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The Good Reverend Doctor Herman “Feelgood” Cain: To Minister or Not to Minister?

8 Dec

I was perusing HuffPo late last week and came upon a question posed by commentator Martin Bashir posing what I thought was a thought-provoking and appropriate question: Should Herman Cain resign from his post as associate minister at his home church?

To be fair, Bashir was positing this thought prior to Cain’s “suspension” of his campaign and made the assumption that his quitting was going to be an admission of guilt on Cain’s part.  Not only did Cain essentially quit, but Cain didn’t own up to anything–other than paying a random lady over the course of 13 years.  His wife stood by his side no less, but just like that the Cain train derailed, or simply found a station at to stay parked–for the time being.

I’ve heard the murmuring amongs bloggers that Cain is the male, and black male equivalent of Sarah Palin.  That is to suggest that we aren’t done hearing from him.  Even I myself have wondered will he end up on someone’s ticket as a vice-presidential nominee.  Nonetheless, as Cain moves out of significance from the mainstream media, I would like to broach the topic of his ministerial status at his church.

The allegations from Ginger White don’t immediately bother me, this is almost normal for random women to come out of the woodwork through the media vetting process these days, but its the fact that Cain is 1) a black Republican and 2) a licensed minister in a black church that probably has more liberal political leanings.  What bothered me about Bashir’s commentary on this subject was that Bashir took a very direct approach and connected dots that I don’t believe were automatically connected.

What Bashir failed to understand was that Cain is an associate minister and according to reports, he’s only licensed, not ordained.  It’s not like Cain is over some grand ministry or delievering sermons every other week.  Bashir presents the story as though Cain is second-in-command to the senior pastor.  However, I think Bashir made a typical knee-jerk reaction that I think most people would; we’re okay with hypocrisy in the pulpit, but we don’t want it from our church leaders

This presents a theological and moral connundrum.

On the one hand congregants exalt their leaders, often times blindly, to the point where the clergyperson can do no wrong.  While all at the same time, you hear some clergy always acknowledging that they’re human just like everyone else and put on pants one leg a time like the rest of the pants wearing world.  The theological connundrum is based on the biblical scriptures that obviously exalt the prophets and the priests and other ecclesiastical leaders over that of the rest of the people  and that doesn’t jive with a clergy rhetoric that says “I’m human just like everyone else.”

The moral connundrum mixes in theological quandries as well.  For a congregant, issues of forgiveness and moral repugnance are at play.  Society tells us that cheating on one’s wife isn’t right and therefore we should shun it, while certain aspects of Christianity speak about forgiveness while also retributive justice which would say that said offender should be punished or sanctioned in some manner.  Unfortunately, too many cases occur where neither forgiveness or justice is meted out and the offender continues on because people would rather sweep the situation under the rug rather than deal with the options on the table.

As with the cases of Eddie Long, Earl Paulk, Ted Haggard, the Catholic church priest abuse scandal, dozens of pastors who cheat on their wives with other women in the church–sex is obviously not enough to immediately get you forced out of your church.  In the cases of Eddie Long, Earl Paulk, Ted Haggard and the Catholic priests, those were officially legal proceedings, but cheating on your wife with another woman is socially acceptable in many ecclesiastical settings.  It may be frowned upon, but its not enough to break up a congregation or for a congregation to force one out of the pulpit.

Frankly, we have a sex problem here.

People aren’t so much moved by sexual scandal as they are by money scandals in many black churches.  For instance, if Cain had been using the money from the church to pay off Ginger White, then perhaps, they would have excommunicated him, but I can pretty much guarantee that he’ll still keep his position as associate pastor.  As it stands, there is no evidence to concretely say who’s telling the truth and this just exists as he-said, she-said problem.  (Although, I say to Ginger White that in 13 years, you can’t produce any evidence that you had a sexual affair with the guy?)

To go a step further, I think much of this problem stems from theological patriarchy.  We image God as a “he” 99% of the time, and the vast majority of pastors are indeed male and certainly in a theologically conservative association such as National Baptist Convention, USA and most church people believe that their pastors not only talk to an invisible being, but hear from it as well.  Mash all of this together and throw in some esoteric concepts about right and wrong based on writings where the newest document is quickly approaching its second millenium in existence and you get people who believe the “manD of Gawdt” can do no wrong.  Ingrained beliefs, even what I committed in the parenthetical comment, tell us that the onus of proof rests on the woman as the accuser and the man is presumed innocent until otherwise.

To ask whether Cain should step down or not is the wrong question and somewhat misses the larger issues at play.  Asking him to step down is not a definitive stance against the alleged behavior nor a disavowal any forms of patriarchy nor taking a step to free the minds of those enslaved by oppressive theological concepts.

Personally, I doubt anything is going to happen at the church as it regards Cain’s status at least nothing that hasn’t already happened.  In a black church arena that has consistantly walked the line between being politically liberal and theologically conservative, I think more and more people are no longer operating out of such a dichotomy.  Asking Cain to step down or even ignoring it completely is still a status quo approach.  Taking him to task on his comments that black are “brainwashed” to vote Democratic would do more good than to strip him of his ministerial title.

As this story, as the personhood of Cain cycles out of mainstream media to make way for Newt Gingrich, the GOP candidate du jour and we gear up for the Iowa caucuses merely days and a couple of weeks away, Cain will fade to the backdrop from which he came.  This will be a non-issue and the potential victims in this case will never see justice in the eyes of the public, but just have the memories of the public humiliation.

Keep it uppity and keep it truthfully radical, JLL

 

“Reed Between the Lines” is Asking us to do Just That

21 Nov

When we think of black themed television networks, our minds usually drift toward Black Entertainment Television–BET and it conjures a myriad of mixed sentiments.  A generation divided by Robert Johnson years and the post-Robert Johnson years remember BET fondly and others that regard it as the sugary snacks of hip hop culture; that which our youth consume at unhealthy rates begging for a type-2 diabetes type of warped cultural worldview to take hold of their minds.  There are still members of my close circle that reminisce about the days when AJ and Free hosted 106 & Park and not someone named Rocsi and Terrence J.

Fortunately, or perhaps unfortunately for others, we have other options.  With my new treasure trove of right-below-premium-cable-package I discovered that there are other options than just BET.  The next most familiar is TVOne, but I discovered this other channel called Centric as well.  So now you don’t have to catch your “227″ reruns on just one station, but you have a few other choices.  But that’s just the problem with these black culturally themed networks: you seen one, you’ve seen ‘em all.  As it stands for me, black culturally centered networks are the dumping ground for black syndicated television shows and sit-coms.

Now on the surface that’s not necessarily a bad thing, but honestly, between reruns of “Good Times” and “Martin” and the obligatory Tyler Perry movie or “The Color Purple” I realised that the black entertainment industry had offered us a pitiably small amount of culture on the silver and small screen.  When I’m flipping channels, whatever is on either of these channels at a given day is either a) something I’ve seen before or b) something I can find on the other 300 channels I have.

One of the problems with BET programming is that it follows everyone else.  BET, naturally, is the leader of the black television entertaniment world if for no other reason that it beat everyone else out the gate by considerable years.  However, BET wasn’t revolutionary in much of it’s original programming even in years past.  Jacque Reid doing the nightly news was simply an answer to every other news program at 11/10pm central in America and Tavis Smiley’s program at 11:30/10:30pm central was an answer to Nightline and an attempt to compete with the Tonight Show and David Letterman.

Not the end of the world, but then the comparisons became odious.

As if not to be outdone, BET launched 106 & Park which was a top ten countdown of music videos with a live studio audience that was the black version of Total Request Live (TRL) from MTV.  Well that was fine I suppose.  No one was really complaining about seeing a constant stream of lack entertainers and the obligatory white ones with street cred (shoutouts to Eminem and Paul Wall), but anyone with a critical eye could see what was being done.  As if that wasn’t enough, though, BET introduced “College Hill” which everyone identified as a rip off of MTV’s “Real World.”  Again, while it was nice to see HBCUs highlighted, it caused so much strife in black communities across the country that it is still being discussed till this day.  Then we got the string of “Baldwin Hills” and “Harlem Heights” that attempted to highlight the black middle class through the distorted lens that is reality television.  Yet again, anyone with a critical eye could see the aping of MTV with just black faces.

Perhaps I’m being overly critical because all of the aforementioned shows I had watched before and yes, I will flip on and watch an episode of “Amen” or “227″ if I see it on the TV guide grid, but most of us are stuck living in liminality when it comes to how we, blacks, are presented to a larger audience even if it is on “our” network.  Is this an ingrained idea of “don’t go out showing your color” adages that our grandmothers and aunts instilled in us as young children or is it an overcompensation of trying to abolish stereotypes with archetypal images of what it means to be black in America.

One of the conversations surrounding “College Hill” was centered in what image did it portray HBCUs that would allow this type of behavior from their students and to be displayed for national dissection.  It led to black college students at other HBCUs to say that their school would never allow cameras on campus to display their students as such.  I’ll never forget the young girl at Southern University from that first season known as “No Drawz” who was rumored to be the daughter of one of the upper-level administrative heads at the school or Dru-Ski’s famous “Booty Talk” freestyle.  To which me and my friends sneered and said how could she go on camera and do that.  The irony behind it all was that much of what was going on at those campuses was just about the same at all the other ones–we just didn’t have cameras to capture it.

So you have all of this discussion about how to reframe the image of black Americans in a positive light, or should I say a positive enough light.  The problem with “The Cosby Show” was that you had two different factions of which one was finally relieved to see a television show that mirrored their life of an upper middle class black family and another that said the Huxtables were not real life.  Perhaps this is where my inner uppity Negro rears its ugly head.  I would rather see the images of the Huxtables portrayed than the cooning of “Martin” and certainly the abominable “The PJs.”

Enter “Reed Between the Lines.”

BET’s latest foray into original programming has obviously tried to hearken back to what we all consider the pinnacle of black television: “The Cosby Show.”  They went so far as to even cast Malcolm-Jamal Warner as the patriarch of the family.  The beautiful Tracy Ellis-Ross is his wife and they together form a blended family.  It’s the rather typical sit-com style of family problems with marriage and kids from school, to work and then back home all succinctly solved in 22 to 24 minutes of script time.  Frankly, there’s nothing all that unique about the show.

Being branded as milquetoast and in the words of a Facebook status I noticed during a two hour series premier block (yes, two hours of the exact same show that just premiered) that “Reed” was the black equivalent of “Green Acres” birthed out of a television era that had produced “Leave it to Beaver” and “Father Knows Best.”  After watching a couple of episodes of “Reed” it was obvious it wasn’t “The Cosby Show,” but then I thought, why should it be?  I think part of the challenge that people always have, particularly in the black communities across this country, is that we too often and too easily look at history through the lens of the present.  Anyone who studies history or anthropology of the past understands that gravity to which one must look at the then-current conditions of the situation to understand the  matrix out of which an event or a person was birthed.

The only reason “The Cosby Show” worked was because it was a novel idea.  They were dangerously close to letting Cliff Huxtable’s character be a truck driver.  While there’s nothing wrong with Cliff as a truck driver for a show,  it would have been following in the tradition of most other sitcoms where some of the basic worries about existence played a central part.  Not to mentioning the burgeoning black middle class in the 1908s certainly made “The Cosby Show” somewhat of a reality show.  Nearly 30 years later, the Reed family brings nothing new to the table than a blended family and a young black kid with a mohawk.

While there may be nothing new about the image that the Reed family is portraying, I think we ought to read between the lines and give the show a chance.  I consider myself a harsh critic of sitcoms having been raised in the era of “live studio audiences” where actors had to really deliver a line and the writers had to give them a good script to elicit a laugh, and actually there have been a line or two where I literally laughed out loud.  In the face of black sitcoms such as “House of Payne” and “Meet the Browns” neither of which have acted as entertainment for me beyond moving artwork in the background, I think “Reed” offers a departure from the current norm.

The viewer is also asked to read between the lines because the sitcom as we once knew it has been dead since the year 2000 in my opinion.  Especially the black sitcom.  Even though we have the modern classics of “The Bernie Mac Show” and “Everybody Hates Chris” they are certainly the departure from the three camera model and no laugh track.  I’m not offering up support for “Reed Between the Lines” just to quell the comedic critique of the show nor to say that other image criticisms aren’t valid, but I think the show indeed does offer us a chance to dig a bit deeper. Who we are and how we align ourselves in the crooked room that is this country at times, say a lot about where we plan on going in the days ahead.

And at all costs, I think we owe it to ourselves to simply read between the lines.

Keep it uppity and keep it truthfully radical, JLL

Should We Change the Black National Anthem? My Response to Toure

17 Nov

This morning I log onto Facebook and I see a link to an article entitled “It’s Time for a New Black National Anthem” entitled by black cultural critic and favorite provocateur  Touré.  He’s making the claim from his opening paragraph that there might be a need for a new Black National Anthem given that the one we pull out during February and HBCU commencements is nearing its 112th year of use.  Usually I’m up for discussion when it comes to things of antiquity as to whether or not we’re beating a dead horse and whether or not the joys of postmodernity have offered us a newer and better alternative.

Touré has the gift of challenging subtle thoughts while provoking angst.  The true artist.  Recently  Touré has been the whipping post for the black blogosphere with some of his random musings on black culture as it intersects the triumvirate of cultural taboos: politics, race and religion.  Toure represents, to me, the better part of what it means to think critically and be situated squarely within a post-modern Civil Rights Black America.  As with most essayists young and old, the sarcastic wit and humor go a long way to illustrate a point–this is a field where hyperbole is your friend not your enemy.  So when I read Toure commentary on “Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing” I had to remember to not respond with a blatant knee-jerk reaction, but dig just a bit deeper.

What I revealed was a reflection of a culture through the lens of being a member of Generation X.  By in large that generation of Americans were taught to question the ideals and mores of yesteryear–nothing, for the most part, is off limits.   Touré was making the claim in this article that we should substitute “Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing” for Marvin Gaye’s “Trouble Man.”  One of the benefits being that the latter is actually a song you can dance to at a party versus the former.  My knee-jerk reaction that Toure doesn’t know the difference between a soul ballad and an anthem or that even the title “Trouble Man” poses some problems that would undoubtedly draw the ire of those reading through a feminist or womanist lens.  Not to mention that the lyrics don’t evoke the antiquity that the tried and true anthem does.

While I agree that “Trouble Man” certainly does illuminate the “multiplicity of multiplicities” that is the black experience, the difference between the anthem and the soul song is the difference between one nation and one man respectively.  The anthem is a song about a collective and united body lifting every voice to sing and and shout with a oneness, a second stanza that acknowledges the hardships of the past and a third stanza that invokes a prayer and a rallying cry rooted in the present but looking toward the future.  Don’t get me wrong, “Trouble Man” conjures up emotions and imagery that aren’t present in “Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing” of which Toure notes when he says

“Trouble Man” is a unique song in that it draws from many sonic aspects of Blackness. It’s a blues song in spirit, but the blues isn’t about sadness, it’s about survival in spite of adversity and that sense is at the heart of this song….The song also captures the sense that our history remains a work in progress. We’re not “there,” we’re not at Dr. King’s mountaintop, but we’ve made gains, yet those gains are often washed away with the tides as if we’re always taking two steps forward and one back. The growth of the Black middle class in the ’80s has been stripped away by a recession that hit Blacks harder than anyone. The cool brilliance of Barack Obama is followed on the national stage by the small-minded buffoonery of Herman Cain. This sense of gains and losses that has marked our history is captured by the deep line, “I had to win, then start all over, and win again.”

Touré’s lens for understanding this is dead on for his generation, my generation included, but I think he somewhat misses the point.  The anthem attempts to speak for a united people while the soulful song voices one man’s lament about being a black man in certainly what then, these yet-to-be United States.  A poem set to music written at the turn of the previous century before DuBois commented on the “souls of black folk,” and before Martin had a “dream” didn’t carry the same baggage that a troubled man would have.

Favoring the individual over that of the national is a hallmark of post-modern thinking.   Touré, undoubtedly would err on the side of postmodernity before he would take an apologetic stance on the tenets of modernity.  Whenever you publish a book Who’s  Afraid of Postblackness?  What it Means to be Black Now? you are certainly stepping all in the area of postmodern ideals.  While most black people probably don’t give “Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing” a second thought, to understand it as the Negro National Anthem invokes such a clear defiance of the established and dominant culture it still sends chills down my back.  The Negro National Anthem should do for blacks what “Dixeland” did (and still does) for those who refer to the Civil War as the War of Northern Aggression.

The words for me even through my, at times, unwavering allegiance to postmodern ideals, pushes the envelope and still speaks toward some of the collective emotions of those located in black America irrespective of class.  Perhaps  Touré had issues with the assured Christian tone of the anthem as it does mention God a few times and “Trouble Man” certainly does move away from that.  But still, I could see black women having a problem with “Trouble Man” as it does not give voice to black women relegating them to romantic and perhaps even sexual objects such as “baby” and “sugar.”

The black experience, or should I say, the Black Experience, is more than just here in America.  It’s bigger than hip hop, it’s bigger than the Civil Rights movement, it’s bigger than Obama, bigger than slavery and the Middle Passage and it’s bigger than Mother Africa herself.  To encapsulate the Black Experience in a song  through the eyes of a singular troubled black man somewhat falls short of the greater glory that is blackness.  The “multiplicity of multiplicities” that make up our is-ness and our being should not be confined to one song.  Seeing as how we have the parameters of human language, when we attempt to embody the human spirit in an art form such as a song, I am quite sure that we can do better than “Trouble Man.”

Be that as it may, I think Toure’s article this morning did what I’m sure he set out to do: it made the reader think.  To that end, job well done sir.

Keep it uppity and keep it truthfully radical, JLL

Read more: http://ideas.time.com/2011/11/17/its-time-for-a-new-black-national-anthem/#ixzz1dyjMx2XL

Hollywood Social Commentary is just ‘In Time’

6 Nov

I frequent the movies often enough so I had probably seen trailers for the Justin Timberlake movie “In Time” before most people and the concept that time itself was a commodity had certainly piqued my interest.  It aroused my senses because being descendants of African slaves here in this country, time as we know it, is a wonder to behold.

Any study of ancient African cultures birthed on the west coast would discover that time is not linear; it does not progress seamlessly on a continuum stretching in a straight line from one end to another, but rather it has creases and buckles and even at times becomes circular.  Please believe it was not circumstance that when Disney decided to do a movie set in the east African serengeti plains that the major theme of the movie was the “circle of life.”

Time within the context of the African American community has often times placed us at odds with dominant society.  Historically blacks were seen as shiftless and lazy because of a failure to be on time.  So much so that there’s a running theme across this country about “CP time.”  It could be an event and they tell people to be there at nine o’clock and without fail someone will murmur “is that CP time?”  No, not some weird concoction of “Central Pacific” but in fact, “Colored People’s time.”  No, this isn’t birthed out of an inherent laziness or some innate inability to be on time, but rather it is a sense of “when it happens, [whatever it is], it will happen at the right time.”  It’s almost a direct resignation and surrender to forces outside of human existence that are in control of earthly happenings; whatever time and under whatever circumstances it happens, is when it was supposed to happen.

While I had seen the trailer, I was unaware of the level of which time had become a commodity.  The movie was set in a typical dystopian near future I suppose and time was the only commodity.  To exchange goods and services one exchanged time.  With a glowing neon green counter on the left arm of every individual counting the years, months, days, minutes and seconds, if one had enough resources, one could virtually garner a level of immortality.

“For a few to be immortal, many must die,” was a quote uttered more than once in the movie as the main character, Will Salas, played by Justin Timberlake experienced his journey in time.  After living a day to day existence getting doled out mere minutes and hours from factory working, he forces his own destiny and winds up getting a century’s worth of time.  Living in general ghetto of Dayton (although obviously the movie was filmed in Los Angeles), he uses his new found wealth to travel between time zones to the place of New Greenwich where everyone can tell he’s not from around there–because he does things too quickly.

Without ruining too much of the movie, it was an interesting forward and liberal movie plot that saw the target of the concept of wealth redistribution and aimed for the bullseye.  I thought the movie couldn’t be more on time given the Occupy Wall Street movement and this concept of the 99% versus the 1%.  In a day an age where Youtube and other social networking has fueled much of the protest, to see the likes of “South Park” parody the police as overbearing and mindless, and to paint the media as clueless (as it was an “Occupy Red Robin” movement, not the intended target of the protest in the episode), this movie was certainly an eye opened.

Much of the plot discussed how in order for the few (read: the 1%) had the power and ability to stay immortal at the expense of the many, (read: the 99%).  In a society where persons genetically didn’t age past 25, years after that were spent trying to get as many years as possible.  This movie explored predatory lending practices of banks, and I daresay payday loan sharks in poor communities, the day-to-day grind of working class persons who have to struggle daily to make ends meet.  To see a dead person on the street wasn’t uncommon in this movie–people just “timed out.”

I think it’s safe to say that Hollywood has a decidedly liberal agenda.

And that’s fine by me of course.  But we all remember those “special episodes” of the family friendly and kid friendly sit-coms of the 1980s and 1990s that discussed everything from drug use, to bullying to divorce, teen pregnancy, gang violence and tolerance.  I’ll never forget the “Family Matters” episode when “nigger” was written on Laura’s locker, or even the “Moesha” episode when they dealt with a young man who was in the closet with his sexuality.  We don’t see a lot of movies and stories that laud the conservative point of view.  Most of the classic books that take the dystopian world view from Brave New World  to 1984 and movies such as “Soylent Greens” all take a liberal approach to politics and social matters–this movie is no different.

I think it is interesting that these movies, these books, these works of art get such wide acclaim.  In lieu of neo-conservatism running rampant thanks to the Tea Party movement and an ever increasing irresponsible batch of politicians who say and do whatever acting in sheer impunity I fail to see how does an electorate fail to connect the dots.  It wasn’t coincidence that the poor people in the ghettos were always “timing out” of life because they were always rushing to get more time, never enjoying the luxuries of time to sit back and relax.  For poor people, the “time is money” concept means that if they aren’t working, they aren’t making money.  For the rich, the few, the 1%, they’ve reached a level where their money works for them even when they’re our of time–so to speak.

I think in the next three to four centuries, this “experiment” of global capitalism will  have wound itself down.  At this current trajectory, the world market isn’t in the position to maintain such highly concentrated levels of wealth.  Am I arguing for wealth redistribution?  No, on the basis of impracticability.  I am, however, siding with the progressive idea that people should pay proportionately to their income.  The flat tax idea is laughable because it unfair taxes the poor, and the progressive tax structure we’re on right now still doesn’t appropriately take into account those at the opposite ends of the income spectrum leaving the majority of the tax burden on the middle income makers.  It’s absurd that we’ve elected politicians who think that taxing the rich, and imposing a “millionaires” tax will dissuade businesses from hiring.  The typical GOP talking point operates on the idea that everyone, based on hard work and a rugged individualist work ethic is going to be a millionaire flies in the face of the fundamental concept that “for a few to be immortal, many must die.”

Unfortunately, the white poor of conservative bastions such as Alabama, Georgia, Tennessee, West Virginia and south central Pennsylvania that make up the Appalachians are just as disenfranchised as blacks and Latinos in the urban ghettos.  These poor people can’t afford to move across “time zones” as in the movie.  These people, these poor people, are locked into their geographical regions unable to afford basic transportation, unaware of a world going on outside of their immediate surrounding.  Where their lack of time is a constant stresser that leads to serious health problems.

Or maybe….

….this was a movie to let the 1% know that there will be a day when the proletariat will rise up and challenge the system of capitalism.  Forgive me if I sound a bit Marxist, but I think anyone with a brain can see that eventually one day, our exit to capitalism will come and it would make sense for us not to be in the left lane and have to cut across five lanes of traffic to exit and cause a pile up in the process!  I think when the history books are written they will have to point to the Occupy Wall Street movement and the severe financial problems facing many of these European countries–who are in the Eurozone mind you.  It’s barely been past one decade and these countries on the Euro as a monetary unit are facing these severe austerity measures.

Whatever the case is, let it be known that there are people who are awake.  I encourage all of us to stay vigilant.

Keep it uppity and keep it truthfully radical, JLL

P.S.  On an unrelated trivial note, Wikipedia informed me that characters in the movie were named after real life watch brandnames.

Herman Cain, the Magical Negro…and Other Topics on Ontological Blackness

2 Nov

Carlos Osorio/AP Photos

Let me just be up front and honest: I don’t like Herman Cain.

Granted I dislike his opponent Texas Governor Rick Perry even less, and Rep. Michelle Bachmann has devolved into a “Love Boat” joke, I just really don’t care for Herman Cain.  His politics seems to hearken back to a Brady Bunch or even “Leave It to Beaver” era of this country–one that never truly existed–and people are eating it up.  Maybe that’s what it is; I’m just mad people are actually buying what he’s shoveling.

But why not?  He’s a magical Negro.

Yes, the phrase “magical Negro” is a bit of a tongue-and-cheek mash up and probably draws more questions that it answers, but if you will go with me, I would like to explore this magical Negro called Herman Cain.

Let’s be honest, since we’re not in a post-racial society despite what mainstream media continues to assert, more and more people are trying to wrap their minds around the now seeable possibility of having two men of color run for the office of the President of the United States.  What is interesting to me, is that both of these men have had the core of their blackness challenged.  For Barack Obama it was his mixed ancestral heritage, being raised by his white grandparents in part and for Herman Cain his affiliation with the Republican party and aligning himself with the likes of other GOP’ers who take such conservative stances when it comes to the disenfranchised of this country.

So how is Herman Cain able to ascend to the point he has now despite being black?  I think very much the same way Obama did for the Democrats: there’s a level of “safeness” about both of these men.  This country isn’t ready for a black man to be president (( wink wink )).  By black man, one need only reference the 2004 nomination process for the Democrats and Al Sharpton didn’t make it past South Carolina.  While Sharpton was able to parlay himself into a nationally syndicated radio talk show and now a full time slot on MSNBC, an elected official he is not!

It’s easy to call Herman Cain a sellout for his political position when it comes to his comments on the Occupy Wall Street movement by inferring persons need to simply go get a job.  Even the most simple of political commentaries understands that with a 9.1% unemployment rate nationwide to suggest protesters need to just get a job wholly oversimplifies the problem.  And that’s Cain’s political achilles heel to me: he oversimplifies relatively complex problems.  While his 9-9-9 plan (( think 9 pizzas, 9 toppings for the low low price of $9.99 )) is easily repeatable, it’s a rather basic solution to a real complex problem.  Even in the last debate, after I finally got the gist of it, Cain was left comparing apples and oranges, literally, to an audience and debaters who could see through it.

This is the problem that Cain faces when it comes to his blackness being challenged.

Most political commentators with any validity to their reputation (so this excludes most anyone who appears on Fox News) and across color lines will admit that the issue of race is not a simple one: it never has been and will probably never be.  Cain’s haste to oversimplify things flies in the face of conventional wisdom in many of the black communities across this country.  This is why Obama’s speech on race in Philadelphia in 2008 following the initial fallout behind Jeremiah Wright was so poignant and resonated with many people.  It was the first time in recent memory we heard a speech that tackled the issue of race head-on and didn’t use euphemisms to address it.  Obama’s speech was the only speech on race I had heard in my lifetime coming from somone with the high level of political status as he, it at least did not dismiss race nor add to the apathy and disillusionment that often characterizes the lives of disenfranchised people.

A potential GOP nomination of Herman Cain could actually be a political jackpot for the GOP when it comes to issues of race.  The GOP has been facing ever increasing flak from the black communities across this nation when it comes endearing blacks to their party.  It’s a joke worthy only of the black blogosphere, Facebook and Twitter when GOP events are aired on national TV and we sit back and count the number of black faces we see in the crowd.  Usually we never run out of fingers.  With the recent chairperson of the GOP, Michael Steele, being black he was forced to deal with these questions directly, and the GOP as a party was able to point and say “Look, we’re not racist.  Our chairperson is a black guy!”

But, as I noted above, that oversimplifies the issue of race.

What the GOP obviously fails to realize is that running a black conservative candidate against Obama runs the risk of political suicide.

Just ask Alan Keyes.

Granted the GOP in the state of Illinois had Barack Obama running unopposed for a U.S. Sentate seat for six whole weeks, but Alan Keyes, as the paragon of foot-in-the-mouth conservatism was the absolutely worst candidate to run against an Obama campaign.  But Obama won 70% of the vote with over four million votes cast in a state that outside of the Chicago metropolitan area consistently voted Republican and in a state that has no qualms about electing a Republican governor when they feel like it.

70-percent.

For social conservatives to vote for a black man in a political office is the equivalent of the “oh, I have black friends” meme.  It somehow tells them that they’re really not that conservative–or prejudiced, or bigoted, or racist–deep down.  What makes this a falsehood one tells one’s self to sleep easy at night is the fact that voting for the likes of a Herman Cain don’t require much of a leap.  Herman Cain’s rhetoric, for the most part is interchangeable with that of Mitt Romney or Rick Perry at this stage of the game.  Nothing Cain stands for or has spoken about would look any different coming from a white GOP politician–no one would raise an eyebrow.

With the latest political bungle lain at the doorstep of Herman Cain surrounding this sexual misconduct from years ago, he seems like a Manchurian candidate of sorts to me.  He seems out of his political element–like Sarah Palin.  The folksy-ness comes off as aloof and unaware of the stakes of the game.  While I don’t mind perceived flip-flopping on the issues when new information is available, Herman Cain’s doublespeak is pushing the appalling level.  And his speaking in unknown tongues referring to not knowing the capital of “Uz-beki-beki-beki-stan-stan” doesn’t show salt-of-the-earth values, but rather a frightening dearth of knowledge of foreign affairs.

Launching into a rendition of “He Looked Beyond My Faults” at the National Press Club earlier this week–as though he were singing a sermonic selection before he preached…

…doth not a presidential candidate make.

Honestly, I don’t like the guy, but as a fellow black man, it felt like Cain set us back the proverbial 400 years when I saw him launch into song.  It came off as a minstrel production; that to placate to white conservative sensibilities he felt the need to sing a song.  It hearkened back to a time when racist whites of the antebellum and Jim Crow era dismissed Negro work songs as songs sung because we were happy to be doing the back breaking labor.  Certainly it roused images of blacks portrayed as mere entertainment and advertisement with black face, exaggerated lips and noses plastered on billboards, food labels and the like.

Notwithstanding Cain’s matriculation at Morehouse College or his parents insistence to not get involved with Civil Rights protests in Atlanta, to be unaware of the consequences of singing as he did disturbs me.

But so is this Magical Negro–the one Herman Cain.

Keep it uppity and keep it truthfully radical, JLL

A Final Word on President Obama and the Congressional Black Caucus

29 Sep

President Barack Obama speaking to the Congressional Black Caucus Phoenix Awards banquet on September 24, 2011

The less and less I’ve found myself blogging over the past couple of months, when I do I try and add something new to the conversation.  Something new doesn’t necessarily mean adding something contrary or opposing to what’s already been said, but often times it is and sometimes it’s just taken that way.  But this topic, who knows how it’s really going to be received.

This past weekend, President Barack Obama spoke to the Congressional Black Caucus about various policies and initiatives all of which were tailor made for the specific crowd.  He opened up with a quote from the revered modern Civil Rights-era icon Rev. Joseph Lowery (the same man who gave the benediction at his inauguration in 2009) from a famous biblical passage of the three Hebrew boys who are at the center of the story in Daniel 3.   It was as if Obama was taking a text.  All I was waiting on was a sermon title.

In a speech (not a sermon) shortly over some 23 minutes, he closed if you will, on this call to action for the CBC to “take off [their] bedroom slippers” and put on some “marching boots.”  There was some admonishment to stop grumblin’ and complainin’ as well.  Here’s a clip below:

 

Invoking Martin Luther King and the old modern Civil Rights motif of “the Promised Land” as some ethereal and mystical utopia where humanity lives in harmony, the concept of “stop grumblin’” and “stop complanin’” is a clear enough reference to Moses and the former Hebrew slaves, making that metonymical transition into Israelites.  The story of the Israelites in the wilderness is one of them complaining to no end–complaining to the point that they wished they were back in slavery because at least Pharaoh fed them, but they believed they had been led out to the wilderness to die.  Many times Moses’ conversations with Israelite tribal god of Yahweh was focused around the people complaining to no end.

To which I say, I think President Obama’s speech was on point and to the right audience.

While I agree with Congresswoman Rep. Maxine Waters that Obama would have never said this to another demographic such as the Hispanic/Latino caucus, an LGBT political community or a Jewish community, it’s probably because those demographics aren’t the personification of a “rubber stamp.”

Granted that’s a very, very surface analysis of the situation, but I’m going somewhere with this, so journey with me.

From jump the other demographics don’t have anything of their own demographic represented in the singular personhood of the President which starts complicating this dynamic portrayed between Obama, the CBC and the black community’s subsequent reaction.  But, all of the other demographics have a working political base that’s operates on politics based within the last decade, not the last half century.

 Let’s just be honest, we don’t hear a lot about the CBC on a national level that often.

We can’t trace the hand of the work of the CBC in the last five years.  While yes the individual members may be doing meaningful work in their own districts, as a unified body they are not a force to be reckoned when it comes to being able to influence political thought in an electorate.  When the CBC is imaged by the disgraced Congressman from Harlem, Charlie Rangel or by Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee or Rep. Maxine Waters (whom I both like by the way) what most in the black community see is the old guard, still stuck in a political era long gone.  For what it’s worth, it says a lot that Barack Obama ran against Rep. Bobby Rush in Illinois, lost, only to win the U.S. Senate seat and finally the Presidency.

And where is Bobby Rush?

I don’t know.  When I voted in 2010, I thought that was one of the most depressing ballots I casted.  I honestly couldn’t point to something Bobby Rush had meaningfully done for our district in all my life–at least nothing beyond the status quo.

It also needs to be said that complaining does not equal meaningful discussion.  I’m not against talk if it’s talk that’s moving us forward, pushing our minds, pulling us toward challenging our embedded political philosophies–but talk, for the sake of talk somewhat equals complaining.  With recent events such as the Troy Davis execution and recently hearing about possible voting rights violations in Texas, one is wondering where is the civil rights outcry?  Instead our organizations that have historically done this well such as the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) have become reactionary rather than controlling the rhetoric and being proactive in their fight.

Granted reactionary politics, showing up a day late and a dollar short has come to categorize the nature of liberal politics in America in general in the age of neo-conservatism that we’ve seen since Bush II administration, it still doesn’t absolve one from finding refuge in the reactionary and solace in being go-along-to-get-along types.  Prior to the jobs move that the CBC launched this past summer, I would be hard pressed to think of an instance where their name was attached to an independent initiative that had national ramifications.  Truth be told, I think they were just riding the wave of anti-Obama sentiments that had been kicked off by the rather public disagreements amongst the academic Negro intellectuals namely Melissa Harris-Perry and Cornel West and Tavis Smiley, but perhaps that’s for another blog post.

Nevertheless, what I saw in Obama’s speech amounted to a coach lighting a fire under the butts of a team that might have been the underdog going into the big game.  What baffles me about the nature of being black and being political is that often times we use the exceptionalism card when we it’s to our advantage and we reject it when it forces us to look in the mirror at our own actions.  Many blacks have been complaining the whole summer about Obama isn’t black enough. [ I think some of this was thanks to Cornel West's observation that Obama was a "black mascot" and that Obama had a fear of "free black men" combined with a comment that "he {Obama} feels most comfortable with upper middle-class white and Jewish men..."]  And it reignited the same questions about ontological blackness that we’re no closer to ending than we were before we elected Obama than we were at the beginning of the 20th century when DuBois so famously remarked about the nature of the “color line.”

Given Obama’s hesitation to make appearances at decidedly black functions in the 2008 campaign season and his pitiably few appearances at decidedly black functions even now, I was just happy that it was getting significant press coverage that he was speaking at the CBC.  But the nature of being black and the nuanced relationship of politics behind just being black in this country gives many blacks the privilege, for lack of a better word, to move back and forth between exceptionalism.

Case in point, Obama’s speech with the CBC.

For what it’s worth, the CBC could have found themselves in a position to complain either way.  If Obama had given a straight laced speech, Rep. Waters might have very well ended up saying complaining that Obama didn’t connect well with the room and the larger national audience.  And the blogosphere would have lit up saying Obama wasn’t black enough.  But, since Obama did his damnedest to connect with the room and a larger black national audience, we’re essentially saying that Obama came off as too familiar with us.  Bottom line is that Obama didn’t have this tone with the other demographics because he’s not a member of the other demographics–which is what I said at the beginning of this.

When it comes to organizations that have their roots directly tied to the modern Civil Rights struggle in this country, understanding this political exceptionalism that blacks sometimes help themselves to is rather difficult.  The younger black generation recognizes it much easier.  No, this is not some roundabout way of me talking about reverse racism, but exactly what I’m calling it: political exceptionalism.

Somehow I think Obama knew this which is why he called on the people to stop grumblin’.

Beyond ALL of this, why are we fixated on one line of a 25 minute speech?  Isn’t this what we defended his former pastor about in 2008?  A handful of quotes and soundbytes out of a 40-plus year preaching career?  And why, just why are we defending the CBC’s right to participate in one of the most pedestrian and banal exercises of one’s First Amendment right–the right to complain and grumble?  Shouldn’t we at least aspire to be known as more than that?

In retrospect, Rep. Waters should have known better, that was red meat being thrown out by the mainstream media and she went for it.  For the last couple of days, that was the media cycle about Obama’s complaint about the complainers, who in turn complained about his complaining.  No one is talking about the context of his speech, but we’re discussing the very, very superficial aspects of it–who’s winning now?

If I can see this, surely the people who do this for a living can.  C’mon people, wake up.

Keep it uppity and keep it truthfully radical, JLL

P.S.  Happy Birthday to Mama Uppity

Coonery or Comedy: What’s the Difference? A Case Study of Tyler Perry

16 Sep

Every once in a while I pose a question on Twitter and actually get some responses.  Today was one of those days.  I visited fellow blogger Average Bro’s website and I saw his story on the recent news that Tyler Perry raked in the most money in Hollywood for a year between 2010 and 2011, a nice sum around $130 million.  Naturally, the black blogosphere had jumped on this a day before when the story broke and a fresh new round of criticisms about Tyler Perry were refreshed.  It’s as though we treat Tyler Perry like some wound that as soon as the scab begins to crust over, we pick at it again opening a fresh wound hellbent on making sure that we create a permanent scar.

The question coonery or comedy isn’t exactly a new one, and certainly not a new topic surrounding Tyler Perry and his brand of cinematography and small screen ventures.  But, since Facebook is enjoying reminding its users of status updates from the past two years on any given day, I saw that this time last year I was encouraging and hoping the best for Tyler Perry as his screen adaptation of “For Colored Girls” was then soon to be released.  For me, that was when the tide turned and I seriously stopped hatin’ on the guy and decided to congratulate him for his successes.

What I posed today on Twitter was:

You can’t criticize Tyler Perry and his Madea image if you think “Coming to America” and “Friday” are funny.

While many people went on to tell me how one could criticize one and not the other, I began thinking what constitutes coonery and what constitutes comedy.  For a basic definition, fellow Twitter follower @Brandale2221 said to the effect that comedy is new jokes in new places and that coonery is old jokes in old places.  While have some nuance differences with that statement, I think most people would agree to that; it sounds good.

Let’s be honest, black comedy has seen a number of “envelopes being pushed” throughout the ages.  From the likes of Redd Foxx, Flip Wilson and LaWanda Page all the way to Richard Pryor, Eddie Murphy, Chris Rock, Adele Givens and Sheryl Underwood.   We’ve seen many of these black stand up comedians and comediennes jump from the stage to the silver screen and small screen making cameo roles to even being Hollywood stars themselves.  Many of them have shows and movies that particularly depict black culture and add to the conversation of what is blackness.  For good or bad, they add to this image.

When the 1990s came around and we had safely moved away from the blaxploitation era of movies, the image of the Huxtables had easily began to dominate the scene, gangsta rap had fully emerged as a force to be reckoned with birthed out of the hip hop culture.  This hip hop culture had given birth to movies such as “Coming to America” to “Boyz N Da Hood” and we saw television shows such as “Living Single,” “Martin” and “The Wayans’ Brothers” become top shows amongst black audiences.  From black romantic comedies such as “Boomerang” to “Love Jones” showed an image of black love rarely seen on the big screen.

But none came out the gate swinging more than Spike Lee.  Quintessential Spike Lee movies from that era still speak volumes for the black community and the purpose of this discussion: “School Daze” and “Do the Right Thing.”  [I would include Malcolm X in this list of quintessential movies, but since it's a biography, it doesn't quite fit the genre comparisons that I'm going for.]  We hold Spike Lee and these movies as the paragon of what it means to be black, male, writer, director and producer–the holy trifecta of the Hollywood movie making industry.

Somewhere, sneaking under the radar came Tyler Perry.

Helloerr!

Perry doesn’t fit the mold of any of the aforementioned black productions.  His movies don’t achieve the level of political and racial consciousness of Spike Lee joints; they don’t exude the smooth romantic comedy vibe that was eloquently delivered in “Love Jones” and his movies certainly don’t fit the genre of the gangster movies such as “Menace II Society.”  Tyler Perry came on the scene in a country that had survived 9/11 and in what some sociologists are already referring to as “the Lost Decade.”

The 20-aughts have seen the death of the live studio audience sitcom replaced by reality TV shows that take you from the jungles of Southeast Asia to the chef’s kitchens of Los Angeles and audiences will pay money to see human jackasses on screen play tortuous pranks on one another.

What better time for Tyler Perry to step on the scene.

Na’im Akbar, the acclaimed clinical psychologist, wrote in his book Breaking the Chains of Psychological Slavery even before we knew who Madea was, wrote about “the Wayans’ Brothers and “Martin” as coonin’.  For me, personally, much of the comedy of Martin Lawrence on the show vascillated between comedy and coonery.  A typical scene with him, Cole, and Gina and Pam all playing off one another when the plumber died in the apartment was sheer comedic genius.  Watching Shenehneh Jenkins act a fool in the hallway was coonin’ to me.

Did I laugh?  Sometimes.

A basic question I pose when I have this discussion is what’s the difference between Flip Wilson in a dress, Martin Lawrence in a dress, Jamie Foxx in a dress and Tyler Perry in a dress; what makes the first three comedy and the last one coonin’.  One someone told simply that the first three are funny and that Perry isn’t.  Well, what’s considered an appropriate emotional stimuli to overbalance neurological stressers that produce laughter is highly subjective–just because you think it’s funny doesn’t mean I will.  But, to suggest that because one doesn’t find Tyler Perry funny automatically means it’s safe to call it coonin’ I think is disingenuous.

Tyler Perry isn’t a stand up comedian who made the crossover, but rather he’s a guy who has said that he’s trying to put forth a message about black culture.  He didn’t go to school for filmmaking and he hasn’t been working in this area terribly long compared to other blacks in the industry.  He’s overtly religious and spiritual in his films.  All of these things make him a clear outlier from the other disparate writers, producers and directors.  And he’s producing these movies in different cultural climate than the one’s we often compare him to–and he’s clear that he has a different target audience.

Much of what I fielded from criticisms about “The Help” are much of what I see in criticism of Perry that are levied against him.  ”The Help” as a movie, never set out to tell a gripping tale of black domestic life in Jackson, Mississippi in 1963, it set out to be an entertaining movie about black domestic life in Jackson, Mississippi in 1963.  Perry, clearly unlike Spike Lee, never set out to tell stories about racial and political injustices–nuanced and blatant–or a clear and pointed view of black culture.  Perry, at best from what he’s said in interviews, set out to tell tranche de vie stories about blacks with basic human uplift themes–he just wasn’t trying to be all that deep.

And boy did he suceed.

Yes, Tyler Perry’s movies and sitcoms are bland at best.  The plots of his movies fall marvelously flat like a cake in a oven on the set of The Bozo Show; a horrible, tired and staid punchline that you can see coming a mile away.  The acting leaves a lot to be desired, and the writing is bad.  It’s so bad that to see the likes of Angela Bassett and Lynn Whitfield have deliver some of those words is truly cringe worthy.  The level of comedy of the sitcoms “House of Payne” and “Meet the Browns” is on par with that of a 1st grade Christmas pageant.

But, Tyler Perry has made power move after power move and for that alone, I celebrate what he’s been able to do.  What makes him and Spike Lee comparable is that, to my knowledge, they are the only two black people in Hollywood who comprise all aspects of writing, directing and producing–and acting–in their full-length productions.  Most times in Hollywood you find black directors and black writers, but to have black producers who also own their own production company is what incurs the wow factor.  While yes you have the Smith’s (Will and Jada) who have their own production company, if one looks at the credits you’d see in Spike Lee and Tyler Perry films, they’re not sharing the rights of production with anyone else but themselves.

That’s some Steven Spielberg type ish!

I guess the next power move for Tyler Perry is to start his own film distribution company to which I say more power to the brother as well!

As with things of this topic, if it’s something you seriously don’t consider to be comedy but view it as coonin’  just flip the channel, as I do when I see Ella’s short T-Rex arms appear on my screen in “House of Payne.” [SN: You know that's the same character hanging out the window of the girls dorm at Mission College yelling at Dap to go away?]  And given the plethora of foolish images we as a black culture have dealt with in the past and are dealing with right now, I somehow think we’re overreacting.  The vapid lyrics of “You Look Better With the Lights Off” from the New Boyz featuring Chris Brown or the anti-love song Miguel is crooning out saying “I Don’t Wanna Be Loved” and that he only wants a quickie–no bite marks, scratches or hickies please–I think has just as much an impact on how black culture is viewed as “Madeas Big Happy Family.”

In an age where Italians are reduced to the images of greasy haired mob bosses or guidos from the “Jersey Shore” and middle class white families paint their young daughters as hoes in training on “Teen Mom” I think Tyler Perry’s image of Madea is about right on target for the U.S. as we see-saw between life imitating art or art imitating life.

Slightly diverging from this line of thinking, but I think equally important in this entire conversation, no one ever questioned the sexuality of many of these previous comedians to the point and extent of Tyler Perry.  Mind you, “Boondocks” did an ENTIRE episode openly criticizing this man’s sexuality.  While the “Pause” episode was brilliant and stood in stark artistic difference to the production work of Perry himself, still, was it morally right for Aaron McGruder to do that?  I think we, as a black community, have given ourselves a bit more of a green light to openly criticize the work of Tyler Perry and Tyler Perry himself because we feel that we are morally superior–we don’t go around acting super churchy all the time while dressed in drag, therefore we’re in a position of moral judgment.  I dare say if Perry wasn’t so overly religious and spiritual in his films that some of the issue we may have with a man who’s 6’5″ dressed in drag would somewhat be allayed.

Still, does that make one’s criticisms less valid?  I would say no, but as much as I’m always interested in authorial intent when I read novels, and works of non-fiction and certainly when I read the biblical text, I ask myself the same thing when it comes to entertainment.  One criticisms are always valid, but what is the intent of your criticisms?  Are they from a knowingly subjective vantage point or from a delusional and seemingly objective point of view?  What bothers me is false objectivity.  I have no problems with people being clear with their bias, but to ignore it, to me, bankrupts the value of your opinion.

For those who think I’ve evaded the question, for me, comedy is rooted in the intent of the artist.  If the artist is simply pushing the envelope for the sake of laughter, then it’s comedy.  Coonin’ is also rooted in the intent of the artist–if the artist is compromising an artistic integrity for the sake of laughter.  

Failing to be, who you be, and be the best at it….you’re nothing more than a coon.

Keep it uppity and truthfully radical, JLL

Uppity Updates

25 Aug

Seeing as how I have a “day job” now, I’ve noticed my posts have gotten farther and farther between–monthly almost.  But nonetheless, I’m still here in the blogosphere and you can check out my comments on some other famous blogs that I visit pretty regularly.  That being said a lot has happened in the month since I’ve last posted, so here’s a rundown on the latest current events with the usual uppity twist to them.

Obama and the Debt-Ceiling Crisis

Quickly stated, Mr. Obama acted as he always has: slowly, yet deliberately.  That’s half the reason why he won the nomination in June 2008 because we believed in his ability to be a bit more calculated in his approach to politics.  With recent blog topics and op-ed pieces throwing out the question of Democratic buyers remorse with regards to Hillary Rodham Clinton, the question is moot.  Neither had any presidential experience and Clinton still has none, I think to ask such a question opens up the topic to too many “what ifs” and nothing is concrete.  To ponder seriously is to fall into the trap of “the grass is greener on the other side” myth that really does nothing to help the current situation.

Nonetheless, there is a liberal fatigue that is sweeping the nation, so much so that former D-NY Rep. Anthony Weiner’s seat is actually being contested by a GOP candidate–seriously so.  I would encourage people to not miss the forest for the trees.  Even if someone is elected who’s a GOP (the trees), I wouldn’t worry about the 2012 election (the forest) for a district that has historically been Democratic and the people aren’t changing that much in the long haul.

What I do think the White House has done a bad job of is getting the word out about Obama’s fiscal responsibility.  The Congressional Budget Office clearly can show that just in the two years Obama has been in office that we’ve seen reduced spending in comparison to the Reagan/Bush I years and Bush II administration with a drastically reduced spending in the future.  Part of this reduction is because of the predicted withdrawal from our wars overseas in Iraq and Afghanistan.  While Medicaid/Medicare and Social Security have been the proverbial third rails of politics since the mid-20th century, the issue of the mountains of money shelled out to fund these wars has been almost mum from the White House to the GOP and to all other talking heads.

Simply stated, the wars are driving us to the poorhouse–and quickly.

Rick Perry, Michelle Bachmann and the GOP Presidential Contenders

Rick Perry

I still say Mitt Romney is the best hope for the GOP up against Obama come 2012 given the trajectory we’re headed.

Seeing as how I don’t have a glimpse into the future, I don’t know how well or how terrible the economy is going to fair in the next 12 months or so, but if unemployment numbers stabilize and don’t uptick, a GOP candidate can still come in and Obama would lose the White House.  It’ll be a tough sell if jobs numbers begin to go up and unemployment starts ticking down; all Obama needs is a solid full 1% drop close enough to the election time when the jobs gains are close enough in the voters minds.  I will admit this: if unemployment drops to 8.1% or hell, even a nice 7.8% by December, and it hovers between 7.5-8.0% for all of calendar year 2012 during campaign season, this country would still elect a GOP candidate who ran on the promise to bring unemployment down further.

The problem with Rick Perry and Michelle Bachmann is that they’re not center enough.  The religious right that elected the likes of Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush aren’t in existence the same way.  I think its safe to say the country has ticked a bit left to center (evidenced by Obama’s election), but the far right has dug in their heels in a way we haven’t seen before in this country–just look at the Tea Party.  While they have candidates in office across the country, most of them are in state representive or House of Representative offices and in highly conservative districts that haven’t seen liberal Democrat elected in decades if ever.  The districts that switched from Democratice to Tea Party GOP in 2010 were districts that have historically flip-flopped and had a mostly evenly divided electorate anyway so to believe anything otherwise is pretty much smoke and mirrors.

As of this moment, I don’t think the Tea Party has enough collective capital with the U.S. population to garner a national election.  Considering how Sharron Angle and Christine O’Donnell’s campaigns in Nevada and Delaware for U.S. Senate so gloriously imploded upon themselves as major Tea Party candidates, I’m really not convinced about the campaign of Michelle Bachmann and even a Tea Party support candidate of Rick Perry.

Black Racial Sensitivity and the Nivea Ad

Honestly, I don’t think there’s much ado about nothing.

For me to call something racist, I have to first understand what’s the intent.  If anything, the ad is weird before it’s racist–or prejudiced or bigoted.  Why there’s a cut off head in the guy’s hand is a mystery to me.  And seeing as how Nivea has a series of ads with random people holding random heads, I think we’re being hasty in judgment in calling the ad racist.

There’s a nuanced discussion we need to be having when it comes to discussing “post-racial America.”  One of which is whether or not post-racial is really where we need to be headed.  One of the initial problems with this concept is that it advocates the “melting pot” theory over the “gumbo pot.”  A melting pot speaks toward us moving toward a homogenous texture irrespective of race, religion, thought and everything else that makes one culture unique.  A gumbo pot on the other hand takes uniquely different items, mixes it together to form a unique taste, but the shrimp is still the shrimp, the andouille sausage is still the andouille sausage and the chicken is still the chicken.  The roux forms and acts as the substance that blends all flavor to produce a new taste and holds all of the disparate parts together.

When I speak of us moving toward a post-racial America, I am speaking of reconcilliation.  There must be a day in human history where we can “study war no more” and discover our similarities and celebrate our differences.  Do I think this Nivea ad is holding us back or moving us forward?  I don’t think it’s doing either quite frankly.  But just as Jay-Z and Kanye pulled the clip from “Blades of Glory” on their track “Niggas in Paris” where Chaz Michaels and Jimmy MacElroy are having the discussion about “My Humps” song being used and Chaz says “because it’s provocative,” I think such a phrase is appropriate here.  Just as Jay-Z and Kanye give an explanation for some of their imagery, the same holds true for this ad–it’s provocative.

London Riots and U.S. Flash Mobs

Riot police patrol the streets in Tottenham, north London as trouble flared after members of the community took to the streets. Photo: PA

Let me be clear from the beginning, I do not condone violence as an appropriate means of offense and protest.  That being said, I’m still at a loss for what was going on with the London riots.  For the life of me, I cannot rationalize violent acts throughout a municipality as a means of public protest.  Does this mean that I side with the British officials that are wantonly calling the looters as “thugs” and miscrients of the lowest kind?  No, I do not.  Rather, I am more interested in trying to move said protests toward relevant revolution.

There’s a difference between a revolt and a revolution.  Revolutions are interested in the long term and usually are a series of events that lead a point in history and result in structural and fundamental social change.  Revolts on the other hand result in short term gains for a small section of a populace and possibly can result in negative gains.  This is not to say that either aren’t birthed out of the same oppressive conditions that need to be changed, but the question protesters must always ask is what is the ultimate result.

I had a conversation with a colleague when I pressed the matter saying how can the London rioters loot their own neighborhoods for the sake of material spoils whilst knowing that eventually it was going to settle down?  He responded that the acquisition of material possessions was a mimicry of the oppressor; getting the same things that the ones who they claimed to be oppressing them possessed.  I thought it was a keen observation.  Why are we, the underclass and oppressed, struggling for the same things that the oppressor owns?  For me, the question of struggle is are we moving toward reconciliation or simply vying for the formerly oppressed to now be the oppressor.

What spurred the flash mobs in American cities as of late, namely Philadelphia, was the result of oppression American style.  Much like in London, police brutality brings out the masses to riot.  One need not go to the Watts Riots or the King Riots or even the Rodney King Riots, but think back to the Cincinatti race riots of 2001 or the Benton Harbor, Mich. race riots of 2003 all spurred from police brutality cases.  The problem that I have with the governmental response in both London and Philadelphia is that it’s the same oppressive rhetoric that helped create the atmosphere for teh rioters to riot.  Yes, order needs to be restored as soon as possible, but labeling the protesters as anything less than concerned citizens worthy of being reasoned with is a recipe for disaster.

Check the clip below [particularly from minute 9:00 and forward]:

Notwithstanding the black church culture, the image of the black preacher and all that went into this moment, Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter choosing to focus on many of the aesthetics of young black teens and hearkening back to an era that has long been passed and using tactics that are outdated and outmoded for an iPod and social networking society, one is dead in the water.  Just last Sunday, I was talking to some of the young male students where I work and was asking why some of the incoming freshman males were standing outside of the chapel rather than waiting inside.  They responded that young black men don’t like church, I asked why, they said “We don’t like being talked at.”

That’s what’s happening.

We’re talking at the youth and certainly are keeping the marginalized marginalized for the sake of our own selfish sensibilities.  As humans and fellow citizens we have a responsibility to ourselves to live in harmony with one another.  No one group, young or old, rich or poor should be subjected the way many of these demographics are.

And these are my uppity updates.

Keep it uppity and keep it truthfully radical, JLL

The Romanticized Victimhood of Black Women and “The Help”

22 Aug

Emma Stone (left) and Viola Davis (right) star in "The Help"

I was able to see “The Help” back in July for a pre-screen and even after sitting on the front row and watching the grossly distorted images courtesy of looking up vertical to a 30 foot screen, I walked away surprised at what I saw.  I was happy to watch a movie that told the stories of black and white women, side-by-side and across generational lines–I haven’t seen a movie like that.  For each main character from Aibleen and Minnie to Skeeter and her mother; Hilly juxtaposed to Celia Foote’s character and even the story of Constantine–all characters showed development from the beginning to the end of the movie.   I was expecting a movie similar to that of the “Dangerous Minds” or “Freedom Writers” that portrays the liberal whites as making a difference in the lives of the poor black and Latino children and ends with a storybook ending and usually throws in the death, by a bullet, of one of the children.

However, black women across the blogosphere didn’t see it that way.

Blog upon blog of black women prior to the movie’s release had begun the rants against “The Help.”  Some were coherent and others not so much.  Famous bloggers said they weren’t going to read the book or see the movie and gave their reasons why. I was left reading whole articles about why someone wasn’t going to see it based on what I felt were bad assumptions–prejudices if you will.  Perhaps because I saw the movie already I knew that much of what people were allegedly having a problem with as far as the concept of the movie was somewhat incorrect.

I think the promotion of the story was a bit misleading, probably for the sake of a white American audience.  But let’s be honest, this movie wasn’t intended to be a movie specifically for black audiences or a movie that didn’t really care whether blacks attended or not.  Fact of the matter is, blacks as a demographic are not a driving force when it comes to box office sales.  That being said, I think some of the beauty of the movie was lost in the marketing and promotion of it.

Nevertheless, black people–not just black women–as the opening weekend drew nigh became more and more critical of a movie that hadn’t even been seen and by most people who hadn’t read the book.

From the likes of Melissa Harris-Perry to other black female bloggers nationwide, this was still an incorrect image in which to portray black women.  This was still the same image of black women as subservient and unempowered that got many people bringing up the image of “mammy” and decrying the fact that Minny went on about fried chicken through the entire movie.   Some even found the pie-eating story unrealistic.  Harris-Perry tweeted that she thought the violence meted upon one of the other minor characters was the only realistic part of the movie.  Which left me asking So black women only identify with violence?

For the sake of this blog, I’m talking about black women, but I think at times this is true of blacks in general. [Yes, I'm aware I'm stepping into some murky territory here.]  I don’t say this often, but I do think there is a romanticized view of violence and victimhood that blacks collectively suffer from.  Collective suffering comes from systematic and collective oppression; we were uniformly oppressed in this country therefore we uniformly have some amount of suffering as a result.  What results is a “my oppression was worse than your oppression” matrix that groups contextually operate.

The tenor of the conversation that I’m reading about and hearing about surrounding “The Help” is that it doesn’t paint a realistic image of black women domestics in the South.  For Harris-Perry to identify with the violent part the most was highly disturbing to me.  Seriously, it got my attention; it was a tweet that stood out from the crowd amongst her others.  This leaves me wondering what is the view of historical black women or even historical blackness at that time.  The subtext that I read is that experiencing lynchings were an everyday occurrence in any given community, that everyone suffered from Night Riders from the KKK, that every black domestic faced sexual threats from the patriarchal white males in their households and that it was all really just that bad. News flash:

Black folks eat fried chicken.

Black folks are fat and eat fried chicken.

And watermelon.

Oh, and we clap our hands on the 2 and 4 beat in church as well.

I am not at all trying to minimize the historical oppression and struggle of blacks in a Jim Crow South, but I think far too many of us are succumbing to looking at history through too contemporary of a lens.  Based on just the stories out of my own family, the level of unempowerment that blacks faced on a day-to-day basis was serious and social conditioning was real.  It’s as though we’re ashamed of the image of black women that doesn’t show them being a triumphant and metaphorical Celie from “The Color Purple.”  The silent struggle of Aibleen resonated with me much more than the towering images of black womanhood such as Fannie Lou Hamer.   Hamer went to bat and was an outlier amongst thousands of unnamed black women who never mustered the courage to speak up, and on behalf those that had sacrificed their lives and their womanhood when they did.

And….if it wasn’t for some courageous white people, the modern Civil Rights movement wouldn’t have been what it was: a revolutionary movement.  A revolution happens in slow, incremental changes, not all at once.  Yes, there are watershed moments that make it in the history books, but the annals of history tell of countless stories full of unnamed men and women who used their own smaller acts of resistance against a system that they were unaware was unjust in the future hope of generations yet to come.  The Civil Rights movement in this country began when the African slave woman decided to pee in massa’s morning coffee back in 1621, it did not start with Rosa Parks refusing to give up her seat in 1955 and end one decade later with the signing of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

Ella Baker

Is this a story worth telling by a black woman?  I answer with a resounding yes.  Would I pay money to go see it?  Yes I would, and I’d buy and support the book.  Am I entitled to my opinion of how black men are portrayed in the book?  Of course.  That’s one of the issues in the movie, the only image of a black man in the movie was a totally faceless one and that of an abusive one.  But, I resolved that in my mind because the movie made men in general take a back seat–this was a story about what it meant to be a woman–white or black–in the Jim Crow era South.

Seeing as how this was historical fiction, there was some basis for truth in this story.  I think this was the case of William Styron’sThe Confessions of Nat Turner revisted: black folks, particularly black women, were just incensed that this wasn’t a story told by a black woman.  While I discount people’s opinions of the book or the movie who have neither read nor seen it, I think many of those that read it or saw it had unrealistic expectations of the movie.  It seemed as though the likes of Harris-Perry were expecting this movie to be “The Color Purple Redux” with heavy elements of “Eyes on the Prize” documentary infused into it.

I think even if the bloggers who had issue with movie went to go see it, they’d be so jaded and be able to offer an opinion without severe bias attached to the judging process.

That’s it.  I just wanted to join the chorus of rants on this topic as well.  It’s officially dead and buried for me.  #ontothenextone

Keep it uppity and keep it truthfully radical, JLL

Jumping The Broom: Understanding Sex and Marriage as Religious and Cultural Oppression

19 Jul

Yesterday I read an article at TheFreshXpress from another blogger who goes by the name DCDistrictDiva (her award winning blog is “The Dithering of a District Diva“) on the topic of sex and marriage.  The article was entitled “Twisted: Why God’s ‘No Marriage, No Sex’ Rule is for Protection and Pleasure, Not Punishment.”   I began reading and I probably figured where the article was going, but I figured in all fairness to read it in it’s entirety before I passed judgment.  By the second paragraph, however, she had begun quoting numerous scriptures to support her point.  Anyone who knows me knows that I shy away from using Bible verses to support a point because of the general assertion from the quoter that by doing so, it effectively ends the conversation.

I plodded through the article reading numerous assertions about premarital sex supported by various scriptures hopping from the New Testament back to the Old Testament and then back to the New Testament.  I trudged through notions about marriage and what it meant to have sex in the context of marriage and what it didn’t mean and doctrines of sin all asserting a particular theology.  In short, I disagreed with just about every thing that the author had to say on the topic.  I viewed the article as incorporating bad exegesis of the biblical documents to support a patriarchal and Victorian view of sex in marriage.

This doesn’t make the author a bad person, just makes her someone who I disagree with–vehemently I might add.

Blacks are still relatively conservative on the issue of sex in general and subsequently marriage.  The idea of a couple, one man and one woman, meeting, then courting, then getting engaged, then married, then having sex–for the first time–still acts as the both preferred method of moving toward marriage, sex, then children and also acts as that archetypical view of what life is supposed to be; a fairytale storybook image if you will.  I really don’t think there’s anything inherently wrong with that image, but to suggest that any deviation from that plan is immoral or in fact a sin poses a problem to my sensibilities in the year 2011.

Using the vantage point of my U.S. citizenship as a background and understanding the progression of the Abrahamic religious tradition as it diverged into Christianity, I would like to take a moment to try and debunk some of these contemporary myths that we have about marriage in the context of the black community.

One of my main issues with how we’re framing our marriage talk in this 21st century is our insistence on using the biblical text to support our beliefs.  Personally, I want to know why do we primarily take our cue for understanding sex and marriage from a brother who lived and died nearly 2,000 years ago?  Yes, I’m talking about Paul.  Even in writing his treatise on sex and marriage in 1 Corinthians, Paul is speaking in first person (I, Paul) and even went through the process of taking God out of the process as if to say this is what I think, not a mandate from God.  Not to mention Paul thought Jesus was coming back in his lifetime!  I certainly think that such a perceived life trajectory would affect one’s lifestyle.

Honestly, would you abstain from sex if you thought Jesus was coming back in November?

The concept of sex in a 1st century world from which Paul was writing had no concept of STDs the way we do, there were no contraceptives that were in widespread use aside from the withdrawal method (pull out).  Marriage was certainly seen through the eyes of patriarchy with the woman as property, everything she may have owned became the husbands and in fact her livelihood was directly connected to how her husband would treat her.  Paul wrote his understanding of sex and marriage operating from the Septuagint (LXX) which included the Hebrew Bible and other historical and theological documents found in the Apocrypha.  I’m not saying that what Paul had to say is just flat out wrong, but I am saying that what he had to say may not necessarily be appropriate to our own modern day settings.

What I found more problematic in DCDistrictDiva’s blog was how she understood the passages in Jeremiah that imaged the tribal god Yahweh as a husband and the tribal nation of Israel as a bride.  This has been a troubling image for many scholars in the more recent years of the theological academy.  As views shifted on feminist theology and how we view women in the Bible juxtaposed to how we view women in our culture (remember through the eyes of American citizenship), such an image of Yahweh (God) as a husband and Israel as the bride or wife is just seething with patriarchy and heteronormative ideals.  To that end, such an image is troubling at the least.  This isn’t an unfamiliar image, however.  In other books of the Old Testament’s minor prophets, such as Ezekiel, we see this “married couple” operating as well.

DCDistrictDiva used a Jeremiah 2:23-24 passage to support her concept of marriage, but the passage images the woman as a) a sexual object b) a wild animal and c) as someone to have the husband’s will imposed on the woman.  Aside from viewing God as a man and summarily a husband, there are passages where the husband/God is in fact abusive to the woman.  The woman in another passage that DistrictDiva quotes views the woman as a prostitute in Jeremiah 3:2.  For me, these passages have absolutely nothing to do with the institution of marriage, be they in the 7th century B.C.E. or the 21st century C.E.  Contextually, those passages had to do with the nation of Israel and their dallying with other gods from other tribal nations and their assimilation into the culture of the their captives.  [Seeing as how chronologically previous passages in the biblical timeline say that Yahweh "delivered them into captivity' {one helluva phrase right?} how does someone get mad when the oppressed assimilate into the culture of the oppressor--but that's another blog post.]  This was not a Hebraic commentary on marriage.   For that, one needs to go back to Leviticus and Deuteronomy.

Again, these passages I think harp on the very, very traditional understanding of marriage.

And what do I mean by “traditional understanding of marriage”?

By traditional marriage, as understood by most U.S. residents, it is this very Victorian construct of familial life.  The male is the father and husband and the head and the one wife and children are subservient.  For the record, this is a departure from the thousands of years of Hebrew culture that many people want to conflate into the biblical understanding of marriage.  With examples of Abraham marrying his half sister; the Jacob, Leah and Rachel love triangle; David who had a man killed just to marry the woman and certainly with Solomon and his many wives or Hosea marrying “a wife of whoredom” all as famous examples, somehow we theologize those examples.  Many find some reason to say God didn’t support Solomon’s many wives thus it led to his downfall.

In Hebraic culture, I doubt people were running to the county courthouse to get legal documentation to say that they were married.  At least according to the biblical writings, it wasn’t even the ceremony that declared one married but it was the arrangement and agreement of both families (negotiated by the patriarchs) and the act of sex that constituted a marriage.  Even by the 1st century C.E., Jewish culture still for the most operated on that same idea even in the midst of Roman occupation.  Fast forward to our African American context, African slaves and descendants of African slaves weren’t running to the county courthouse either to justify and satisfy wedding requirements.  The tradition of “jumping the broom” was one way of signifying marriage and it added to the festive and cermonial atmosphere.  Marriage in slave communities and even after the Civil War was about the merging of two families–not about a piece of paper.

Now, the process of going before a pastor is synonymous with going before God and the marriage license acts the official thing that makes one married.  If God is omnipotent and omniscient as Christins like to profess, wouldn’t God have already ordained the marriage prior to showing up before a Justice of the Peace or an ordained pastor?  Such an understanding seems to hold God subject to a legal document: God doesn’t ordain the union of one man and one woman until a county official signs it and places a seal on it.

Whatever the case may be, I think Christians have to acknowledge that marriage as we know it has changed over time.

Certainly in the black community.

Too often we like to use the fact that people aren’t getting married like they used to and those who do get married are succumbing to high divorce rates under the metanarrative titled so ominously “The Downfall of the Black Family.”  Sociologists have traced roots back to the infamous Moynihan Report and even back to antebellum days in the United States.  Whatever the case is, we have no problem talking about The Downfall of the Black Family which of course leads to The Downfall of the Black Community.

As if to say all is bad.

Yeah, I’ve written posts that we’ve reached critical mass in any number of social, political and economic matters and that we need to declare a state of emergency and that we need to be outraged–yes, that is true in many respects, but we can’t offer a simple fix to what I consider to be a complex problem.  We’re not going to solve black family situations by young black couples suddenly marrying one another.  Will it help?  Well, maybe, but I certainly don’t think it would hurt the problem.  The problem with DistrictDiva’s approach and what many others do when it comes to this topic is offer what seems to be a clear cut solution to a varied, multi-layered and highly complex issue that we’re facing.

First of all, not every black person in America is Christian.  The argument she preposed suggests that everyone should follow said precepts about marriage and sex because it’s what the Bible says.  Not to mention there are a fair number of black Muslims, Jews, Black Hebrew Israelites, Buddhists and other religions, faiths and non-faith persons who have had their own AHA! moment when it came to understanding spirituality and religion.

Secondly, not every black person is heterosexual.  Her approach, as with many others in black religious culture, only operate in the “one male, one female” context.  With the LGBT movement growing every day, seeing the passage of gay marriages in the state of NY, this is going to be an ever increasing issue that the black religious culture is going to have to contend with.  While some gay blacks still voice concern over their unique issues–being gay and black (with gay black men and gay black women having differing concerns)–I still believe it’s just a matter of time before many of these concerns are going to be more and more laid at the feet of the old guard of the black religious community; no longer ignoring the issue.

Thirdly, not every person is going to get married.  I really just think it’s ludicrous to accept that” sex feels so good, but you can only enjoy it if you’re married” idea.  Usually when I ask what do we say to single persons on this issue, the other person somehow dodges the issue.  Frankly because most people don’t want to imagine someone going their whole life without experiencing the joys the sex have to offer.

Fourthly, and finally, I think to make premarital sex so forbidden results in fetishizing it.  When we tell hormone laden and perpetually horny adolescent teenagers to not have sex and that abstinence is your only option, not only do they want to do it all the more, when they do it and realize that God didn’t strike them down, we have a much bigger problem on hand than what shows up at the surface.  The same for many adults.  Time and time again, we do these so-called “sinful” acts and the punishment we were taught to expect never shows up.  Sure people catch an STD here and there, or even get pregnant, but given the medicine for most STDs and given adoption and even dare-say abortion as relatively viable options for a pregnent woman, the concept of hellfire and brimstone somehow gets pushed to the back burner.

So as opposed to the black religious culture pushing sexual responsibility, they teach abstinence.  Of course most public schools offer a sex education course because they’re aware of increasing STD numbers in younger and younger students and they’re aware of the pregnancy rate amongst teens and how school districts are increasingly having to accomodate pregnant teens and their children.  They see the problem and are attempting to do something about it.  The black churches see the problem, but because of what “the Bible says” we ignore it.

As I conclude, I’m not advocating that everyone go out and start a’whoring and galvanting naked throughout the countryside, but I am directly challenging what the biblical scriptures say about marriage throughout the years and I’m unapologetically defiant against the lens through which we like to understand sex and marriage.  The patriarchal and heternomative lens does nothing more than allow us as blacks to oppress other segments of our own community–in the name of God.

Stay tuned for some more issues around “Jumping the Broom.”

Keep it uppity and keep it truthfully radical, JLL

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