A couple weeks ago, I attended a screening for BET’s first ever original music documentary, “My Mic Sounds Nice: A Truth About Women In Hip-Hop“. Directed by Ava DuVernay, the film takes a loving, yet critical look at the history of sisters in Rap music. It is equal parts celebration of pioneers and those carrying the torch and lamentation over the lack of estrongen in today’s Hip-Hop spaces.

Take a peek at the trailer:

Commentary is provided primarily by woman rappers, including MC Lyte, YoYo, Trina, Salt n’ Pepa, The Lady of Rage, Diamond, Eve, Missy, etc. Other heads weighing in include Kevin Lyles, Joan Morgan, Questlove, Glennisha Morgan of The Fembassy and Russell Simmons. I was really excited to hear the thoughts Jean Grae, Tiye Phoenix and a few other female rappers who aren’t as familiar to the BET audience (there is a great independent artist roll-call at the end as well).

The film itself is visually stunning. The colors are rich and lush and warm. The women themselves look beautiful and they were shot in a way that feels very intimate, personal. I got tears in my eyes about 15 minutes in. I felt like I was watching a family reunion or something. So many of the special names, faces and (most importantly) sounds of my youth were present in this piece.

The filmmaker and her subjects took no shorts and take on some tough questions: why are so many female rappers hypersexualized? Why do women seem to need a crew of men around them to be taken seriously? How is it that the absence of one person had such a tremendous impact on an entire genre of music (and it’s listeners)? Why is it still so hard for women to make it in this game? Make sure you pay particular attention to Trina’s thoughts on her own success at the end of the film. Her astuteness was both remarkable and incredibly depressing.

I had been a while since I had really sat down and thought about the role of sistren in Hip-Hop and the film inspired me to finally take on the topic of Lauryn. My conversation with the fabulous Esther Armah after the film a was the spark for this piece as well.  Even if you are as cynical and jaded as I about what mainstream Rap has become (particularly as it relates to women)…if you have love in your heart for Hip-Hop,  you are gonna love this movie. 

It is important that people know we are interested in seeing work like this not just in small, independent spaces, but on major networks like BET. We’ve been asking to see work like My Mic Sounds Nice for years and we have to make sure that we support it if we want to see more. If you are on Twitter, check out the official page for the film. “Like” it on Facebook. Tell friends to tune in and MOST IMPORTANTLY….watch!

My Mic Sounds Nice: A Truth About Women In Hip-Hop will premiere on August 30th at 10:00 PM EDT on BET.

Waitresses at Bronx strip club Sin City recently filed a sexual harassment suit against management alleging, amongst other things, that they were asked to perform sexual favors and that their tips were unjustly withheld. I’ve been to Sin City once before and compared to some of the more low-brow spots I’ve seen, it appeared to be a nice enough establishment. The security guards were very visible and seemed serious about making sure that the dancers, as well as the female patrons, were protected. I’m not really surprised to hear about sexual harassment allegations from any workplace,  but I certainly would have hoped that Sin City was a safe place to work for those young ladies.

What was not only unsurprising, but equally depressing as the details of the suit was the reaction I’ve heard from a number of both men and women in regards to the case:  “It’s a strip club. What did they expect?”

Le sigh.

I waited tables at a few different restauraunts in college. None of my managers ever asked me to serve them food after hours. When I was a Starbucks barista, I didn’t get any requests for lattes when it wasn’t my shift (though I’d say to this day, I had the best Caramel Macchiato game in the store). And when I was a school teacher, the principal never attempted to make me come over and tutor his children on the weekends.

While the culture of the strip may be a bit different than that of the classroom, that doesn’t mean that dancers or cocktail servers should be forced to accept sexual harassment from co-workers or employers as an occupational hazard. The sexual fantasy that is being sold in the strip club is a commodity. Staff members who are not paid consumers of this product are no more entitled to s*x or flirting from these young women than Victoria’s Secret employees are to free lingerie.

I have mixed feelings about stripping, largely because it’s a hard instution to maintain without ever being dehumanizing to the dancers. Even if the act itself is objectifying, we should be able to restrict that willful objectification to the confines of the stage, to the agreed upon relationship between performer and client.  Unfortunately, this is very difficult to enforce and society’s attitudes about these performers further complicate the matter.

While there are many men (and women) who can appreciate a strip club for what it is- a place to be titillated and enjoy a sexual fantasy, there are countless others who have some really sexist and misinformed views toward these girls. There seems to be a widespread societal belief that women who work in these establishments are all ‘hoes with daddy issues’. We don’t consider that some of them may simply enjoy the work or that while they may not love it, they treat it with the same detachment employed those of us who hate our traditional 9-5’s. They do their work, collect their money and go home…and not always with a different man every night. The same can’t always be said for all school teachers, doctors or members of more ‘respectable’ occupations who routinely engage in all sorts of deviant and illegal behavior.

While strippers may be more inclined to take on additional s*x work, p*rn or otherwise, than other working people, it simply isn’t accurate to assume these women and men are all hoes who manage to bring in a few dollars off the strength of loving s*x.  And no matter what the reason they have for joining the field, that doesn’t strip them of the right to be treated like employees: fair wage, fair working environment.

While stripping can be lucrative or even fun work, there’s a lot that these girls have to endure in their chosen trade. You have people who seem to think the dancers sincerely get off from performing for them and thus, they aren’t inclined to tip. You have the judgment of non-dancers, many of whom work for organizations that are doing far more damage to the world around them than putting some glittery thighs on a willing man’s lap. Like employees of companies of all sorts, you face possible sexual harassment.  But while women in other workplaces may be hailed as heroines for blowing the whistle, the Sin City dancers are laughed at and derided as being naïve for daring to think they could do s*x work without sexual harassment.

The tone that people outside of the sex industry take when discussing its workers is revealing of not just displaced elitism, but a lack of understanding of the entire concept of s*x work. The fact that people require convincing that strippers can be sexually harassed or that prostitutes can be raped (not ‘robbed of their product’) says far more about those commenting than it does about the women doing the work.

In an ideal situation, you could have patrons who come in to a club, enjoy the fantasy, tip the dancers and keep it moving. And you could have staff members who respect the strippers as professionals and do their part to keep the environment safe and respectful. While I hope that the Sin City case changes the culture of that particular club, I also wish that those of us outside the industry start to view these women with the respect that they deserve. Even if you don’t appreciate the concept of stripping, you should support the right of those who do it to be treated with dignity in the workplace like anyone else.

This post originally appeared on May 12th, 2010. As the campaign draws closer, I would like to urge everyone-particularly my fellow residents of Brooklyn’s 10th Congressional District-to check out Kevin’s website and consider donating or getting involved with the campaign. This is a great young brother who has been an advocate for the people and voice for many years now. He has been a big inspiration to me as a writer and budding media personality and I am excited for his campaign. This is a great opportunity for the people of Brooklyn and the Hip-Hop community to make a change we can not only believe in, but feel and see on a local level.

Last week, I had the pleasure of attending a fundraiser and birthday celebration for writer/activist Kevin Powell, who is again challenging incumbent Ed Townes to represent the 10th Congressional District in New York. My interest in Powell’s campaign is twofold: I’m not only a huge fan of his writing and activist work, but I’m also a resident of the central Brooklyn area he wants to represent. And I definitely think the brother represents a change we need around these parts.

Powell describes himself as being “in love with people” and this romance has guided his decision to again attempt unseating Mr. Townes, despite the hospitalization of his mother this past winter and the many challenges in opposing a man who has been in office for 26 years. The author of 10 books, Powell was a founding Vibe Magazine staffer and has had a successful career as a speaker, writer and organizer.  Having not seen his own father in 35 years, he  has managed to thrive despite being from what he calls “the sort of background that stifles a lot of us“.  His Jersey City childhood was “materially poor, yet very rich” and his mother, who only has a grade school education, introduced him to the importance of political engagement in his boyhood by both voting regularly and taking the time to write to local officials when she was displeased.

Powell has been a Brooklyn resident since 1990 and admits to being detached from local politics until the second half of the decade. When he began to ask people about Ed Townes, he soon found out that the Congressman was a “Wizard of Oz type figure” who had little physical presence or positive impact upon the central Brooklyn communities he represents. Today, only 30% of East New York high school students will graduate in four years. Ed Townes has been in office longer than I’ve been alive and yet he has no major legislation tied to his name.  It should be noted that he DID,  however, sign legislation to continue the war in Iraq, has received a lot of lobbyist money (including from the tobacco lobby), miss some 1,000 votes since 1993 (he spends most of his time in Florida and DC) and closed his Bed Stuy office because of mice infestation. Townes seems to have arrived at that place in a politicans career where the people are here to serve him, not the other way around. Unfortunately, generations of older folks tend to go out and reelect these people who they are familiar with, without taking the time to question the things that they aren’t getting from them. And we younger people tend to have a political apathy that is embrassing on a number of levels.

The candidate oozes the sort of charisma and ease in public speaking that is the calling card for most successful politicians (he got a good round of laughs when he intoned “Forty is the new forty. Let’s act our age.“), but he doesn’t seem to be selling snake oil or a self-serving agenda. Powell explained that he works to see life “through the eyes of the less fortunate” and that he feels in his “DNA a deep sense of social justice.”

I was greatly impressed by Powell’s explanation of how and why we cannot sit back and wait for President Obama to be all the change we have waited for in this country. He described how the election of Ronald Regan in 1984 brought with it a very carefully orchestrated paradigm shift on the part of the Republicans. They “penetrated the minds of the youth” via the spread of college Republican groups and “changed the spiritual conversation of the country” with the work of the Christian Coalition. The creation of Fox News, to inform the public as they saw fit, also furthered their agenda.

While most of you reading this, like me, take great issue with the Republican Party’s agenda, Powell makes a great point in calling for the same level of widespread transition of thought and action: “We are going to have to create a movement of progressive, multicultural people. Because our progressive multicultural president can’t do it (all) by himself…Change is a process, it doesn’t happen overnight.”

Powell, who describes himself as a “pro-feminist, anti-sexist American male” stated that he and his activist comrades (including writer and public relations maven April Silver of Akila Worksongs) are already doing the work of an elected official and that not a day goes by without people of Brooklyn reaching out to them for some sort of help.  ”Imagine if we had the resources that the Congress people have” he said. Resources that Ed Townes does not seem to be using for the greater good of the people of central Brooklyn.

The event was hosted at Dame Dash’s The Dash Gallery @DD172 in Manhattan’s Tribeca neighborhood. Dash, who served as co-host along with designer Mark Ecko pointed out the poignancy of Powell being in a space essentially created by Hip-Hop, surrounded by images of the Black Panther Party and describing his journey to this candidacy. A journey that has been largely shaped and grown by Hip-Hop culture, as he is a member of what are now the elder statesmen of the Hip-Hop generation.

To be frank, I believe in this person and that’s the only reason I’d take the time to write this. A longtime follower of his career, Powell is no longer the angry young man he appeared to be through the lens of MTV’s “The Real World” some 18 years ago. He is approaching his campaign with a level of righteous indignation, tempered with love and a profound sense of peace.  Powell has a deep demonstrated to helping others, with a focus on women and Black males I find to be quite admirable. He’s not some lifelong politico, but a member of the Hip-Hop generation who has grown up essentially before our eyes in to the sort of leader Central Brooklyn is crying out for.  This is a person who I feel bests represents my interests in Congress and the interests of my community.

For more information about Kevin Powell and his campaign, please check out his website, which details his platform and gives you the opportunity to both sign up to volunteer and donate.  You can also connect with him via Facebook and Twitter.

The first post from my sister in struggle and sass Saida Grundy, who will be appearing here from time to time, is a response to “Dating While Feminist: An Anatomy of an Intellectual Affair” (via Crunk Feminists Collective).

Blog begets blog, and this will be no exception. More typically, however, feminist stances posted to the internet(s) give way to counter-bloggage and commentary retort from those on the outside of our movement. The patient amongst our sister-comrades may even take noble attempts to explain to our foes the histories and social contexts of Black feminist politics that we already knowingly share and understand amongst each other. The less patient among us– say… me– usually just take to internetthugging because my patience for male patriarchs and their allies is limited if not expired.

 So, from the outside, it may be surprising to witness feminist dissent amongst feminists. And yet, this is where I find myself–in ardent disagreement with my feminist community over the sexual consequences of feminism in our romantic lives. 

Without any intention to misrepresent the post’s point, I will summarize briefly the bulk of this lament: The author is a smart and rising feminist academic. The author is a heterosexual and still has a pulse, so she sometimes finds herself attracted to her male intellectual peers and colleagues. These male colleagues often engage the author in deep intellectual discussion(what she describes as “an intellectual affair”) and yet do not reciprocate sexual interest in lieu of presenting said author with the almighty friend card. Where this may seem typical to the experiences of adult professionals across the board, what has been argued here is that this lack of sexual interest coupled with shared intellectual stimulation constitutes a “mind-f*ck” in which feminists in particular are repeatedly used for mental exercise but not considered as candidates for sexual pursuit.

As a homegirl, I can “get” the former complaint, that women—particularly women involved in the incestuous f*ckfest of academia—often navigate the very ambiguous territory of dating within the profession and have to brace ourselves for rejection. But my feminism takes issue with the latter—the notion that our feminist identities and intellectual depth have somehow muted our sexual desirability to men, and, perhaps more disturbingly, that men’s unreciprocated sexual interest while maintaining intellectual interest is somehow “using” us.

­Such a take on feminist ‘dating’ has me doing something I have never actually done before: defending men. While I do understand the hurt feelings that come naturally with any unidirectional romantic interest, I just can’t help but think that men are damned if they do, damned if they don’t on this one.  While there is a valid point to how our political presentations of ourselves make us more or less desirable to potential partners (i.e. nothing makes me lose my erection faster than a man with pronounced homophobia issues) I refuse to think that in the history of heterosexuality a man has ever said to himself “I would totally bag dat if she wasn’t so SMART!”

What black women feminists and non-feminists alike more often encounter with our male colleagues is unwanted sexual advances that place us frequently in positions of disempowerment and compelled feelings to play nice and take it lest we get labeled man-haters. What happens more frequently is the harassment of our lesbian sisters for violating the heterosexual contract and being unavailable to male pursuit. What we regularly encounter are men who fake feminism for the aims of lowering our guard against them (and hopefully, our pants). And yes, what we unfortunately still face is the humiliating real life old school Anita-Hill-Pubic-Hairs-on-a-Coke-Can style sexual harassment in the workplace. It is politically irresponsible to bemoan straight men keeping it above the belt without taking account of the hurtful and devastating consequences that their sexual entitlement has caused black women.This is real exploitation. A man not giving up the penis after intense scholarly debate is not.

Feminism has gifted me the quite pleasurable experience of being able to date smart, kind, and thoughtful men (even within academia!) and enjoy them sexually and intellectually.  But the sexy part? That was all me. I choose and navigate my sexy inasmuch as I am conscious that it still plays to conventional male heterosexual desire.  I won’t give feminism credit for my desirability outside of a brief shout-out for allowing me to feel more in control of my sexual power. But I most certainly won’t have it blamed by my sisters for stifling theirs. To claim that feminism somehow negates our allure to men smacks in the face of the daily exploitation that even feminists face because of our sexual desirability.

**I am going to be a guest on Abiola Abrams’ LSD: Love, Sex and Dating tonight at 10pm EST! You can watch it live at Shovio.com! I will also be Tweeting a bunch throughout. Please join us!**

Happy Black Girl Day! (What’s that? Click here for answers!)

My theme for HBGD this month is gratitude. When I started writing about 5 years ago, I wasn’t really sure what the end result would be. I knew I wanted to be an essayist, but I’ve never taken any writing classes and I didn’t see how I could really become a legitimate writer. I didn’t quite know how I could get people to read my stuff, either. I just kept at it until things started to gel and I managed to figure out some things about shameless self-promotion and marketing.

Fast forward to now and things are looking promising. The site traffic here is pretty darn respectable. Blind Iwas the first site to ever put me on and I’m still part of the team (much love and respect to the fam) and I also contribute for Clutch, Soul Train, and Essence Online.Plus, I’m part of The Fresh Xpress network and I have a new column debuting very soon (more on that in a second).

All of that came from people supporting me, challenging me, sharing my work with others, sending me hate mail, telling me they were going to start dating one of my friends and then dump her to spite me and prove a point (ok, only one batsh*t crazy reader did that), encouraging me, telling me to hang it up, etc, etc. I’m still rather poor, but I am seeing my dreams come in to fruition and I am very, VERY happy for that. A lot of people have a blog just to have one and no shade to them, but my social media/online presense is more than just “Oh, I just wanna share my thoughts” or some way for me to make new friends. I bust my as$ to keep up this site and my other writing and it means a lot to me that people enjoy what I do. So thank YOU for everything!

I am also grateful for freedom. My entire life, I’ve been known as a little bit of a rebel or someone who marched to the beat of her own drummer.  When I was younger, I had some awareness of this and I didn’t like it. I didn’t change to conform, but I resented the occasional discomfort or dissonance that occured. As an adult, I don’t worry much over those things and I realize that a lot of my ‘out of the box’-ness is my committment to freedom. I am bound by certain loyalties, as most of us are, and I do subcribe to and/or play along with plenty of social mores. But I’m not chained, lovelies, I am free. I use my voice, my body and my life as I see fit. “Free, Black and grown“, as Star Jones would say. And I love it! 

Speaking of feeling free, I am embarking upon a new path in my writers journey and freedom is certainly the name of the game with this here. I am going to be doing a sex column for Madame Noire: Girl On Top. It will be a super fun adventure in s*x positivity*: I’ll share some stories, tips, advice, interesting info making s*x fun! Stay tuned!

Happy Black Girl Day, everyone! Take the time to talk to a sister today and let her know why you are grateful for her presence in your life. Take a moment to examine why you are a Happy Black Girl and appreciate that part of your existence. We have so many spaces to mourn, make sure you make some room to celebrate!

PS: DC folks, the lovely PBG is hosting her monthly HBGD happy hour! Go and have three gin and tonics on my behalf!!!

*I know that some of y’all have trouble with the site getting blocked at work, so I am trying to be careful with words that can be caught up by content fiters.

The other day, Professor Mikhail Lyubansky (a scholar who actively challenges racism and who I have a lot of respect for) asked me my thoughts on the following video clip:

For those unable to view it, the clip shows a Black man explaining that “every 45 seconds, a Black man enters an elevator and some stupid White b*tch clutches her purse for dear life“. If there were pictures in the dictionary, this fella’s would go next to the “non-threatening” entry. However, I don’t doubt that he has experiences a whole lot of purse clutching in his day.

I had seen this while ago and told him that I thought it was spot on. While I don’t know what it feels like to be a Black man in that situation, I know how it feels to be a sister and have some simple White woman clutch her bag in an elevator, on a crowded street or in even in Whole Foods WHEN I HAD A CART FULL OF HUMMUS AND OTHER UPPITY PEOPLE FOOD! WHEN WAS THE LAST TIME A BOUGIE BOHO WITH A CART FULL OF HUMMUS AND TOFU SNATCHED SOMEBODIES PURSE???And I can attest that those very words have gone through my head: “stupid b*tch”, “stupid White b*tch” and all sorts of variations on that phrase.

In fact, my senior year in college, I told a middle aged White purse clutcher “If I were the sort of person who snatched purses, I wouldn’t be robbing someone broke as you. I could probably buy you, stupid b*tch“. Now, we both know that last part is a lie (it’s still The Beautiful Struggler, not the Beautiful and Class Mobile…for now!), but I looked like I had more than she did. I had on a pretty dress, my face and hair were popping and I was full of Howard pride. How dare this woman treat me like I was some no count thief simply because I was Black?

The professor was surprised that I was okay with the B-word (you can check his Twitter stream for his response and thoughts: “I’m not trying to equate racism with sexism…or “bitch” with the n-word. Just exploring the complex dynamics of racism.”) and it set em to thinking about my use of the B-word, which is somewhat liberal but not excessive IMO. I don’t think calling some one a “b*tch” automatically implies sexism the way that a non-Black person calling someone the N-word does.

I think the b-word is one that we need to wield with caution. I don’t mistake female strength or aggression with being a b*tch, nor do I think it’s the appropriate utterance every time a woman does something wrong. I’ve called men ‘b*tches’ and women ‘assh*oles’ and it didn’t mean that the former was acting ‘like a woman’ or vice versa. When I watched that tape, I didn’t feel like the man was attempting to use patriarchy to reassume power or lash back at this woman. I felt like he called her the same word that I would have used in that situation.

The biggest problem with b*tch is that there is no universally accepted definition. It certainly CAN imply that the speaker has issues with women, but that isn’t always the case. For example, when someone uses it when they refer to a random group of women as b*tches, that’s not quite the same as “This b*tch has been smiling in my face and sleeping with my man for the past 5 months“. And, as Joan Morgan pointed out, it’s “extremely telling” when you have a group of people that use ‘b*tches’ when they mean woman/Black woman and ‘n*gga’ in lieu of man/Black man.

We have the same issue with n*gger too; some of us want it to go, others want it to be a term of endearment. However, the history of n*gger is very clear: it was widely accepted as a synonym for ‘Black person’ and had the ugliest of connotations. It wasn’t used to refer to a certain kind of Black person, it was ALL Black people. Where as b*tch has typically meant a woman with some sort of unseemly qualities. I just can’t co-sign the notion that it is the same for a Black man to call a woman a b*tch as it is for a White woman to call a Black man a n*gger.

As I was getting in my homegirl’s car last night, a driver who was zooming down the street at a red light hit the open door, only missing me by inches. She seemed to be high on something and got an attitude with me, stating the whole thing was somehow my fault. When my friend and I finally got ready to drive away, she looked at me and exclaimed “That stupid b*tch almost killed you!” What would she have said if the driver was a man? Perhaps ‘assh*le’ or ‘motherfu*cker’. But does that mean she has bias or hatred towards her own gender? I’m going with no. I mean…the b*tch almost killed me!

PS: It’s Black Weblog Awardstime! I would greatly appreciate some nominations, which are being submitted NOW! Please consider The Struggler when voting for Best Writing In A Blog, Blog Of The Year and/or Blog To Watch and, also, my Twitter pagefor “Best Microblog”. Thank you kindly!

I’ve been called a lot of things in my lifetime: daughter, Jamilah, sister, sista, friend, student, teacher, friend, Sunny, foe, lover, victim, survivor,    b!tch, bigot, snob, slut, assh*le, nationalist, nigg*r, loudmouth, feminist, hater, mentor, mentee, man-hater and, of course, Sister Toldja.

I asked for a few of those titles. Some came naturally and others just unfortunately got attached to me somehow. Since I chose that last one, I’ve made my thoughts and my existence public in a way that has allowed folks the space to label me as they see fit. Whether I like it or not, whether or not I agree with the assessment. I’ve written here and there about how I ended up who I am today (for example: this), but I can’t recall ever sitting down and putting pen to paper fingers to keyboard to explain why it is that I write. There’s a lot of reasons. One encompasses them all: love. Love for women, love for Blackness, love for humanity (like all of it, for real, White people and err’thang), love of freedom, love for the possibility of a new world.

To be totally honest, one of my greatest loves is the one that people don’t always seem to understand. Now, as someone who believes herself to be a skilled writer, I have to be careful about always blaming the reader for not comprehending what it is I say. Just because something is clear in my head doesn’t mean I have articulated it clearly on the page. Yet, at the same time I am aware that because of the -isms that I have inherent beef with, I also have to accept that things can get lost on folks due to the state of the world around them.

That’s a lot of preface to get to this point: one of my primary driving motivations for writing as I do…for LIVING as I do, is my love for Black men. I love Black men. I LOVE BLACK MEN! Perhaps I don’t say it in those very words enough. Perhaps I need to throw some <3′s and glitter on it to make it clear for certain folks. But it’s true. I love Black men so very, very much. I think that people look at feminists and assume that our criticisms of men are either rooted in hatred or have delivered to a place of resentment. And I’d suspect there are a lot of folks who hear sisters like me talk about Black love and think what we are really advocating for is love for Black women. That’s not it at all.

My love for Black men is very complicated. My interest in them is self-serving and for the people at the same time. There’s my relationship to fatherhood (my own very precious bond with my own dad, my concern for the fatherly relationships with others and for others). My feelings of sisterhood to brothers, big and small. My sexual interest in them. My urge to protect them as far as I can and to receive protection from them. My romantic stake. My burning desire to be a wife in some years and a mother. My deep, deep wish to be the mother of sons. These needs and wants and existing institutions are not easily managed.

I want to show love and give love to our men (Yes, our men. Not our implying possession, but being of one another, i.e. “our family”, “our people”).effectively. I wish that was always easy or that it always felt good and could be served with a smile, but that isn’t how it works. I don’t ever want to again coddle or make excuses for them. I don’t want to be perceived as hating or bashing when I’m being critical. I want us to be better, healthier, happier, freer. Feminism is a tool in the kit I got to get there.

On a more personal note (as if I could get more personal in an essay that already has the words ‘me, ‘my’ and ‘I’ in it about 50′leven times), my life would probably be a bit easier if I dropped all this think-y Black people stuff and just dealt with what’s going on with the folks I know. Would you believe that being known as an outspoken feminist can be intimidating and unappealing to a lot of young men? Redic! But I love Black men and Black women too much to just ignore this stuff we got going on and I feel like writing is this thing I’m fair to middlin’ at and I should write about us and that maybe, just maybe, I could inspire some people or get them to talking and that might could help somebody.

As I touched upon yesterday and will eventually engage on a less personal-touchy feely level, we want to love our men and we don’t always know how to do that. I think that I feel pretty good about how I love my brothers: how I relate to the men I’ve dated, the little ones I encounter in my community (even though some of the big ones make me feel like this and so I love the little ones in a way to keep them from ending up in that place), my homeboys, my father. The ones reading this right now.

I think so much of the conversation we hear from Black women about their frustrations with Black men can be summed up under the heading of: “I love you and I want you to love me back”. I also think that we don’t always know what we are doing when it comes to showing love to one another (men and women alike), be it on some cultural critic stuff or in the house or on the bus. We have love issues. Love issues all around.

I strive to love brothers better each day. I don’t think more would be possible, but better, sure. I’m very committed to this love as a sister, a daughter, a future wife and mother to sons*. I’m working on it. This is why there is a site in the first place. This is why I write. This has always been why I write. Love, love and more love. That’s what I’m here for.

*I know I’m gonna have a son. I took a mental picture of a baby boy and prayed that God would put him in the Baby Class of 2017.

There is yet another very compelling narrative to emerge from the discussion surrounding Chris Brown’s BET performance/ redemption/breakdown/moment of narcissism or whatever you’re calling it. I watched the video clip again last night and this time, I paid more attention to the faces of the people in the audience.

From Ann Powers of the LA Times:

Watching Brown’s performance, I was intrigued by the cutaway shots of rapt fans, captured by the BET cameras. Those shown in close-up were mostly women of color, cheering, nearly crying themselves. One mouthed an exclamation that was like a prayer: oh my God.

I read about Brown’s emotional breakdown before I saw the tape, so I can’t say that my own reaction to his performance was what it might have been had I been watching it in real time. But seeing these women so rapt made me think.

A confession: I made a comment when the incident first occurred that I deeply regret regarding the rumor that Rihanna had given Brown an STD. I re-read my first post on the assault from last year and I see where my own tone was (admittedly) less concerned for the young lady than it should have been. As I recall, my friends and I were emailing back and forth about it and someone had some “inside scoop” about Rihanna’s jealous and violent behavior. Until the picture of her injuries leaked, it had become very easy to convince myself that there was a fight, not a beat-down. I thought he’d ‘just’ struck her once or twice in response to her hitting him. I didn’t automatically assume that he’d beat her bloody and even as I acknowledged that he’d done something wrong and deserved to be punished…I essentially took his side.

Part of it was the fact that I was a fan of his adorable boy-next-door image, something I’d wanted young Black girls to have for a long time. I would not have been protective of Rick Ross or Justin Bieber in that way, I’m sure of that. And perhaps Rihanna’s edgy “bad girl” image made it easier for me to buy into the notion of a fight. Had the victim been someone with a good girl persona or someone who we knew nothing about, maybe that would have changed things.  (Side note: I’m a college-educated, well-read feminist in my mid-20′s and I’m revealing how much someone’s stage persona can impact how I view them. Imagine how these things look to a 12 year old.)

Yesterday, I called in and spoke to one of my favorite folks, Albert Butler of ”Al B. In The Afternoon“; he made a really great point about how our desire to combat the external assault on Black men has allowed us to at times be hypersensitive about certain things. Holding a pop singer accountable for a vicious attack on his girlfriend is not ‘trying to hold another Black man down’. I think we have found ourselves at times to be, if not overprotective, protective in a very ineffective way.

A man who sounded to be about 40 called in to defend Brown (“You know how these young girl’s mouths can get and then they get upset when somebody touches them”) and also managed to speak up for R. Kelly (“Yeah, she was 12, but she knew what she was doing and why was she there in the first place?”). I’ve heard both these statements in many different forms as they relate to these famous men (from people of both genders and all ages) and I’ve heard the same sentiment when it comes to non-famous people who are the victims or criminals in cases of rape and domestic violence.

It would be impossible to accurately compare how a Chris Brown situation would play out with a young person who isn’t famous. You’d have far less people weighing in, you’d have to consider the specific community in which it took place, etc, etc. We have long since learned that we tend to give celebrities more leeway than the common man in certain instances and far less in others. However, I do think the public reaction…my initial reaction…to this story (from the arrest to “Man In The Mirror”) speaks to a desire to protect young Black men.  Something we should do, but not at the expense of young Black  women and not in a way that stifles the growth of the men we call ourselves ‘loving’.

I’ve spoken to a number of young women in my community about the Brown incident and I was devastated to hear the “Well, she must’ve did something to get him that upset” meme over and over. Though I shouldn’t have been so surprised, given that even I was having a hard-time letting him be the bad guy until I saw that photograph. When I look at this video from the other day, I couldn’t help to think back to that protective instinct. I’m not condemning any of those women on there, I don’t know what they were thinking. But it put these things on my mind.

One of the big push-backs that I get when I talk about feminism is that Black men have been so callously treated by society-at-large that inter-communal criticism just seems to be adding insult to injury. But I can’t think of anything more abusive and insulting to our brothers than to suggest they aren’t capable of behaving appropriately, respecting themselves and others and being held accountable for their misdeeds.  Unconditional love does not mean the death of expectations and criticism.

I’m not obsessing over Chris Brown, but I am hoping that we can use what has transpired as a teachable moment. I know that I have had allowed this to be an opportunity to take a serious look at myself and the way I process certain things. I hate being called a ‘male basher’, but damn if I want to coddle our men either. Whether its the kid on BET or the one on my block, I want to show love in a way that encourages growth, mental and spiritual wellness and responsibility. I’m working on making sure I’m actually doing that in both thought AND action and I hope others will do the same.

Folks all across Negronia and beyond tuned into last night’s BET Awards in anticipation of the network’s second attempt at a Michael Jackson tribute. I didn’t watch live because, well, I ain’t got cable. I am convinced that having access to so much television would make me lazy. And also, I’m poor. In anticipation of the key performances making their way to YouTube, I was able to garner the public’s reaction via Twitter. Interesting to say the least.

Chris Brown, who was unable to partake last year in the wake of beating his girlfriend bloody, was given clearance to do the sort of MJ tribute all of us had been waiting for (not to shortchange the dope tribute at last year’s VMA’s, which was overshadowed by the Kanye/Taylor and Jay+Alicia+Lil’ Mama incidents):

Let’s table the last two and a half minutes for a second and focus on the dancing first. Did Brown bring it? Yes, he did. As most of us know, there isn’t really another artist around who can dance as well as Chris does. Justin Timberlake is good, but not that good. Usher might have been able to pull it off, but I’d wager that had he wanted to do it, he would have been the one up there in the glove. However, we never had any doubt as to whether Chris Brown can dance. He’s been dancing since we met him. That’s what he does best; his vocals are fair to middling, but he can move those feet.

The immediate reaction to the dance performance from a LOT of folks on Twitter was “Chris Brown is back!” and “This is his redemption song!” (this was the reaction on the Negro Net; other folks felt differently). Hmmm. Interesting. Brown hasn’t really been gone as of late; he released an album last December and his name has stayed pretty constant in the gossip pages. This was his first performance at a major awards show since his arrest, but it wasn’t exactly a comeback. More like a high moment in a career that has, as of late, been marked with low ones. A comeback would require some new music; Brown can’t just show up everywhere and do Mike choreography (as much as I would enjoy watching that). And since he hasn’t ever been known to do bad dance performances (remember: we haven’t engaged the attempt at singing “Man In The Mirror” yet), the only ‘redemption’ he could have been seeking on stage would be for his assault on the Barbadian sensation.

A few weeks ago, I wrote that R. Kelly’s star only began to fade as the quality of his music declined. Not as a result of his scandal. The reaction to Brown’s performance last night gave me a similar feeling. Graffiti didn’t tank because of what the singer did to Rihanna; the album failed because people didn’t enjoy it musically. Did his trouble make things worse? Absolutely. Brown’s victim was famous, there was photographic evidence of just how bad the beating was and he never denied what he did. Plus, his post-arrest interviews and apology video were infamously terrible. But I think had the kid recorded some better music, it wouldn’t have taken this long for people to forgive him. The fact that people want to call a great dance performance a “redemption” troubles me greatly.

I personally would have liked to see Chris disappear for a while. He was arrested for the Rihanna incident in February of 2009 and his third album was released in December. If I were in charge of his career, he’d have been gone at least a year and reemerged after some serious therapy and media training. And then he’d come back to say he was still in therapy, that healing would be a long process and that he wanted to be an example to young men and women everywhere who grew up witnessing abuse and found a way to brake the cycle. I’d get some great songwriters and producers to give him an album that had some lighthearted dance material for the kids and a few cathartic ‘I am changing’ cuts. And I would keep him off of Twitter without a chaperon. But, alas, I ain’t in charge of his career (evidence of which: Larry King interview (and bow tie), apology blouse, Sandra Rose jokes, Wal-Mart rant, ‘I miss her’ rants, etc.)

Ah, yes, so how about those tears when he attempted to sing “Man In The Mirror”. Staged? I can’t call it one way or another and with no apparent evidence that it was, I’ll just say it looked real to me. Chris is 21 years old, which is still remarkably young. He’s just barely an adult. He was plucked from a little town in Virginia before he could halfway finish high school and before he could drive legally, he was at the top of the music charts, being spoiled and coddled and exposed to all types of things a person his age shouldn’t have access to. Even without the fame, the fact that Chris Brown grew up with domestic violence in his home made it very likely that he would repeat the behavior he witnessed as a child. I am not making excuses for him, but instead, trying to highlight some reasons as to why the Grammy night assault (and any violence prior to that event with Rihanna or other girls) may have happened.

I’m personally hoping that we do get an actual ‘redemption song’ from this young man. Is his personal life my business simply because he’s an entertainer? Well, he’s a young brother and I want what’s best for him and what’s best for the community: rehabilitation. For his safety and happiness, for the sake of the women he dates and for the many young people of this celebrity obsessed culture who take their cues from entertainers. I’m glad to know that on a legal end, he’s doing what he’s supposed to do and I truly hope that Brown is in a space where he can work on himself for real and not just going through the motions to stay out of prison.

I am in no way saying that we should blacklist him for life for something he did at age 19, but the suggestion that dancing and crying on TV redeems him from his violence against his girl is pretty disturbing. Had he not performed well, would people say “See, that’s what he gets for beating up Rihanna!” ? What if the dancing had been bad, but he broke into tears; would people still say that was his ‘redemption song’?

All that to say, if Chris Brown redeemed himself yesterday, it wasn’t for beating up his girlfriend but for releasing a crappy record. He did a great job and it was enjoyable to watch. But by delivering a fitting salute to the King of Pop, Brown simply reminded the world that he can perform. Nothing further. If you feel that he requires public forgiveness for what he did to Rihanna, then he shouldn’t be able to earn it from dancing. If you don’t think forgiveness is required, then just say he’s good at what he does.

This is how I chose to close my last post:

Tomorrow: Black male privilege,  Black male feminism and Black female misogyny.

Um. Word? I agreed to cover all that? On a weeknight? Whoo, boy. And tomorrow was yesterday, to boot.

I’m not sure why I decided I needed to engage this very broad subject of feminism this way. Long-time readers know this is somewhat a departure from my more anecdotal style of writing. I suppose I’ve gotten rather frustrated with the attacks I’ve been subject to over this whole feminism thing, both on and off the net. And I get totally incensed when I get questions like “Do feminisits get married?” or “Do you support ‘masculism’ as well?”. That is, until I remind myself how little exposure most folks have had to writings about feminism. Which is why I started writing this series. And now I have talked myself into a circle, I still have those three very daunting phrases that I claimed I would engage today. Just sitting, staring at me all bold at the top of the page.

I should have never told y’all I was gonna talk about feminism. I should have just discussed some real feminist stuff and had people feeling it and then hit y’all with “Oh that? That’s feminism.” Like if someone made you a lasagna with soy sausage and didn’t tell you until you were done that it wasn’t real meat. Just pushed the empty Boca package towards you at the end of the meal and winked. Just like that.

In Monday’s post, I cited Michele Wallace’s belief that Black women were encouraged and expected to support the Black liberation movements of the past in a way that would allow Black males to stand on equal footing with White men. I believe that the end goal was to allow the Black man to occupy the same sort of patriarchal territory as his White counterparts. Black women were not intended to be equals, but we were required to be in the trenches fighting as simply staying at home and birthing warriors was not nearly enough. While a number of women did take on prominent leadership roles in the Civil Rights/Black Power Movements (most notably Dr. Dorothy Height, Angela Davis, Kathleen Cleaver), the glass ceiling for sisters was very obvious. Interestingly enough, it did not seem that Black men or women sought to place sisters on the same pedestal White women have occupied since arriving in the States. Had equal patriarchal privilege been obtained for Black men, it’s hard to say how Black women would have fit in, as we were never guided by the Puritanical code of womanhood that White women had followed (purity, piety, domesticity, submission). Would we have been encouraged to take those values on? Perhaps, but we can’t say for sure because it never happened.

And as we stand today, Black men still not occupying the same territory as White (even when they have risen far enough up upon the socio-economic ladder to be considered successful), it’s hard for a lot of folks to grasp the concept of Black male privilege existing. As I say all the time, this isn’t a privilege that holds much weight outside of our community. It is gender based privilege that Black men have over Black women that is rooted in more than simply Western patriarchy. I believe that our people’s reaction to the White man’s attack on Black manhood placed us in a position in which we seek to protect Black men in a way that isn’t always…appropriate. For example, let’s go back to the Anita Hill/Clarence Thomas debacle; look how many of us were willing to support Thomas simply because he was a Black man? Where was the desire to respect and protect this woman? Why was the need to get a “brother” on the Supreme Court, one who no less ideologically removed from the majority of the Black community as Sarah Palin, greater than the need to adequately address Hill’s complaints? Why did so many Black men AND women consider Hill to simply be ‘yet another sister working with the White man to hold the Black man down’?

This question was posed to me on my last post:

“By a very substantial margin have Black Women been the greater beneficiaries of the Civil Rights movement than Black Men. The Civil Rights movement was created in the interest of defeating systemic institutional barriers obstructing the social mobility of colored people. All you have to do is look at the results: 1. More Black Women have collegiate degrees than Black Men. 2. Black Women are employed at a greater rate than Black Men. 3. Black Women are incarcerated at a lesser rate than Black Men. In fact, other than the entertainment industry and, perhaps, the church I cannot think of one institution where Black Men have an advantage over Black Women. Please explain how the Civil Rights movement was for the liberation of the Black Man.”

While the gains of the Civil Rights Movement may have freed Black women to obtain greater social mobility, this does not challenge the patriarchy that guided this movement. This does not challenge the fact that Black women were not encouraged to be leaders so much as they were to be workers and dutiful supporters. This doesn’t erase the sentiment that Black men were meant to be the political, spiritual and professional leaders of our community. Social mobility does not cancel out misogyny; in fact, the increased gains Black women have made in the academic and professional realms seems to have further grown the resentment of a number of brothers who seem to feel that Black female success implies that we are complicit with the forces that seek to hold them down.

While Black women may be making gains in the workplace, our class mobility is so often challenged by the fact that so many of us are raising children alone. Though the Black female unemployment rate is lower than that of Black men, sisters still earn less than brothers for the same work AND are less likely to be promoted to managerial positions. As far as the Black church goes, this is arguably the largest Black owned and operated institution in the country and though Black women far outnumber Black men in terms of membership (and, consequently, the millions of dollars tithed each year), Black men are still by and large the leaders of our churches. I think that fact alone speaks volumes.

Despite it’s best efforts, the Civil Rights and Black Power Movements failed to institute a powerful Black male patriarchy that challenged White supremacy. Even as the White man faces impending minority status in this country, he has created a powerful stronghold over industry, government, education and the minds of this country’s citizens that will not soon be broken. I believe that the frustration Black men feel over that power dynamic, the knowledge of being rendered to second class manhood has resulted in a hostility that is brought “home” and taken out on Black women. The belief that Black men are entitled to some sort of patriarchal power breeds resentment and lacking the ability to lash out against White men, it is Black women and the erroneous notion that we are outpacing them by leaps and bounds that find themselves thrown under the bus

I was fortunate enough to attend a panel discussion, “Black Male Privlege: A Myth? An Illusion? A Reality?” that took place here in New York last month. Byron Hurt, Mark Anthony Neal, R.L. Heureux “Dumi” Lewis and Marc Lamont Hill broke down the concept in their own words and explained the experiences they’d had that led them to embrace the concept and the need to challenge it for the betterment of our people. You can listen to the entire discussion here and I highly suggest that you do. I was first introduced to the term Black Male Privilege in 2008 when writer Jewel Woods published his controversial “Black Male Privilege Checklist”. I posted it and highlighted what I believed at the time to be the most salient points. Go on and check that out here.  I also briefly revisited the issue a few months ago when Dr. Lewis gave the keynote at Morehouse’s Founder’s Day Symposium, “Confronting Black Male Privilege”.  That good stuff appears right here. All of these brothers are self-identified feminists, a fact that I find to be wonderfully refreshing and inspiring, if not tinged with the frustration of knowing that 1) there are people who will write them of as ‘punks’ the second they hear that and 2) there are both men and women who are more likely to embrace the same ideas coming from these men than they would their female counterparts.

As this post is already incredibly long, I’ll table Black female misogyny until next time. Thanks for sticking it out and see you back here soon.