Groovin’ to …
Donald Glover A.K.A. Childish Gambino’s Camp.
I can’t get his music out of my head, even with though he’s overdosing on cursing –which doesn’t bother me that much but as I pass the link along to those a lot younger than me they look at me with skepticism at first and once they hear it puzzlement with all the expletives.
Although they shouldn’t. If you know me then you know then you know I understand creative license and as long as you are creating art for more than just shock value and how shocking can profane words be in the 21st century when you have 3 years using them with verbal dexterity?
But perusing comments and critiques it seems everyone is trying to reach and compare him to people they already know: he wants to be hard like Jay-Z, he’s emo like Ye, he has beats like Lil Wayne.
Yeah, they influenced him, I can hear some of it in his music. But then it also sounds as if Glover has been mining his relatives LPs for the Fifth Dimension, Todd Rundgren and soul singers from the 80s/90s who switch to a falsetto register to convey the urgency of need or despair.
And his lyrics have weight, mining his recent childhood for pain over being unaccepted by blacks and whites for being inauthentically black, although there is the requisite braggadocio about his relationships with women and how great his raps are.
But the flaws are small. Camp is an album for all the young blacks out there who proudly let their nerd flag fly. Maybe now they can wave it higher and in rhythm to a Gambino beat.
Reflect It Back #YesGayYA
When we first met I would say he was about… hmmm… maybe 12. At the time he claimed he was 16 but that baby face never fooled me.
I was on the desk when he walked past me. I knew he was looking at me. He stopped, turned around and came back.
“Do you work here?” he asked.
I’m behind the desk dude, so uh, yeah. I just smiled at him and said, “Yes, I work here.”
He let out a big sigh and then smacked his lips. “You know Dorothy Dandridge?”
“I love Dorothy Dandridge,” I said looking into his eyes. He smiled; I understood him.
A few years later he confided in me that he was 13 when we met. “Oh, really?” I feigned surprise. And that he was gay.
“Do tell,” I said laughing.
“Miss R, you always laughing at me,” he said in playful protest. “Ugh!”
We walked to the bookshelves where I pulled off several fiction books about gay teens. He looked at them and then handed them back.
He looked at them and then handed them back.
“Where’s one with a black boy?” he asked.
I shrugged my shoulders. “There are none with black boys.” He pursed his lips and then asked for Drama High.
I understood how he felt. When I was a teen I felt the same way. At the small branch library I went to there was barely an A-frame bookcase of teen books and I could count on one hand the number of young adult books that had black lead characters and still have fingers left over. I would read the books with white characters because I craved something to read, and often when the author described the character a female with blue eyes and blonde hair I would re-imagine the character as black. Yes, I read the books, but I was still sad there was nothing approaching Blissful Joy and the SATs or The Cat Ate My Gymsuit for young black women like myself.
Luckily now there are more writers of color like Varian Johnson, David Yoo, and Dona Sarkar. But still, the majority of books that are written for young adults feature white straight teens. And it doesn’t seem like it’s going to change anytime soon.
In a missive published on Booklist.com, YA authors Rachel Manija Brown and Sherwood Smith write about the trouble they are having publishing their latest collaborative work. It’s not that it’s science fiction/fantasy which is a really hot genre for teens now. It’s not that the manuscript is poorly written, agents seem to be loving it. So what’s the issue?
One of the lead characters is gay and Asian. And he’s not even a pining, closeted gaysian. Yuki (the character) has a boyfriend … and they kiss.
The agent offered to sign us on the condition that we make the gay character straight, or else remove his viewpoint and all references to his sexual orientation.
Rachel replied, “Making a gay character straight is a line in the sand which I will not cross. That is a moral issue. I work with teenagers, and some of them are gay. They never get to read fantasy novels where people like them are the heroes, and that’s not right.”
The agent suggested that perhaps, if the book was very popular and sequels were demanded, Yuki could be revealed to be gay in later books, when readers were already invested in the series.
With the rise in popularity of gay teens on mainstream TV shows, silencing a gay character by making him/her into a sidekick (or writing out that aspect of life completely) seems very prudish.
Where are the gay teens of color, not just in SF/F but in regular fiction? In mysteries and historical fiction? Not just as a cool best friend, but the lead characters? Why can’t I find a book with a black gay boy on the cover? Or a girl?
Part of me knows a bit of the answer: minority parents will take some issues with their children reading gay/lesbian books for fear it might make them a homosexual (although a teen reading the book may or may not be gay but they will positively be curious about sex –it goes with the hormones and age). And there are parents in minority communities who dislike homosexuality, feeling it’s a chosen lifestyle but not something innate.
Although there are parents who feel uncomfortable with the subject, I would never want to censor a story. People want to see themselves reflected back in books as well as visual media. LGBTQ teens of color need to see someone like themselves, struggling, living and existing! Can they read straight white characters to get the same messages a story is telling? Yes. But then can’t a white straight character get the same from a LGBTQ character as well?
The number of gay/lesbian teens are decreasing, the number seems to be growing as more teens of color feeling comfortable enough to come out at younger ages. My young gay friend was the first out young teen I have met but he’s not the last and more of them are looking for books they can relate to. Just today I gave a young lesbian Ash by Malinda Lo and Gravity by Leanne Lieberman. Ash has an Asian love story and Gravity is Jewish. The young woman I gave the books to are black, but happy to have something of a story line that was similar to her interests.
She held the books in her hand waving goodbye. As she left, she turned around and walking backwards she called to me, “I’m going to come back everyday and tell you about each chapter. We can talk about it! Okay?”
I’m looking forward to it.
RIP Aaliyah
This is for all the Romeo Must Die fans who are watching this movie on a constant loop today.
The Urban Mama’s Guide to Helping Your Kids Through School and Beyond
It’s the beginning of a new school year and you don’t know how happy I am that it’s finally here. Not just because my kid is entering his last year of high school but because the children that come into the library will be heading back as well (Yay!). 
However, what I am not looking forward to are the ensuing statistics of how African American students are not doing as well in school as their non-black counterparts. Immigrant black families also seem to be pulling ahead of us. Yes, there are a lot of empathetic and bad teachers whose main goal is to pick up a paycheck whether your child learns or not, but that is not the topic of this post (although I will explore it in the future). This post is for those who want their children to get the best out of whatever school they are in. And these rules are not “middle class” values, either. This is a list things that I, my family and friends have employed to help make their children do well in school.
1) Leave your all your issues about your education in the past. This is the most important one for many people and that’s why I made it the first one, although the rest of the list isn’t in hierarchical order. I have family members who have regarded the education system with suspicion and with the first slight they are ready to fly off the handle at teachers and administration. In the past, well when I was in school, a lot of the white teachers were harder on black students than they were on white students. Growing up, people might have forgiven, but not forgotten which leads to residual feelings of resentment. Don’t let your child be the inheritor of emotional education baggage and please don’t ever say, “Those schools don’t want to teach us, anyway.”
2) Develop a partnership with your child/ren’s teacher/teachers. Your first contact with the teacher should be in the first month of school, if not within the first week. This person is spending more hours with your kid than you are during the day, don’t you want to know who they are? You need to. If your child is in high school things will be different since you have to coördinate meeting many different teachers so try to make it to the first open house and if you can’t send an email expressing your regret to each teacher and let them know you care about how your child learns. For primary school, go in and introduce yourself. If you work a lot and can’t be reached, let the teacher know that and who they can contact. Yes, it’s on the emergency sheet you filled out, but saying it to the teacher will stick out in her memory more than what she has to pull up. It’s the first step in being an involved parent, even if you are a busy one.
3) Set bedtime, even through high school. This is probably the hardest one to do because tired children are cranky; it seems when they don’t want to go to bed they get more wired so it’s easier to just let them pass out in front of the television. Or maybe you work late and it’s hard to get children from the babysitter’s to home before 10 or 11 pm on public transportation. You need to work something out, like maybe asking the babysitter to let them take a nap before you get there. Growing children need sleep. If they aren’t getting enough sleep chances are they are groggy and frustrated during the school day or falling asleep in class. Teens need just as much sleep as younger kids but many don’t get it because of stimuli like social networking and texting (more on that in #10). If the kids are at home at a proper hour but still can’t get to sleep then ask yourself why. Do they have a lot of electronics in their bedroom that’s keeping them awake? Or are they wired on sugar which brings us to number…
4) Cut back/eliminate sugar from the family’s diet. Sugar is every where, even in places you wouldn’t expect. There’s high fructose corn syrup in breads, drinks, diet bars, you name it. We are a nation of sugar addicts, no wonder why diabetes is on the rise. So, if your child is snacking on candy and chips everyday just think about all the sugar they are consuming. I’m sure it’s more than the recommended daily allowance. When I was growing up (yeah, I went there) candy and dessert was a treat not part of the usual routine. I am not a nutritionist, but something tells me the consumption of sugar may also be tied into the high numbers of children diagnosed with ADHD. Add to it children are big couch potatoes and you have a group of wired sugar addicts. Cut back on the sugar –even the fruit juices that are touted as healthy– and let kids snack on non processed whole foods like fruit and vegetables. Prepackaged meals are also high in sugar and sodium so, when possible, cook large meals when you have the time so your family can eat that a few times a week. Somethings will be hard, but do what you can to make sure your kids eat healthy. At one time my baby sister works two jobs and has two sons. Even on her regular job she worked odd hours. Her youngest child is a sugar fiend and diagnosed with hyperactivity. She keeps no sweets in the house, but of course he can get it on his own because his friends are overloaded with cookies, chips, and candy bars. But she makes sure she doesn’t add to his sugar surfeit by stocking it at home. He’s naturally hyper (he gets if from us) so not having more sugar than his system can handle in addition to exercise has helped him in school.
5)Where is the homework? I see this with many kids that come into the library to play computer games for hours, none of them have homework. To be fair, some school systems don’t give out homework, especially if they dont’ have enough books. There’s even a growing movement of educators and parents who are against homework, citing it offers little reward and cuts into valuable sleep and playtime. I am not anti-homework but I do feel that overloading an elementary child with work that isn’t properly explained in school can lead to frustration for parents and children. If you child is on his second or third week and you see very little homework check with the teacher and school to see what their policy is. If your child does have homework he seems to finish before even hitting the door you might want to take a page from neurosurgeon Dr. Ben Carson. His mother, Sonya Carson, barely had a third grade education but when Ben was a child she figured out how to get him to learn by making it mandatory he read two books a week from the library and write a report on them. His mother could barely read herself, but she pretended to read and score his papers anyway. Mrs. Carson is a mother that I admire, when Dr. Carson tells the story of his success he always begins with how his mother raised him.
6)Demand organization. Let’s say your child does their homework but can never find it in their folder. This has happened with my son. He would leave his homework at home or, sometimes, he’d talk through class and forget to turn it in. My husband and I remedied that by putting our foot down on having an organized folder. We make him study in the same place, the dining room table, and before he goes to bed at 11pm (yes, he’s 17 but lights are out at 11pm) he needs to make sure all his homework is in his backpack. It doesnt’ make sense to have the homework done but you can’t turn it in because it was left.
7)Even before they begin school, introduce them to reading, science topics, math. I began reading to my daughter when she was a newborn. I know some people read to them when they are in the womb, but I just talked to her then. Before my daughter was one she knew what a book was, by the time she was two she understood rudimentary science and math. Science and math? Yes, just counting things out to her as I handed them to her, or counting steps as we walked up and down. At the park we talked about dirt, grass, compared leaves and paid attention to bugs. Learning doesn’t start in school and it’s not just about ABCs and addition. Learning is about introducing your child to the world and you are your child’s first teacher. Piquing your child’s curiosity about the world is the first step in getting your child ready for school.
8)Balance. Are your kids all about school but not about anything else? Do they make time for sports but not reading? Trying to strike balance in your life is hard as an adult but with kids, who have no concept of what it is, will find it evenmoreso. Instill in your kids that there is a time for playing as well as a time for studying. Teach them not to procrastinate until the last minute even if they swear they do better under pressure. And if they like to read too much, encourage them to socialize more. Balance varies from person to person, family to family so you have to figure out how to even the scales for yours.
9) Are you still reading and learning? How can you tell your kids they should learn in school if you treat education for yourself as a disease. If your attitude about learning is negative then your kids will pick up on that. What you do impresses your children more than what you say. Learning is more than just picking up a book but doing things. Do you want to learn how to play guitar? Crochet? Build a carburetor? Check your local recreation center and take a class, hell take some friends with you. Learn yoga, learn to cook. If your child sees you learning and growing then chances are their attitudes will be the same when it comes to learning.
10) Limit television/computer/video game time. This ties in with #8. For years research has shown that black children watch more television than their white counterparts and a recent study proves it again. Television shows like Yo Gabba Gabba and computer games can be helpful learning tools, but when used in excess they do more to impede learning, not engender it. And some children aren’t even watching educational television. You need to ask yourself, if your child is six years old but doesn’t know some addition and subtraction but can sing almost every song in the top one hundred you have to think about how you are falling down on your job, not what the teacher isn’t doing. In the library I have seen plenty of moms pat themselves on the back that their child can click on YouTube links but can’t read the word “you” when they see it.
What is up with that?
Unplug your child from the world and give them only a few hours of it a day. Or even better, let them earn their internet rights over the weekend. Even if they are in junior high/high school? Especially if they are that old. Teens can easily get distracted away from studying with socializing and gaming. For our son we don’t prohibit it, we just limit it to the weekend, although when my daughter was a teen she was busy with a lot of extracurricular activities as well as a heavy course load and I encouraged socializing so her gaming was limited to non school time although she was allowed an hour a night of online socializing. Like I said before, you can see for yourself how long you spend on a computer, if you have read this article all the way through it took some time. You can’t always expect a child to exercise self-restraint when adults have problems doing it themselves.
This is not an exhaustive list and if anyone has topics on education please type them in the comment section or email them to me. Sounds like a lot of work, right? Well, raising children can be a lot of work, no one said it would be easy.
Next time: can your kid pass the marshmallow test?
If Someone Doesn’t Get Shot Then It’s Not Really a Family Gathering
Yesterday afternoon, around 2pm, a young friend ominously wrote on his Facebook wall:
I think somebody gonna get shot at the Black.!!!
The Black refers to the Black Family Reunion (BFR). Maybe it wasn’t so prescient as seeing into a crystal ball and more like playing the odds at a blackjack table. For years there have been “incidences” at the BFR in the past that have made black Cincinnatians shake their heads. There was black kids wilding out one year; someone was shot last year. We remind ourselves that other non-black events have had violence –like the Who Concert and that drunk guy plowing his car into the crowd at Oktoberfest. There’s probably been more, we just can’t think of any off the bat, but white folks ain’t no better look at how the police shoot us.
One year I remember that Mayor Mallory reminded people that the BFR is a family event, encouraging parents to attend with their children. Meanwhile, I haven’t been to a BFR in hmmmmm, maybe 10 years, maybe longer. I don’t have any friends who attend, either. I wonder if that’s the problem. I stopped attending because I found the BFR boring, it wasn’t living up to the hype of its publicity, there were way too many t-shirt booths although the vocal entertainment was often promising. Now I won’t go because too many unsupervised kids and teens is just not a good mix.
Maybe Mallory should remind people again that the BFR needs the parent component to make it work.
So, early Saturday afternoon my young friend predicted someone was going to get shot at the BFR; by late evening a 16-year-old was shot by police, dying from his wounds on Sunday morning.
At 6:45 police learned that someone was throwing fireams into the secure area of the children’s playground at Sawyer Point; the weapons were retrieved by 16-20 year olds. Somehow, the action moves barely a quarter mile up to Fountain Square where an officer follows a suspect. The teen pulls a gun on an officer, the teen gets shot. End of story.
Except I’m sure it isn’t. I can’t help thinking about how much worse it could have been –there still are some families who attend the BFR, especially with small children in tow, what if one of them were hurt. What if the teens were planning a shoot out with other teens/gangs there. Although I am not as aggrieved as perhaps I should be that a young life was taken, I do wonder what got him to this point? Where are his parents in all of this? Are they ashamed that their son was killed in this way? Or maybe they are angry that the police has taken his life at all?
I remember when the BFR was brought to Cincinnati over 20 years ago. I remember Dorothy Height and Pamela Warner (mother of actor Malcolm Jamal Warner) on the local news, discussing the creation of the BFR and why it was needed to combat the negative images of African Americans and the black family. But what has started with good intentions has become a jollification of free P&G samples and unruly teens.
Yeah, just like your own family reunions.
Deep inside I quell a nagging fear that the image of the black family we want to project of ourselves was never real or attainable anyway which is why the reality has come crashing into our dream for the last few years, one can only keep up the pretense for just so long. I want to believe that the demographical aspect of the black family is not held in the numbers of single parent homes, the high rate of incarcerated black fathers, or the number of black males who can’t make it out of high school. I want to believe that diminishing numbers doesn’t quantify the strength of a people who made it through the adversity of slavery and Jim Crow.
I want to believe in a black family that is intact but not crazy. Or if crazy at least not homicidal with gun-toting children who want to shoot out our future as well as their own.
But if the BFR is reflective of the Black Family in Cincinnati, then how dysfunctional does that make us?
Grooving to…
… Soul is Heavy by Nneka.
I can’t but help have this song on constant repeat. I love this chick. I loved her last Afro-synth, rap-infused cd Concrete Jungle. Heartbeat was another song by her I had to listen to at least once day for six months.
Anyone who says rap music is dead and black women in it are just sexual props just aren’t looking.
To hear more from Nneka click here for her website.
Update on the Blasian Philadelphia Story
To refresh your memory, back in 2009 Immigrant Asian students and African American students were having routine racial fights, while the principal La Greta Brown seemed flummoxed on how to bring the two racial groups together.
Jump up two years to see South Philadelphia High School will have a less tumultuous school year and, maybe, even build a bridge between AfAms and AsAms. Wei Chen, Bach Tong, Duong Nghe Le and Xu Lin became activists and started their school’s Chinese American Student Association to help combat the Anti-Asian violence that was taking place in their school. For all their work they have been awarded the Freedom from Fear Award.
The current principal, Otis Hackney III has also helped to reduce the tension between the two racial groups.
“The actions of those attackers do not reflect the student body, the majority of
whom are African American,” says Hackney, stressing that misconceptions must be
overcome in both groups. “There were some African American students who felt it
wasn’t fair how they were treated after the attacks.”
New America Media 16 July 2011
Often on blogs the focus on AsAm/AfAm relations focus on how we don’t get along (read LA Riots) or how people are hooking up (almost every Asian/Black centric forum). Building Blasian communities need to focus less on love connections and more on how as people we can relate to one another. When I first heard the story it made me sick that African Americans kids could step into a position of power to bully another racial group but I think if we can learn anything from this is that anyone at anytime can be in either postition and it’s the people on the sidelines, who see the wrong being done, decide how to take a stand. No, we aren’t a post-racial society, but before we start decrying the role race plays in our lives we might want to actually look and see how thoughts about race might be playing us.
We Need a Hero– A Black One
Captain America Isaiah Bradley
So who is your favorite black superhero and is he worthy to get a movie franchise dedicated to him?
Groovin to…
…System Addict by Idle Warship.
It’s my new fave song for the summer to run to, lift weights, to wake up to, dance to, ignore J to…
Especially ignore J. LOL
It’s basically a given it was going to be a fave song of mine with Res and
wait for it…
wait for it…
Jean Grae!
Idle Warship is putting out a CD later this year so to stay on top of it make sure you follow @Talib Kweli, and @Res. For a free download of the song click the link here.
Moving Images of Black and Yellow
Because I wasn’t blogging that much in the spring –ok, not blogging at all, I neglected to tell you about the Lifetime movie of the week Taken from Me starring Taraji Henson. I’m sure you’ve seen it though. You know you have. If you haven’t you can pick it up here.
If you are looking for more diversity than what TV is giving you this summer (or the networks are promising us this fall) there is the webisode hit Awkward Black Girl (whose director/writer/actress I think has observed the lives of me and my friend) which is in need of funding to expand the season so go to their Kickstarter page if you are able to donate.
According to the black movie blog Shadow and Act there are two movies Blasian fans will want to check out local movie festivals and see if it’s in your area. The first is a documentary called A Lot Like You. The African/Korean film maker Eliaichi Kimaro goes in search of her Tanzanian roots and gets the women to open up about a part of their culture they don’t often talk about to outsiders.
For more information on this movie click the link for the blog.
The next is an independent film about sex slavery in the U.S. Shanghai Hotel stars Hill Harper, Pei Pei Chang and Eugenia Yuan.
If are stuck indoors because of the heat or you are bored in an airport terminal here are two webseries to check out. Sci-fi fans will love Futurestates, a series which asks various movie directors what America will be like in 10, 20, 100 years. Director Barry Jenkins envisions a San Francisco where the underclass has been pushed out of the city. Family and memory is pondered about in J.P. Chan’s Digital Antiquities and people with a surplus of melanin find that it becomes a commodity in Sayeeda Clarke’s White.
If you just want summer romance then you will love Audrey and Dre. I wrote of the webseries over a year ago and I am so glad Audrey Kelly has finally been able to complete her show. Audrey and Dre comes in short 5-7 minute clips because the mobisodes can be viewed over smartphones.
So, I have hooked you up for viewing during the summer. Now let’s hope some diverse fare is offered on television this fall. I’m not holding my breath, though.
