Sardonic Sistah Says

from NY Mag

I basically ignored when Steele got the nod to head the GOP because, really, who cares?  The GOP has had high profile African Americans for the last couple of years (Condi, Colin) and so Steele being the head of the Grand Ole’ Party means nothing to me.

I even shook him off when he said he wanted to give the Repubs a hip hop makeover.  I think it’s stupid.  It’s out of his generation.  For it to work he would need to be a bit younger and pull out some pics of himself wearing the big dope ropes and stringless Adidas.  But if the boomers want to think that they can get “jiggy’ with it then by all means let them “jiggy” their geritol behinds all over the place while we laugh behind their backs.

But when Curtis Sliwa asked Steele if he wanted to offer Bobby Jindal some slum love because of his performance on Tuesday night I have to put my foot down.  Number one, because y’all asses are too damn old to try to hang with youth slang and number two, that sounds like some kind of Log Cabin isht.  Y’all sure you want to go there?  It’s not like y’all been showing love to Gays and Lesbians and the last thing I wanna see on my TV late one night is Republicans Gone Wyld.  Rush Limbaugh raising his shirt, showing off his man boobs.  Mitch McConnell cooing into the camera talking about he’s still young and got it going on.  And then the creme de la creme Steele and Jindal showing us what slum lovin’ really means.

Ewww, ewww! My brain.  Don’t wanna see it!  Ewww. Happy place.  Happy place.  Trees, flowers, Obama signing bills…

(sigh)

Okay, I’m back.

The hip hop make over, not going to work.  You guys just sound like Grandpa Simpson trying to stay on track.  And the young people who fall into the GOP don’t necessarily want to see that either.  You can’t lead them that way.  You have to listen to them, not try to “jive talk” with them. (You guys remember that slang, right?)

If you want to show that the GOP is fresh then it takes more than just bringing out folks of different colors (although it won’t hurt).  You need some new ideas.  You need another way to look at things.  You have to change the paradigm.  You have to show that everyone gets a chance to play, not just those who can remember when the internet was the radio.

Ya feel me?  Prolly not.

My hubby was cracking up watching this vid yesterday.  His BFF and ex-roommate is in this video (should I be worried that his BFF and I share the same birthday?) and it’s kind of cute.

Enjoy.  Or don’t.

I have to say, I agree with Moyo.  Here are some highlights:

For the whole article go here.

Dambisa Moyo

You argue in your book that Western aid to Africa has not only perpetuated poverty but also worsened it, and you are perhaps the first African to request in book form that all development aid be halted within five years.

Think about it this way — China has 1.3 billion people, only 300 million of whom live like us, if you will, with Western living standards. There are a billion Chinese who are living in substandard conditions. Do you know anybody who feels sorry for China? Nobody.

Maybe that’s because they have so much money that we here in the U.S. are begging the Chinese for loans.
Forty years ago, China was poorer than many African countries. Yes, they have money today, but where did that money come from? They built that, they worked very hard to create a situation where they are not dependent on aid.

What do you think has held back Africans?
I believe it’s largely aid. You get the corruption — historically, leaders have stolen the money without penalty — and you get the dependency, which kills entrepreneurship. You also disenfranchise African citizens, because the government is beholden to foreign donors and not accountable to its people.

Another K-Pop Singer is Poised to Hit American Markets This Spring

My daughter is a big fan of Se7en but no word from her on his impending American debut album.

Singer Se7en likes "Them Girls"

His new song “Them Girls” is hawt and Lil Kim is sounding better than she has in a long time.  The song was produced by Darkchild (Rodney Jenkins).  Still no word on the name of the CD (but if you know pass it on to me) but it’s sure to be good with Three 6 Mafia and Fabolous helping out.

Here’s a bootleg vid for it:

The ladies in the pic above are from his official video.  I’m definitely looking forward to it.

“Though this nation has proudly thought of itself as an ethnic melting pot, in things racial we have always been and I believe continue to be, in too many ways, essentially a nation of cowards,” Holder said.

This he said on the same day that the New York Post ran a cartoon with police shooting a primate and one officer quipping to the other, “They’ll have to find someone else to write the next stimulus bill.”

Controversial Cartoon

There are some who are still waiting for the NY Post to weigh in on who the primate is supposed to be, but do we really need to hear their excuse?  They could say they were trying to evoke the image of the recent story of police in Connecticut who killed a pet chimpanzee and use the animal as a symbol for the stimulus.  Yeah, but then who would be the author of the stimulus?  Who is the one who has been pushing for the stimulus?

And who is are the ones who have been often depicted as primates for hundreds of years in this country? 

Does anyone remember this cartoon from just a few months ago?

Unless the artist is an alien that just got to this planet last week then I am sure that he/she is well versed in the underlying meaning of the image of the ape.  Come on now, we’ve been having this discussion for years.

So, it’s not that we don’t discuss race or what we think about other races.  What we really don’t discuss is how race shapes how we see ourselves.

African Americans do up to a point.  We can talk about ourselves in relationship to white people and sometimes in contrast to other minorities.  But what it would be like without that racial frame, that we haven’t given much thought to.

But whites try to tip toe around the American story of race because their role in it hasn’t been the one to covet.  As the racial landscape shifts, making white level out on equal footing with the rest of us, it’s not one that some whites are going to reconcile with easily.  In a multiracial society they won’t always be the leaders or the facilitators.  A lot of times it won’t even be about them or thought of.

The NY Post comic was a throwback to past times, when minorities could be dehumanize and the rest of America could laugh at it.  Or if not laugh at least be obsequious to the majority. 

But now the minorities are the rising majority that they used to cast derision upon.  Not a smart thing for a news paper business to do when newspapers are struggling as it is.

So, do we want to have that race discussion right about now?

Trenton O'Neal Advertising his Grades

Kudos to the parents of Trenton O’Neal who made their son stand on the corner of his town advertising his grades. 

What the heck are “E” grades?  You can get an “E” in a class?  What does that stand for? I’ve had “E”nough of you dumb ass so I’m not even going to look at your worksheets anymore?

And yeah, I read the people who disparaged this tactic and I want everyone to know those who don’t like it are punks.  These are probably the same people that  don’t want this kid to stand on the corner getting his little slacker behind embarrassed but they wouldn’t cry to see him carted off to jail when he is standing on the corner with his other friends causing a public disturbance or selling drugs.

Every morning I come to work to be surrounded by 20-somethings playing on the computer.  When the weather is good they are out there on the corners hanging out but now that the weather is bad they are indoors watching videos, playing on Urban Chat.  Most of them are male and they all of them are black.  We also get the occasional jazz june skippers who are also black male.  They can get caught in the occasional truancy sweep but come back again in the afternoon, laughing about it, shrugging it off.   One kid who got snatched in the sweep once was disappointed that I didn’t give him the heads up.  He was asking me that morning about getting a job there and would I give him a recommendation.

“Hell no,” I said.  “You can’t even go to school, why would I think you’d come to work?”

He was taken out in cuffs with the other skippers to go to the juvenile hall 3 miles away.  When he came back he asked me why didn’t I tell him there was going to be a sweep?  I said I didn’t know and then gave him a tour of the building.  We went to the side of the building that had the most computers.  There hung the real burn outs of life.  That crowd is partially mixed but still mostly men who are also mostly black.  They are 30 and up.  They hang down there all day.  A few are mentally ill and you can almost always spot them, a lot more have just decided that this was the life for them and 40 year old men are walking around still thinking they are 20-something.

“Get a good look at them,” I told the kid.  “This is what they do all day.  This is where they’re at.  You might as well get to know them because in a few years you will be on this side of the building because you will be too old for mine.  You wanna make a friend?” I was about to walk over to one of the guys when the kid stopped me.

“Naw, Miz Nay.  I don’t wanna.”

“Well, this is where you’re headed,” I told him.  We spoke of his options and what he could possibly do.  He said I wasn’t the first one to talk to him about it; other people have been on him, too.

“It’s because we see something in you.  We don’t want to lose you.”

Is standing on the corner to the point of embarrassment the remedy for every child?  No.  But truth be told, the kids hanging on the corners aren’t wearing signs but they advertise the same message anyway.

I have 20 more minutes before I have to go home and where I will be in darkness.  Eternal darkness!  Horrible, horrible darkness.

Yes, the husband and the boy will be there, too, but that is beside the point.  Actually, it just makes it worse because it just reinforces that I have to miss Top Chef and Lost.

I didn’t complain last fall when the hurricane winds knocked out my electricity for 3 days and I had to chase those two nuts away from opening up the fridge and staring into it.  Nor did I mumble a word when the ice storm two weeks ago crushed the hood of my car and took it out of commission for a week.

But, Lord, to make me miss Lost and Top Chef tonight?  How did I offend Thee?

(meekly, head bowed)

I repent.  Can I get my electricity back on by 11?

Last night I watched Medicine for Melancholy and I nearly busted out laughing when Micah (played by Wyatt Cenac) went on his rant about interrcial couplings and asked, “Why don’t you ever see black women with Asian men?”

“Yeah, J,” I nudged him.  “Why don’t we ever see that?”

But more are coupling up.  Here’s a link to a story about a black girl dating a Chinese guy on AverageBro.com.

So how did I accidentally start dating a Chinese guy? Well, all I can say is that on that night in July when we met, I magically stopped thinking about the fact that he wasn’t black, and was more concerned by how great he was.

We ended up talking for hours, both the night we met and then over the next few weeks. As culturally conflicted, yet militantly black as I am, he is with his Chinese culture. Yes, my afro and it’s daily changes of behavior do require the occasional conversation, but it’s not nearly as complicated as I thought it would be (of course, he hasn’t seen me with my hair tied up and in rollers yet).

In fact, the interracial/intercultural part of our relationship is not nearly as complicated as I would have thought it to be. Yes – there have been a few hiccups and nervous moments. Him telling his Hong Kong-born mom about me. Me meeting his mom and realizing that when nervous, she’s less comfortable speaking English. Me meeting the rest of his family at Thanksgiving. Him meeting my Bible-study group. But at the same time, I’m sure some of these things (family, religion) are complicated in any relationship.

And I’ve found that some things are true regardless of race or culture: I won his mom over by going shopping together on the day after Thanksgiving. I impressed the rest of the family by cooking pies for Thanksgiving and Christmas. I’ve knitted his mother a scarf. All things I know any black mother would be impressed by, as well.

I’m not a Steelers fan (I do live in the Bengal Nation) but I like Hines Ward.  Here are highlights from a recent article on him that was printed in the Daily News.

Hines Ward and mother Kim Young-hee

Now, entering Super Bowl XLIII, Ward is is a celebrity who is considered a “savior” for half-Koreans who are treated like second-class citizens. He’s become an inspiration to Koreans and a force to alter some of the country’s old-school traditional views and attitudes toward race, and much like the way he plays on the field, Ward is not going to stop until his message is heard.

 ”He was teased unmercifully by his friends,” says Andrew Ree, Ward’s longtime friend and attorney, who is Korean. “His black friends thought he looked funny because of his eyes. His Asian friends wouldn’t accept him because of his skin color and he was embarrassed by his mother because she couldn’t speak English very well. She would drop him off at school and he would spot his friends and he would duck down in his seat so they wouldn’t see him with her.”

“She looked over and had tears in her eyes,” Ree continues. “She said, ‘if you are that ashamed of me, don’t be with me anymore.’ From that point, he said he wasn’t ashamed anymore.”

While he used chopsticks and ate Korean staples such as kimchi and kalbi, Ward was discouraged by his mother from exploring his Korean side because of how they had been treated in Korea. A country that was scarred by the Japanese occupation in World War II, Korea prides itself on maintaining its culture and identity.

“What Koreans want is to keep the blood lines pure,” Ree says. “When you mix the blood in some ways in the old days they felt it was inferior. They want to keep the blood line going… it’s almost, for a lack of a better term, a royalty issue. They also feel there is a less likelihood of divorce from that standpoint.”

Ward has returned to Korea every year since his first visit and he has seen his impact.

“I have seen change,” says Ward. “They didn’t (used to) let mixed races into

Korean Children at a Steelers Game

the military and they have passed laws to allow mixed races to join the military. I am not trying to change it overnight. I am not trying to be the next Martin Luther King.”

It doesn’t hurt that Ward is now friends with Korea’s President, Lee Myung-bak. And it doesn’t hurt that the new U.S. president, who preaches “change” here, is also bi-racial.

While some are still waiting for Hollywood to tell our stories others are taking it upon themselves to find funding to tell it ourselves on the Independent circuit.

The first film you want to try to see is Medicine for Melancholy. You can view this movie from the comfort of your home on IFC in Theaters on your cable tv.  It’s about black people who aren’t gang bangin’ or dancin’ or doing slapstick comedy with black male actors playing the lead female roles in a fat suit or black people working high powered jobs but still spend 20 hours a day lamenting about love.

Are they sure these are black characters?  Director Barry Jenkins drew on his own experiences as a Miami transplant in San Francisco.

“As a person of color from the South, San Francisco was the first city that really made me feel like an other,” Mr. Jenkins said over breakfast in Brooklyn recently. Because he was in an interracial romance when he got there, he added, “I was almost buffered.”

“When that relationship was off,” he said, “it was like I was seeing the city for the first time.”

New York Times 21 January 2009

The film is not about race but how people deal with it, live it.  “Micah comes across as pro-black, and Jo’s is more of a post-race point of view,” Mr. Jenkins said. “When I started the film I was teetering between these two viewpoints. It’s like I was splitting my personality in two.”

The next movie that is a must see is not for every one.  I read the book Push by Sapphire when it first came out about 10 years ago; actually, I’ve read it several times.  (And, if Sapphire should be web searching her name and happens upon this blog I just want her to know I’ve given up on her ever coming out with another novel.   Nope, I just gave up on you.  The same for you, too, Ms. Sandra Jackson Opoku)

I don’t know if I can explain the novel to without turning people off from the story.  Two weeks ago a friend and I exchanged emails where I tried to do exactly that and I turned her off from the story.

The story is about Precious Jones an illiterate teen with two kids who has been abused by the adults in her life.  It can be compared to the Bluest Eye or the Color Purple but I really think the story (like those other two) stand on its own next to them, not conjoined to them.  And like those other two I think Push should be required reading and, from the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance, required watching.

But if  this is too heavy for you don’t worry, Madea Goes to Jail should be coming out soon.  No clip for that film, though, because if you’ve seen the first one know how it goes.