A New Kind of Blackness: Remarks at Tufts University's Black Solidarity Day

This keynote was given today at Tuft's Pan African Alliance's annual Black Solidarity Day Rally. I was honored to be invited to keynote this amazing event.
 

Let me begin by thanking Tabias Wilson, Jameelah Morris and the rest of the Pan African Alliance and the Tufts community for inviting me to spend some time with you today. It's an honor and a pleasure.

I've spent a long time thinking about blackness. About, roughly, all of my 35 years walking around this planet. I guess that makes me some sort of an expert, but mostly it makes me confused, angry, celebratory, conflicted, colonized, dehumanized, aggrandized, powerful, vulnerable, righteous, and a whole host of other adjectives, some of which are pejoratives, most of which reflect the complex relationship to blackness that comes with living in this particular historical moment, in this particular body, at this particular arc in our development as black folks and as community. Let me not mince words, though, it is a beautiful day to be a person of African descent in this world.

Despite the struggles, despite Jim Crow being alive and well and feeding on our people, despite the KKKoch brothers, despite still pretending that military service is job training and a pathway to anything but more colonization of people that look like us, despite having lost enough collective monetary worth during the Recession that we now are looking at a community with the equivalent resources of our folks BEFORE the Civil Rights movement, it's a good damn day to be black.

Let me tell you why. And it has nothing to do with Barack Obama, though let my one overt partisan moment be to say this:

If you have the right to vote for President, unlike our immigrant brothers and sisters, folks living in our colonies, and the millions of mostly men of color that have lost the right due to felony convictions (Jim Crow is alive and happy as Hell)...and you do not vote because "voting doesn't matter," or "you are protesting the system," please take your selfish self-centered behind up and out of these here United States. Most likely someone died for you to have that right especially if you are a woman, person of color, non land owner. ESPECIALLY IF YOU ARE BLACK. Folks are still dying here and around the world because some folks decided to stay home in 2000 and 2004 and Bush got in the White House, lost his mind, and started two wars. Go vote. I hope you will vote for Obama, but not voting isn't a protest it is an abrogation of your most minimal democratic obligation.

I am proud of Barack Obama but that has nothing to do with why it is a good day to be black in America. It's a good day to be black in America because we are beautiful. Always have been. Always gonna be. But it's a good day to be black because we have a chance to grab ahold of our blackness and shake it out. It's time to pull it back out of the closet, air out the afro puffs and pin that blackness to a clothes line and take a good look at it.

You know it has some stains on it. You know there are some old patches and frayed edges. Well it's time to Shout it Out! The Tide I am here to talk about is a tidal wave of change that needs to start right here with each and every person of African descent, whether you were born in Africa and have decided to make the United States your home, a descendant of U.S. born slaves, a Black Latin@, or wherever that slave ship happened to land and drop off your ancestors. Bi-racial, or a racial smorgesbord that has the black experience in the mix. Blackness now, today, needs a radical redefinition.

Before I go into what needs to be done with that blackness on the clothesline, let me talk to the black men a little bit and about feminism. Feminism at its root means that both men and women get to express their full humanity without oppression, without prescribed ways of being that are rigidly policed and socially/politically/often physically punished when deviated from the norm, and allow both men and women the full range and expression of their vitality and spirit without taking away from the other. Indeed, feminism is, at its root, the negation of gender roles and the full expression of human experience as in a liberation framework---ie...you get to be all of you, and I get to be all of me, and together we are committed to building each other to our full potential.

For black men this becomes about survival. Black men are taught from the gate to be tough, hard, in control, "macho", independent, players, victims, and that our potential is circumscribed by history, circumstance, and ability--not to be punks, to be virile, the mandigo syndrome...and these ideals images and thoughts are reinforced through our own communities, often, media--too often--, and what we consume from mainstream dominant ideology. We resemble what we are presented by others as ourselves. We become charicatures because so many of those that would be our own role models are dead, absent, or in prison. We are socialized internally and externally, and unless someone or something intervenes to break the cycle of history, legacy, and socialization we often become what we were never born to be. We become angry, and turn that anger inwards and towards our own community. And as a wise woman once told me, there is a place for angry black men: jail.

The truth or untruth of these socializations are related to our relative position to power, history, presentation, and ability to conform or not (willingly or not, consciously or not) to a paradigm that requires us to set our skin aside and adopt a way of being that imitates the master consciousness. This too is an ultimate expression of sexism and must be rejected through conscious practice. Further, I would argue it is sexism and a lack of feminist ideals and thoughts that are at the root of the pandemic of the single parent home, which, in and of itself, keeps the community widely struggling with poverty and in cycles of poverty.

Black men. Your liberation is inimically tied to women. It is not an option for you to be feminist if you want to be free. It is for all of our survival that black men must move towards an articulated black feminism, accountable to black women, and responsible for ourselves.

Let me let you in on a wee little bitty secret. Whether you were born in the Motherland and recently moved here or grew up here anyway, the blackness you experience is only partially your own. You may feel empowered and a fully realized person of African descent, but I am here to tell you right now today that your blackness has been shaped, influenced, and molded by oppressive institutions that have anything but your best interest in mind. The media, education, prison industrial complex, the nonprofit industiral complex, and all the other systems that were, listen closely here, created and built to maintain hegemonic white power.

And do you know how whiteness was legally defined in this country, beginning in the late 17^th century and then systematically constructed through a series of colonial state and later federal laws? As the basic opposition of blackness. Or, to be more specific, who was white and who was black and what that meant, entailed, and carried was and has been a function of law in this nation for the better part of all of its existence as a free standing state and for a good 250 years before hand. From the first laws passed by the House of Burgesses in Virginia to establish race based slavery to anti-miscegenation and Jim Crow laws later, what it means to be black has been fundamentally been defined by the legal system for a good chunk of our history.

And the greatest victory of that legacy of racial legislation is that through the combination of the media, the police state, and our own complicitness, the legal apparatus of our blackness is largely no longer necessary. We no longer need laws to force us to segregate, we no longer need laws for us to adhere to an anti-intellecualism, we no longer need laws to tell us to stay in our place and keep our heads down or don't buck the system or divide ourselves from one another based on skin tone and class, we do all that by ourselves, most of the time without thinking about it. If a brother or sister's hair is natural or they spent a semester in Ghana or is taking West African dance or can whip up mean plate of collards and neckbones (which I can....my greens will change your life), or can recite Tupac's biography, or has been to prison, or is hood, or is hard, or is straight, ..then that brother or sister is downer, blacker than say a light skinned lesbian that graduated summa cum laude from Tufts.

Pardon me but I call bullshit. Don't get me wrong, we need to embrace with a fierceness our historical roots whether that be our immigrant selves from Nigeria or our slave ancestors from a mill in West Virginia, but the downer than thou, black than you mentality has done nothing but foment separation, pain, and kept our ability for revolution and liberation in shackles and chains. It's time to set our liberation free y'all and it starts with building with one another.

I am standing in front of you a black, white, Ojibwe, Afro-Boricua, HIV positive, queer man. And I am just as black as any of you. You are my community, you are my salvation. I am in community with my queer and trans black family and being queer or trans doesn't make you less black than anyone else. It's time for us to realize that HIV stopped being a white gay disease a long time ago, it's now a black and Latina straight women's disease (as the fastest growing populations of HIV infection) and it's time to hold up our positive brothers and sisters as our own. No more high yellow and midnight blue conversations when talking about skin unless its to talk about how that high yellow or midnight blue person rocked your socks last night after that party and you are about to take his or her last name. I could give a damn about the style you wearyour hair, fried died and laid to the side or afro-tastic, I am with Miss India.Arie, I am NOT my hair!

I have a great-uncle that some of you may have heard about. His name is Carter G. Woodson. He wrote a book called the Miseducation of the Negro. It is time that we stop miseducating ourselves. Hear me now, and hear me clear, that blackness on the clothes line needs to be washed clean of the things that we have let divide ourselves from ourselves. It needs to be ironed and beaded and treated with loving care and expanded to include all shades of blaqness and all the power that holds while letting go of the powerlessness. Ain't nobody in this world going to give us our liberation. We need to break those chains ourselves, and we have to start by holding each other close in a way that says clearly that I am you. You are me. And I will do the work to undo the legacy of oppression, racism, sexism, heterosexism, abelism, classism, immigration status, and skin privilege that keeps me from you and you from me and us from the mountaintop because I am climbing y'all, and I mean to take every one of you with me, if you'll just hold my hand. I need you, and we need each other.

Thank you all for having me here today with you to talk just a little bit. Be blessed.

Interview with a Comic Diva Part Deux: Yamaneika Saunders

A little over a year ago, I met a a beautiful and hilarious woman by the name of Yamaneika Saunders. A year ago August, I published my first interview with this sexy, sassy, no holds bar maven of the microphone. Over the last year, though I have not gotten to see her as much as I would like, I have gotten to know her better, and I love everything about this human being. From her art to her heart, I am a true blue fan of this gem of a stand up comedienne. Yama is an inspiration to me, and I am very happy to present this new interview with her.

Thank you to Yama for providing this very real, very straight up (no pun intended) conversation.


1. You have a keen and vivid sense of the political, talk about how your art as a comedian and your incisive political wit cross? How does your politics as a back woman inform how you choose your topics for your comedy?

Whether I like it or not, I am grouped into this "angry black woman" category, for the sheer fact that I'm loud, black, big and female - so right off the bat there are going to be generalizations. I take it in stride. I am definitely trying to carve out my own unique voice, in hopes that the world will see I'm not defined by my sub-culture.

It's important for me to take on certain topics, as well as, trying to veer from being marginalized and characterized by my physical identity.

2. A few months ago, you thought about giving up on comedy. Let me first say that I am damn glad that you didn't, but can you talk a little bit about what brought you to the point of making that decision? You decided to continue gifting us with laughter, can you talk about why you choose to keep doing stand up?

Well, its still part of the plan for me to take a break. The reason is not that I don't love comedy, I just don't love the business of comedy. I'm always going to be a performer, its in my blood, but if I can't use my gift to save a life or change one then I'm failing. So, its quite possible you might see me make a switch into the ministry very soon. I can tell jokes from the pulpit.

3. We are in a recession, duh, how has that impacted your work as a comedian? And, in this climate, who, if anyone, of your peers is "making it?"

The recession affects the city, a lot, because people want to keep tight with the purse and the clubs want to make money so there are requirements when you come to shows. I try to make it worth everyone's wild when they come and see me, trust me no one is going to say "I wasted money on that show" even if I'm the only person who does well that night, I give 100% and its often times is enough to overshadow a bad night overall (that sounds cocky, but I'm keeping it real) that's not to say I don't have my moments but after being the game so long they are few and far between.

I'm not sure who is making it, we all get opportunities and they seem like they are gong to pan into something, but you just never know. Most of my peers in this game have set such a high standard for "making it" that I think when everyone knows our name we feel like we are "making it". I sometimes get a little ahead of myself because I'll go out to a club and I'll be surprised when someone says "Oh, I saw you at this place or that place" and I'm like "Really? You remember me?"

4. You have an amazing spirit and an obvious strength. Where does that come from? How do you re-energize yourself and keep yourself moving forward?

Thank you, for saying that! It's tough because I as an individual am very weak, in my opinion; the fortitude that I have is from God, without Him I wouldn't even wake up out of the bed. He keeps telling me He has me in His arms, so I step out on faith. My mother also keeps me grounded. She is always reminding me to be strong and stay positive. I have a good friend system too, even though I fight with all my friends and alienate them, the ones who stick around keep me tough, they don't take the shit from me so I can't take it from myself. So, by the time people see me on stage I've been picked up by all the above.

The audience also keeps my strong. I am super sensitive and I have so much I want to say to people, jolt them into reality that life is hard but so the fuck what?! Don't let a person treat you like shit. Don't accept shit! Those are my messages, so when I get on stage I just want to shout and yell and tell everyone FUCK IT ALL LETS LAUGH!

5. You have a show coming up on tonight at Comix in NYC...how can folks get tickets? Where else can they see you? What else do you have coming up?

Yes, the show at Comix is a hot one! Its been a minute since I've been back in the city, and since I go on the road often I sometimes don't get the chance to really get on at some of the clubs like I could, so its great when I'm able to do such a prestigious club like Comix.

The show starts at 9 PM Oct 28th, which is tonight. Tickets are $20, but anyone who mentions my name at the door gets a $5 discount. So, come out!

Policing Black Faces

Over my life time, my blackness has been a source of pride and panic. Depending on the geography, the locality, and population, my blackness has been vilified, exoticized, eroticized, ignored, or honored. And, in each of these geographic and temporal localities my own interaction with my own blackness has ranged from struggle to celebration.

My Mom tells the story from when I was around three or four years old. I was in pre-school in the "Projects" in Duluth, MN. Let me be clear that these projects were actually town homes, that had built in play facilities for children, several large green spaces including preserved prairie and a small woodland, and its own early education center for residents. It was very forward thinking for its time, we lived there when it was new, and it is in no way related to the ways in which people of color have been ghettoized in larger cities. The racial make up of these projects were, in fact, largely poor whites with a few black families mixed in and a couple of native families. The setting for this story is important, as one day I came home from school, which was also largely white, though with a prominent minority of people of color, and, though I don't remember this, I was irate. When my Mom asked me what was wrong, I told her that I was angry because I was not white.

That is a hell of a statement for a four year old to make, particularly a four year old that was as light as I was. For my first two or three years in school it was not unusual for me to be the only or one of less than a single handful of students of color in the entire school. In fact, in the 2nd grade, until I moved to Kansas City, Missouri, I was, in fact, one of two people of color in a school of roughly 600 students, and the only other person of color, who was also mixed race, was my cousin. I knew very little about black culture other than what I absorbed through extended family dinners and from my awesome church, Calvary Baptist, that had a black choir that could challenge the glory singing from any church anywhere. But, my day to day reality was largely a white world, an excellent education system, my Mom's white and native family, and, because I was pegged as a "smart kid,": I was often the only person of color in any of my classes.

All of that changed when my Mom fell in love with a man that lived in Kansas City, MO. We packed our bags and moved from one of the whitest places in the United States (Minnesota overall, Duluth for sure) to an entirely black neighborhood in the eastern part of Kansas City, which is largely a working class black community. My Mother was the ONLY white person anywhere in the neighborhood. We didn't know of another family that included a white person for at least six blocks in every direction. My brother and I became good friends with the family three houses down (Sean, Stacy, and Kenya), but their mother, upon finding out that our Mom was white, forbid her children from ever entering our house, and I can remember being inside of their home (beyond the front porch) only one time. In Minnesota, my brother and I stood out because we were black. In Kansas City, we stood out because we were half white. Not only that, we were taunted by the Southern drawling neighborhood kids because of our accent. We were called, "proper," in reference to our usage of the English language, and, though now when looking back on it, I should have accepted it as a compliment instead of an insult, at the time "proper," really meant, "outsider," "white," "siddity," and most hurtful, "not really one of us."

(And thanks to Google Satellite maps, I just saw my old neighborhood for the first time since 1987....hot damn that brings back memories).

The school system in Kansas City didn't really know what to do with me. I remember taking the Iowa Basic Tests in the fourth grade with my hated teacher Ms, Hardy. I asked her, one day on the playground, if the scores had come back. She scowled at me and said, "Yes they did. And you got the highest scores in the grade. But, if there were a way to cheat on this test, I would have assumed you cheated, as you simply aren't smart enough to have scored that high." I hated Ms. Hardy and she hated little boys. I think she was a repressed lesbian, and my heart goes out to her even while I hope her joy hole dried up and fell out at an early age.

The story stayed the same for much of the rest of my educational career. In fact, when I went to high school in Minneapolis, my school was almost 70% black. But, because of my educational achievement, and the fact that I was in the International Baccalaureate program, even the other black kids within the IB program saw me as other, outsider, different.

It wasn't until college that I had a big old FUCK YOU moment and claimed my blackness and the rich heritage of my family. I am unsure of what really tripped my trigger and led me to embrace my blackness deeply. Perhaps it is the trait I inherited from my white Mother wherein if someone tells me no or that I can't, my instinct is to do it, and do it so well, that the I can't becomes "damn you did it." I remember claiming my skin at a job, and thinking of myself, not as dark skinned, but not as particularly light and being told by my darker skinned black co-workers that at best, I was "butter."

The moment that I knew I had arrived home and comfortable with my identity as a black man came with electronically meeting a cousin that lives in Louisiana. She is a lawyer that does free lance research for the West Virginia Historical Society on black families. This brilliant woman, Miss Carol Haynes, has more than 30 notebooks on the history of our family. In fact, unlike most black families, we have a history that goes back to 1709 verified through sales receipts. My great-uncle, Carter G. Woodson, is the Father of Black History Month and founded the oldest (and still published) academic journal for African American studies. It was then, that I knew that no one, no matter how much darker than I am , could take away my identity.

Today, though, I had a conversation with a friend that I deeply love that made me really very sad. I texted a friend of mine from college that now lives here in New York (he moved here several years before I did). My earliest memories of this beautiful man are from visiting his house when he was living with my sister of the heart Jennifer. He was looking through a huge book of pictures of African peoples trying, through deductive reasoning, to see which people he most resembled. Despite the fact that his skin is extremely light, there is no way this man could pass. His features are African and proud without regard to the melanin count in his skin.

I wrote to him today to see if he wanted to go with some friends and me to the Black Out Party on Fire Island. The Black Out party is the queer black party that takes place annually on the island. When I asked him if he wanted to go, he told me that he was over black parties in New York. Then he wrote and said that, basically, he has been rejected and/or treated poorly because of his light skin by queer black communities in New York. And I, due to my personal history, understand that experience viscerally. But I also call bullshit. While I celebrate the fact that black men are intentionally finding darker skinned black men beautiful, and I understand the history wherein light skinned black people were used by whites as a buffer community between dark skinned folks, our experiences, while different based on our individual life paths, are still intrinsically tied together. What I told my friend is that if he chooses not to go for that reason, then he is letting the skin police win. He is black. Period. And he gets to and should claim his space even in the face of rejection. Because, frankly, by him and myself claiming our space, we open the doors to let others claim their blackness. My niece and nephew are only 1/4 black. Anyone that looks at them will NEVER EVER think, gosh these are some black children. Yet their father is darker than I am and obviously black. By standing up for them and by demanding that blackness and history accommodate the truth of my reality, I allow others that share our history and blood to claim their spaces when and if they decide to do so.

It is my hope that he chooses to join us on our trip to Fire Island. He has a place there, whether or not it is ever offered. It is his by right of birth and history.

Tom Tancredo Rhymes with Jim Crow

To invoke the power of the great blogger Divine Grace, former Republican Congressman Tom Tancredo is a douchenozzle.

He is also a racist bastard that, during his opening remarks at the Tea Party (I calls 'em Teabaggers) Convention, stated that "Obama was elected because we don't have a civics, literacy test in this country before people can vote in this country." (Read the Alternet.org article)

Jim Crow say what?

Speaking in the Nashville, TN, in a South that has never healed from the physical, spiritual, and psychic wounds of slavery and Jim Crow, Tom Tancredo said in his "outside voice" that Jim Crow era voting barriers should be reinstated to keep the ignorant from participating in Democracy. And by ignorant he meant to say niggers. Teabaggers are ok but carpet baggers will not be tolerated.

And wouldn't you know it, the crazy ass fuck nuts in the audience applauded. Holy shit.

When I first read this story yesterday, my jaw hit the table so hard that I left a dimple imprint in the Formica. It is a new fucking day and a great big leap backwards when white folks are no longer afraid of backlash or severe outward consequences by saying uncoded racist shit in public. Pre-Obama it would have been the immediate death knell of the Tea Party if a speaker at their "convention" aka "klan rally" said anything resembling what Tancredo said. There is no way in hell a former Vice Presidential candidate would have kept her appointment to give the keynote speech. Republican legislators would have immediately decried the organization, and it would have quietly broken apart or pulled their sheets back over their heads and returned to burning crosses in colored folk's front yards.

Not now. There's a nigger in the White House. The coloreds done got uppity and forgotten their places, and it's time for Granny to pull up her knickers, rub on some extra Fixodent, and get to kicking ass and tying nooses.

I am listening to NPR this morning, and they were reporting on the convention, and low and behold there wasn't a word spoken concerning Tancredo's remarks. WTF man? Oh yeah....they get money from the gubernment, and there is a recession don't you know. Can't rock the boat by doing any real reporting.

Wake up people. The true measure of the state of racism in this country is not the fact that a black man is in the White House. The true state is measured by what the opposition says and gets away with impunity. Racism is alive and well, and it has taken off its white robes, put on a suit and started a new white power movement called the Tea Party.

Jason Mattison, Jr. Murdered in Baltimore

I am sitting at my computer, drying tofu and waiting for a college friend to come over, so we can have dinner, drink wine, and enjoy each other's company. Up until I opened my Facebook a moment ago and saw an article posted by my friend and fellow blogger Andres Duque, I took every single moment of my day supremely for granted.

Today Jason Mattison, Jr. reminded me to pay attention and to be grateful. Yesterday it was George Steven Lopez Mercado. Both of the lessons came at the cost of these youth's lives.

What the fuck is wrong with motherfuckers in this world?

I mean come on. Jason was raped, stabbed in the throat and face, gagged with a pillow and shoved in a closet in his Aunt's house. He was murdered by a friend of the family known to be a violent criminal and yet somehow they let him in the house and left him alone with this boy? WHAT THE FUCK! I might love the hell out of a good friend or relative that snaps and does violent harm to someone, but you can bet from that day forward that person will NEVER be alone in a room with anyone that is precious to me...especially a child.

And what really pisses me off, once again, is that since this was a black child that was murdered in Baltimore in a poor neighborhood, there will be no massive Matthew Shepherd outcry. There will not be massive candle light vigils around the country. There will be no massive legislative intervention by the HRC or NGLTF or any other national advocacy group. I am so tired of the fact that OUR children, our beautiful brown and black children, are continuously sacrificed and pass out of this world without a tremendous roar by every breathing loving person that understands that every single human being is precious. FUCK YOUR RELIGION if it tells you that a gay child should not complain when he or she is killed. FUCK YOUR NEIGHBORHOOD if people get off by harassing and slamming queer kids just trying to grow up. FUCK YOUR SCHOOL if it does not immediately boot anyone that thinks its ok to bully or shame someone because of their perceived sexual orientation or perceived gender identity.

THIS IS NOT JUST A QUEER PEOPLE OF COLOR TRAGEDY. THIS IS A TRAGEDY.

I want to see white straight male Republican capitalists that own overseas assets crying on TV about this child's murder. I want WHITE LED LGBT ORGANIZATIONS to organize the marches and vigils and remembrances of this baby. I WANT A GODDAMN NATIONAL ACT TO ELIMINATE POVERTY in this country called the JASON MATTISON JR and GEORGE STEVEN LOPEZ MERCADO ANTI-POVERTY AND WELFARE RIGHTS ACT that also includes a provision that provides for Puerto Rico to become a free and independent nation with a guaranteed annual no strings attached AID package of 100 billion dollars a year for every year that Puerto Rico has been a U.S. Colony, which is 110 years and counting.

Remember Jason Mattison, Jr and his family in your thoughts and prayers. And once you are done praying, call someone and tell them about his murder, then call your neighbors, your schools, your legislators, your ministers, your police force, and anyone else that needs to be called and told that our youth are inherently sacred, valued, loved, cherished and no one has any right or reason to dim or put out their light.

Ragtime on Broadway Fucked My Ass Up

So I basically spent the last two hours being angry as hell and crying like a little biznatch that got beat in the face with a morningstar dipped in acid.

Ragtime is the best piece of theater I have seen in a long damn time. It's better than Wicked, and since I named my penis Gregory McGuire after seeing Wicked...that should tell ya'll something.

Ragtime is a revival of a play from the late 90s. It is officially re-opening this Sunday at the Neil Simon theater just up the street from my house. Today was a preview matinee. A friend of mine, that I met through David, had extra tickets to the show and sent me a text earlier this afternoon to ask if I would like to see the show.

I had already had a midday cocktail as today was a day off for me, and I was debating whether or not I should go. Ragtime was on the top of my list of shows to see, so I figured I should get my lazy ass up off the stool and go check out the show for free.

I haven't decided yet if it was a good choice.

So, in a vacuum it was an excellent choice. The show was fucking phenomenal. The music was incredible, the performers were outstanding, the story was great and original, and the stage/sound/lighting are going to win this production a Tony.

In relationship to my mental health after two days of intense labor and already being soul tired before I went, it was probably a poor choice.

I didn't know what the show was about before I signed up to see it. I knew it had black folks in it, and I knew that it must be set in the late 19th and early 20th centuries as that was the hey day of ragtime music.

In actuality the show wove the stories of two Jewish immigrants, a well-to-do white American family, and a black woman and her child, and a Harlem based successful ragtime musician. The play addressed issue of workers right and industrialism. Emma Goldman figured in prominently as did JP Morgan and Booker T. Washington. The gist of the play is that a poor black woman abandons and then is reunited with her infant. What she thought was an itinerant musician tracks her down and tries to build a life for her. Unfortunately, she is beaten by whites and killed. As often happened, the legal channels of justice did jack shit to remedy the situation, and the musician goes ape shit and kills three white men. And I say halle-fucking-lujah to that.

Of course in the end, the black man is shot down by the authorities, and Booker T. Washington's assimilationist and white washed negro ass advocates for the wronged musician to trust the wheels of justice which roll right over the musician.

The entire story is told through brilliant musical numbers and frankly I cried from sadness and ridiculous anger.

I am so tired of being angry. I wasn't sitting in the audience angry at some historical injustice, I was angry because the EXACT SAME SHIT HAPPENS RIGHT NOW EVERY DAY AND NOT A FUCKING THING HAS CHANGED fundamentally. Sure, overt racism in the criminal justice system is no longer permissible but violent crimes against black men by the police have not substantially dipped in a generation, white cops that kill black men almost uniformly get off no matter HOW obvious it is that the shit that went down was a case of fucked up white men shooting down a black man who only had a wallet in their hand, and institutional and structural racism, though mitigated, remains rampant in so many ways. I love Obama but his election has meant little to jack shit in the substantive day to day realities of black folks living in America.

Didi I mention I am tired of being angry. I really am. I am so emotionally drained. I know that when I came home pouring a delicious vodka drink was probably not the best answer, but it was a readily available one. I know that my man is going to come home in an hour or so, and he should not be subjected to the ridiculous and irate feelings that are pumping along with adrenaline through my veins. But, seriously, right now at this juncture I am utilizing every tool that I have to just survive this rage without reverting to old drugging patterns or pulling out a hatchet and going Jason Voorhies on the asses of whatever poor white souls I meet on the street below.

I am sure tomorrow I will be my old chipper self again, but today I am pissed as hell.

Oh, and btw, go see Ragtime. It is worth the ticket price.

Tragedy and Stupidity In South Memphis

This morning I logged into my Facebook account to find a news clip posted on my wall by my friend Arthur. The clip was an interview from a Fox affiliate in South Memphis. A mother and and her sister left their home unattended with a two year old and a three year old inside while they went to drop off a friend at home. During their absence the house caught on fire. The two year old died.

You can see in this clip that the mother of the children is understandably distraught. One child is in critical condition and the other one is dead. Then the aunt of the children loses her fucking mind. At the end of the clip, she announces that she has no regret that the children were left home alone, then she laughs and says she needs to get in to see if her "purse burnt up cuz her food stamp card..." was in the purse.

Stupidity knows no fucking color.

Unfortunately, this ignorant black woman's interview is already making its way around the country at the speed of YouTube. I am sure that Fox News could not WAIT to get this clip up on the Internet and into the hands of their faithful across the country. At a time when the black community is enjoying the beginnings of a Renaissance, Fox has helped ensure that this ridiculous excuse for a human being is going to get massive amounts of air time.

And let's be real here. When a crazy white person aka Timothy McVeigh blows up a federal building killing innocent children, he is just one disturbed human being. When a crazy working class black woman exhibits her personal ignorance and callousness on Fox News, she is representing the entire American Black community. She immediately conjures of images of deadbeat welfare queens, uneducated poor, and stereotypes of black women used to galvanize the religious right base during the Reagan and Bush Sr. years.

The woman in that video clip is a poor excuse for a human being that should have her tongue yanked out by her sister. I can't imagine one of my siblings being so heartless and cruel as to make a statement such as the one she made while the house is still smoldering. If any of them did, you can bet the first thing I would do when I came out of the shock of losing my child would be to kick his or her ever loving ass. But I would know that it was just a stupid person saying stupid shit. But when the media, particularly Fox media, gets a hold of something like this it is a culture war gold mine.

If I had the stomach for it, I would Google search this topic. I would not be surprised if Don Imus and Glen Beck mentioned this news story on their shows today. Just as one black person should not represent our entire community nor should that same black person have the power to sabotage the image of an entire community, but this one disturbed individual does. My own internal tapes started running as soon as I heard her speak. False stereotypes of the working class (from which I come), the South (my family is from the South and I went to college in the South), black women (ummm I am black), and a whole host of other negative stereotypes started running through my head. AND I KNOW BETTER. I know that the South is a beautiful and vibrant place. Most of my political mentors come from, live in, and organize in the South. I came out in the South, cut my teeth as an organizer in the South, and I know the power, beauty, and history of that place. Yet this one woman was able to raise all the specters of the South implanted in my mind by history books, television, movies, and other pop culture vehicles. I know so many powerful black women that it should be impossible for me to project the shortcomings of this stupid individual to all black women, yet the tapes in my head started shouting things like "typical." The Aunty in this video IS NOT TYPICAL. Yet pop culture and U.S. acculturation tells me that she is.

I hate Fox News. I despise this woman her personal ignorance, and I hate our cultural system that indoctrinates even people that know better to feel and think AUTOMATICALLY the thoughts and feelings that rushed through my head and heart when I watched this particular interview.

My heart and prayers go out to the Mother of those children. She is not faultless. She knew better than to leave two young children at home alone. She has reaped a punishment that will haunt her for the rest of her life. I wish her only peace as she tries to pick up the pieces of her family. To the Aunt, I hopes that she gets the help she needs from friends and neighbors. I hope she sees her interview and is embarassed to the core of her being. And I fervently hope that Fox News and Ruport Murdoch are sucked into a worm hole, deposited on an oxygen-less planet on the far side of the solar system where they are gang banged by giant poisonous sea slugs.

Lord let the rest of the day be filled with peace, joy, and love.

Interview with a Man Who Tells The Damn Truth: Kenyon Farrow

In 2006, I received a phone call from my best friend RJ. He told me that he had a friend in NYC that was touring the country promoting a new anthology: Letters from Young Activists: Today's Rebels Speak Out. The man was Kenyon Farrow. A few weeks later he walked into my my studio and my life. The friendship and the association has been one where I have found myself constantly and urgently challenged through the honest way in which Kenyon lives, works, writes, and struggles. Kenyon has enough manic energy that there are times I want to stick a plug in his ass and power my apartment. ConEdison better watch out. He is brilliant and passionate; anyone that had a chance to hear his speech at Creating Change in Denver last February on the realities of HIV/AIDS and the black community, will know that when Kenyon tells the damn truth people jump up and say amen. This Midwestern brother from another mother of mine is someone that I honor, that honors my community, and that lives the shit he talks about.

Months ago, Kenyon was featured in Out Magazine as one of 2008's Out 100. At that time, I asked him if he would be willing to be interviewed for my blog. He said yes. Now, 3/4 of a year later, I finally got him the interview questions. Know Kenyon. Listen to Kenyon. You will be a better human being for it.

1.) In 2008, Out Magazine named you one of the Out 100. You were one of a very few people of color on that list. What did that "honor" mean to you? What does it mean that there were so few people that looked like you on that list?

KF: Well I was honored by the Out 100 nomination precisely because it was people of color who told the editors at Out that I should be nominated, so it was definitely nice to be recognized by other people of color who think highly of my work. I guess in terms of the lack of representation of Black people or other people of color on the list, is simply reflective of gay magazines in general, so I guess I had low expectations in that department to begin with. Sometimes I do those kinds of publications or engage more mainstream outlets because I think about those black gay boys like me, in places like Ohio, who may only have access to these mainstream publications, or who may not have black gay activists or spaces that have a certain political vision I have. So for me, it is important to me to reach them, the same way I found Barbara Smith's work in a cheesy gay bookstore in Columbus, OH. I would not have had access to that kind of political work in Ohio otherwise. I sometimes worry about people critiquing me for making that choice, or calling me a media whore or something, but the reality is not everyone who has an interest in certain kinds of political discussions or ideas reads some underground zine or even a progressive magazine. My family is super-politically engaged and some of the most politically astute people I know, but they do not, and never have read The Nation, let alone something even smaller. So I sometimes engage mainstream stuff to get my work out to people that are not "The Left".

2.) You have been a tireless advocate, researcher, and speaker on issues relating to HIV and queer people of color, specifically youth and African-Americans. I was at the speech you gave at Creating Change this year. Whooo child. In an America that believes itself post-AIDS, how is your work different than HIV/AIDS Advocacy, say, in the early 90s?

KF: Thanks for the compliment on that speech. I am really humbled by the impression it (and the rest of my co-panelists) left on the attendees (Editor's Note: Bishop Yvette Flunder also let us all have it). In any case, I think that my work on HIV/AIDS in some respects looks more like some of the work in the 1980's and early 1990's, that really understood the AIDS epidemic in the US as a manifestation of other kinds of injustice, as opposed to a manifestation of problematic behaviors that we need to teach "certain" people to curb. Other than that, I think that my work is not only about drawing together the issues that are driving the epidemic among black gay/bi men and black trans women, but also to just actually remind people that the epidemic didn't go anywhere. I am beginning to hear a lot of gay organizations saying that they "don't do AIDS" anymore, and I think we need to call them out on that shit too.

3.) You are HIV-, what does it mean to do significant work in the black queer positive community while both being a part of and being distinct from that community? How do you integrate and organize around economic justice issues as a negative person while supporting the positive community?

or

You are HIV+, how does your HIV status inform your work both as an advocate but also an organizer for social and economic justice?

KF: I am actually glad you asked my HIV status to some extent. I think it is something I struggle with how to talk about as an AIDS activist. I am HIV negative, but I don't know how to talk about that in a way that doesn't seem like I am trying to let everybody know, I don't have it. Kinda like when straight allies to queers always have to remind people that they're straight. How dreadful. The fact remains, that though I do not have HIV, I am personally impacted by the epidemic in that several family members have died of AIDS, and probably half of my black gay/bi men and transwomen friends are positive. Not having HIV does not mean that it doesn't impact my life in some very dramatic ways on a daily basis. As consistent as I am with practicing safe sex and whatnot, I am beginning to feel the need to begin to talk and write more publicly about feeling like condoms as the only real strategy I have is not something I don't know that I can maintain for the rest of my natural born life. I am almost 35, and have been having sex with men for about 15 years. And if I am lucky I have another 50+ years, and I plan to have sex for as much of that time, as often as I can. LOL!!! Am I supposed to wear condoms all the time for the next 50 years? It makes no fucking sense, but that's all we got right now. And I am tired. And given the HIV rates among gay men in general, and certainly among Black men, the idea that I can sero-sort my way through it for the next 50 years is just fucking ridiculous. And I am almost afraid to say that, but fuck it. It's the truth and people need to hear it. As much stigma as there is for HIV+ black gay men, there is no space for negative men to say any of this. We're treated like we ought to be fucking glad to not have it. But the odds are so against us and we're so traumatized by the spectre of contracting HIV, or having witnessed the death of friends and family and nobody being able to talk about it, or people being ostracized, negative men are carrying the weight of this too. And if that's the case, being negative doesn't seem like much to fucking celebrate--the impact of the virus and what it means is kicking your natural ass anyway. And that's the truth that is so scary to say out loud. But as you can tell, I am tired of holding this. And I think it is this kind of frank discussions about sex and sexuality for Black gay men as it pertains to HIV is where I want to go with my work--ground my political writing about AIDS in my own sex life. We can sometimes cloak ourselves in "the issues" and not be brave enough to tell our own truths for fear of being judged often in our professional spaces, and by people we can't fucking stand anyway.. Well, I am about to throw caution to the goddam wind.

4. In addition to being a tireless advocate for health issues, you are also known (and worshipped) as a leader in the economic justice movement and its intersection within and throughout queer communities...talk about how you frame issues of HIV/AIDS in the context of economic justice?

KF: Well there was a study that recently came out, where they interviewed 1,115 Black and Latino men who have sex with men in Philly and NYC about how they identify-gay, bi, down-low or some other term. 35% of them made less than $5,000 a year. Now they used money incentives to recruit people, so that skewed the number of poor men who participated in the study very high, and also the number of HIV+ men who already knew they're status high. But that should tell you something about where the epidemic is--among poor black and Latino gay men. Or the impact of getting and HIV diagnosis actually increases one's likelihood of becoming poor if you weren't already. If that diagnosis means you are socially isolated from family or communities of origin, who do you rely on to get needs met in times of hardship? What if you can't afford treatment if you have no health insurance? If you're working in a low-wage job with little benefits or with no sick days or vacation, how do you take time off for doctor's appointments without raising the suspicion of co-workers or your boss? Medicaid is the largest insurer of people with HIV. If you're transgender woman or just a gay man who like to press your hair or wear nails, where do they even get work in the overground economy anyway--performing drag, or maybe working the MAC counter at the local mall, or maybe in a beauty salon. Those are your options and not everybody can or wants to to that kind of work. To me, there are some very clear reasons that HIV is an economic justice issue, and yet, no economic justice organizations that I know of even mention it. But QEJ is going to be at least putting this kind of analysis out in the world soon.

5.)You are also a brilliant writer...if folks want to read more about you, your work, and what you are doing, how can they find out more about you?

KF: Well, the tension I have now is that the activism, and the demands of working at QEJ which is a full plate on top of the other work I do, is taking me more and more away from my writing, and is keeping me from actually working on my own book project, which I am really desperately trying to do. But folks should check my blog, www.kenyonfarrow.com and I am also writing for this new site called TheGrio.com pretty regularly, so check me out there as well. Lastly, I am co-editing a book that should be out next year called A New Queer Agenda on NYU Press. It's a project of QEJ--a collection of writing critiquing the mainstream LGBT movement, as well as pieces about how other racial and economic justice issues impact the lives of queers. I co-authored a piece in the book about the "War on Drugs" and queer communities with gabriel o. sayegh, who works with the Drug Policy Alliance.

A New Black Literary and Cultural Renaissance

This poem is one that I discovered just today. It is by the late, great poet Paul Laurence Dunbar. This poem is important for its humor, its structure, its linguistic heritage, and how it illustrates how free black and slave black used the Christian Church as a source of inspiration, but more truly, a source of organizing. When folks today wonder why the black church is so important, still, to the black community it is because it was the one place where we could gather, free of a watchful eye, where we could sing and shout our pain and anger, celebrate our small joys, and also connect through music and dance with our African heritage, which had been systemically stripped from us (for example, U.S. black slaves were the only black slaves in the Western Hemisphere to be denied the use of traditional drums...this...of course...was impetus for other musical expression and seeded the roots of country, blues, soul, hip hop, rock and roll, and jazz).

The poem also demonstrates how and why the Preacher held the role he (and she) did in slave communities. Since slaveholders proclaimed themselves to be God fearing and Christian, it was in their best interest, and supported their standing in the community, to have their slaves educated in Christian theology. As such, Black preachers enjoyed a freedom of mobility denied to common free blacks and slaves. Yet, this freedom did not come without a price. As Dunbar points out in his poem "but fu' feah some one mistakes me/I will pause right hyeah to say/Dat I'm still a-preachin' ancient/I ain't talkin' 'bout today," and when he states pithily, "Now don't run an' tell yo' mastahs/Dat I's preachin' discontent." That is to say...a preacher could and did slip in messages of freedom and liberation but those things were dangerous and could result in more strange fruit swaying in the breeze. Though, even with the fear of lynching riding high on the backs of ministers, they still travelled the pre-war South and preached messages of freedom and liberation.

This poem, though written post-Emancipation, shows also the freedom with which late 19th and early 20th century black writers wrote. Folks like Dunbar and Zora Neal Hurston were masters of the English language yet would, without apology, write in Southern black vernacular English, not as a characterization of ignorance (as was done by well meaning folks like Harriet Beecher Stowe), but as a illumination of how Southern black vernacular English (slave English) was far from ignorant and could and did transmit complicated ideas and dangerous messages in an era where a slip of the tongue or a cut of the eye could end with a black person swinging from a tree.

This is in stark juxtaposition to the debates around Ebonics in the 1990s and the characterization of Black Standard English as an expression of ignorance that needed to be stamped out with "proper" education. Indeed, all Americans should be proficient in textbook English: reading and writing. But just as a native Spanish speaker should not be discouraged from writing and expressing him or herself in Spanish even though he or she should be American born, neither should black folks distance themselves from a rich literary and linguistic tradition because the white power structure in America has characterized and still characterizes it as lacking in intellctual richness simply because it is a divergent dialect from Webster's English. That tends to happen when you snatch up entire populations of people with their own syntax and grammatical structures inherent to families of languages, force them into bondage, and then attempt to mold their languages into the boundaries of ones own.

Language was meant to grow, change, diversify, and birth new linguistic (and literary) traditions. Once upon a time, French, Spanish, and Italian were considered bastardized local offshoots of Latin. Hell, the Catholic Church didn't allow vulgar Masses until after Vatican II. Imagine...speaking to the people in a language that they understand.

In the end, this poem demonstrates the power of language and culture. Almost a hundred years after its composition, it still resonates deeply in theme, subject, content, and humor with the issues facing black communities and black culture today. Though slavery ended some 144 years ago, and black folks in the U.S. have progressed far beyond the days where preaching the wrong word could end with a short drop, the overwhelming economic, pyschic, and spiritual burdens of 300 years of slavery and a 100 years of state sponsored segregation and terrorism against black folks in United States still hangs as a heavy lodestone around the weight of the collective black psyche. Finding the strength and beauty developed and cultivated during bondage, shucking the husk of white supremacy folded around those modalities, and serving up a new black literary Renaissance that builds on our literary and linguistic traditions and opens them wide to embrace new art forms (spoken word and hip hop to name a couple), and new black communities (black Latin@s and African immigrants) could be the foundation for the next stage in the evalution of the black community in the United States.

An Ante-Bellum Sermon
by Paul Laurence Dunbar

We is gathahed hyeah, my brothahs,
In di howlin' wildaness,
Fu' to speak some words o comfo't
to each othah in distress.
An' we choose fu' ouah subjic'
Dis—-we'll 'splain it by an' by;
"An' de Lawd said, "Moses, Moses,"
An' de man said, Hyeah am I.'"

Now ole Pher'oh, down in Egypt
Was de wuss man evah bo'n,
An' he had de Hebrew chillun
Down dah wukin' in his co'n;
'Twell de Lawd got tiahed o' his foolin',
an' sez he: "I'll let him know'
Look hyeah, Moses, go tell Pher'oh
Fu' to let dem chillun go."

"An' ef he refuse do it,
I will make him rue de houah,
fu' I'll empty down on Egypt
All de vials of my powah."
Yes, he did—-an' Pher'oh's ahmy
Wasn't wurth a ha'f a dime;
Fu' de Lawd will he'p his chillum,
You kin trust him evah time.

An' you' enemies may 'sail you
In de back an' in de front;
But de Lawd is all aroun' you,
Fu' to ba' de battle's brunt.
Dey kin fo'ge yo'chains an' shackles
F'om de mountains to de sea;
But de Lawd will sen' some Moses
Fu' to set his chilun free.

An' de lan' shall hyeah his thundah,
Lak a blas' f'om Gab'el's ho'n,
Fu' de Lawd of hosts is mighty
When he girds his ahmor on.
But fu' feah some one mistakes me,
I will pause right hyeah to say,
Dat I'm still a-preachin' ancient,
I ain't talkin' bout to-day.

But I tell you, fellah christuns,
Things'll happen mighty strange;
Now, de Lawd done dis fu' Isrul,
An' his ways don't nevah change,
An' de love he showed to Isrul
Wasn't all on Isrul spent;
Now don't run an' tell yo' mastahs
Dat I's preachin' discontent.

'Cause I isn't; I'se a-judgin'
Bible people by dier ac's;
I'se a-givin' you de Scriptuah,
I'se a-handin' you de fac's.
Cose ole Pher'or b'lieved in slav'ry,
But de Lawd he let him see,
Dat de people he put bref in,
Evah mothah's son was free.

An' dah's othahs thinks lak Pher'or,
But dey calls de Scriptuah liar,
Fu' de Bible says "a servant
Is worthy of his hire,"
An' you cain't git roun' nor thoo dat,
An' you cain't git ovah it,
Fu' whatevah place you git in,
Dis hyeah Bible too'll fit.

So you see de Lawd's intention,
Evah sence de worl' began,
Was dat His almight freedom
Should belong to evah man,
But I think it would be bettah,
Ef I'd pause agin to say,
Dat I'm talkin' 'bout ouah freedom
In a Bibleistic way.

But de Moses is a-comin',
An' he's comin', suah and fas'
We kin hyeah his feet a-trompin',
We kin hyeah his trumpit blas'.
But I want to wa'n you people,
Don't you git too brigity;
An' don't you git to braggin'
"Bout dese things, you wait an' see.

But when Moses wif his powah
Comes an' sets us chillun free,
We will praise de gracious Mastah
Dat has gin us liberty;
An' we'll shout ouah halleluyahs,
On dat mighty reck'nin' day,
When we'se reco'nised ez citiz'
Huh uh! Chillun, let us pray!

Al-Shabaab and the U.S. Military: Gangs of a Feather Flock Together

Listening to NPR this morning, I heard a story about my hometown of Minneapolis. Minneapolis has the largest Somali population in the United States. Since the mid-1990s, when I first left Minneapolis for college, the Somali community went from non-existent to more than 10,000 individuals. An area of the city once known as Seven Corners is more usually called, now, Little Somalia. In the last few years I have had a chance to know and even work with amazing Somali men and women that are looking to build a strong community and sense of home thousands of miles from war torn Somalia. As a former member of the board of directors of the Headwater Foundation for Justice, I was able to fund and support the work of the Somali Action Alliance—a social justice organization focused on building positive community strength in the Twin Cities Somali community.

Thus, I was totally caught off guard this morning when I heard that Somali youth in Minneapolis, many of them U.S. born Somalis, are being recruited by a Somali jihadist organization called Al-Shabaab...a fundamentalist group that is actively committing acts of violence against the Transitional Federal Government in Somalia. At least 27 Somali youth from Minneapolis have gone missing since March. They are thought to be in Al-Shabaab training camps. Their parents have no idea where they have gone and are terrified. And none of this is helped by the fact that last October, a 27 year old Minnesotan Somali by the name of Shirwa Ahmed killed himself in an Al Shabaab suicide bombing act killing more than 30 people.

In a report given to the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, Andrew Liepman, Deputy Director of Intelligence, of the National Counterterrorism Center shared seven pages of testimony. In that testimony Deputy Director Liepman stated that:

Compared to most Muslim immigrants to the US, many Somalis—seeking refuge from a war-torn country—received less language and cultural training and education prior to migration. Despite the efforts of Federal, State and local government and non-governmental organizations to facilitate their settlement into American communities, their relative linguistic isolation and the sudden adjustment to American society many refugees faced has reinforced, in some areas, their greater insularity compared to other, more integrated Muslim immigrant communities, and has aggravated the challenges of assimilation for their children.

According to data from the most recent census, the Somali-American population suffers the highest unemployment rate among East African diaspora communities in the United States, and experience significantly high poverty rates and the lowest rate of college graduation. These data also suggest that Somali-Americans are far more likely to be linguistically isolated than other East African immigrants. (11 March 2009, Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, page 4)

Basically, due to abject poverty and feelings of isolation, Somali youth are vulnerable to recruitment. Two other groups I can think of target the poor and the isolated for recruitment: Gangs and the U.S. Military.

I was surprised when I heard the report this morning on NPR. I was surprised that some of the students recruited were from Roosevelt High School, a school that was less than two miles from where I last lived in Minneapolis. (Incidentally...to anyone that heard the report this morning...the reporter referred to Roosevelt as being in the suburbs...it is not. It is in the heart of South Minneapolis). But, after reading the Senate testimony my surprise faded to dull anger.

Roosevelt High School, since I was a student in the Minneapolis Public Schools in the early to mid-90s, has been an economically depressed, highly segregated, and high violence school. While I love the Minneapolis Public Schools, I can not understand why Roosevelt has been allowed to continue down a road of under achievement and poverty and racial segregation while, for example, my own high school, Patrick Henry, has enjoyed a renaissance and is now one of the top public high schools in America. We know that gangs target these communities, so why are we surprised, in this growing global world...that an immigrant population with a homeland in turmoil would not be vulnerable to international recruitment.

When crazy white Americans convert to radical Islam and join Al-Qaeda, how can we suppose that our Muslim youth, trapped in isolation and feeling despondent, will not turn to whoever will give them hope and a sense of self...no matter how ultimately destructive that acceptance turns out to be.

And when poor students of color and poor rural whites in the United States feel they have no other option than to join the U.S. military or are actively recruited by the military using the exact same media and Internet tactics that Somali militants are using to recruit Somali youth...how can I have been surprised.

In this moment, there is no moral high ground for us. We readily sacrifice our poor and brown/black/red/yellow young people on the altar of the Oil Wars. The difference between the recruitment of these Somali youth and the recruitment of poor black Americans into the U.S. military is only that the Somali youth are being recruited into an independent militia without state power behind it. Let me be clear...U.S. Military recruitment tactics are only differentiated from Islamic militant recruitment tactics because they are state sanctioned. Just like these Somali recruiters, who use the Internet, media, and real time recruiters to appeal to the Somali's sense of duty, honor, commitment, patriotism, and sense of self worth to get them to sign up for Al-Shabaab...so do the U.S. military recruiters use the Internet, media, commercials before movies, financial incentives, and patriotic and duty appeals to recruit those that also see themselves as isolated, without much of a future, and no ability to see a way forward.

Whether recruiting young American Somalis for Al-Shabaab or young black men for the Marines, both groups are recruiting what is fast becoming or already is cannon fodder. Both Al-Shabaab and the U.S. military are offering up our young as sacrifices to a set of ideals that have nothing to do with the prosperity and welfare of their people...they are sacrifices made on the altar of power in a quest for dominance.

I do not in any way blame those that sign up for either cause. I support my little brother and my sister. They did what they believed they had to do in this world that gave them few options. Their stories are their own to tell, but I can promise you that those stories would break your heart...that for both of them...they put themselves in harms way for reasons that had nothing to do with glory and power but realities and limited possibilities.

I lay blame on the recruiters, on Al-Shabaab, and on the U.S. military industrial complex and the government that benefits from it.

It is my fervent hope that the city of Minneapolis, the Minneapolis Public Schools, the state of Minnesota, and the U.S. government take this as a wake up call. Understand that the racism and economic disparity upon which our grand U.S. society is built is the reason that our youth continue to be shipped overseas or recruited overseas to die.

The Senate report stated that there is no proof that Somali youth are being recruited abroad with intentions to return back to the U.S. to execute acts of violence. If we act now to systemically address the fundamental justice and inequality issues that make recruitment possible, we will eliminate any possibility of Somali youth turning their anger and isolation back on the U.S.
In so doing, we will save our youth from needless wars that eat our young without sating our hunger for power, wealth, natural resources and world dominance.

(The report mentioned in this post can be read here.)

The Blacks Are Coming! The Blacks Are Coming!

Lord have mercy I can't stand Republicans. I don't hate who they are. I hate what they do. Love the Republicans, hate the Republicanism. Whatever, fuck 'em.

A good friend of mine wrote recently that we need to be partisan. Hell fucking yeah. I am partisan as hell. And the root of partisan is party...and I'll be damned if any Republicans are invited to mine. I am going to have a big ass black dyke hippy draft dodging Communist feminist Wiccan abortion doctor recovering addict as the bouncer at the door with a loaded double barrelled shot gun and Black Panther tendencies.

I heard the dumbest thing I believe I have EVER heard on the radio today:

“Blacks, blacks, blacks. The blacks are everywhere. The blacks are being promoted. I am being discriminated against because I am white.” So spoke a woman from Oklahoma interviewed by BBC America about Barack Obama and his first 100 days in office.

I love BBC America...if there is a wignut Fox news Rupert Murdoch blowin' bleach blonde former beauty queen turned pundit out in the wilds of the rural West, they will find her...put her on the radio...and giggle.

Now, pardon my French lovin' ass, but, with African-Americans making up 12% of the U.S. population how the hell are we “everywhere?” Yesterday, a story came out saying that college educated blacks are being laid off at TWICE the rate of blacks without a college degree. So where the hell are we getting promoted? Popeye's Chicken? Shit.

Has this lovely woman in Oklahoma taken a gander at Obama's cabinet? There are more women/white women up in there than there has ever been in any administration ever. I mean come on Janet Napolitano, Katherine Sebelius, Hilary Rodham Clinton, and I am sure I am missing a few.

And, for the record, back in 1921 the good people of Tulsa, OK rioted and burned to the ground what was called the Negro Wall Street (Greenwood District). They segregated black folks, only allowed them to live within a 35 block radius, refused to let them shop, eat, or go to school with the white folks, had the dubious honor of being the only city in America with segregated telephone booths, and then got pissed the fuck off when black folks spent their money on each other and ended up developing a community that rivaled any white community in the state for education and elegance. So what did they do? They burned the entire damn district to the ground. They shot women and children. They shot and let bleed to death a noted black surgeon that the FUCKING MAYO BROTHERS (you know...Mayo Clinic...best hospital in America) said was the best black surgeon walking the planet. And this heifer is going to have the nerve to get the hell up on the radio and suggest that she was being discriminated against?

Sweet Jesus.....OOOOOOOOOHHHHH SWEET JESUS!

And the Right in this country wonders why it got its ASS handed to them in the last election. They wonder why their own pundits are saying that the GOP has become irrelevant and is falling apart around them. They wonder why the hell Arlen Spectre would jump ship after 30 years as a Republican. Here's the answer, listen closely: YOUR BASE IS A BUNCH OF RACIST LOONIES SPOUTING SHIT IN PUBLIC THAT MAKES THEIR OWN MAMAS PRETEND AS IF THEY DON'T KNOW WHO THE HELL THEY ARE.

In the end, I know that this was just shooting off at the mouth by one stupid woman. Unfortunately, I know that her ignorance represents what a segment (and probably a large one) of poor, working class, white folks believe. It's not the fault of the average every day working white person that they may believe this. I lay the blame squarely at the feet of sensationalist radio personalities like this random white woman from Oklahoma who gets on the radio, makes fucked up statements like the one she made. In the end, when the James Byrd style lynchings happen, when black kids are beaten in school, and when black churches are burned to the ground it is the black community that pays the price for one woman's insipid ignorance.

Nam-Myoho-Renge-Kyo

This evening, I entered a brightly lit, ornate redstone building covered in scaffolding on East 15th on the border of the Village and Chelsea. I met my best friend, RJ, there--after a hasty cab ride as I thought I was going to be late--to attend evening chant. RJ had recently started attending prayer services at this Buddhist Society, and I, a Christian pan-theist, gladly joined him.

It was nothing like I expected.

To begin with, the chanting had started early. We entered a room filled with a Bennetton spread of nationalities literally humming with the Nichiren Buddhist chant Nam-Myoho-Renge-Kyo (for those that love them some Tina Turner and have seen What's Love Got to Do With It a half million times as I have will recognize this as the chant she was taught). The chanting and the room were alive with energy. The sound jumped directly into my chest, and before my butt hit the seat I was chanting along with the crowd.

As I looked around, I noticed young and old, Asian, Latino, Jewish, Black, and White filling the room (thanks to Tina Turner the largest groups were black folks and a pan-Asian hodgepodge--and true to form most of the black folks arrived late as hell including the Afro-Latin@s). The service was simple, except the five minutes of the liturgy which sounded like a Buddhist monk on meth, and largely consisted (except for that five minutes) of chanting Nam-Myoho-Renge-Kyo which means I commit myself to the cosmic law of cause and effect and to the ultimate universal truth expressed through sound. Damn that little old Japanese/Sanskrit phrase packs a lot of punch.

I fell into the easy rythym of the chant. About half way through, RJ looked up and said, "call me." Which is a code word for HOT MAN. I paused in my chanting to appreciate the Latin thick 'em that was moving out to take a call. Yes, the Buddha is good. Hey glory.

About 15 minutes into the service, I found myself chanting and rocking back and forth to the vibration of the sound. And then I experienced a strange and awesome sensation. I felt as if a cool fire was emanating from my skin...like...if they had killed the lights...my little brown ass would have been all a glow. It was a cool feeling. And then the little Japanese women next to me, who arrived late I might add, started chanting out of rythym and threw off my feng shui...and I lost my glowing feeling. But for a minute I felt like Bruce Leroy...whose the master? I am!

I have always believed in God. It's been both a blessing and a curse. He and I have not always gotten along, but I've always believed in him. This was an entirely different way of experiencing him. And one that I will be repeating. I am no hero for opening myself to the experience, but I am proud that I was enable to enhance my faith journey...even if it was a little bit Barry Gordy style.

Kenyon Farrow's Speech on HIV/AIDS From Creating Change 2009 in Denver

Kenyon Farrow is an organizer, communications strategist and writer working on issues at the intersection of HIV/AIDS, prisons and homophobia. A current Policy Institute fellow with the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, Farrow is working on a report about the HIV/AIDS epidemic in Black gay and bisexual men in the U.S. This is a copy if his speech from the 2009 Creating Change Conference.

PERSONAL NOTE: Kenyon Farrow is a friend of mine, an inspiration to me, and a great and powerful asset to our work and this movement. He also works at Queers for Economic Justice.

SPEECH

In 1991, nearly 18 years ago, I was 15 years old when my mother, who was working 13 hour days, 6 days a week in Cleveland, OH, sat me and my two sisters down in front of the television to watch history.

It was not unusual for her to do such a thing. For, we had been made to watch the Civil Rights Documentary "Eyes on The Prize" in its entirety. We also watched "How the West Was Lost," the documentary about White American expansion into the "Americas" and the genocide of First Nation peoples--to understand what we perhaps weren't learning in one of the worst school districts in the country.

But that night, in 1991, my mother--after right-wing Senators Jesse Helms and Arlen Spector tried to protect "American Families" from being able to view it public television--sat us in front of the television to watch Marlon Riggs' breakthrough film on black gay men, Tongues Untied.
Apple iTunes

The film, and the poetry of the men in the film, particularly Essex Hemphill, was for me the example of the possibility of a Black gay life, of an aesthetic, and of a radical, sex-positive, pro-feminist politic. They were, quite literally, the men of my own dreams.

Though they would both make more films, more books, they would both be dead of HIV-related causes by 1995, within one year of each other. And just short of the first anti-retrovirals to hit the market. And half of the people in this room don't even know of the two names that I speak.

Despite their examples as two of many who spent the late 80s and early 1990s literally writing us into the history of the planet while they were being dragged from the face of it, we have largely lost the layered, nuanced, and multi-issue nature of their brilliant work, which very clearly demonstrates the social conditions of Black working class queer life in the context of the HIV/AIDS epidemic. Theirs was not a politics of inclusion--but a politics of sexual liberation in a decidedly Black gay context.

These men, and many others who died from HIV or from violence, were not only cultural workers but were in fact movement-minded folk--starting and running organizations, writing and creating, and making political alliances with Black lesbian organizations, other radical third-world people of color artists and organizers.

Their work that gave the public health world, and the mainstream LGBT movement a body of work with which to fashion ideas around the context of HIV/AIDS among Black "men who have sex with men." But instead of looking to that work as insight and inspiration, we have built a public health, Black, and/or LGBT movement response to HIV/AIDS among Black MSM with the decidedly ignorant assumption that we don't know what's going on with Black "men who have sex with men" and that there is no Black queer leadership that currently exists or could not be further nurtured and developed.
STATISTICS

Despite major advances in treating the virus, the HIV/AIDS epidemic seems to be getting worse for people in our community. At the International AIDS Conference, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) stunned the international AIDS community by announcing that the richest nation on earth had over 56,000 new infections in 2006. This revision also included a back-calculation revealing that, for the 15 years from 1991-2006, infection rates were approximately 25-50 percent higher than the long-held 40,000 annual estimate.

Not only have we been undercounting the growth of the epidemic, men who have sex with men (MSM -- that public health category that includes gay and bisexual men, and transgender women) continue to bear the greatest increases in new infections. In 2006, 53 percent of all new infections were among MSM.

More stunning, it found the number of new infections of black MSM ages 13-29 to be the highest of all MSM groups. Even though CDC officials are typically conservative in its public statements, CDC scientists are stating publicly that black MSM are the only group in the U.S. with HIV rates similar to Sub-Saharan African nations, despite similar or lower rates of risky sex or substance abuse than white MSM.

Though transwomen are counted in the "MSM" category, some data has shown Black MTF transwomen have an HIV prevalence rate of 56%.

While black MSM certainly bear the brunt of the virus, gay and bisexual the virus disproportionately impacts men and transgender women of all races.
POLICY

There are many policy changes that we'd like to see, many of which are encompassed in the National AIDS Strategy, and those are likely to happen. So I am going to focus on what we in this room, as activists and organizers in the LGBT movement, need to do.
MOVEMENT

First and foremost, the time where we can pretend that there is no viable, credible or visible Black (or other POC) queer leadership is over. While we certainly need to be developing leaders, leadership per se, is not the problem. We have lost of leaders, but leaders with no base that they're accountable to. Because what little Black LGBT infrastructure that exists, is largely due to HIV/AIDS service delivery, we are able to reach lots of people in our organizations as "clients", but are rarely engaged as potential leaders, organizers or members of our organizations. We need the investment of both progressive philanthropy and LGBT funders to help build the capacity and infrastructure of organizations to move from strict service delivery to doing community organizing, leadership development, and base-building.

Lastly, as long as the White-led mainstream LGBT movement is invested in seeing itself as the only credible leadership or it's organizations the only ones doing "the real work" or having "real impact" we will continue to invisibilize the work that Black and other POC organizations are doing on the ground, in spite of real material obstacles. So every time the gay news media and organizations promote ideas of the gay community vs. the Black community, Black queers will continue to remain invisible, and assumes that Black queer people are not engaging in a battle against homophobia and transphobia in the Black community.

Phrases like the Advocate's recent "Gay is the New Black" which has surfaced in stickers and T-shirts in gayborhoods as well, is racist, dangerous, and ignores the reality despite having a Black president, Black people in America continue to suffer a vast array of health, and socio-economic disparities, even when you control for all other factors. Not only that, it also, once again, presumes that to be LGB or T is to be white and usually male.

Just yesterday at this conference, a major figure in the same-sex marriage movement told a young queer person of color that "there are some people in our community who are fit to lobby, and some who are fit to sing and dance."

These kinds of comments are simply disgusting, particularly since many people of color and transgender people in white gay male spaces are only allowed in to do as much. The sad thing is, for too many people of color in this movement, the line between being asked by white-led organizations to lobby, or to sing & dance, is far too thin.

I think a lot about Marlon Riggs, Essex Hemphill, Barbara Smith, Audre Lorde and many others, as artists and organizers and activists who have led the way for me to be able to stand here on this stage, and it seems sad to me that in my work as a writer and here with the Task Force & Queers for Economic Justice, with my comrades in the room and in various movements around the country-- having to make the arguments, they'd been making for decades.

And we can have all of our policy wish lists items and services around HIV met--but without movement building from the grassroots of people most vulnerable to serve as the place where real change happens. And so long as no cure is found we will not see an end to the epidemic and the disproportionate impact it has on people of African descent globally.

I would hope, that after the decades of efforts to make visible the work that Black LGBTQ people are engaged in directly or indirectly related to HIV/AIDS, not another person has to stand here, decades from now, having to justify or make visible that work, ever again. We are beyond the point of benign ignorance. The bodies in this room, and the graveyards many of us are carrying on our backs, tell a different story.

And so now, should we.

People of Color Weather Forecast

This morning, my co-worker and I are up hella early at our retreat condos in Guernville, CA right on the Russian River. I got a Tweet this morning from my girl Amalia back home saying it is -20 degrees air temperature in Minnesota right now. Now, I don't think most folks that are not either from Antartica or Minnesota really understand what it means when the air is that cold. Add to that the windchill and the air temperature, currently, feels to be -33 degrees.

Carlo and I were talking about what a People of Color weather broadcast would sound like, here is the transcript...

"Listen here ya'll. It is -20 degrees outside today. If your ass is not pearly white. I mean nigh on albino. Keep your simple ass in the house. You ain't biologically designed for this shit. Go on outside if you have too, but know that the wind is waiting on your ass and is going to snatch off your skin down to the meaty bones. White folks, by all means, go outside and make you some snow angels, build you an ice fortress, cut a hole in the lake and go skinny dipping and shit. If you are Italian, Spanish, or Greek, please get you a piece of unlined printer paper...if you are darker than that, please refer to the instructions above. Thank you."

Mother Africa

I have been having an exchange on Facebook with a young queer man from Kenya. Today, I posted on my Facebook status that I know magic exists in the world. This young Kenyan wrote and said that he knows magic exists at least in Africa.

I responded that indeed it does and that when we, the lost children, were taken from our Mother's shore, when we were forced into terror and darkness, when we laid side by side in filth and fear, we carried her, our great Mother with us. When we walked again into the light, when that first nameless black person touched foot on this side of the Atlantic ocean, all of the power, the spirits, the magic, the Gods, and the ancestors of our African peoples emerged with us. Into this land, onto this land, with our blood and our labor and our great burden and tragedy we brought all of our powerful and magnificent history. We brought Songhai and the Lower Kingdom. We brought the great Arab empires of the North. We brought with us a legacy of science, math, philosophy, and literature. We brought with us a power and magic so powerful that Southern whites trembled at the thought of the Obeah woman. They sought out the cures of the Voodouin. They turned to us as healers, teachers, nurses. Even as they tried to beat the spirit out of us, strip our history from us, pull out our native tongues, and steal our drums they could not escape the power that is naturally and by birthright ours.

Our people have and continue to struggle. We are not perfect. There is no master race. But it is undeniable that this world, which once revered us, then reviled us, has been undeniable and markedly impacted by us in a way that no other people have ever done. OUr music, our language, our culture, our history, our ways of being and our ways of fighting can be found on every inhabited continent on this planet. From Asia to South America, liberation struggles base their fights on the fights fought by us. The modes of expression, particularly hip-hop, have taken this planet by storm...Aboriginal youth, Japanese teens, Dutch b-boys all draw on and embrace those things which we brought into this world.

African genocide is the ultimate Caine and Able sin. It is the original curse. It is kin slaying. We are one family. Our Mother is Africa. She watches her children no matter where the are in the world. A Mother never abandons her child.

Divide and Conquer: Prop 8 As A Black/Queer Wedge

This article was written for www.blackpower.com

Obama’s election victory is less than two weeks old, yet already the divide and conquer tactics of the Right are in full effect. Though Obama’s election was a great victory, there were some significant losses on November 4th, particularly the queer community. The passage of Prop 8 limiting marriage to one man and one woman in California, the country’s most populous state, was a sad defeat. It was a loss created very simply by a largely complacent organizing model by the left and a massively funded, exquisitely organized campaign by the Right that cut across political, religious, and racial lines. Unfortunately, instead of the Left looking at the passage of Prop 8 as an opportunity to evaluate our organizing tactics and learn from the loss while exploring alternative avenues to stop implementation of the proposition, a vitriolic attack on the Black community has ensued.

At a time when the Left should be uniting, a line is being drawn between Black and queer communities leaving black queer folks invisible and creating wedges that could be long lasting. The truth is that many African-Americans in California did vote for Prop 8. Some statistics say that as many as 69% (plus or minus the margin of error) voted for the proposition. While that is a small t truth, the big T truth is that from the beginning of the Prop 8 battle, the religious right and other pro-8 organizers beat the streets of black neighborhoods, used black faces front and center in their organizing strategies, and made immediate overtures to black faith leaders and in black churches. Not until the 11th hour, when the polls began showing a sharp turn in favor of prop 8’s passage, did the Left realize it had been out maneuvered. Although there were a few, small LGBT people of color organizations participating in the No On 8 coalition, the No On 8 campaign was largely organized and sponsored by the Human Rights Campaign (an organization with a notorious history of racial exclusion in its operations and political priorities) and other white-led LGBT organizations, it is not surprising that communities of color were an after thought in the organizing strategy around the No On 8 campaign.

Unfortunately, in California newspapers, and in papers across the country, this is being touted as an issue of homophobia in the Black community. Our loss, and I include myself as a Prop 8 opponent, was not due to some inherent homophobia in the black community, our loss was a failure of our community to organize itself. The separation, marginalization, and exclusion of communities of color, particularly black communities from the leadership of national and state level LGBT organizations continues the image of queerness being equal to whiteness and fails to allow communities of color to see their own queer children as part of themselves.

As we move into an Obama-era in this country. It is imperative that we recognize the tactics that will be used against the Left in order to destabilize the broad coalition of LGBT people, women, working class folks, and communities of color that put Obama into office. The amazing national backlash against Prop 8 is heartening, in that it is a galvanizing force that will keep the coalitional politics of the Obama campaign alive---if we do the work to keep it alive. That means that we can not scapegoat the Black community for our failure. Be angry. Be disappointed. Be angry and disappointed that the Right got to our people and our communities with disinformation and lies. Be angry at the outcome but do not slip into race baiting generalizations that do no good and create long lasting harm not only to queer-black relationships but also to the relationship of black queers to the rest of the black community.

To be clear, I am not absolving the overwhelming majority of Black voters that went to the polls and betrayed their brothers and sisters, children, grandmothers and grandfathers, cousins and friends. How quickly our community forgets that it was only 40 years ago that interracial marriages were illegal in large swaths of the country. They said that love between whites and blacks was unnatural, un-Biblical, and wrong. The same arguments used against LGBT folks getting married just different versus from the Bible used to justify intolerance and injustice. But the black community was no more and no less culpable as an entity than any of the other millions of people that went to the polls that day and voted for injustice. Black folks should know better.

If we want to see ourselves as a mature movement, then we must accept responsibility for the passage of Proposition 8 as a collective failure. Acknowledge the failure, mourn the loss, and then do the work to figure out how to move forward towards victory. Accepting defeat and accepting responsibility for defeat is the only way that we can avoid falling into the base dividing pitfalls of the Right. It is time for a national leftist humility. By looking closely and critically at the real reasons that Prop 8 passed, we can learn, grow, and make sure that next time around we are knocking on the right doors, broadening our coalitions, and laying the foundation for sustainable progressive social change. To have a revolution means to revolve to go back to or to change back the collective will. I am not interested in a revolution. I am interested in an evolution. A moving forward. An advancement of the will. It’s time to move towards a just society that says no not only to Prop 8 but also to race baiting, racism, and the divide and conquer tactics championed by the right. Yes We Can.