"Blackface," "Bitch Bad" and "Bow Down"

When Beyoncé posed in "blackface" for a fashion shoot in France last year, I figured she was simply pushing the envelope, expanding her vast empire, "twistin that cabbage," and otherwise exercising her artistic prerogative.  After all, she's young, hot, talented, and she's paid her dues. Although many harshly criticized her for "coonery," "buffoonery," and "21st century minstrelsy," she got a pass from most of her loyal fans. I mean, it's only entertainment right? Right.

However!!!!  She recently released the first single/video from her new album. The track is entitled "Bow Down." On this track, Queen B seems to assert her dominance over other females by commanding them to "Bow down, bitches!..Bow down, bitches!"  Hmm...not exactly what I would have expected from a heretofore first class pop icon.  I understand...it's only entertainment!!! I get it...I get it!

But, is it feminism? I digress.

It's not that she uses the word "bitch." There's a time and place for everything, I suppose. Perhaps even a proper time and place to use the word "bitch." But, wow...intent, tone, tenor, and temperment means everything.  Rather than talk about it, check this video by Lupe Fiasco. He uses the word "bitch" while serving as an exemplar of "edu-tainment" rather than mere entertainment...a thoughtful take on a scandalous word. The video is entitled "Bitch Bad." Hit it!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C3m3t_PxiUI

 



"Bitch bad...woman good...lady better...they misunderstood. Bitch bad...woman good...lady better...greatest motherhood." Entertaining, Educational and Enlightening "at the same damn time!"

But, is it feminism?  I digress.

Mind you, I'm not here to pit one artist against another.  I've got "mad" respect for Lupe and I greatly admire Beyoncé. One could argue that she rivals Michael Jackson as the ultimate "pop entertainer" of her generation. Throw in her acting chops and her modeling portfolio, and it's an interesting comparison.  So, this is not a Beyoncé bashing session.  I'm disappointed...in the same way one might be disappointed in a dear loved one. But, couple this new single "Bow Down" with her questionable French fashion shoot in "blackface," and the peeps are mimicking the quizzical looks on the blackened faces above. Maybe Beyoncé is "crazy like a fox" or maybe it's time for a serious intervention.

Beyoncé is at the top of her game right now, but success brings "hate."  Being crowned Queen of "pop music aristocracy" carries with it a heavy burden.  So, Queen B would do well to remember the words of Shakespeare's King Henry IV, "Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown," or the words of the Bard of Brooklyn (Notorious B.I.G.), "Mo money, mo problems." 

But, if that's feminism...do we regress?

Until we rendezvous...

Peace

The Real Face of "Satan"

I'm a Black Republican!  Ha-ha-ha... just kidding!  But, I could be. 

I'm not necessarily a Democrat either. I mean, contrary to popular belief, African-Americans aren't genetically coded to vote Democratic.  In fact, after passage of the 13th Amendment, it's likely that the first ex-slave cast his ballot for the Republican Party, the progressive party. You see, it's about how you look at things...your worldview, so to speak.

When a picture of Mehdi Ouzanni, a Moroccan born actor portraying "Satan" in the new History Channel series "The Bible," went viral, right-wing apologists squinted hard to find a resemblance to President Obama. This is not exactly shocking.  Conservatives have perfected the persistent "demon-ization" of the President.

Okay, maybe I'm a little crazy. But, when I saw the picture of "Satan," I immediately saw the "John Boehner tanned" face of the Republican Party...wearing a hoodie in honor of Trayvon Martin. Yeah, right!  Seriously, perhaps this photo is an interesting psychological Rorschach test, of sorts. What you see depends on where you stand.

So, what do African-Americans see from where they stand?

Assuming it's possible for a racial/ethnic group to have a collective worldview, then it's fair to say that African-Americans have a progressive political worldview. That makes sense since their collective "human-ness" has always been affirmed, confirmed, and defended by progressives. In 1856, the first candidate for President of the newly created Republican Party, John C. Freemont, ran on the slogan, "Free soil, free labor, free speech, free men."  So, progressive Republicans welcomed African-Americans into the human family while conservative Democrats were content with our place among the livestock.

I mean, just take an "old-school" hip-hip roll call for past progressive Black Republicans:

Former slave and Abolitionist, Frederick Douglas - "Holla!"
First Black to serve in the US House of Representatives, Joseph Rainey - "in da house!"
Conductor of the Underground Railroad, Harriet Tubman - "fight the power!"
Abolitionist and Suffragist, Sojourner Truth - "Peace!"

All Republicans...yes! But more importantly, they were all PROGRESSIVES and dedicated themselves to expanding the American dream to those who had been systematically and historically disenfranchised. Now, check the mic for the "new-school" conservative Black Republicans: 

Court-martialed former Army Officer, Rep. Allen West
Pizza Man, Skirt Chaser, and Sponsor of the number 9, Herman Cain
Country Singer and Court Jester, "Cowboy" Troy Lee Coleman III
Disgraced Talk Show Host and Strom Thurmond protege, Armstrong Williams

All together now, "Yessuh, boss!"  I'm only kidding...don't be so damn sensitive. LOL

But, you get the point. The modern Republican Party has abandoned its progressive roots, and conservative Black spokespersons for the party have no standing in the "neighborhood." I mean, when former RNC Chair Michael Steele and General Colin Powell are exiled from the party while boxing promoter Don King and Jimmy "Kid Dy-no-mite" Walker are embraced, something is terribly amiss.

Last week, at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) national convention, African-American speaker, K. Carl Smith, was chastised by a couple of confederate flag carrying attendees. One attendee, Scott Terry, said, “It seems to me like you’re reaching out to voters at the expense of young white southern males like myself....I feel like my demographic remains systematically disenfranchised.” Terry audaciously interrupted Smith by asserting that slave owners sacrificed greatly by providing enslaved Africans with food and shelter. Roll the tape...

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PGfCX9sJqqc

 



Terry totally takes Booker T. Washington's philosophy out of context and reportedly said in a later interview that African-Americans should vote in Africa rather than in America!! Why would any sane African-American be a part of THAT conservative movement? THAT is the FACE of the conservative Republican Party.  THAT is the face that K. Carl Smith saw, and that was the face of EVIL...the face of anti-minority rights...anti-women's rights...anti-gay rights...anti-workers' rights...anti-voter rights...anti-government...anti-immigration...anti-environment...anti-Islam...pro-gun...pro-war...pro-corporation...pro-rich...pro-state's rights...pro-"legitimate rape"...everything but pro-gressive.

Combine all those conservative inkblots and it forms the "Face of Satan." (I hope Smith got home safely.)

Yes. Theoretically, I could be a Republican, but never a conservative Republican...or a conservative Democrat for that matter. You may lynch me, but please don't ask me to hold the rope! For some reason, conservatives and ropes have formed a historically close working relationship.

Frederick Douglas said, "I am a Republican, a black, dyed in the wool Republican, and I never intend to belong to any other party than the party of freedom and progress."

However, unless the GOP rejects its new "reactionary" conservatism, brushes off its Reagan-style "hustle and flow," and re-commits itself to FREEDOM and PROGRESS, it will learn the lesson taught to Republican presidential candidate Herman "Big Daddy" Cain...that "it's hard out here for a pimp!"

Until we rendezvous...

Peace!!

One, Two, Three..."Four Women"

Eunice Kathleen Waymon was better known by her stage name Nina Simone.  The Black jazz singer and songwriter was also a classically trained pianist, arranger, and civil rights activist. Known as the "High Priestess of Soul," Simone synthesized the genres of jazz, blues, gospel, and folk to weave a mystical web of intoxicating musical incantations.

I first encountered Ms. Simone during my formative years lounging in the University dormitory. That encounter greatly hastened my journey into social and cultural consciousness. It transformed my worldview and provided a lens through which to examine the "knowledge" consumed in the classroom and in the media. "Mississippi Goddamn," "Trouble in Mind," "Strange Fruit," "Rags and Old Iron," "My Baby Just Cares For Me," "Feeling Good," "The Work Song," and an almost endless list of recordings that propelled me through my informal course on the "United States of Amnesia." Having adopted her as a mentor and role model, my admiration and respect for Ms. Simone is everlasting.

Last year, film director Cynthia Mort announced the release of a movie on the life of Ms. Simone. In response to the announcement, a furor erupted over the casting of actress Zoe Saldana in the lead role. Although acknowledging her African roots, Ms. Saldana, born to a Dominican father and Puerto Rican mother, has been described by critics as being not sufficiently "Black" to play the role. Although pressure has mounted on Ms. Mort to recast the role with a more appropriately hued actress, she has resisted.

As an observer of American history, I'm sympathetic to the critic's argument. We've seen "colorism" sitting comfortably at the table alongside racism and sexism eagerly consuming the great American feast. I'm aware that the weight of racism, colorism, and sexism (and their lingering effects on the American aesthetic) landed heavily on the backs of Black women. That being said, I am still somewhat uneasy with the "hater-ation" directed at Ms. Saldana. 

The fact that slave ships deposited some enslaved Africans on the shores of Spanish-speaking countries should not necessarily sever their ties to other unfortunates who were dropped in English- speaking countries.  We are all part of the historically despised, the disenfranchised, the dishonored, the diaspora scattered from mother Africa.

So, although I may have cast Lizz Wright or India Irie in the movie's lead role, my best wishes go out to Ms. Saldana. For the sake of Nina Simone's legacy alone, I hope she's nominated for an Oscar.

Zoe, just know that most of the criticism is delivered with sincere and pure motives. Know that we must be vigilant in exposing racism, colorism, and sexism in all its various guises. Recognize that to whom much is given, much will be required...so seize the moment and don't trifle with the legacy of a great African-American legend. Lastly, be inspired and find wisdom in the words of these four women:

Sojourner Truth  - "And ain't I a woman? Look at me! Look at my arm! I have ploughed and planted, and gathered into barns, and no man could head me! And ain't I a woman? I could work as much and eat as much as a man - when I could get it - and bear the lash as well! And ain't I a woman? I have borne thirteen children, and seen most all sold off to slavery, and when I cried out with my mother's grief, none but Jesus heard me! And ain't I a woman?"

Zora Neal Hurston - "All my 'skin folk' ain't my kinfolk."

Josephine Baker - "Beautiful? It's all a question of luck. I was born with good legs. As for the rest... beautiful, no. Amusing, yes."

Michelle Obama - "One of the lessons that I grew up with was to always stay true to yourself and never let what somebody else says distract you from your goals. And so when I hear about negative and false attacks, I really don't invest any energy in them, because I know who I am."

Since encountering Nina Simone, I've been mesmerized by the song, "Four Women." It's my mental soundtrack as I consider the women in my life, and I've often employed it as a thought-provoking conversation piece. The number "Four," in numerology, represents strength and stability...explaining my love of this song, all women, and particularly Black women. Listen as Lizz Wright, "Simone," and Diane Reeves render a hauntingly beautiful rendition of the Nina Simone classic.



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9yWOVrwe1Zw

Until we rendezvous...

Peace!!

Code Black...Code Black! Voting Rights Act in the Emergency Room!

Sirens blare and lights flash as an ambulance rushes to the Department of Emergency Medicine at Georgetown University Hospital.   Native Washingtonians and political hacks gawk in astonishment as paramedics frantically transport an apparently lifeless body into the bowels of the emergency room.

Inside, an ER doctor studies the vitals provided by paramedics and urgently requests a medical history. The head nurse first confirms that Mr. American Body Politic has been a frequent patient in the hospital.  She then quickly prints out the following medical history:

• Born in Philadelphia on July 4, 1776, in a difficult birth. He was born to highly educated European parents of substantial means and high aspirations. However, Mr. Politic was born HIV (hypocritical, inglorious, violent) positive, and his tiny body was also wracked with the dread disease of the day, "racial entitlement." The latter disease likely hereditary as it appears to have run in his family.
• Symptoms developed early as a "peculiar institution" was enshrined in it's founding birth certificate....Africans perpetually enslaved as chattel and counted as only three-fifths of a person. 
• "Racial entitlement" spread quickly throughout the body exhibiting symptoms such as exploitation of the indigenous Native Americans and the territory expanding Mexican-American War.
• Medical notes indicate that Mr. Politic had a close brush with death in the latter part of the 19th century when he engaged in a bloody civil war fought primarily over the fate of enslaved Africans. Politic was fortunate to have been attended to by the foremost physician of the day, Dr. Abraham Lincoln, who properly determined that the patient could not survive "half slave and half free." 
• In order to arrest the disease of "racial entitlement," Dr. Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation. As follow-on treatment, he and his assistant, Dr. Ulysses S. Grant, prescribed as a remedy: the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments, to the Constitution. A prescription designed to abolish slavery, make citizens of all persons born and naturalized in the United States, and to ensure the right to vote to all citizens irrespective of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.
• In spite of those wise diagnostic and prescriptive remedies, Mr. Politic has suffered several medical setbacks as "racial entitlement" appears to lie dormant in his system only to reemerge with a vengeance. A few noted examples:

1. The emergence of the Ku Klux Klan and the White Citizens Council.
2. Leo Frank, a Jewish man, convicted for the rape and murder of a 13-year-old white girl in Atlanta, was sentenced to death. But, convinced by a review of the evidence that Frank was innocent, the Governor commuted the sentence to life imprisonment. As a result of public outrage over this act, a white mob kidnapped Frank from prison and lynched him.
3. The irrational internment of thousands of Japanese Americans during the Second World War.
4. The Tuskegee Experiment...an infamous clinical study conducted by the U.S. Public Health Service to study the natural progression of untreated syphilis in rural black men who thought they were receiving free health care.
5. The Scottsboro boys... nine Black teenage boys who were falsely accused and convicted of raping two white teenage girls.
6. Plessy v. Ferguson... a landmark decision by the U.S. Supreme Court that confirmed the principle of "Separate but Equal," minority segregation, and set the stage for Jim Crow laws.
7. Jose Campos Torres, a 23-year-old Latino Vietnam Veteran, beaten to death by several Houston police officers. The officers responsible were convicted and received one year probation and a $1 fine.
8. The all-white southern primary, poll taxes, grandfather clauses, and literacy tests.
9. Schwerner, Goodman, and Chaney dead in Mississippi.
10. Bloody Sunday on the Edmund Pettus bridge.

The medical notes even detail a rather extraordinary therapy prescribed by a brilliant young doctor. That doctor, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., placed Mr. Politic into a hypnotic trance while suggesting a "dream" that all God's people would one day live in peace.  That dream was not immediately embraced by Mr. Politic and Dr. King himself died as a result of the disease he sought to cure. However, his therapy and his dream inspired later physicians to prescibe a more enduring remedy to the disease...the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.  These Acts codified the principles outlined in the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments.

We now watch in terror as Dr. Antonin Scalia stands over Politic's body and suggests that the Voting Rights Act, prescibed as a cure for "racial entitlement," is in fact the disease!!  Dr. Scalia says the Voting Rights Act is a "racial entitlement." Scalia, having earned a Doctorate of Jurisprudence, is completely ahistorical in his approach to diagnosing Politic's illness.

Scalia knows that Mr. Politic was born with the disease of "racial entitlement."  He knows that the disease has been extremely difficult to eradicate and that the patient has suffered several serious setbacks.  He knows that Politic needs a consistent regimen of antibiotic therapy to arrest the disease.  He knows that the Voting Rights Act has served as an extremely effective antibiotic therapy and the patient has experienced slow but steady progress. Most of all, Scalia knows that an antibiotic therapy cannot be discontinued until every trace of the disease has been expelled from the body!!  If "racial entitlement" exists anywhere in Mr. Body Politic, then the therapy should continue.

Dr. Scalia and his colleague, Dr. Roberts, ask whether "racial entitlement" is limited to the southern regions of the body.  If the disease is found in the northern regions of the body, then perhaps we should discontinue the therapy in the southern regions, they say. What?!!  That is an argument to EXPAND the therapy to other regions of the body. In fact, Dr's. Scalia and Roberts could learn a thing or two from Dr. Malcolm X who said, "We need to stop talking about the south...as long as you're south of the Canadian border, you're south!"

Not only should all sections of the Voting Rights Act be upheld as constitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court, the Act should be expanded to include Philadelphia, Miami Dade, Cleveland, and many other regions of the country. It's ironic that those who fled virulent southern-style racism during the great Black migration should somehow lose the protections of the Voting Rights Act in their new northern abodes.

Dr. Scalia, if you insist that the Voting Rights Act represents a "racial entitlement," then you should talk to some good ole boys. They'll tell you that sometimes the only cure is to consume "the hair of the dog that bit ya." If it was "racial entitlement" that made us drunk, maybe a good strong shot of "racial entitlement" will sober us up!  Just saying...

Until we rendezvous...

Peace