#opoftheweek

Today I ran across a video in my Facebook newsfeed that made a tasteless joke about victims of domestic violence. I am not friends with the person that created the video -  I don’t even share any mutuals them; however, the video had been shared by a friend of mine whose life work it is to combat violence against women, sexual assault and domestic violence in particular. Her call was urgent: Report this video! So I clicked on it. Attempted to flag its content as inappropriate. But, after trying to follow Facebook down its rabbit hole of what constitutes impropriety, I found no category in which to place this video. I left without reporting it.In fact, upon returning to the comments of my friend’s post, I found that several folks before me had attempted to flag the video, only to be told that it did not break the community standards that the Book holds so dear.

Similarly, I read a poem in The Nation a few days ago by Anders Carlson-Wee. I am not a fan of Anders’ work. Prior to reading this particular poem, a critique of of the invisibility of homelessness that Anders attempts to make by donning “literary blackface,” I’d never heard of him. Despite the fact that he’s published a collection through one of my favorite local presses, and done several readings in my favorite bookstore, this poem was the first of his that I’d read. Not because I follow the magazine where it is published. Not because anyone I know was singing it praises. But, it was my first instinct after reading post after post about what trash it was, coupled with a (an admittedly amazing) response crafted by a poet that I do enjoy.

I wonder how much unusual traffic The Nation got as person after person came to “hate-read” Anders’ poem? I wonder how much traffic was driven to the domestic violence video because of my friend’s campaign to have it removed? I wonder what that translates to in new followers? In likes? In ad revenue?

Did you know that R. Kelly has a new song out? In the Year of our Lord 2018? Of course you do. Probably not because you follow any news or media source that would actually give you such information. But, if you’re like me, you have several friends who spent one or more statuses expressing their outrage that the song exists. Because of them, I know its title, its length, its content, and, more importantly, I know that in our haste to vent about our hate-listen to the new Pedokelly offering, we have effectively unmuted him.

As is often the case these days, I’m more intrigued by the conversations surrounding the news than the actual news itself, and this business with Nate Parker has been no different. However. Just as quickly as these conversations started, they immediately became redundant; thus, the following list is my top five list of things I’m no longer willing to entertain when it comes to Nate and his rapey ways:

“They only want to bring up this kind of news when a brotha is trying to do something positive.” These are the same folks that really want you to know that Bill Cosby was trying to buy NBC and teach Black folks not to sag their pants and be respectable. But here’s the thing: The reason we’re talking about Nate Parker after he makes a 17.5 million-dollar deal with Fox Searchlight, is that no one cared about Nate Parker until he made a 17.5 million-dollar deal with Fox Searchlight. And sure, we all know you saw Beyond the Lights and Great Debaters, and some of you more devout followers might be able to name one or two other films he’s been in, but really - the making of this movie is a huge deal beyond your own Black boy fandom. It’s the story where the main character is a slave. And not a docile slave who teachers the other slaves to read or makes money playing violin until he can buy freedom for his cousins. He revolts. And is still the hero. And this movie was successful at Sundance. So successful that Fox Searchlight chose to option it. In the kind of Hollywood climate that is still squeamish about putting too many dark-skinned folks with speaking roles in the same film. Of course the man is being scrutinized. Trust. If your Cousin Pookie starts making multi-million dollar deals one day, we’ll all know about his drug problem too.

“He’s innocent. He was acquitted.” Let’s be real. That same justice system that you berate for acquitting police officers who murder unarmed black men on video and then turns around and presses criminal charges against the eyewitnesses that catch said murders on said video...that justice system...is also corrupt enough to acquit rapists. So. Let’s not throw those two sentences together as though they actually mean the same thing. Let’s not even throw the question of innocence around, unless you want to get real about certain facts - namely that one in three women are victims of sexual assault, one in five men - which means you get no shock from me when someone is accused of rape. If all of these people are being attacked, then certainly there have to be attackers. Neither of the men that sexually assaulted me faced any punishment for doing so; one’s friends subjected to me all sorts of bullying for “lying on” the man that assaulted me - doesn’t make either of them any less a rapist. This automatic assumption that the man is innocent, especially after his acquittal was granted in large part to a prior consensual experience and not based on anything that happened that night….is ridiculous. You’re smarter than that. I hope.

“It happened 17 years ago; how long does this man have to pay for his crime?” Well. The answer to that is I don’t know how long he has to pay for it….but I do know that he has to…...pay. And if punishment or retribution aren’t possible, then certainly an apology is. Has there been an instance where Nate has said, “I am sorry”? Because. Whether or not Nate believes that he is a rapist (cue the discussion where being raised in a patrimony where rape culture is the norm does give rise to generations of rapists who do not believe that they’ve raped anyone), he should be aware that he hurt someone. Deeply. So deeply in fact that she would rather let him go unpunished then dredge up the pain of testifying for a second time. So deeply that she would take her own life; he should be aware enough to say “I’m sorry.” What he should not be doing - is framing his being a rapist as a difficult time in his own life, and then hiding behind the fact that he has daughters.

“[Random White Actor] is also a [generally agreed upon horrible criminal] and I bet you went to see all of his movies.” Here I offer an old adage: Two wrongs don’t make a right. I know you’ve been “woke” you’re entire life, but at times I admit to being drowsy. If you have somehow decided that the degree to which I am willing to “hold down Black men,” has anything to do with my willingness to watch a rapist on the big screen for any length of time, then you have a lot of waking up to do as well.

And finally, “We have to separate the art from the artist.” Sure we do. And I get it. If the answer to problematic behavior is to boycott every piece of art that the person committing the problematic behavior has ever produced, then we won’t ever be able to consume art. Unless Jesus starred in a film. And even he turned over a table and beat up some Jewish leaders in his day, and I don’t know if I can support that kind of antisemitism. Hell, I still break out and sing “I Believe I Can Fly” every now and again, so I know that there is value in holding the art that someone creates in a different space at times than their personhood. But. We do not do so at the expense of any other person’s right to be. We call them forward. We hold them accountable. We do not give them an automatic pass because they can sing, or write, or draw.

If you want to have a conversation about Nate Parker, let’s talk about the conversations you’ve had with your teenage sons that are hearing these stories in the news and wrestling with reactions within themselves.. Tell me how you’ve reinforced definitions of consent with your daughter, and let her know that anything outside of that is rape and is not her fault. I’m not here for casual activism that says supporting a film is the obvious one answer to a problem that has more than one very complex layer. For rape culture standing up in the room and calling itself Black solidarity. For any conversation that does not acknowledge the fact that Nate Parker isn’t a victim here.

So. I’m driving to work, listening to clipping. like my life depended on it, when I get the dreaded text from one of my coworkers “he’s here.” The he being referred to is a gentleman who is committed to establishing “regular status” at the bookstore, but is doing so in a rather unsettling way.

Picture this: a...not unattractive gentleman sits at the bar, reading from a book called Flirting 101. Every now and again he lifts his head from the book in order to make small talk with you. When the conversation dies down, he reads a few more pages, lifts his head, and tries again. It’s awkward. And cute. And funny. So you talk with him, for what turns out to be most of your shift, and then he leaves. You hear that he comes in again a few days later, asking about you, and when your boss casually mentions the next time you’ll be in the store, he’s back, with his book, and at it again. This time, it’s only awkward, and you try your best to engage with other customers, only making conversation with this gentleman when it’s pertinent to suggesting which menu item he should try, or refilling his tea.The book changes. After Flirting is The Art of Small Talk. After that is The Power of Body Language. At the bar. Every week. Only on days when I work. Coming in exactly five minutes before or after my shift starts. And leaving exactly five minutes before it ends. Exactly.

Here’s where I automatically hear all of the mansplainers in my head telling me that “this is just a nice guy making small talk” and “I shouldn’t have led him on in the first place by having a conversation,” and I almost feel compelled to justify my discomfort and decision to stop dealing with this man, but I won’t. Because (A) that compulsion to explain myself to any man who has a problem with my problems with the way another man is behaving...is another symptom of patriarchy with which I’m actively choosing not to engage; and (B) in a world where women are murdered every day for “hurting a man’s feelings” and “saying no,” when my intuition starts popping off, I listen - no excuses. (I will say here, that on an intellectual level, I understand that this could be a perfectly nice guy, with poor social skills and no ill intent….but when being wrong about that could mean my life, I’m perfectly with fine on erring on the side of treating him like a serial killer.)

When I walk in the door, my boss and I make eye contact; he moves over to work the bar, and I take over his station across the store. I am beyond grateful. I was almost reluctant to tell him about my being being unsettled, for fear that my discomfort would be brushed off, but he immediately responded by making it a store rule that I don’t have to work the bar on days that this guy is there. He told me about an article he’d read once about women being catcalled and abducted that had kept him up that night. Reminded me of his daughters. Escorts me to my car on nights that we close the store. He gets it. And last night, in that moment of coming to work in what could potentially be an unsafe situation, I was reminded that my discomfort was understood, and that I would be kept safe.

Fast forward a couple hours, and I pick up a copy of Claudia Rankin’s Citizen to ward off mid-shift boredom. Fifteen pages in, thoroughly engrossed in an inner dialogue about microaggressions and casual racism, my boss steps from behind the bar to ask me if I’d like to accompany him to the North Carolina Republican Party State Convention as a representative of the store, to sell books. I chuckled. I thought surely he was joking. Surely the same man, who so readily understood why I would be unsettled around a male customer who had never actually threatened my physical safety, would not suggest that I make myself available at an event where it would not only be possible, but quite likely, that I’d endure some sort of emotional or physical violence. But he was. Even when I remarked that my experience of selling books there would be drastically different than his, he still did not understand my reluctance to go. Still could not fathom why I would feel unsafe.

And the questions come rolling in: Where is this cluelessness coming from? Why is it inconceivable that I, as a queer woman of color, would not be comfortable at the NC State GOP convention? Especially with all the unrest surrounding HB2? Especially the weekend after Trump, whose entire campaign is based on fear mongering and violence  is slated as the presidential nominee? How could I not feel unsafe? How could you, while being so protective of my personhood in one regard, be so callous about it in another? If you can’t understand my fear of going to this convention, how can you understand my fear of working near one customer? Is it only because you have daughters? Is it partly because this customer is Black? Do you even know? And why don’t you?

If you are going to cast an actor that doesn't physically resemble the real-life person they will be playing in a movie, then that actor has to be so incredibly talented that their performance alone can create the physical embodiment that a biopic needs. All of that to say: If we were going to ignore the amazingly gifted dark-skinned actors whose portrayals of Ms. Simone I would have loved to see (You know you want Viola singing "I wish I knew how it would feel to be free" or Uzo giggin' to "See line woman")... then shouldn't our search for a light-skinned Nina include someone... that is somehow more talented than these award-winning ladies and able to suit all of or colorism needs? 

All of that to say: I am not ever going to agree with anyone who says that Fantasia could have played Nina because they look alike from certain angles. But I also refuse to entertain any conversation that suggests Zoe Saldana may have been the most qualified for the part. Which is not to say that I don't love her for what she does, because I do enjoy most of the projects she has been a part of (yes, even Crossroads) ...But name one role of Zoe's that indicates she has the chops to pull off Nina? (And before you go there with the "well, she probably just wasn't offered the great roles" nonsense, let me remind you that you can already see Olivia Pope if you go back and watch Kerry in Save the Last Dance) 

I just feel like there were a whole host of mistakes made in a conversation that started with "Let's make a Nina Simone biopic," and ended with, "Yes. Call Saldana. She's perfect." 

Unrelated (in a completely related way): I feel the same way about Cynthia Mort, a white woman, having a creative control over this story, as I did about Tyler Perry, a Tyler Perry, having creative control over the "for colored girls" adaptation. 

Zora Neale Hurston was buried in an unmarked grave.

This amazing woman who stood adamantly against the respectability politics of the day (here’s lookin’ at you DuBois) - prominent figure of the Harlem Renaissance, who penned one of the great (albeit largely disparaged) American novels, and could not scrape enough money together in life to have her name written on her tombstone in death.

This is what I think about during Black History Month every year. How I don’t consider The Color Purple at first mention of Alice Walker, but instead of how hard she worked to ensure that Zora was remembered. I think about the elementary school classrooms where they will talk about Martin Luther King Jr and his dreams for equality, and not about his desire for socioeconomic independence within the Black community. How teachers who have no problem talking about the practice of enslaving Africans and the cruel tactics used to subdue them, will refuse to mention Malcolm X or Bobby Seale and Huey P. Newton by claiming that these men were violent. How the first Black folks arrived in America as free men in 1619, and nearly 400 years later, you can still be the first Black person to do a thing. That students all across the country will learn to celebrate Black folks for being the first to enter into various white spaces, as if being allowed in a white space is the crowning achievement to which they should aspire. I think about what it means to grow up Black and queer, and not know Bayard Rustin’s name. I think about erasure. How even during Black History month, we are made to view that history through the white gaze, and what it means to be too Black to be remembered.

I think about Zora. And how she was buried in an unmarked grave. What history we hold, and what we throw away. How we spend so much time talking about the achievements of Black people, but never about the climate and culture that makes those achievements so remarkable. How Black History is not some static era of a few decades, but stretches across the entire history of the country and continues today. How a good education in Black History is not just Arthur Ashe being the first Black man to win at Wimbledon, but is also the backlash that Serena Williams faces every time she steps onto the tennis court - in a classroom that isn’t afraid to talk about how Tamir Rice was murdered five years after Emmett Till’s casket was donated to the Smithsonian. What it means to say “my life has value,” while also holding the idea not to long ago, that value was easily tagged at a couple hundred dollars or less depending on how many pounds you could lift or children you could be expected to bear. I think about a Black History month that is little more than a hearty collection of factoids, and not an actual time dedicated to the teaching and learning of a rich and dynamic history.

I think about Zora. And how this woman was nearly left out of the canon of the Harlem Renaissance. How that omission would have been deliberate. How many Hurstons there may have been without Walkers to search for their graves. How many present-day geniuses are already sinking into obscurity without loved ones to archive their greatness. To ensure they are taught, many years from now, to a room filled with eager minds.

Every year, for the past seven years, I have gotten the flu. I’ve come to expect it. It’s one of the byproducts of working day in and day out with young people who can jailbreak your phone in 30 seconds, but somehow cannot remember to sneeze into their sleeves and wash their hands. I’m ready every time it shows up. Water. Nyquil. Vitamins. Sleep. A mixture of vinegar and cayenne pepper. I start fighting as soon as I feel the malaise that lets me know the flu is coming. And yet. No matter what I do, I also understand that the flu is a virus. Anything that I throw at it doesn’t actually attack the flu; they merely combat the symptoms until my own immune system eradicates the infection from my body. But I fight the symptoms anyway. On multiple fronts. Believing that by doing so, I am giving myself a better shot at getting better and feeling the least amount of misery until I do.

Of course I wanted to write today’s unsolicited opinion on the horrible attack on Paris last night...sprinkled with some controversial quips on the history and objectives of ISIS while making the obvious (and somehow still necessary) parallels to European colonialism, American imperialism, and the ideals of White Supremacy that each wave a Christian flag. But. I couldn’t write that particular piece without somehow including the need that certain groups of people have to use the attack on Paris as a means to silence people of color who are also fighting for their lives; and in trying to write that piece, I tend to vacillate between blinding anger and crippling sadness to the point that it’s impossible to write. That said, I cannot, not say anything about last night’s attack and this morning’s ignorance, and so - I offer up...what will be the framework of the poem that I eventually compose as a means to write my way through all this grief. 

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1.       The day before the University of Kenya was attacked, a few white boys protested affirmative action on a campus whose buildings had their grandfathers’ names inscribed on the doors. When the headlines mentioned 147 bodies, no one silenced the American protestors; no one said anything at all. Not about the campus protest, nor the massacred or injured students – probably because one group didn’t matter and the other group was right.

 2.       I am angry about many things: Taylor Swift and appropriation, Islamaphobia, Xenophobia – the way all of it is anti-Black; the way American means different things, based on the boat your fore parents travelled in, or whether they had no ship at all.

 3.       Pray for Paris. Pray for Mizzou. Pray for the Muslim praying for peace. Pray to whatever God looks most unlike you and still allows you breathe here – five times a day standing straight at a westward mirror, til your newsfeed holds no grief.

By now we’ve all heard about the South Carolina student violently arrested from her classroom after having disrupted the class. I’m not going to show or direct you to the video because I’m really not here for the hyperconsumption of brutalized black bodies, but shows an almost silent classroom looking on as a police officer grabs a student around the neck; slams her, while still seated in the desk, bodily to the ground; grabs her from the desk; drags her across the floor; then while kneeled over her, admonishes her to give him her hands so she can be arrested. After the video went viral, there was the usual admonition for people to contain our outrage until we “had all the facts” - meaning of course, that we should until someone could figure out how it was the Black girl’s fault. And, of course, that crucial piece of “context” emerged when it came to the public attention that the girl was in possession of a cell phone that she refused to hand over to her teacher. Let the games begin: “if she had just put away her phone,” “if she had just given her phone to the teacher,” “if she had just left with the administrator,” “if she had just stepped outside when the officer asked,” “if she had just kept her hands to herself when he approached her…” I only got five - can you think of any other things this child did to deserve being assaulted by a police officer while at school?

Meanwhile, in an alternate version: let’s talk about the many levels on which this situation was messed up from the onset.

A cell phone is not a disruption. As a former teacher, I get it, there are few things more annoying than a student pulling out a cell phone in the middle of class, especially when there are strict rules put in place by the school that prohibit their use during class time. I also understand that one of the (supposed) jobs of an educator is to teach students to comply with rules, and so - whether we agree with anti-cell phone rules or not - we’re supposed to enforce them. I’m also…a person alive in 2015, and I have been known to pull out a cell phone during faculty meetings, church, and a whole host of other places where there use is not technically permitted. Using that cell phone to play a game or send a quick text message keeps me from being disruptive when I’m so bored that I want to scream. Also, again from my experience as a teacher, high school students are juggling work schedules, sibling or child care, anxious parents, and a whole host of other situations that quite actually don’t allow them to be without a phone for an entire day. You want to know what is a disruption? Watching one of your classmates being body slammed by the “police.”

Disciplinary options can’t be “give me your phone or get out”. Again, I understand. Once a student refuses to comply with the directives given by a teacher or administrator has two choices: either (A) give in to the whims of the student and lose authority with the rest of the class, or (B) go for the next, more aggressive option to save face - neither of which actually works to benefit any of the children in the classroom. I mean think about it: if the point of the “no-cell phone” rule is to keep students engaged while in classroom, how is any disciplinary action that results in that student leaving or being taken from the classroom a solution?

Fear should not be part of a school’s culture. If there is any member of a school’s personnel whose reputation is such that their presence means “shut up and get your camera out,” then that person does not need to be at that school. Many people have expressed disgust at the other students who did nothing - completely ignoring that their conditioned response is something that they’ve learned as a result of going to a school with that man it.

Did someone say school to prison pipeline? So….having a cell phone turns to noncompliance with a teacher, turns to noncompliance with an administrator, turns to being forcibly removed by an SRO who, had it not been for video evidence, would be able to claim that she assaulted an officer and resisted arrest. Both of those noncompliance “charges” usually carry with them some sort of mandatory suspension, and I’m sure being dragged into the front office by an SRO doesn’t help matters. Can we also talk about the language of being “charged with classroom disturbance?” I don’t know that I have an actual point to go with all of that…just some general musing that should make you reconsider any disciplinary processes in our schools.

Oh, and let’s talk about race too. When I first saw the video, I actually didn’t go to race. I went to the brokenness of the education system in this country. But….when the first articles that I read that talked about Officer Ben being fired used a photo of a Black officer (now corrected), and when the Sheriff goes out of his way to let me know that Ben has a Black girlfriend - I can’t help but think that it is, of course, about race…well…you know the complexities of race in a school system that is so broken that a Black girl on a phone is such a disruption that she of course deserves to be body slammed and dragged across the floor of her classroom.