Trenton Doyle Hancock
May 17, 2014
Spent a beautiful afternoon with my friend and fellow visual artist Regina Agu exploring the Trenton Doyle Hancock exhibit at Houston's Contemporary Art Museum. His canvas-based collages, large and largely black and white, were the most breathtaking pieces, but his drawings, which weaved a complex narrative on race and myth, were funny, startling, and disturbing—none of which is a bad thing. We have to go back again to take it all in as it was all a little overwhelming.
Afternoon in Chelsea
May 8, 2014
The overcast sky did not dampened my determination to make it to the Jack Shainman gallery in Chelsea to see Toyin Odutola's solo exhibit of her large ball point pen drawings, which are as breathtaking as you would expect them to be.
Across the street, I was happy to discover that the Joni Moisant Weyl gallery had collected all eight pieces of Robert Rauschenberg's Hoarfrost Editions 1974, all together for the first time since being first displayed in 1970s. Rauschenberg is one of my major inspirations and it was an "a-ha" moment for me when I saw these collages were actually executed on delicate silk scarves. No medium is off limits when it comes to collage.
Gallery Hopping with Akeema
April 2, 2014
When I lived in Barbados I had the pleasure of meeting and hanging out with the great photographer and artist, Mark King, who in turn introduced me to a new NY-based friend, Akeema. By way of introduction, we decided to do a Chelsea gallery hop together, which solidified our new status as kindred spirits.
Peter Buggenhout, Caterpillar Logic II at Gladstone Gallery, New York
On the crawl we first visited the Carla Klein (photo above) exhibit at the Tanya Bonakdar gallery. Her massive paintings of road trip window scenes were intriguing and I loved them immediately; large pallets of dark color bisected by sharp and defining brighter colors. Abstract, but still somehow formed and identifiable.
Sheila Hicks, Isadora, 1988 at Sikkema Jenkins Co., New York
Akema and I were bowled over at Gladstone Gallery by the smelly, looming sculptures of Peter Buggenhout, which, in their ecological narrative, evoked the post-apocalyptic. We loved them and circled them like little birds looking for a place to land.
As the afternoon wound down and we visited less impressive exhibits, we perked up when we found the small Sheila Hicks retrospective at the Sikkema Jenkins Co. Housed in the back of the gallery, Hicks' knitted paintings and balls of yarn were surprisingly comforting in their craftiness, though not diminished because of that. We left her work tired but smiling.
For Trayvon Martin: A Letter to Sanford Police Chief Bill Lee
March 18, 2012
Dear Mr. Lee,
I, like thousands of people around the world, sat in horror as I listened to the 911 tapes of Trayvon Martin’s last moments on this earth. They were gut wrenching and terrifying. After reading more about the actions of Mr. Zimmerman leading up to Trayvon’s death, I grew more concerned. Your actions in the face of so much overwhelming wrongdoing is startling and disconcerting. I am sure you have young people in your life that you care for deeply. Can you imagine one of them coming back from the store in the rain only to be confronted by a large, aggressive stranger? What do you think they would do? Would you accept in the hours after they have been killed, unarmed and defending their life, that the stranger did it in self defense?
Trayvon’s life is as valuable as those of the young people that I am sure are part of your life. Respect it by giving his death the thorough and honest investigation it has long deserved. If your compassion can’t rise to the occasion on this case, I ask you to dig deeper and put yourself in Trayvon’s parents’ shoes. They lost their son as he was coming home with a bag of Skittles and an Iced Tea. In what world is that sane or acceptable?
To ignore the thousand of voices raised in protest to Zimmerman’s walking free would be a further miscarriage of justice. I urge you to do what is morally just; what is essentially American. Give the innocent a face and a voice. Investigate the actions of Mr. Zimmerman. Make him accountable for each step he took that eventually led to the death of Trayvon Martin.
Sincerely,
Llanor Alleyne
Brooklyn, New York
To write Police Chief Bill Lee your own letter of concern, email him @ Bill.Lee@sanfordfl.gov
Some People of Color Aren’t Wedded to the Idea of Gay Marriage
July 15, 2011
A couple of Fridays ago, I was on my couch reading a novel when my cell phone started buzzing. Friends around the country were texting heartfelt messages congratulating New York for becoming the sixth state in the United States to pass a gay marriage bill into law. My response to the news was an audible “meh,” and I returned to my book.
My ambivalence about gay marriage is an echo of things past and reflects an unexpressed feeling that, as a gay woman of color, I am still separate from the larger collective of gay people often featured as the face of the movement. On June 25, the day after the gay marriage bill passed in New York, many of the celebration photos posted on television news programs and on the Internet showed ecstatic, glowing white faces. A perusal of the background of these images showed a scant smattering of brown faces among the crowd. Being part of a minority group—black lesbians—I felt even farther away from what was a genuine political victory for the larger gay community.
This feeling of exclusion is something I’ve heard again and again among friends and colleagues. Gay community organizer Kenyon Farrow, who is also the former executive director of Queers for Economic Justice, says it best: “The marriage equality movement has bet its chips on this strategy of painting the LGBT [Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender] community as white, upper-class, kind of gay/lesbian versions of ‘Donna Reed’ and ‘Leave it to Beaver.’ If your strategy is normalizing gay people in that respect, that’s always going to benefit white people more because even straight black people aren’t seen as normal. It means that black LGBT people, when they look at those images and the way in which the movement is talking about itself, don’t feel particularly moved by it.”
Sensing the emotional and economic distance that is felt within LGBT communities of color from the gay community at large, the Gay Men’s Health Crisis advocacy group (GMHC) under CEO Dr. Marjorie Hill issued a statement nine days before the passage of the New York same-sex marriage bill emphasizing the benefits of marriage equality for black and Latino/a gay couples and their families. Citing census records, GMHC noted that, “those with the most at stake in the current debate are black and Latino/a same-sex couples, and especially black and Latina lesbian couples. This is because those in black and Latino/a same-sex relationships are more likely to be raising children than white same-sex partners. They also earn less, on average, and are more likely to rent than own their home.” The argument here is that under the new marriage laws, these families will have economic protections and “peace of mind” should unforeseen occurrences befall a parent.
However, in order to benefit from these protections, we have to get married—something the press is fond of admonishing people of color, especially straight black women, for not doing.
What’s missing from the conversation about the perceived ambivalence of blacks and Hispanics on marriage, regardless of sexual identity, are the unconventional family structures that exist within these communities and how these relationships influence the meaning of marriage. These handmade families are connected by deep love, loyalty and a shared sense of pulling together in the face of economic and social plights that often take precedence over what is seen as a “traditional” family. For many of us, it wasn’t a mom and dad that raised us, it was Grandma Viv and Auntie Carol along with Ms. Mary down street and Uncle Larry, who sometimes sent money to support us all. These constructed families have become a distinct defining point for people of color in general, and have been used as a weapon to attack and exclude us from the large conversation about what constitutes an “American family.”
“Because we are dealing with social, economic and institutionalized factors, our fight is different, so our family composition is different,” says Ricardo Muñiz, a New York City social worker. “This whole American dream about 1.8 kids and a white picket fence is mainly a white American dream. White people have been buying into that dream for hundreds of years. People of color and oppressed communities have not had access to that dream until they have gotten to a certain socio-economic and education level. So for many of us, it is fairly recent access and we’ve been forced to come up with different family structures in order to survive.”
This particular perspective resonates strongly with the Audre Lorde Project (ALP), a New York-based organization that strives to address the multi-tiered issues facing the lesbian, gay, bisexual, two-spirit, transgender, non-conforming communities of color. In a conversation with ALP’s co-director Collette Carter, it became clear that this practice of prioritizing struggles stretches across gay and straight lines.
“A lot of our issues that we work on here at the ALP are on shifting community attitudes. Issues of survival, access to housing, access to benefits, access to health care,” Carter says. “So we acknowledge the fact that marriage has passed is an event in itself, but at the ALP it’s not necessarily a priority issue particularly when you are talking about communities of color…The law is one thing, but actually changing the minds and the social economy of how people are viewed and valued is a whole other game. And we are in the game of changing the social construct of how people are engaged with one another.”
Changing hearts and minds is an ongoing struggle in and of itself. For black and Hispanic gays, the fight is bracketed with so much marginalization (race, gender, class) that it has become easier to sit outside the gay rights mainstream in favor of tackling the everyday battles of existing within our own neighborhoods. Growing up in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn, N.Y., I learned early on that exhibiting any behavior that can be remotely perceived as lesbian was going to get me into trouble.
When I got my first short haircut in my teens—out of the sheer frustration of dealing with relaxers and not out of any need to declare my sexuality—my barber had to be convinced that I could handle what may come after I got out of his chair. The patina of his worry held the revulsion that he might somehow be responsible for unleashing me on the unsuspecting, good people of Bed-Stuy.
That I had to carry both my fear and his was a weight that stayed with me as I negotiated not only my community, but my cultural standing with black movement groups I got involved with at my university. While I am comfortable in my skin now, back then the idea of marrying another woman was not the most pressing issue on my mind. And frankly, it still isn’t.
“My biggest issue with the fight for gay marriage is the fact that there are still places in this country where a gay person can be fired or denied a place to live because they are gay,” says my friend Kim, an African-American woman who lives with her partner in Brooklyn. “And based on geography and economics, gay folks of color are the ones most impacted by these discriminatory practices. Just imagine if those hundreds of millions were poured into issues that impact the gay masses or even real social justice. For me this feels like a class issue. A bunch of privileged folks who wants to be treated like everyone else—except, of course, the poor black lesbians living in Mississippi.”
I’m with Kenyon Farrow in believing that for LGBTQ (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Questioning) people of color the real fight is in cultural changes, which can then lead to the active pursuit of policies that, with larger community support, will benefit us all. One of the biggest hurdles for gays of color is the black church that, as a pillar of social activism in many of our communities, has used its considerable influence to further marginalize and denigrate gays, many of whom are the greatest contributors to community uplift. Positive changes start at home, and as we begin to actively work ourselves out of the margins of our own neighborhoods, then we would have defined yet another movement of our own, without seeking to find reflection in circles where we are nominally considered or represented.
I wrote this article for TheLoop21 this week, where you can view the original piece.
My Collages in the “Living in Color” Exhibition
May 20, 2011
June is Pride Month. In Harlem, The Casa Frela Gallery has organized an array of special events specifically for the LGBT community. The first event, LIVING in COLOR, is a unique exhibition and performance installation celebrating both Harlem Pride and the pride of LGBT artists of color throughout New York City.
Conceived as a collaborative visual and performance art installation, photographer/body artist Ricardo Muñiz and writer/performer Clarence “Cito” Haynes looked to the power of color for this joint venture. “Living in Color” features an exhibition of photography, acrylic paintings, ink drawings, mixed-media, water colors, collages and even a toy theater. The exhibit opens June 11 from 6 pm to 9 pm and will run daily from noon to 4 pm through June 30, 2011. On June 18th, from 5 pm to 10 pm, the exhibit itself will be a stage for a series of short performances and dances bringing the colors of Harlem to life.
“LIVING in COLOR is a celebration of living art in the LGBT community of color. It’s a joint recognition of both the colors of life and the lives of people of color,” states co-organizer Ricardo Muñiz.
LIVING in COLOR will showcase the art and photography of Ricardo Muñiz and will include exhibition pieces from Llanor Alleyne, Steven E Brown and Marivel Mejia. The LIVING in COLOR performance installation on June 18th will feature the interpretive work of The Beautiful Ones, a multicultural collective of models, dancers, and performance artists who play with identity, pan-sexuality and fantasy. The performance installation will include live nude body painting, jazz/folk music, sketch models posing for artists, modern dance pieces and a video installation.
General viewing of the exhibit is free. For the June 18 performances, tickets are $15 general admission and $20 for artists wishing to illustrate female and male live models during a two-hour drawing session. Check for updates on the Casa Frela Gallery website at www.casafrela.com
A portion of the proceeds from the performances and from the sale of the exhibited art will be donated to charities that support educational opportunities for communities of color and/or provide therapeutic support for LGBT youth of color.
Wangechi Mutu: Hunt Bury Flee
November 19, 2010
Yesterday, my friend Leila and I went over to the Gladstone Gallery in Chelsea to see Wangechi Mutu’s newest collages, curated under the the title “Hunt Bury Flee”. It was the first time I’d seen a Mutu collage in the flesh, up close. I was floored and moved. They are large, layered, rich in subtext, and simply visually stunning. It is intoxicating to see someone’s imagination so wondrously rendered in art. I was extremely grateful that the gallery wasn’t opposed to visitors taking photos. Here are a few images of the collages that really moved me. Of them all, I kept going back to “Humming”, which is now my favorite piece of artwork. For once in my life I wish I were filthy rich.
For Colored Girls: Holding Everyone Accountable
November 7, 2010
I am reluctant to write anything about Tyler Perry’s cinematic interpretation of Ntozake Shange’s choreopoem, For Colored Girls Who Considered Suicide When The Rainbow Was Enuf. I saw it, thought there were brilliant as well as heavy-handed moments, but over all it sits in that nebulous part of my mind where things that neither moved me or offended me sit. It was okay.
What I find more fascinating, though, is the reactions I’m reading from all corners of the black community–from self professed cultural critics to around the way girls–to Perry’s film and how, in most instances, people have found it astonishingly easy to separate Shange’s work from what Perry ultimately presented in movie theaters. So is the power of rabid love and selective memory.
I read Shange’s poem play when I was in high school, and as a black girl growing into womanhood, it was one of several books that I devoured as I tried to work out what exactly I, me as a person, was to mean not only to myself but to the world at large. It was a painful read because in it were things I’d experienced and things I was terrified of ever experiencing, but there was also a tremendous amount of compassion running through the poems for those women dressed simply in their colored dresses.
In reading a newer edition of the book a few weeks ago, I realized something that others who love the work are reluctant to say. While many of the poems remain lovely — in turns withering, devastating, probing, witty, and kind in examining female selfhood — there is constantly present the truth of the work’s age and the time period in which it was created.
The 1970s was the time of the Black Arts Movement, the flourishing of the feminist movement, the coming out decade for black women who were now finding their voices and the courage to speak about unspeakable things, including incest, rape, spousal abuse, back alley abortions and the hardships of just getting on in the world. Toni Morrison and Alice Walker kicked started the decade with their debut novels, The Bluest Eye and The Third Life of Grange Copeland, respectively. Nikki Giovanni, June Jordan, Sonia Sanchez, Angela Davis, Shirley Chisholm were all speaking truth to power in poetry and politics. By the time Shange’s play hit theaters in 1974/75, black female empowerment was in itself a (small) movement and for every rapturous embrace given to For Colored Girls there was an equally vocal dissenting fist ready to knock it down, often from black women and men who thought it said a little too much about what was going on behind closed doors.
Has much changed since the first staging of FCG in 1975? I would argue, yes. What in 1975 was revelation, is in 2010 now seen as pathology. I’ve said before that black girl pain has taken on a certain complexion in the past 25 years; a coloring that has been mixed by films like the Women of Brewster Place, The Color Purple, and Waiting to Exhale, all successful and now seen as touchstones for actors and filmmakers who want to address black female identity and get a broader audience. Black female issues now have a formula and recently the person producing the most popular version of that blend is Tyler Perry. And, we detest him for it.
What folks are really afraid to do, though, is to take issue with the source material. Canonical and in itself a touchstone for two generations of women, FCG is considered sacred and frankly, for purists nothing would have been good enough. What we need to come to grips with is that those issues Shange painted so beautifully and painfully in her choreopoem have been, in our time, worked over to the point of caricature. So that when Kimberly Elise cries for her babies all we can think about is a catatonic Lynn Whitfield crying for her electrocuted child in The Women of Brewster Place; or that a drunk, PTSD Beau Willie is the same tragic man/child that is Hurston’s Teacake in the film adaptation of Their Eyes Were Watching God (played by the same actor in both films); or that the newly introduced Lady in White has endured the same ruthless gutting of spirit that Celie did in The Color Purple (also with both roles played by the same actor).
None of that is really Perry’s fault. We can moan about what he actually presented, but what would we have done in his shoes? Can any of us honestly say that we would have creatively done this or that? Black women still face issues of incest, rape, mammyism and maternal disconnect, sexism and racism, but what people really wanted from FCG the film was a placing of those issues in a modern context without disturbing the compassionate core of the book. But that film would not have been FCG, which in the cyclical nature of cultural narratives has essentially become a root in several pathologies that many viewers are now bemoaning.
Someone on Twitter said that Tyler Perry didn’t trust black audiences to understand poetry and the disingenuousness in that comment was what drove me to write this article, because it became clear to me that people were less interested in what was actually in the book and film than with who visually told the story. Seventy-five percent of the film was Shange’s own words, as was the much maligned DL/HIV storyline, which the author herself added to the newest edition of her book. What I’m trying to say is, we also have to hold Shange and ourselves responsible for what’s up on that screen today as For Colored Girls. The choreopoem is a historical document; one that got some of us and our mothers through tough times, but we also have to acknowledge our ache for a different way of sharing our unique experiences, which after years of being stroked with the same brush is in need of fresher, newer voices to tell it like it currently is. We’ve grown and our relationships with men and the world have not completely change but are evolving. We can’t expect a work from 35 years ago to reflect or encompass that; we have to start painting that evolution, those changes for ourselves.
Jimmie
August 2, 2010
With out getting too academic about it, I love James Baldwin.
I loved him before I knew I was gay and fell even deeper in love with him once I acknowledged my own sexuality. Never in all of my voracious reading as a teenager had I encountered, up to that point, anyone who wrote about alienation, isolation, and loneliness so poignantly, honestly and beautifully.
I love him for being Black and out and loud and less than humble. I loved to watch old black and white videos of him speaking, deconstructing–with his big, expressive eyes, a hand at his temple as if to hold up his head with all these thoughts–the -isms that drove him to another country, where he was still lonely, isolated, and searching for peace of mind (thank you PBS.)
I love James Baldwin for giving me: Just Above My Head and Tell Me How Long the Train’s Been Gone, two of my favorite books that, in language aching with grief and love, explore familial and romantic life without being sentimental or pretentious. I love him for writing something as impossibly insightful and gorgeous and painful as this:
There is nothing more to be said. All we can do now is just hold on. That was why she held my hand. I recognized this as love–recognized it very quietly and, for the first time, without fear. My life, that desperately treacherous labyrinth, seemed to fall where there had been no light before. I began to see myself in others. I began for a moment to apprehend how Christopher must sometimes have felt. Everyone wishes to be loved, but in the event, nearly no one can bear it. Everyone desires love but also finds it impossible to believe that he deserves it. However great the private disasters to which love may lead, love itself is strikingly and mysteriously impersonal; it is a reality which is not altered by anything one does. Therefore, one does many things, turns the key in the lock over and over again, hoping to be locked out. Once locked out, one will never again be forced to encounter in the eyes of a stranger who loves him the impenetrable truth concerning the stranger, oneself, who is loved. And yet–one would prefer, after all, not to be locked out. One would prefer, merely, that the key unlocked a less stunningly unusual door.
-From Tell Me How Long the Train’s Been Gone
Author James Baldwin sings "Precious Lord, Take My Hand" written by Thomas Dorsey
I love that in all of that searching he never stopped being himself or forgot where he came from. Listen to that preacher’s kid sing.
James Baldwin (August 1, 1924 – November 30, 1987)
Book: Nothing to Envy
July 12, 2010
This weekend I traveled to a place I know very little about: North Korea. It was not a journey I’d expected to take. In fact, it was on a whim that I downloaded Barbara Demick’s affecting nonfiction book, Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea, to my Kindle on Saturday night. Earlier in the day, I’d watched the latest edition of the BBC’s “Culture Show”, which covered the nominees for the broadcaster’s most prestigious award for nonfiction, The Samuel Johnson Prize, worth £20,000 ($30,000). Of the books and authors discussed–all of which were fascinating looks at mathematics, human evolution, a personal account of the power of fly fishing, the reign of William II and an intricate look at the latest financial crisis, respectively–Demick’s book was the one that grabbed my attention when, in announcing Demick as this year’s winner, chair judge Evan Davis of Radio 4 said that one of the survivor accounts in the book, “actually moved me to tears.” It helped that the short interview conducted with the author, who is an American foreign correspondent for the Los Angeles Times now based in China, moved me with her reading of a short passage from the book.
Chronicling the lives of a doctor, a school teacher and her much richer secret lover, a fervent communist mother, an orphaned boy, and a rebellious daughter (all having defected to South Korea), Nothing to Envy takes its title from a children’s song taught throughout North Korea with the lyric, “We have nothing to envy in the world.” From the opening chapter the irony of the song is firmly established. Not soon after, it becomes nearly impossible not to compare the direct, affecting prose unspooling before your eyes to George Orwell’s dystopian masterpiece, 1984. There are all the tell-tale signs of totalitarianism: neighbors enlisted and entreated to rat out neighbors, the banning of all forms of art unsanctioned by the government, the secret police, the gray unmitigated stench of oppression and starvation, and at its core, a love story that moves forward and often trips over the figurative and literal darkness that is life in North Korea. It is a gripping read; detailed and unflinching in its parade of revelations about the resilience of human beings, as well as the effectiveness of propaganda, indoctrination and demagoguery. I literally only put it down to eat, shower and sleep.
Off the six accounts Demick researched over a ten year period, the journey of Dr. Kim–educated by the state in her profession–was the most affecting. Filled with gratitude with the opportunity to “pay back the Great Leader” for giving her the opportunity to practice medicine, Dr. Kim bears witness as her city’s functioning hospital crumbles under the weight of a famine that grips the country in the mid-1990s. Already barely able to serve the community with its lack of medicine, Dr. Kim is forced to helplessly watch small children in her care die of hunger. When asked if she remembers the children, she says, “All of them.”
Just as harrowing as the details of life under the demigod Kim Jong-sun and his equally despotic son, Kim Jong-Il, are the stories of flight and eventual settlement in South Korea. Our six eyewitnesses are wild-eyed, naive, and just as frightened when presented with freedom of choice as when they had none. The “overwhelming” is palpable and it comes as little surprise that some of them initially yearn to return to the familiar absence of independence.
When I finished reading Nothing to Envy, I was seized with a choking gratitude for my life as it is now. I climbed out of bed, having set my Kindle solemnly aside, and walked into my kitchen, opened the fridge and stared at the abundance of food that crowded it. I made a meal that did not need weeds, pine bark or stolen dog meat to stretch it. I sat in my spacious living room and marveled at my right to criticize the policies of my government without fear of being sent to a detention camp for the rest of my life; sat, grateful to my parents who did not have to cross a freezing river in the dead of night to get us here; sat, grateful for the luxury of my own boredom; sat, grateful for the freedom to walk to my desk, sit down, write and express anything I want and then share it with the world.
Birthdays, John the Baptist & Me
June 9, 2010
Today is my 35th birthday. If that number is meant to invoke panic about approaching middle age, sagging body parts, and introspection about where my life is as opposed to where I wish it to be, it has certainly failed.
I woke up this morning to the grayest of skies and a mood that can best be described as “soft.” I’d long planned not to be too hard on myself about anything (my work, my art, my life) on June 9. I’d promised myself that I would flow with whatever cropped up for the day, as my major celebrations are all planned for later this week and this month (can you say Miami?). This means I currently feel like butter: so relaxed I might actually be melting.
But as I laid among my several pillows just taking in the fact that I was alive and happily getting older, John the Baptist crept into my head. I grew up as a Jehovah’s Witness and to this day it is still strange, though incredibly liberating, to celebrate my birthday. From ages four to 16 I was not permitted to act like June 9 is special, that it belongs to me, that I have a right to rejoice in being here. This was all John the Baptist’s fault. Beloved Brother John got beheaded on King Herod’s birthday as a gift to his stepdaughter, Salome. For Jehovah’s Witnesses, this bloody act of lust-filled vengeance (prompted by Salome’s mother) means that any Christian worth his or her salt will back off of acknowledging birthdays in recognition of what befell John. I’m a pretty empathetic person, but since Jesus will presumably be reunited with John in heaven during the pending 1,000 years of paradise shouldn’t we turn away from the bloody spectacle of John’s death and rejoice in his guaranteed spiritual living? I’m not trying to be funny or blasphemous. It honestly doesn’t make sense to me.
Because celebrating birthdays was never programmed into my DNA as a child, I’ve always struggled to get to that ecstatic, excited place when my own rolls around. This has gotten a little easier in recent years because my friends just aren’t having it. And frankly, neither am I. I’m glad that I was born. June 9, 1975, was a great day and I would be remiss as a person who values life to let it go unmarked in the shadows of blood. Salome behaved very badly, but her punishment should never be mine. I’ve got too much to be grateful for to hide from my born day.
Happy birthday to me.
Lorraine & Malcolm
May 19, 2010
They are such icons and heroes that, like members of our family, we are comfortable calling them only by their first names. On this day in 1925, Malcolm Little, later to be called Malcolm X, was born in Omaha, Nebraska. Five years later, the playwright Lorraine Hansberry was born in Chicago, Illinois. In their own unique ways they were pivotal to the explosive push for civil rights in the tumultuous years spanning the early 1950s, right up to their deaths a little more than a month apart in 1965.
I read The Autobiography of Malcolm X for the first when I was 14, about the same time that I’d read A Raisin in the Sun. Funnily enough, it was my religious, West Indian mother who gave me Malcolm X’s book and I subsequently caught some of the militant fire that was beginning to strain her relationship with the church. It is a cracking read. You can smell the polish of Chicago’s shoe shine boys, you can feel the weight of prison, and the lightness of religious conversion and acceptance. You can also feel the determination and love with which Malcolm X, later to once more change his name to El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz, pursued justice; an endeavor made more significant and fitting, I think, because he knew what it was like to be a prisoner on every conceivable human level.
Hansberry had the same goal as Malcolm X, it’s only her tools that were different. “A Raisin the in Sun”, the first play by an African-American to be produced on Broadway, is a politically charged domestic drama about the strangling tentacles of segregation. There might be some debate about whether it has withstood the test of time (George C. Wolfe famously poked fun at it and the numerous imitators it spawned in his Colored Museum skit, “The Last Mama on the Couch Play”), but in its time it was revelatory, raw, and humanizing. Hansberry’s death at the age of 34 after battling cancer is impossible to comprehend. That a mind that fertile was taken so young still feels like an egregious error.
I wonder if people really knew what they had when Malcolm and Lorraine were in the world? History says no, a lot of them didn’t. But the ones who did know loved them madly, deeply and honored them the best ways they knew how. Below Nina Simone sings, with a bit of bitterness and anger, her Hansberry-inspired song, “To be Young Gifted and Black” at the 1969 Harlem Festival. The footage is grainy, terrible even, but it captures a little of what Simone must have felt at losing her dear, close friend; defiant and just a little sad.
"To be young, gifted and black" / "Revolution". Nina Simone ao vivo no Harlem Festival, no Central Park, em 1969.
The Death of Aiyana Stanley Jones
May 18, 2010
There is nothing accidental about the death of Aiyana Stanley Jones. Guns don’t just go off; fingers have to be firmly on triggers. The same way there was nothing accidental about the death of Sean Bell, Amadou Diallo and Patrick Dorismond.
I know what the police are like. I once sat in the back of a police car as an escort with my brother as two cops called us “barbarians” and “niggers.” You can not get me to ask a police officer for directions or the time. I respectfully keep my distance.
But they don’t.
Detroit police are offering the family of 7-year-old Ayana Jones their sincere condolences for the child's death during a police raid. They are now investigating the circumstances surrounding the killing. (May 17)
Time and time again, people of color living in the US have to endure the dismantling of our civil rights and our humanity because police officers, having got away with murder time and time again, are emboldened to do as they please and fix up the documents later. The continuing lack of accountability will haunt our streets and our justice system for generations to come.
I agree with Pro Libertate blogger, William N. Grigg, when he writes in his post The Death of Aiyana Jones: “Showtime Syndrome” Claims a Child, that “This was not a hostage situation. The proverbial clock wasn’t ticking. Why didn’t the police quietly set up a perimeter at the targeted address, and wait until the suspect left the building? Why stage a post-midnight paramilitary raid against a home where children were present?”
The excessive force employed by police officers nationwide not only calls for a reevaluation of police procedure, but of police officers themselves. Like any job requiring people to interact with a public they are sworn to protect, definitive psychological evaluations of officers and consistent follow ups, as well as judicial accountability, need to be implemented and strictly enforced. Until then I continue to worry for my family.
Fig Leaves & Face Paint Do Not a Homage Make
February 22, 2010
I’d heard about it a few weeks ago. Russian ice dance pair, Oksana Domnina and Maxim Shabalin, debuted an original dance program that incorporated face paint and fig leaves at last year’s European Championships. Calling it a melange of Aboriginal cultures (because, you know, all “natives” dance, look, sing, eat, and pray alike), the pair found love with that competition’s judges, while the Aborigines of Australia had a different take: offensive.
Grainy video on YouTube left me gawping (see below). An Al-Jazeera report quotes one Russian citizen as saying, “Why is it wrong from them to do a performance like this? On the contrary, it is interesting and funny. I think it’s fine.” The operative word in that quote is “funny.”
Last night at the Olympic Games in Vancouver, with heavy criticism hounding them, yet armed with the blessing (and blankets) from Canada’s CEO of The Four Host Four Nations, Tewanee Joseph, Domnina and Shabalin took to the ice with no face paint and a few less fig leaves attached to their costumes to perform the original dance once more. The percussive Aboriginal music thumps and the pair swooshing here and there on the ice, perform dance moves more akin to Tarzan and at one point even cavemen (Shabalin pulls Domnina by the hair more than once). The stadium’s audience staunchly refused
to urge them on. I can’t blame them.
There is a clear line between homage and misappropriation. Homage is underscored by serious research, consideration, and respect for the thing or person being honored. That respect can easily be seen in the reverence with which the homage is rendered. The finer points are adhered to; shown upfront to take away any doubt that the portrayal is less than an appreciation. What Domnina and Shabalin did last night was on the wrong side of that line. The monkey-like hunching, the hair pulling, the random swirls on their customs, the vibrant fabricated fig leaves spat on the complex symbology and mores of the Aborigines. That Domnina and Shabalin were quoted as saying that the dance was a “melange of native cultures,” adds insult to injury, gutting the cultural differences that define individual Aboriginal peoples around the world for the sake of what amounted to a “Me Tarzan, You Jane” Hollywoodesque take on Native cultures.
That they still don’t get why folks are in an uproar about this points to what keeps racism going strong: entitlement and an unwillingness to examine intent versus outcome as it relates to who might get hurt and why. Domnina and Shabalin’s performance was punished with poor scores from the judges, who may have received the memo that the pair refused to read.
My Gospel According to Nina Simone (February 21, 1933 – April 21, 2003)
February 22, 2010
That afternoon I remember the strong streaming of the sun through the 20-foot classroom windows. It was after 3 pm and most of the student body of Brooklyn Tech was already making its way out of the building amid overly loud cackles, verbal jabs, and general merriment. I was the only student in the classroom, summoned by my favorite teacher, Ms. Reiss. Short, her pepper-salt bob still meticulous after a day of urging her students to read between the lines, Ms. Reiss wanted to give me something. From her slender coat cupboard she pulled out two vinyl albums and handed them to me: Oscar Brown Jr. Goes to Washington and Nina Simone’s Pastel Blues. I don’t remember what she said to me as she handed them over, but I do recall that I felt warm, noticed, and understood. I was struggling at home with mum. Ms. Reiss didn’t know the finer details, but she loved my writing, critical thinking skills, and the initiative and openness I’d shown in exploring things outside of my general, tiny sphere of knowledge. I took the albums home, promising to return them the next day.
At my flat in Crown Heights, my mum wasn’t home yet. I sat down in front of our killer stereo system which had a wonderful, high-end turntable and played Pastel Blues first. I promptly began to cry. By the time the needle rode on to “Nobody Knows You When You’re Down and Out” I was in a state. How could Ms. Reiss tap into my soul so deeply that she knew I would understand (as much as a 16 year old could) the meaning of those words? Could related whole-heartedly to the mournful sense of abandonment and loneliness conveyed by Ms. Simone? I hunted down a couple of blank cassette tapes and copied both the Brown and Simone albums. I returned the albums to Ms. Reiss, not enough thank yous in my mouth to give to her. She went to her cupboard again, placed the two albums back in and gave me yet another one to try, Nina Simone Sings the Blues. She smiled and sent me on my way.
Nina Simone saved my life. She gave my emotions value, instilled in me a sense of self worth as well as a right to be righteously angry. She became my religion and my chunky Sony Walkman played those tapes like a Baptist plays gospel. To this day, I continue to find comfort and joy in her work. I buy reissued albums to get one new unheard live version of one song or another. I am grateful to Ms. Reiss for reading me so well, for not talking down to me, for trying to comfort me with music, for giving me Nina Simone.
When Racism Flag Waving Becomes A Petty Sport
February 6, 2010
I‘ll admit that I am exhausted with the topic of race. This is not to say that I agree that we have entered into a mythical post-racial society, but the discussion is so rife with poor judgment calls, poor assessments, and bull-horn bullying that I’ve begun to openly wonder if the language we now use to talk about this thick, convoluted societal affliction is inadequate; incapable of harnessing the minutiae, the nuanced insidiousness of the industrial race complex. Because, let’s face it, race talk has always been as much a movement as it has been big business. Careers have thrived and died on dissecting this living organism.
In recent weeks, I’ve been scolded and condescended to because I haven’t readily raised my hand to agree with some approach or overly broad statement concerning “blackness.” As a consequence my own “blackness”, my race consciousness and my commitment to challenging racism has been brought into question by other Black people, who having found me wanting, often dismiss me with, “you clearly don’t know who you are.” I refuse to be angry about this because I know where I’ve been and what I’ve done. If I let other people define me I will certainly cease to exist as myself.
But I am angry about what Ta-Nehisi Coates recently succinctly called “the parlor games” of race. With the election of President Barack Obama every pseudo-intellectual now feels qualified to tell other people how they should feel not only about themselves but about every single incident that involves people of diverse racial backgrounds. The NBC lunchroom incident is a classic example of this kind of race bullying, where the simple act of putting fried chicken and collard greens on a Black History Month menu is enough to rant and write 2,000 words about racism in corporate America. Meanwhile, real incidents of racism in the workplace are left unchallenged, perhaps because the subtlety there is too great for most racism flag wavers to comfortably etch a narrative on.
I am an advocate of calling racism out, both in its overt and nuanced forms, but I will not clog up the discussion with petty claims that do little to advance the broader issues and challenges, one of which is to get all of us–black, white, yellow, brown–away from these constant attempts to pigeonhole each other with the very scaffolding that we are trying to dismantle. That is to say, if we want to have an honest talk about race we have to remove the language (and its emotional underpinnings), the very words and actions, that have kept it alive for so long. Therefore, when a black chef–paying homage to the Southern roots that generations of Black people have helped to create–decides to place fried chicken and collard greens on a menu during Black History Month, we need to put the cameras, pens and flags down and dig in.