My Name is Peaches

I am sitting in my living room, after dark, listening to Four Women by Nina Simone. For those of you not familiar with the song, you can listen to it here. In the song she sings the story of four women: a slave, a prostitute, a mixed girl, and an angry post-slavery woman.

Alice Walker wrote in the Color Purple that when you first see the shores of Africa, it's as if someone strikes a chord inside of you. This song does that for me.

Nina Simone sings with such soft power, boiling down four caricatures representing epochs in black history yet encapsulating in four minutes the reality of a 400 year period of history.

The first three verses are matter of fact, and then she sings the last verse:

"My skin is brown. My manner is tough. I'll kill the first mother I see. My life has been rough. I'm awfully bitter these days. Because my parents were slaves. What do they call me? My name is Peaches!"

No other song I have ever heard in my entire life has ever compacted into such simple verses a vitriolic anger that simply, radically, and unapologetically holds the anger of all those held in bondage plus the weight carried by and lived with by their descendants.

Slavery ended 142 years ago, and I am still pissed off.

I have heard so many times from so many people (almost uniformly not black) that they don't understand why black people are so angry. They don't get why we still carry a burden "laid down" by ,at this point, our great-great-great grandparents. In fact, the only people that I have met that actually understand are Jews. Genocide whether 142 years ago or 60 years ago is carried in the DNA of those that survive it.

When I hear Nina Simone sing "Black is the Color" or "Four Women" or "Strange Fruit" or any number of her songs, I can hear the pain and anger that is carried and is righteously held in her for all of us that share those same terrible roots. And like all things grievous it can be healed, but never has the United States shown the will or the willingness to go beyond an apology to the amends necessary to heal those old yet still fresh and festering wounds.

Nina...my name is Peaches as well.

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!

Forget 40 Acres and a Mule...Write Me A Check!

(I am taking a short break from my multi-part Minnesota story to share with you my thoughts on today's vote by the Senate regarding slavery)

Today the United States Senate, on the eve of Juneteenth, passed a resolution apologizing to African-Americans and descendants of slaves for slavery and Jim Crow segregation. The resolution now moves to the House, where it is likely to pass.

I think I am going to pass on this apology too.

Juneteenth, the largely invisible holiday celebrated by few outside of the black community, is a celebration of the actual end of slavery. Slavery ended in the United States on 19 June 1865 when the last blacks held in bondage, in Galveston, Texas, received word that they were free. On that day no man could call another man property. Unfortunately, abject poverty, degradation, wage slavery, and violent subjugation were to continue, with state sanction and complicity, for another century. And anyone that has been pulled over for driving while black, been called a nigger, or been denied employment or housing because of their race, knows that while physical lynchings may be over, spiritual lynchings continue without regard to who may be sleeping in the White House.

Though this resolution, passed 143 years and 364 days after the actual end of slavery, is long overdue, the rider on the resolution clearly stating that it does not in any way support or condone or authorize reparation payments to the descendants of slaves invalidates the sentiment and marks the difference between an apology and an amends. I am not interested in apologies. An apology acknowledges action without the assumption of responsibility or obligation to repair what was broken. An amends is the assumption of responsibility for the results of ones actions and doing the work necessary to repair what was done.

The words of a body that once stood firm against human rights for black folks and continues to stand in the way of the liberation of queer folks is worth about as much as my total worth. Roughly -$46,000 or so…depending on the current amount of interest I owe on my student loans.

It is beyond time for apologies. In 1988, Congress voted to pay the 60,000 survivors of Japanese internment camps $20,000 each to help ameliorate their pain and suffering. That, my friends, is an amends.

I am no fool. There is a very real reason why the Japanese received remuneration for four horrible years in concentration camps while black folks received nothing for 400 years of free labor and horrific abuse. The 1980s saw a meteoric rise in Japanese international cache. Japan was an economic powerhouse and American business wanted to do it doggie style with Japanese businesses, and $1.2 billion dollars was a small price to pay for the return on their investments.

Most people of African descent have no idea from whence they were stolen. And, even if we did know, there is no African economic powerhouse that American businesses want to exploit. The natural resources of Africa are in the hands and control of Western business interests. The only reason to pay substantial reparations to U.S. descendants of slaves would be justice. The business of the U.S. government is business and investing in justice, though it pays great moral dividends, rarely creates capital gains.

So, I say, respectfully, keep your apology. It is meaningless. The wealth of this nation does not exist separate from the hundreds of years of free labor that created it. For some, this is an abstract concept, for me it is a reality. The family that owned mine was the Nickels family of Greenbrier County, West Virginia.

My family still lives in the town where we were slaves. My Father went to school and grew up with the descendants of the family that owned us. The economic privileges of that family, a century after my great-great grandfather was freed, were still apparent.

Our family records date back to 1709, for more than a century the Nickels and others before them earned wealth on my grandparent’s backs. No apology will free their spirits. No apology will remove the wealth from those that exploited them and put it in their hands or in the hands of their descendants.

In America, we value the ability to pass on wealth from one generation to the next. Parents pass as much wealth to their children as possible in order that their children will need to work less than, perhaps, they did. My ancestors did not have that option. Their wealth, the fruit of their hands, and their labor was compelled from them and their products taken from them to benefit those that did nothing to earn it except be born with white skin.

Keep your apology. I don’t want it. But I will take a check, and one for my brothers and sisters, parents, and grandparents, and every other descendant of slaves in this nation, children of those that built this nation. It is our due. You have been drawing from our spiritual and labor account for too long. I am marking your apology NSF: Insufficient funds. You will be charged a penalty.

Ain't I A Woman?

Well, actually, no I am not a woman. I was not so blessed as to have been given the gift of life. Though, after seeing friends and family go through the birthing process, I would be lying if I said I am jealous of the actual birthing process. Giving life is a miracle...shooting a football out of a hole the size of a lemon makes me think waterboarding would be a more enjoyable alternative.

Today, the U.S. Congress unveiled the first statue of a black woman in the nationa's capitol. And, fittingly, it was Sojourner Truth. On the dais today were Secretary of State Hilary Clinton, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, House Minority Leader John Boehner with First Lady Michelle Obama making the dedication and Cicily Tyson acting out the speech Ain't I a Woman.

Unfortunately, fucking C-SPAN left the program just before the First Lady spoke. Idiots. But, they did show Miss Cicily give the performance of a lifetime. I was on this crazy machine at the gym that combines an eliptical machine, stair climber, nordictrack, and mideval torture device, and I had the broadest grin on my face listening to Cicily. She brought the speech to life. She made Sojourner live again, and each time she said, Ain't I a woman, I tucked my penis back and said, YES I AM!

Somehow I made it to 31 _ years of age without every having heard or read the full text of that speech. It, along with Martin Luther King's “I've Been to the Mountain Top,” is now my favorite speech of all time. The entire speech is roughly four or five paragraphs long (I am going to include it at the end of this blog). But in five paragraphs Sojourner Truth laid out the best, most succinct, and clear articulation of actualized feminism that I have ever seen. I understand the value of academia and theory. I often lapse into academy speech. But this brief oration reminded me that some people earn (or should earn) their doctorates in exactly 354 words.

Sojourner Truth was a powerful woman. She was a radical. She was a mother of abolitionist, civil rights, and feminist movements. The honor she received today was overdue and well deserved. Thank you Sojourner. You were one hell of a woman.

(P.S. And what a hell of a present to Miss Truth that Arlen Specter announced he is going Blue Dog on us and giving the Democrats a filibuster proof majority in the U.S. Senate. Word).

Text of “Ain't I a Woman” delivered in Akron, OH at the Women's Convention in 1851.

Well, children, where there is so much racket there must be something out of kilter. I think that 'twixt the negroes of the South and the women at the North, all talking about rights, the white men will be in a fix pretty soon. But what's all this here talking about?

That man over there says that women need to be helped into carriages, and lifted over ditches, and to have the best place everywhere. Nobody ever helps me into carriages, or over mud-puddles, or gives me any best place! And ain't I a woman? Look at me! Look at my arm! I have ploughed and planted, and gathered into barns, and no man could head me! And ain't I a woman? I could work as much and eat as much as a man - when I could get it - and bear the lash as well! And ain't I a woman? I have borne thirteen children, and seen most all sold off to slavery, and when I cried out with my mother's grief, none but Jesus heard me! And ain't I a woman?

Then they talk about this thing in the head; what's this they call it? [member of audience whispers, "intellect"] That's it, honey. What's that got to do with women's rights or negroes' rights? If my cup won't hold but a pint, and yours holds a quart, wouldn't you be mean not to let me have my little half measure full?

Then that little man in black there, he says women can't have as much rights as men, 'cause Christ wasn't a woman! Where did your Christ come from? Where did your Christ come from? From God and a woman! Man had nothing to do with Him. (emphasis added)

If the first woman God ever made was strong enough to turn the world upside down all alone, these women together ought to be able to turn it back , and get it right side up again! And now they is asking to do it, the men better let them.

Obliged to you for hearing me, and now old Sojourner ain't got nothing more to say.

25 Random Things About Me

Here is a wee little about me that I posted in response to lists that other friend's posted on Facebook.

1. I saw a ghost for the first time ever.
2. The ghost stole my cell phone charger and hid it in the hall closet.
3. I was going to talk smack about the ghost, but I am afraid the ghost will steal my cell phone next.
4. My black family can trace their ancestry back almost 300 years. They kept good records on niggas in Southern West Virginia back in the day.
5. I am going to see my little brother Julius, next week, for the first time in 15 years.
6. I love my family.
7. I am building my own family for the first time and it is terrifying---for some reason loneliness is more comfortable than allowing myself to be loved fully.
8. I am truly in love for the first time, and I understand now that the movies are full of shit. Love is real work and worth all the effort.
9. I have come to understand that only when you are truly loved for all your goods and ills can you really then begin to exorcise your belief that you are unworthy of being loved.
10. I believe in God.
11. I believe that God has a plan.
12. I believe the plan is focused on my good.
13. I want to find the plan, roll it up, and hit God in the face with it.
14. I used to trust easily and blindly. I have come to discover that trusting for me as an act that I am, in some ways, not yet fully capable of doing---no matter how deserving the person is that should be trusted.
15. I believe in magic.
16. I can't save money to save my life. I misspend, overspend, and still eat ramen on occasion because of it.
17. I spend a lot of time being afraid and pretending that I am not.
18. For the first time ever I actually fantasize about the person that I call my boyfriend.
19. I believe that my brothers and sisters are some of the most beautiful and amazing individuals I have ever met.
20. I think anal sex should be an Olympic Sport.
21. I have dreams so powerful that I often believe that they are the thoughts of other people that sneak into my head and run around while I am sleeping. The Borg is out there.
22. I love my lips and I hate my back fat.
23. I struggle being in an open relationship, but I could never be honest and be in a closed one.
24. I am a kick ass cook.
25. I believe that I have been given the chance at a powerful life, in partnership with a beautiful man, in fellowship with tremendous friends, and with the support of an amazing family.

Obama-Nation!

This morning, I sat surrounded by new friends--movement workers that are committed to creating powerful change in this world...and I had the privilege of being with those people as the 44th President of the United States was sworn into office. It is an understatement to say that I was caught up in the moment. Hope has a new face. May be strength and grace of God and the wisdom of the righteous be with Barack Hussein Obama as he moves us forward. You are the dream and the hope of the slave of which Maya so eloquently spoke. You are the fantasy of the Civil Rights movement. We are not yet free, but you mark a move towards freedom...even though you remained tethered to a capitalistic yoke. Let us lift you up as you work to lift us up. I am proud, this day, to be an American.

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.