"You all had better pay attention to what comes after the just." Some phrases stay with you forever; they make such good sense.
That one came from my sociology teacher, Mona T. Billups. She threw Baldwin at us that week and said, "This is sociology." The next semester I enrolled in her Sociology of Women course. I earned the saddest C, ever. I could argue aloud; I just couldn't study what I was assigned. I wasted my evenings sitting in the special collections room, requesting rare texts from DuBois and Ladner and John Hope Franklin. Just sitting in the top floor of the library. Reading.
James Baldwin is experiencing a rebirth of sorts, in this millennium. He makes such good sense. His queer, black and free voice spoke ahead of everybody else's time.
I just read a piece in the Times. Claudia Rankin quoted Brother James in a piece on Serena--who's about to go up against that wall again--the white one that loved Arthur Ashe so much (in his quietude, his light brown, thin, humility) it named that stadium--the one in New York where Serena will play--after him, after he died. He, despite his light brown thin humility, died just like so many black men: early.
I just watched this video from Root TV.
A Latino Brother in shorts, white sneakers and a white-T held his hands up in San Antonio. Police shot him anyway. In the front yard. Like that. The brother shooting the video said, "They just shot that nigger, yo! In cold blood."
Yesterday, I watched this report about the disturbing news of a sheriff's deputy gunned down in Houston and one in a Detroit suburb. The head sheriff had to say it, it's not just black lives that matter, all lives matter, including police lives. Show me how all lives matter.
Tell me, why do the reporters speak slower and with more trembling when they report police deaths? When they report the death of two workers at the Wing Stop on Lakeshore they make sure to point out the murdered actually lived in Richmond. When they report a killing in Westwood, they add that this is a normally quiet neighborhood. Quiet means not black or brown or immigrant and certainly not poor. Quiet signifies whiteness and it signifies worth. Validity. Marketability. Marketability deserving of police protection and sympathetic reporting from the news media.
I teach critical thinking skills. Seriously, logic and rhetoric. No matter the course, it's my job to ask students to pull the covers off--look under the blanket. As an introduction, we analyzed Nicki Minaj's riff at the VMAs.
Students have to make decisions about context, purpose and intended audience. All the black students in the class said Minaj was getting at Miley Cyrus over her whack performance of black face all last year--twerking hella awkward--disrespectfully exploiting and denigrating the authentic with cheap mimicry. Taking without permission. Ornamentalism at its worst.
Like Elvis singing Big Momma Thornton's "Hound Dog" and studying Ike Turner through a Memphis juke joint curtain. Like Justin Timberlake counting steps or snatching Janet's top down because he thought we really believed his black fantasy.
Like Robin Thicke ... As if black folks don't deserve respecting--like we don't see it.
As if we are most useful when quietly in service to elevating white people and whiteness. As if we are expendable and of less value when we are ourselves, interested in our own success, identities and promulgation.
A beautiful light in the class, newly immigrated from a Caribbean country said, "Well, I salsa. I can't just say only Cubans can salsa. It's just a dance. Nobody made twerking."
"But somebody did make it. Black people made it. And black people were chastised and made fun of for doing it. We are going to speak honestly about race in this class. And we have to look at signals and why we do what we do. And why? And it's never, just."
Serena will make a ruckus at Arthur Ashe Stadium. Soon come.
James Baldwin is experiencing a rebirth of sorts, in this millennium. He makes such good sense. His queer, black and free voice spoke ahead of everybody else's time.
I just read a piece in the Times. Claudia Rankin quoted Brother James in a piece on Serena--who's about to go up against that wall again--the white one that loved Arthur Ashe so much (in his quietude, his light brown, thin, humility) it named that stadium--the one in New York where Serena will play--after him, after he died. He, despite his light brown thin humility, died just like so many black men: early.
I just watched this video from Root TV.
A Latino Brother in shorts, white sneakers and a white-T held his hands up in San Antonio. Police shot him anyway. In the front yard. Like that. The brother shooting the video said, "They just shot that nigger, yo! In cold blood."
Yesterday, I watched this report about the disturbing news of a sheriff's deputy gunned down in Houston and one in a Detroit suburb. The head sheriff had to say it, it's not just black lives that matter, all lives matter, including police lives. Show me how all lives matter.
Tell me, why do the reporters speak slower and with more trembling when they report police deaths? When they report the death of two workers at the Wing Stop on Lakeshore they make sure to point out the murdered actually lived in Richmond. When they report a killing in Westwood, they add that this is a normally quiet neighborhood. Quiet means not black or brown or immigrant and certainly not poor. Quiet signifies whiteness and it signifies worth. Validity. Marketability. Marketability deserving of police protection and sympathetic reporting from the news media.
I teach critical thinking skills. Seriously, logic and rhetoric. No matter the course, it's my job to ask students to pull the covers off--look under the blanket. As an introduction, we analyzed Nicki Minaj's riff at the VMAs.
Students have to make decisions about context, purpose and intended audience. All the black students in the class said Minaj was getting at Miley Cyrus over her whack performance of black face all last year--twerking hella awkward--disrespectfully exploiting and denigrating the authentic with cheap mimicry. Taking without permission. Ornamentalism at its worst.
Like Elvis singing Big Momma Thornton's "Hound Dog" and studying Ike Turner through a Memphis juke joint curtain. Like Justin Timberlake counting steps or snatching Janet's top down because he thought we really believed his black fantasy.
Like Robin Thicke ... As if black folks don't deserve respecting--like we don't see it.
As if we are most useful when quietly in service to elevating white people and whiteness. As if we are expendable and of less value when we are ourselves, interested in our own success, identities and promulgation.
A beautiful light in the class, newly immigrated from a Caribbean country said, "Well, I salsa. I can't just say only Cubans can salsa. It's just a dance. Nobody made twerking."
"But somebody did make it. Black people made it. And black people were chastised and made fun of for doing it. We are going to speak honestly about race in this class. And we have to look at signals and why we do what we do. And why? And it's never, just."
Serena will make a ruckus at Arthur Ashe Stadium. Soon come.
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