Just Call Me Dia

Finding the middle between "high" and "low" 

Brooklyn based, Cali. born. 

When I read her, I saw myself; if she could be so influential, there was hope for other big dreamers like me. That’s why I e-mailed her when I was at such a loss in my career search. After introducing myself and mentioning one of her articles on freelancing, I wrote: “I can only imagine how busy you are and so I know this may be a big request, but if you could spare some time for coffee and some advice, I can’t tell you what it would mean to me. Without sounding overly adoring, I just hope that in 10 years I’ll have accomplished anything close to what you have, and the work that I’ve seen you create and been able to make happen for yourself (and others) has given me a glimpse of hope that I will be O.K. and I can have the big dreams that I do.” Seventy-one minutes after I pressed “send,” a reply from Courtney landed in my in-box.

Doobie wraps are one of the enduring signifiers of black girl vernacular and the other night, despite an awards show that would have us believe that white folks can do everything (musically) that black folks can do, Rihanna managed to re-assert sui generis aspects of black culture and expose the dubiousness of that assertion.

“No one can manipulate anyone else. In any relationship, both parties know what they’re doing, even if one of them complains later on that they were used.”

A good friend of mine remind me that we're working within an industry that was founded upon a film called, The Birth of a Nation. Within that context, our stories are not valued by the industry itself, the business, the politics of this industry do not serve our storytelling. So, it's really important, and I think when you look and study black cinema, the times where we have had the most success are when we worked from the outside as opposed to trying to work and trying to get into the inside. The LA rebellion, Burnett, Dash, out of UCLA in the '60s and '70s. The explosion of films in the '90s, you look at House Party, that was at Sundance. People don't know that it was an independent film before a lot of these films, Love Jones, they were independents that became a part of the studio system. So I think we need to learn what worked in the past, and independents, for me, is the path I've chosen.

Conversations that take Kanye’s vanity as a given annoyance obfuscate the fact that Kanye has helped change the game entirely for how black men are allowed to express their vulnerabilities in public… he talks about how, in the public’s imagination, “the idea of Kanye and vanity are like, synonymous.” He goes on to explain, however: “But I’ve put myself in a lot of places where a vain person wouldn’t put themselves in. Like what’s vanity about wearing a kilt?” If you see him simply as a crazy egomaniac, you’ve taken away his right to be a dimensional human being. You miss the moments when he is so boldly asserting his vulnerabilities, his anxieties, his humanity — the times he is placing his bare self on the line as an artist. He articulates his expression of vulnerability in terms of fashion choices, in terms of a leather kilt and is keenly aware of the way black identity, and black masculinity in particular, is wedded to an image, a static image, and he purposefully plays with that.

… Because if I am educated, if I’m analytical, if I am able to be creative, then I am able to figure out ways in which to deconstruct my own oppression, and to construct my own liberation.

But love, according to Ifemelu, remains the last great hope for solving the problem of race in America. “Not in a wishy-washy, clichéd, love-will-conquer-all way,” says Adichie. “It’s very hard to undo what’s happened. But I think when you love somebody, really love somebody, you start to see the world through their eyes.”