwanzaa also celebrate other religious holidays.

Kwanzaa is more of a cultural, historical and community-building holiday. According to its founder, Ron ‘Maulana’ Karenga, Kwanzaa is intended to “give Blacks an opportunity to celebrate themselves and history rather than simply imitate the practice of the dominant society.” First celebrated in 1966, it is a seven day holiday that begins on December 26 and lasts through the first day of January. For each of the seven days, there is a candle lit and a principle (collectively called nguzo saba) to go with it: 1 – umoja (unity), 2 – kujichagulia (self-determination), 3 -ujima (collective work and responsibility), 4 – ujamaa (cooperative economics, 5 – nia (purpose), 6 – kuumba (creativity), and 7 – imani (faith). It falls near christmas partially because that (i guess?) signifies the end of harvest and the beginning of a new planting season, and also, probably, because that’s already a celebratory holiday season when people have time off from work, are in the mood, etc.

Now, there is a whole vocab to go with the kwanzaa holiday. There is the mkeka (straw placemat), muhindi (corn placed on the mekeka for each child in the family), mazao (meaning crops, symbolized by fruits and vegetables on the mkeka to remember the earth’s abundance). The gifts are called zawadi, the wooden candle holder is a kinara, the karamu is a glorious feast, and so on and so forth (there are a few more). The word kwanzaa, along with these other names, of course, is derived from Swahili, which to many Americans, is the language of Africa.

This brings me to my next point, which is that Kwanzaa is an American holiday. It was invented by a black american man in the state of California. It is, therefore, this individual’s interpretation of African ritual, life, and so on.

Part of the point of Kwanzaa, in my opinion, is to give descendants of Africa (please don’t hit me with the ‘we’re all descendants of africa’ cowdung) and black americans in particular, a sense of connectedness to their history, and also, something to celebrate outside of the mores of the ‘dominant’ society within which they are oppressed and share a history that it hurts to remember. Now whether or not this sense of community and independence within the greater hegemonic culture of america has to come with middle class blacks gathering in public libraries in overpriced dashikis and patchwork kente hammerpants is up for debate. What do we make of it? Maybe it’s a starting place for greater awareness of ancestry, maybe it builds communities, brings families closer… or maybe it’s just black folks imitating their visions of a mythical and monolithic ‘african’ culture, learning token swahili words and walking around in ‘african’ garb in order to claim a history, home, and culture as their own. I mean, does this go back to the neverending issue of ‘home’ for displaced peoples, ‘culture’ for postcolonial societies, the controversial idea that black people in america and black people in africa are somehow the same…? that we are, or, at some point were, them?

I stopped celebrating Kwanzaa around the age of fifteen, when I learned that Karenga not only had beef with the Black Panthers (whom I was basically in love with) but also spent time in prison for torturing two black women with electrical cords, a hot iron, and some others of the master’s tools. This combined with the unsurprising fact that like many organizations at the time (inlcuding the BPP), Karenga’s cultural nationalist US Organization (United Slaves) was systematically sexist towards its female members, was pretty much enough for me to be done with Kwanzaa. For me, it represented an individual’s idyllic nostalgia, as well as the collective desire for a sense of belonging among black americans. While I loved coming together with my family and friends to laugh, share and discuss these principles that I did find important, the symbology of ‘africanness’ didn’t serve much purpose for me. it’s not that i didn’t recognize how my folks got to this country, or that i didn’t understand respecting history and ancestors and paying dues and whatnot. but i was american after all. and have been for a very long time.

So I say all this to say – Kwanzaa is an option. Some people choose it, some don’t. But whatever the case, it is not the black subsitute for christmas, and it is not a race-based celebration. So, good-intentioned white moderates — next time you see me anywhere around the cold season, do me a favor and stick to ‘have a good break’ or ‘keep warm out there,’ and I’ll do the same for you.

Gates Affair About More Than Just Race

It is with happy feet and a grinning heart that I introduce my first guest blogger, Anthony Kelley. Kelley is a scholar, brilliant in mind and spirit, whose interests span philosophy, black political thought, and critical pedagogy. He was a regular contributor to his alma mater’s newspaper, and since he doesn’t write nearly enough on his own blog, he’s come over to the black scientist to share his perspective on the protracted Gates incident.

It is no secret that mainstream media often mask the complexity of an issue in order to reach a wider audience and, in turn, increase profits. Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr.’s arrest and the subsequent media frenzy is no exception. It seems unnecessary to delve deep into the debate at this point. A week later, the main arguments are well known. For a couple of particularly insightful, opposing viewpoints, look here and here. But despite the wide-spread commentary, there seems to be several gaping holes in the mainstream analysis. Here I’ll point out a couple:

First, any commentary that does not include a class analysis is incomplete. The facts that Gates is a wealthy, well-educated individual and that the arresting officer represents a lower-economic strata are undeniable. Given these facts, I am not completely convinced, as is often the case with the black elite, that when Gates was faced with perceived racial injustice, his response wasn’t “Oh, how dare he perpetrate racism against me” but instead “Oh, how dare he (i.e. a white man of a lower economic status) perpetuate racism against me (i.e. a wealthy black man). The former of which indicates a righteous indignation in the face of injustice, whereas the latter merely reveals the deep class divides that make some of us feel entitled to preferential treatment while the rest of our people suffer.

Second, the black community’s response to Gates’s arrest tells us something about the state of black political solidarity. People were justifiably upset at the apparent racial injustice while acknowledging that Gates may have exacerbated the situation by antagonizing the cop. When one of our own is attacked, we will speak out and defend our community. Now, this is not to suggest that there is (or that there should be) an uncritical, wholesale acceptance of Gates and his behavior; I do not know many black people who are not at least willing to entertain the idea that Gates might have over-reacted. What most black people share, though, is a nearly preternatural willingness to speak out on behalf of other black people, whether they be culpable and arrogant teenage boys in Jena, Louisiana or class elitist Harvard professors on a first-name basis with the president of the United States. This point is even more important when we consider the critical scrutiny under which notions of solidarity have been under recently. Given the purported “post-racial” society, the task of strengthening black political alliances in the face of anti-black racism is increasingly obligatory. Gates’s arrest represents a unique moment to think about race and the way it works in our everyday lives as well as think critically and creatively about ways to strengthen black political solidarity.

Despite these observations above, the fact that black men and women (and all those in between) continue to suffer at the hands of police violence remains unchanged. Though Gates’s arrest does offer a “teachable moment,” we should never lose sight of those who suffer the brunt of police aggression. Our efforts should not be limited to speaking out on behalf of “the least of these,” but the core of our efforts should nonetheless be directed towards building a long-term sustainable movement to end police aggression, not simply at providing individual blacks with immediate relief. So whether or not Gates is arrested and whether or not he and a white police officer is invited to the White House for beers by a black president, we must still fight. And, I trust, we will.

[Thanks to the Scientist for giving me a space to voice off on this issue. Good looks sis.]

Fear of Black… People.

As you may have heard, a private predominantly white club canceled its agreement to share its pool once a week with a summer camp when the campers showed up and happened to be mostly black and latino. The families of the campers of Philadelphia-based Creative Steps summer day camp had paid The Huntington, PA Valley Club $1,950 to swim in the pool on Mondays, but two days after their first visit they received a phone call from the board president telling them they could not return. The first excuse of club owner, John Duesler, was that the children would “change the complexion” and the atmosphere of the club. Then he said he “underestimated the capacity” of the facilities (what he means is he overestimated). There wasn’t space, he said (despite the fact that the club has two pools), and now his wife, Bernice Duesler, is saying absurd things such as: “As long as we can work out safety issues, we’d like to have them back.”

According to role taken that day by camp executive director Alethea Wright, there were 46 children at the pool, not 65 as has been reported and exaggerated. And what is more, Wright’s son, Marcus, attends a predominantly white elementary school, from which 56 students went swimming without controversy at the same pool the week before. (More with camper Marcus Allen, because he is adorable (and he breaks your heart).

To me, it seems rather obvious that race played a role in the reactions of the club members who were at the pool, as well as the decision reached by the board to break the signed contract with Creative Steps. Judging by the comments some of the children heard, such as concerns that they would steal from or harm the white people, i think it is fair to assume that the members of the club were uncomfortable.

They were uncomfortable because they are not used to black people, and especially not in a group larger than that one family at the supermarket or (maybe) in the neighborhood. Most of what they know of black people, they’ve learned from movies, music videos, the news, racist jokes, and stereotypes that cycle like rumors. They are afraid of black people because they imagine them manifesting the various qualities they’ve heard or seen about. According to white media and black people themselves, negroes are loud, crazy, and lack a certain “refinement”.

I’m from a small city/town rural suburb esque thing in Washington. (It’s unbelievably ambiguous). I was usually the only black girl in my classes throughout elementary school, and I attended a relatively diverse high school, with different numbers of white, black, latino, american indian, asian and pacific islander students. While my high school was not dramatically one hue, black students were probably 3rd lowest in number (before american indian and latino). I had black friends and so did my parents, so I wasn’t totally isolated, but I did invest heavily in some “identity” work in high school (and throughout college).

To put it simply, I was not used to being around large numbers of black people. My concept of blackness came from .. well, music videos, whatever else was on TV growing up, and my parents’ extensive music and book library on black people, things, history, and ideas. Sure, I knew some black people, but they weren’t black. They didn’t act like the black people in Ride, or B*A*P*S, or the multiple music videos I digested as a young person. They didn’t even act like my cousins in Virginia. So they couldn’t have been really black.

And as I would find out, I wasn’t really black either because I had neither a country nor a New York accent. I spoke “proper” and was from Washington where black people apparently “don’t live”. So no I wasn’t black then. Not at all. I was auctioned out of the fate of it, somehow.

But had you put lil ol me, anytime from the age I started watching skewed representations of black people (say… 13) to probably freshman year in college, in a crowded place with black people, chances are I might have been a little uncomfortable. Not because I was right but because I didn’t know, and I believed everything around me that told me black people were always hostile and prone to violence.

So what I’m suggesting is that yes, these white, probably upper middle class, suburban folks were afraid of black people. But I don’t think it can be considered independently as a class issue, or a location issue (suburbs vs “innercity”), or even a clear-cut white vs black race issue, per se.

I think this instance is emblematic of a larger cultural (mis)conception that a lot of Americans hold, which is that: black people are threatening. This is a notion that has been ingrained into media and the way dominant narratives tell American history so long that it has become an actual part of our collective imagination and consciousness. Many Americans, unless their upbringings have shown them otherwise, have ideas about groups of people they’ve never known because they have seen, read or heard something that attests to it. Needless to say, generally what we see, hear and read about people is at least limited, if not just plain wrong. I think that had the members of the Huntington Valley Club been Indian or Jamaican or Jewish or dare I say it – black, that a similar reaction would be possible.

Now don’t get me wrong. I am not making the “black people can be racist too” argument because I think that’s a crock of cow dung. I am however saying that while white people are capable of racism because they are the ones with power in a white-supremacist system, it is still possible for people of all colors, ages, etc to hold prejudiced feelings towards other people. (This is where, in racism 101, we differentiate between the system of racism and the beliefs of individuals.) And I am going on to say that people of all colors, ages, etc do have a subconscious fear of what they’ve come to understand and label in their heads as “black people”.

It’s not only white yuppies that are scared of black people. People are scared of black people. They see a young black man dressed a certain way, they cross the street or lock their car doors. They see a young black woman, they assume she’s hotheaded and liable to curse them out at any given moment. Many people live in the box they watch, expecting real people to be characters and individuals to behave as representatives. This is an expectation and attitude most of us living in the US are susceptible to, and many of us in fact do carry around with us.

That being said, it was white people at the Valley Club. Because of the history of this country, it was them who were in the position to ban any large number of black children from sharing a pool. I do not wish to imply that whiteness doesn’t play a huge role in this matter — notably the privilege and the power — but to suggest that the underlying fear and uncertainty (and maybe to an extent, dislike) that moved the white people at the Valley Club to take their children from the pools, make racially charged remarks, and complain to the owner is an underlying anxiety that people of other races share as well. And while all races may not be in the position to make decisions that work to black folks’ disadvantage, we can share in this unfounded idea about ‘black people’ that is informed largely by media portrayals of ‘urban life’ (and sometimes, the real life people who fulfill those portrayals). It is ultimately this idea, along with the cultural, political, social, economic (etc etc etc) repercussions that accompany it, that needs to change.

charles hamilton + rihanna: hitting is not cool.

seriously… is anyone else into this charles hamilton thing?

1.

It’s interesting because when Chris Brown hit Rihanna, people took both sides but for the most part there was a general consensus that it was “messed up” on some level. Charles Hamilton getting punched by his (ex?)-girlfriend Briana, on the other hand, is circulating as some funny sh!t!

In my opinion, Briana’s violence against Charles Hamilton (all of which we have is the public display. who’s to say what goes on behind closed doors) is just as unacceptable as Chris Brown hitting on Rihanna. Violence is not okay regardless of if it is physical, verbal, emotional, whatever, and regardless of the genders of the people involved.

Why is it that violence against women is more regularly acknowledged as wrong, and violence against men is seen as excusable (and in some cases, empowering)? (How often is a woman setting a man’s stuff on fire/throwing things out the window framed as positive?) And why is it that women hit men with the expectation that they should not/will not get hit back? It seems that we analyze and judge how acceptable violence is based on certain circumstances: size of the people, what one did to “deserve it,” degree of intimacy/time spent together, frequency of occurrence. Among the types of violence that we tend to not take seriously is domestic violence where the aggressor is a woman and violence in non-heterosexual relationships.

What’s interesting is Charles addressed his relationship on his blog:

First, I can’t escape how I feel about Briana. I opened my heart to her, and we spiraled where we spiraled. I’m glad that matters of the heart (and fist) is public entertainment (as said with sarcastic smirk), but the fact of the matter is, I LOVE TO NO END. I’m the kind of person that, I told her to hit me HARDER next time. Knock me the f*ck out. I deserved it. I mean, that punch was on behalf of… lol… every Charles Hamilton ex-girlfriend, every rapper I sh1tted on, every teacher that I f*cked with, every cop I harassed… I deserved such abuse.

I’m not here to psychoanalyze anybody, buuuttt .. ! What are your thoughts? love is complicated, sure. we’ve all been in situations that, in retrospect, weren’t right. it’s very difficult sometimes to draw lines in your own relationship, and more difficult to draw them for others. However, nobody ever deserves abuse. It doesn’t matter how large or small the scale nor what one supposedly did.

2.

This video seems like Hood News caught up with Charles and Briana for an impromptu make-up interview. Please don’t watch the whole thing, it’s painfully awkward.

3.

(it’s 10 min)

So… by the time that i get around to the third video, I’m just confused.

It’s almost like Hamilton wants to use the punch as some kind of catalyst for publicity … after the fact. Or he’s just addressing it so much that it’s no longer amusing? Or, he’s providing us with a tool for discourse around violence in personal relationships that is different from the usual man against woman story. He seems like a smart (or at least self-aware) person, so I can’t help but wonder why he’s approaching “the punch” the way he is.. in an almost satirical yet somewhat seriously introspective way. I’m intrigued by his willingness to make his dealings with post-punch relationship public, although I can’t figure out if it’s working to his advantage…

I’m also interested in the fact that this is all happening by way of independent/DIY/new media (youtube, twitter, etc). (The “counseling session” was someone videotaping a computer screen of a live chat.. whaatt?) What does it mean when you can produce/broadcast your own hype? Whether it’s bad or good (which, for Hamilton, is debatable), it generates exposure. It gives us the power to image ourselves as celebrities. Particularly, if we can get enough people to watch our stuff, other folks will come across it and assume we are important/worth watching simply because it seems as though other people do. we can become “well-known for our well-knownness”. Hamilton, who seems to be a pretty computer-geeky type guy anyway, has exercised a surprising degree of control over his publicity (especially as a rap artist signed to a major label). But to what end?

And how useful is his session with Briana? Are we as upset about them still being together (judging from the blog) as we would be if Rihanna and Chris Brown put out a video? Is it “not so bad” because she just socked him once?

Since I’m writing about him, I did listen to some of his music. He puts out some creative stuff. a little annoying, but i like it. like drake and cudi.

oh, btw this is his single:

Is it just me or is that a KP and Envyi sample? 6th grade, what’s good.

On Tyler Perry

Entertainment Weekly recently ran an article about Tyler Perry and “black america’s secret culture war”. I’m not sure what they’re talking about and I tend to think I’m black. but apparently, there’s a culture war in progress right under our noses, and it’s all due to mr. multi-millionaire Tyler Perry: the playwright, author, filmmaker, and actor who has created a franchise around his name and is also responsible for opening the first black-owned studio in the U.S. in October of last year. It’s worth mentioning that he also owns it all, from the movies and video library (he’s sold 25 million DVDs of his plays) to his TV shows.

There’s been a lot of talk about whether Perry is “bad” or “good” for black folks. Author Donald Bogle thinks Perry’s most famous character, Madea, is “mammy-like,” and that “If a white director put out this product, the black audience would be appalled.” Bogle doesn’t think Perry’s claim that Madea is based on an actual woman he’s known excuses the fact that she resembles a racist archetype invented by white men and forced onto black women in media. Professor at USC, Todd Boyd, also isn’t pleased with Perry’s films. According to him, ”All of [Perry's] productions demonize educated, successful African-Americans,” and he “is simply reflecting the thinking of a lot of uneducated, working-class African-Americans.”

Ouch. Then there’s Perry himself, who says that the stories have come out of his own pain and everything he’s been through, perhaps including living out of his car for a few months in Atlanta before his plays got picked up in theatres. To him, the characters are “simply tools to make people laugh”.

As someone who actually found parts of Madea’s Family Reunion funny (call me lower-class if you will), I’m not mad at Tyler Perry. His films, which are in some ways modern morality plays, speak to a largely black demographic — people who can relate for various reasons, whether they are southern, church-going, have a dream of social mobility, like seeing black folks on TV, or whatever. I can admit that I absolutely suffered through Why Did I Get Married, but just because I thought it sucked doesn’t mean it’s not a story worthy of being told.

It seems like black people get very picky about the representations of blackness that get put on screen. And this is understandable considering the long history of racist depictions by white media. But we cannot only advocate for portrayals that we like. And by we, I mean the middle to upper class, extra educated, bourgie and/or afrocentric negroes who think that a country-ass grandmother on TV who suggests throwing hot grits to resolve romantic conflict is holding back the race.

Are we only content with the token black character in Hollywood productions, or with images that we consider “positive”?

It is common for people in the Tyler Perry debate (especially white people) to wonder why — in the age of Barack Obama — we still have films with mostly black people in them? That is, films that draw on a southern black culture and a sense of humor that many white people – frankly – just don’t get. The general narrative starts: “At a time when Barack Obama is presenting the world with a bold new image of black America…” and ends with something about Perry’s films having “junkie prostitute[s]” in them. As a blogger for the LA Times puts it: “Even after America has elected a black president, it remains a country that is–especially when it comes to TV and movies–culturally divided.” Is this true? “Divided” or “different”? Because some of us voted for the individual Barack Obama, are we suddenly expected to share the same values, culture, sense of humor?

And why don’t we talk about the election of Obama and white Hollywood? “Mainstream” film has been construed as catering to the majority of Americans although, since the 1920s, it has told a very specific middle-class, suburban, white, hetero-normative story. “Mainstream” films can be considered to have a “submerged racial presence,” in that they do not thematize race per se, but they do engage humor, stories, and culture that draw on a particularly raced experience (Dig Unthinking Eurocentrism by Shohat and Stam). When we go see a mainstream Hollywood movie where the cast is ninety-five percent white, rarely (if ever) are questions posed about the necessity of such films in a “post-racial” society. But because TP tells stories that happen to revolve around black characters, his products are labeled “specializied,” racialized, and obsolete. This is because the white American public is not familiar with black spaces in the way that everyone is familiar with white spaces. And it’s not because black space is any more private, but because mass media has been exposing everyone to the ins and outs of white life for decades so that we are all accustomed to a certain humor that draws on a widespread understanding of white culture.

The arbitrary connections between Barack Obama and Tyler Perry imply false notions of post-race as well as exaggeratedly raced readings of Perry’s films. Obama is painted as the face of our “post-racial society,” and Tyler Perry as a vestige of “race movies” – black productions created by black people in the early 20th century that presented alternative narratives to those of the exclusively white film industry. It’s like Obama is what we like about black people, and the TP is what we don’t. But why can’t the two exist together, as dialogical components of a larger recognition of difference? Why can’t they both present images of blackness that we can watch and accept, without necessarily ingesting as absolute truth.

I’m a fan of diverse (and preferably complex) representations. They don’t have to be reflective or realistic, as long as everything is not The Cosby Show and everything is not Shaft. Perhaps people are up in arms because in the gaping absence of national minority representation in media, Perry has the authority of being the foremost employer of black actors/actresses and the most widely watched storyteller amongst black audiences. But that is an issue of lack of representation and shouldn’t be addressed by attempting to narrow down the few existing representations into an image we prefer. Regardless of how artistically or politically progressive Tyler Perry’s films may seem, he is pulling in record-making numbers at the box office which means he is reaching sizable audiences on a consistent basis. And because these audiences are predominantly black and latino, white critics have been drastically off the marks with their predictions, and are having to cope with a loyal audience that was previously rendered invisible. But this is an important audience, TP is an important filmmaker, and to dismiss him would be to dismiss the spectatorship of a bunch of people who — to the dismay of many film and culture critics — are basically dictating what’s popular right now in Hollywood.