Artwork Needed for What Does the Future Look Like? Exhibit — Midwest Black Speculative Fiction Alliance
The Midwest Black Speculative Fiction Alliance is planning to host an art exhibit on Afrofuturism next February. We’re pegging this for Black History Month because as a society, we always talk about the past experiences of African-Americans during that month. With this exhibit, we’d like to focus on their futures. What Does the Future Look Like? will showcase […]
Who Rocks it Better: Cocoa Avenue vs 4Minute
This song is now stuck in my head, both versions. So for me it’s a toss up on who is doing it better.
I present the original:
And the remake, which is only a few weeks older:
Coco Avenue’s cover definitely has more soul, which I’m used to.
Which, for me, leads me back to the question of black fans for KPop: where are we in that genre, can we love the music and not expect anything back from the performers we love and why is it many of the artists and record labels that are pursuing entry into our tough markets aiming more for mainstream white audiences instead of targeting specific genres like R&B, soul and forming alliances with black artists?
I guess that’s a topic for another day but I’d love to hear your thoughts as my nascent ideas begin to form. Drop your opinions below as well as who won between these two groups. For me: tie.
Woke in Sleepy Hollow
For a minute we were all going to move to Sleepy Hollow then we found out that not only could it’s citizens turn a blind eye to a horse being ridden by a headless man around town but it’s creators could also suddenly forget the people of color who initially populated the small burg during it’s first season.
In 2013 Sleepy Hollow took everyone by surprise. It probably took the producers and the network by surprise as well. It was an abbreviated season with 13 episodes but the online fans were vocal about their love so that by the summer it was referred to as the surprise hit of the season.
At Paleyfest fanboys and fangirls were clamoring for autographs and as it entered it’s second season, critics pronounced it the “sleeper hit” of the previous season.
Fast forward three years later and Nicole Beharie is packing her bags and leaving for regions unknown as but we can be sure that she’s done with the East Coast small town demon busting. Abbie Mills is dead.
So what happened?
It started with an article written about the show in season two by New York Times TV critic Alessandra Stanley where she referred to Abbie Mills as Ichabod Crane’s sidekick. Fans pushed back, taking up for Abbie as a co-lead and superstar in her own right.
Then the season started and Abbie was barely seen that season, the character of Katrina (Ichabod’s wife played by Katia Winter) seemed to have more storylines and screen time than Abbie.
Perhaps Abbie was spending time with all of the people of color who walked those Sleepy Hollow streets only to disappear in 2014.
The only people left were Abbie’s sister Jenny (whom we saw sporadically) and Captain Frank Irving who we barely saw at all.
I couldn’t even free myself from purgatory but I can use my powers to deduce I am over my head on this case
Instead we got a lot of Katrina Crane. Newly freed from purgatory and overhyped by Ichabod as the most powerful witch ever we learned that Katrina really couldn’t do more than Aunt Esmeralda from Bewitched. But somehow Katrina was soaking up screen time and running cases with Ichabod.
Then next was Nick Hawley, treasure hunter and all around sexy dude set to be a love 
interest for… which sister?
Who knows, who cares.
When he left I was happy; I was so tired of seeing his character. Where is Frank? Why was he slaying (literally slaying not the good fashion kind) people in the preview we were given at the beginning of the season? Where are his wife and child? Where is Abbey’s sexy Latino boyfriend? Where are all the people of color that were in the previous season? The Amerindian who helped with the Windego? The conversations that mashed up the bible, past histories, people of color, and the current state of our nation? Where is the show that held promise at the end of season one?
I felt like we were given a bait and switch; we were shown a show that was diverse and innovative (a 21st X-files) only to have a show that had white savior issues while black people helped out in the background.
Viewers were vocal in their complaints on Twitter (I know because I was one of them). The season premiered in late September and by early November people knew something was off. I guess the writers and the new showrunner don’t read TV think pieces or pay attention to Twitter. Maybe they did and was too committed to the course of the season to turn around. Maybe they didn’t want to turn around. Checking the writers list on IMDB it seems that they had more writers of color contributing in season one than they did in the last few seasons. When it came time to do the voice overs for the season two commentary they left Nicole Beharie out just like they tried to minimize her character out of the season.
I watched until the end of season two but was not satisfied. I watched the first half of season three but I still felt something was missing so I didn’t continue when the show came back from hiatus this February. We got more Abbie but the vibe of season one was gone. They promised a love connection for Ichabod and Abbie (the Ichabbie fans were elated) but the cross over with Bones wasn’t awful, it just wasn’t what we wanted.
And now Beharie is gone.
Not sure what Sleepy Hollow will be like without Abbie Mills. Personally, I feel they should cancel it. It’s a show where the showrunner and writers refused to listen to their fandom and, ironically, their other main star. Tom Mison has always been a proponent of the Ichabbie relationship. With the year long hashtags of #iamabbiemills and #abbiemillsdeservesbetter I’m letting Abbie Mills go and leaving Sleepy Hollow behind. Nicole Beharie is a great actress and she deserves better. After fighting the demons that was hiding out as workers on her show, I hope her walking away becomes a victory for her.
FYI’s Bride and Prejudice
I’m not gonna lie, I watched the whole first season of Married at First Sight and part of the next season of their first year.
Yeah, I was watching TV instead of writing. What?!
Okay, maybe I could spend a bit more time in my feelings with my fingers on a keyboard.
But back to the point, FYI has a new show called Bride and Prejudice, not to be confused with the favorite Aishwarya Rai movie that is a take on Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice.
Nope. This one has modern day couples dealing with the racism or homophobia of their families.
To promote the show they used three different couples which they didn’t use in the show (what’s up with that). But at least the promo gave us the cute Raquel and Justin.
https://www.fyi.tv/embed/652493891539
They both do Muay Thai, they are both adorable. Maybe FYI will catch a clue and give them their own show, maybe in one of those little tiny houses they are always house hunting for people.
I guess if you watch it use the #loveislove and let’s get these cuties their own show.
From One to One Hundred, There Can Only be One
A few evenings ago I stayed up into the wee hours of the morning following (and sometimes participating) in a heated debate about this one subject:
This math problem.
It’s not as widely contested as February’s argument on whether a dress was white and gold or blue and black but for my group the conversation hit high responses in short amount of time which says a lot for math problem because you know Americans don’t excel in arithmetic.
In a matter of hours the responses exceeded well over 400 (quite a few of theIf m mine) with people arguing over the Order of Operations.
“PEMDAS!” said the people who got the answer of one.
“PEMDAS!” said the people who got the answer of one hundred.
People began writing dissertations on the origin of mathematics and invoking Copernicus to underscore their answer until finally a few started seeing it as a trick to convince us there is real answer and that things like this was a waste of time to ruminate upon.
Folks came on and announced they were math teachers, engineers, math doctorates and that should bolster their answer. They all had different answers
But I had to wonder why were there so many differing answers when, allegedly, we were all using the same method.
Some used PEMDAS and added 5+5 and then multiplied that by 2 before dividing that answer by 20.
Some used PEMDAS and added 5+5 and then went back to the beginning (the left of the equation) and divided by 2 then multiplied the 10.
Everyone claimed the other person was wrong and although they refrained from ad hominem attacks they veered pretty close.
Decades ago we asked why Johnny can’t read but can Johnny even add, multiply, divide or subtract? Does Johnny understand fractions so he can divide a pumpkin pie correctly among his friends or figure out what percentage of 15% of 9.99 is so he knows whether he’s getting a good deal on those Yu-Gi-Oh cards he wants so badly.
But there are calculators now so who needs to know math, right?
Well, the Google scientific calculator gives you this answer:
And another scientific calculator will give you this answer:
So who is right? Are the computers trying to confound us and once they start their revolution we will instantly cave because we are so slow with numbers we need their help for simple multiplication?
“Siri, what is 9X9?”
“Am I your lord and master?”
“Yes, you are. Can I have the answer now?”
It is odd that I should be the one making this query and was so drawn to the debate because as a child I loathed math.
Math and I started out fine; I loved to add and subtract. I was jamming to School House Rocks songs on multiplication.I wanted to be a scientist as a kid (well, scientist-actress-writer-journalist). But I came from a generation where the teachers disparaged you from using visual aids and I always needed to see it. I needed to draw them out, count them out because that’s how it was for me so by the time I hit fractions it gave me anxiety. Then in 6th grade it was Mrs. Patricia “I Got My Education” Campbell who had no patience to teach us pre-algebra although it was her job. If we didn’t understand her or if we talked too much in class or if we didn’t turn in our homework her response always was, “If you guys don’t learn it’s not on me; I got my education”.
By the time I got to junior high and discovered that math and science was linked my desire to learn math was shot. It took me years to come back to math and actually like it again. It was around that time I learned that those teaching math weren’t necessarily the people who liked numbers the best. The people who liked the manipulation of numbers and the dance of their forms went off into other careers which often didn’t include teaching.
Math, unlike reading, has strict rules. Writing has semi strict rules, for example people say you can’t end a sentence with a preposition but writers do it all the time. But math can be long and convoluted. You need to show your work and if everyone doesn’t come up with the same answer then you need to check it. In English class as long as you can infer your opinion to the text then your POV is just as good as anyone else’s even if it goes against the grain.
Which leads us back to what is the correct answer to the above equation. It can’t be one and one hundred. I guess we can try to figure it out by checking our work which is what my high school math teachers always harangued me to do.
How can that be done?
Well if you care let X stand for the initial 20. Yes, I know we already know of 20 but for this equation you will pretend as if you don’t know.
Only one of these problems will give us the answer of 20.
And the one that gives us 20 is the answer to the above equation. But you don’t have to take my word for it.
Rest in Power Grace Lee Boggs
It is with sadness that I have to write that one of my freedom icons has passed away today.
At the age of 100 Miz Grace Lee Boggs has died leaving behind to cherish her memory black activists, Asian activists and a city that is ready to come back from the ashes.
J and I went on vacation in Northern Michigan this past summer and while driving back to Cincinnati we decided to cut through Detroit just so we could see her center. We drove through the city, surprised at all the empty lots and abandoned buildings. When we got to her street we expected to see a sign for her center but the only thing there was a house. We drove away cursing our car’s GPS system. James typed the address into Google Map on his phone which led us… right back to where we were.
I jumped out of the car and asked a woman in scrubs if she knew where the Boggs Center was. She pointed to the house across the street. She noticeably sized me up and told me to go knock on the door, they’d let me in.
“She lives there, right?” I asked.
“Yeah, she’s there. You know we just celebrated her birthday.”
I thought for a second and then shook my head. We did not know the center was also her house. There’s no way I wanted to go knock on the door of an old woman.
“She’s been sick,” the woman went on. “But they’ll let you in.”
I asked for directions to the school and the woman asked me if I had an appointment. Again I said no. We were just passing through and wanted to see it. She gave us directions and we got lost only once. We jumped out of the car, took a picture in front of the building and talked to the principal.
We didn’t get a chance to see the center or meet her but we were satisfied for the rest of the drive home.
At least I was. Now I wish I had the courage to knock on her door and tell her how much she meant to me.
If you want to know more about this awesome women listen to her interview on Democracy Now or On Being; check out her obit in the Detroit Free Press; watch her film American Revolutionary on PBS or you can always read her books Living for Change and The Next Revolution.
Tales from the Stalls
It was a hot late summer day in 1989 and I was working at a marketing research firm as a survey supervisor when she came in. She was dressed in a tasteful outfit –I believe it was pink– and her hair was a weave that could have used some help but back then lacefront weaves weren’t a thing in Cincinnati. But her makeup! She was melting. She was dark-skinned, about my complexion, and she tried her best to put on the best face but the tri-state’s heat and humidity was winning. It was hard to find a good foundation for mahogany toned skin back then plus a powder to set it. A lot of the powders that claimed to be for darker hues were really just for olive toned women.
I could see the stubble along her strong jaw line and the oil in the crease of her eyelids was sweating up the blue of her eyeshadow. I knew she couldn’t go in like that.
“Girl,” I said discreetly, friendly as if we were best buds. “You have to go fix your makeup before you go into the interview.”
She followed me to the women’s restroom. Looking back I believe we must have been close in age, both in our twenties, But she was in the later years where as I had just ventured into that decade. Our body frames were different, too. I thought I was fat, weighing around 135 and she was definitely skinny. We both couldn’t walk in heels for shit but I was wearing flats that day. Before opening the door she turned to me with her large brown eyes they expressed everything in those seconds. “Thank you,” she said.
I went to the meeting room to let my supervisor know that her next interview would be along shortly after a quick refresher in the restroom. They too had seen her walking in and were waiting in anticipation to see her. They were anticipating laughter afterwards with the utmost professionalism before, of course,
She and the two others who were in the room turned to ask me, “Which restroom did you take him to?”
“The women’s restroom.”
The women began to shriek. “You took that man to the women’s restroom!” Unbelievable!
“Yeah,” I said laughing. “She had to freshen up her make up.”
Needless to say she did not get the job. She was applying for a telemarketing job but the supervisor just couldn’t see hiring a transgender woman. Back then we called transgender people trannies, transvestite, he-be-she-bees and possibly worse. My supervisor worried what potential clients would think if we had a trans woman on the team. We were a national company with clients in a lot of different states and sometimes they would come in to listen to the telemarketers just to make sure they were getting their money’s worth. It would be awkward to explain why a biological man was dressed as a woman calling up people to ask them if they preferred shopping at the Piggly Wiggly or the IGA.
Not that the responders could tell what someone was wearing on the other side of the phone. Sometimes they couldn’t tell their gender. My best buddy Donald Stewart was often called ma’am and he would just giggle and wink at me across the aisle. “They think I’m a girl!” he’d laugh after hanging up.
“You are!” I said, throwing paper at him.
Our voices were also not raceblind. When we made calls to the south sometimes the voices on the other end would bluntly ask, “Are you black?” or “Are you negro?” Or nigra. I tried to keep the tension out of my response. “Yes, I am.” Sometimes the call would continue, sometimes they’d promptly hang up.
The southerners also were able to spot that we were northerners. When we called Boston, respondents were polite enough to not reference we weren’t from their area. But we would laugh at their accents as soon as we hung up the calls.
“My God! I could not understand him!”
“She said, “the numbuh is foh-wuh, foh-wuh, foh-wuh,, there’s enough foh-wuhs in that anyways.”
The people were nice enough to take our phone calls and complete our 20 minute long surveys. They were also nice enough to not ask us if our mode of dress matched the assigned gender on our birth certificates.
Donald and I hung out a lot after work because we were the youngest of the crew. Discovering by chance that we both had attended kindergarten at Winton Place Elementary in 1974 we decided that we should be friends just like we were then. He was a slight of build white guy with dark brown hair that waved and curled at the ends and the growth of the skinny mustache replaced the thick milk one he used to have on his upper lip during snack time. After work he would pull out his boombox and we’d walk around Walnut Hills listening to Bronski Beat, Sylvester and Joy Division. We were wasting time before he had to catch his bus and head back to his boyfriend. I never met his boyfriend but from what I can recall from the description he was a black guy who wasn’t fully out to his family Because of their issues Donald would arrive to work with bruises and black eyes. I was also wasting time before returning home. I didn’t have a boyfriend to go home to; my fiancé Timothy was stationed in the Navy in Chicago. Because this was the time before cellphones long distance phone calls were expensive so my phone was turned off at the time. I spent most of my time in the single room apartment reading, writing long letters, and waiting for responses. Tim didn’t care that Donald and I hung out together, quoting Eddie Murphy, “as long as you don’t come home with AIDS on your lips”.
Donald confided things to me. embarrassing things like his penis was emitting a green discharge (“Go get that shit checked out!” I yelled at him), sad things like his father was abusive to him and disowned him because he was gay and his boyfriend was black and happy things like the time he went to a club in drag.
“Really, drag?” I asked incredulously. I couldn’t envision it but he did recently shave his mustache. I had a million questions: what was it like? Did he want to do it all the time? Did being gay mean he wanted to be a woman?
It was fun, he just did it just for the show and no, he didn’t want to be a woman.
His boyfriend didn’t like it, though. He called him a faggot, he smacked him around, he cheated with other men and women. His boyfriend was horrible but he couldn’t leave him. One day while sitting around in my apartment he asked to spend the night and then he made a pass at me. He didn’t want to be gay anymore, he wanted to try heterosexual sex, how did he know he wasn’t actually straight? I told him it was probably best he didn’t spend the night and walked him to the bus stop. Sometimes when you don’t know yourself you do things and you don’t know why.
For example I don’t know why I invited the young woman to use the women’s restroom. Maybe it was because I wanted to drive my other co-workers crazy; the response from my supervisor and the two women who flanked her was a plus.
Maybe it was the influence of Donald. I knew someone who was gay and having a trans person in the women’s restroom didn’t seem that much of a stress.
Maybe I wanted to seem cool and above it. “Hey, this person is trans and I don’t care! Why can’t she use the same restroom as I do?”
Maybe it’s because I saw a fellow sister distress. She needed to refresh herself and I just couldn’t see myself going into a men’s restroom to reapply makeup so why should she? Besides the men’s restroom is gross.
Maybe it’s a mix of all those above. Or none of the above. I don’t know, it’s been over 25 years so its hard to recreate events such as that.
Last year the place where I work now created a non-gender restroom. Or maybe it’s called an all gender restroom. Probably unisex, is more like it.
Whatever it’s called I misused it the first time I needed it.
There are two restrooms side by sides. The one on the left used to be the men’s, the one of the right the women’s. Now the signs have been replaces with just a man/woman symbol each. I ran into the right one, not just out of habit but because the devil you know is better than the devil you don’t know. There are two stalls.
And this restroom always stinks.
Someone knocks on the door. I don’t answer because that is odd.
The person comes in, sees someone in the other stall, and then walks back out again.
When I leave the woman was waiting outside. She tells me that proper protocol is to lock the door when using it. I tell her I didn’t know. I guess that makes sense. Although there are two stalls. Someone could use the stall next to me but I don’t mind having private time in a bathroom, George Costanza style.
I have to give my workplace kudos or taking the chance to create a unisex restroom. I’m not sure how many companies in the area have tried it, let alone across the country for that matter. Years ago I thought the idea of an Ally McBeal restroom was cool, but then I also thought that it would be cool to break into dance after the flush and hand washing.
Although my workplace has given employees the option to have one genderless restroom the public is afforded the same luxury. Transpeople can’t even use the restrooms of their identities. One of my favorite trans girl teens got in trouble for going into the women’s restroom with her friends. I vouched for her, saying that I didn’t think D was intending to do anything wrong in the restroom, but the guards disagreed. The guards said it was because they were worried about sexual assaults so they had to enforce the rule of assigned biological restrooms.
Last year a gay friend posted on Facebook an article written by a woman about her apprehension (okay, dislike) about transwomen using the women’s restroom. It was in response to this sign:
His friends were calling her all sorts of names: stupid bitch this, dumbass that.Even though I understand the sentiment of the sign above I have to agree it was too over reaching in it’s sentiment. Unlike the writer of that article I don’t think that a cis straight man is going to dress up as a woman just so he can enter the woman’s restroom and rape her, maybe incidences like that have happened and I’m just not privvy to it. But I do personally know of men entering into public restrooms in broad day light in attempts to do everything from peek at private parts to rape. If I walked into a restroom and saw an unknown man standing there I’d first check the symbol on the door before searching for another restroom. So although the idea of unisex public bathrooms seem charming in theory, I don’t know if a business wants to take on the legal responsibility for that.
But things are change, so I guess small steps.
Ronald Moon and the Evanston Arts Center
I was scrolling down my FB timeline when I ran across this video:
Ronald Moon lives in Evanston, one of the toughest/roughest neighborhoods in Cincinnati. To see that he is trying to make a change in the community only to be thwarted by some of those who are imprisoned in a broken spirituality is heartbreaking.
But then he just forgives them and wants to keep on doing his work.
Please help Ronald Moon by giving to his fund. If you can’t help them pass along the word so those who can help will know about it.
Be strong, Ronald. There are so many of us out there that care.
Sardonic Sistah Says 