Sardonic Sistah Says

African American singer Natalie White (aka Puma Shock) made her debut on the Korean talent show, Star King in early March 2009.

White came to the attention of the show when her YouTube videos of her singing remixed R&B versions of K-Pop hits from artists like Girl Generation and May Doni began to get a lot of hits in Korea.   She’s a big fan of the music and Korean dramas as well.

Yesterday I went to a Korean owned black hair care store downtown during my lunch hour.  I don’t go in there often; the ones I prefer to patronize are a few miles away.  The one downtown is rather harried.   Everything seems to be piled up which creates neat, narrow aisles but is not conducive for browsing which I never want to do there anyway. 

Other black women who come in might  have the same feeling.  Maybe they are transferring buses or need to pick up hair to get to stylist appointment or maybe they just have errands to run on their lunch break but whichever way it is, they are always rushed and short on patience.  I can sympathize with them, it’s hard to feel loving and light if your hair ain’t right.  You don’t feel at your best, so the women might not always act their best. 

The couple that works there seems overworked and in a hurry as well.  I often think one reason for the layout is not just because the space is small but also to make sure nothing gets boosted.  From their raised position behind the cash register they can see everything.  the products that are most likely to get stolen (like 50 dollar wefts of hair) they keep behind them on the wall.  Some choice hair is also at the other end of the store but since the exit is next to the register they can stop you before you are out the double doors.

All I want is a blow dryer attachment and peppermint shampoo.  I find the shampoo right away but I don’t see the nozzle.  I ask the guy where it is and he points over she maze of shelves to a wall.  I follow his finger in that direction and then turn back to give him a look that says, “I don’t even feel like walking over there to not find what I’m looking for”.  He’s done it to me before, told me something was along the wall and I search for 10 minutes until his female counterpart comes to help me which was nowhere near where dude said it would be.  I don’t think he knows where anything is anyway.

He can’t leave the register, though, because two other women are standing beside the counter, waiting for the lady to come back to the front.  She is helping a different set of women select hair.  Realizing that if I want to get lunch as well as my hair products I have to try to search myself.  Luckily the woman is swinging my way with her two customers and he shouts out to her what I need.  She pulls one from out of nowhere and asks me if it’s what I need.

It has a round base and teeth.  “Yeah, I’ll take it.”

So now it’s back to the guy.  He never smiles although his demeanor is passably polite.  He rings me up and says to have a good day.  I say thank you and leave, happy to be out in the wide world.

As I walk to get my lunch I wonder why the interactions between Korean Americans and African Americans aren’t better.  Of the ten hair stores that I will go to they are all Korean owned and located in black neighborhoods.  One or two might have an African American worker but most of the people who work there are Asian and all of the customers are black.  They don’t live in the neighborhoods where their businesses are located, either, and I have often wondered where they lived.  Did they make that much money from selling black women hair that they could live way out in the suburbs? 

For lunch I go to a local Spanish restaurant.  The owner is always friendly, even when we pass each other on the street.  He doesn’t know my name, but he always remember my standing order.  He has told me that I come in too much to not pick up some Spanish and he tries to engage me with Buenos Dias, senorita.  I know a few words but always get self conscious speaking them to him since he is a native speaker.  But others come in and speak rudimentary Spanish with him with no problem. 

I wonder what would happen if people tried speaking Korean in the black hair shops.  The workers there all speak English, but what if there was a mutual cultural exchange along  with money and products.

I could say basic phrases like:

I wonder that would have happened if I had said Gahmsahnida to the guy as I was taking my bag.  Would that have made him less wary of the next black customer to come into his store?  Or would he have thought that I was being a smart ass?  I couldn’t recall the word as I stood in front of him; just like in the Spanish restaurant I become self conscious around a native speaker.

Or maybe it’s just best to for things to stay as they are, with both sides warily observing each other and the language of money speaking for both of us.  Those things come in loud and clear.

Health Day News reports that researchers have identified differences in the copy number variation (CNV) between blacks and whites.

Across the genome, there was little difference in the frequency of CNVs between blacks and whites. However, there was a marked difference in the frequency of two duplications, one on chromosome 15 and another on chromosome 17, said Joseph P. McElroy and his colleagues in the neurology department at the University of California, San Francisco.

 

 

A duplication in chromosome 17 (region 17q21) was found in 45 percent of the 435 whites in the study and in 8 percent of the 435 blacks. This region has been implicated in mental retardation caused by the deletion of two genes due to duplication. The two genes aren’t located within the 17q21 region, but are very close to it, the researchers said.

“It would be good to know if the CNV duplication of the region might have an effect on the expression of these genes, which in turn could result in neurological disease. It is also interesting to find out whether the type of mental retardation associated with this locus is more common in whites than in Africans or African-Americans. If this is true, then it might be one of the first reported diseases with differing ethnic frequencies due to CNVs,” McElroy said in a news release.

US News and World Report, 24 March 2009

 

department at the University of California, San Francisco.

I am loathe to say that this marks a difference between races, especially blacks and whites.  If such genetic markings exist I suspect we are years away from discovering it at the moment but this might be the beginnings.

Author Victor Lavalle wrote a great article on Bookforum.com about black nationalism, skin color, and black empowerment. 

My favorite part of the essay is this:

I’m sick of discussing black nationalism. I’m tired of all the dourness and doomsaying; of the grimace that’s required whenever we discuss it and blackness in general; of the countless humorless men and women who scold every impulse toward comfort or laughter or, dare I say it, optimism. I’m sick of the same old forecast for blackness: gloom followed by clouds of hail.

To read it in it’s entirety click here.

2 January 1915 – 25 March 2009

J called me up at work last night to tell me that John Hope Franklin passed away.  He was 94 years old.

Franklin was a scholar and historian.  His seminal work, From Slavery to Freedom, was first published in 1947 and been repeatedly updated.  It has sold over a million copies.

Franklin also worked on the Brown V board of Education case, helping Thurgood Marshall research laws to help strike down the “separate but equal” rule.

“Because of the life John Hope Franklin lived, the public service he rendered, and the scholarship that was the mark of his distinguished career, we all have a richer understanding of who we are as Americans and our journey as a people,” Obama said in a statement. “Dr. Franklin will be deeply missed, but his legacy is one that will surely endure.”

From time to time I visit the Asian Male/Black female groups and I often wonder if the hook ups ended up like this one:

Sometimes black folks get heated over stuff I just can’t fathom.

First folks were complaining because Disney never had a black princess, then folks didn’t like the name Maddie because it sounded kind of “slave-ish”,  they disliked that voodoo was put in (although magic is a key component in a lot of their films) and then they didn’t like the fact that Princess Tiana (I know, that name does not sound like it’s from the 1920s) had a white suitor.  So they gave him a tan and named him Naveen.

Princess Tiana and her Prince Naveen

(Big, deep, sigh)

My people.  My people.  Get a damn life!

This is Disney’s movie they have a right to tell it how they see fit.  I would be behind them if there wasn’t so much nitpicking before with the name and the color.  Yeah, it would be nice for them to put a black prince with a black princess because they’ve never put a black looking prince with a white looking princess but the color of the prince doesn’t really matter to me.  Maybe some are missing the point but it’s the female who is the lead of the story, the guy is just an accessory.  He could be purple with polka dots (okay, maybe not an alien) but when it comes to the Princess tales like Snow White, Cinderella, and Sleeping Beauty the guy is just a guest star, not the star.   He’s an arm charm.  It’s little girls they are marketing to, not little boys and the little boys who might want to go see the flick aren’t really worried being prince charming but getting with prince charming themselves (sorry to tell you).

So should little black girls grow up to dream of marrying little black Prince charming boys?  Don’t they do that already?  But if one really feels the need to inculcate them with that vision then maybe they should pick up Mufaro’s Beautiful Daughters or Cendrillon or better yet maybe we should get together, collect some money and fund some black artists, animators and storytellers so we can tell our story our way.

Although when a black person got to tell Cinderella their way they still put a multicultural spin on it.

Yesterday I had lunch with Grace.  I brought her up to speed with what was happening in my life (which is where it was the last time we spoke) and she gave me the 411 on what was happening with her (which was a lot.  I almost got drama envy).

We saw these two young guys approaching us and as they moved on by we could see that they weren’t really young men at all, but young women who look like young.

Hmmmm?

When did this happen, I asked.

Girl, I don’t know, she agreed.

We remembered the one girl in our high school whom we suspected was a lesbian.  The rumor was she was a lesbian.  We talked about her (“You know so and so is a lesbian”).  I don’t know why we thought she was a lesbian; maybe it was the short closely cropped hair or the manly strut.  There was a rumor that she asked one of the popular girls out.  She never hung out with any black kids, just the druggie white kids who would stand out in the smoking section even if it was 10 degrees below.  No one talked to her about it and no one wanted to ask her straight out.  Except for Grace who was bold enough to try to put an end to the rumor or verify it.

“So I walked up to her and asked her if it was true.  I just said, “It’s a rumor going around that you’re a lesbian, are you?” and she wanted to fight me.  She said, “Bitch, I oughta knock you out” and I just walked away because if she wanted to fight me then she should swing on me but I’m not going to stand there and discuss it.”

We laughed and then discussed the ones who had come out since graduation which was half of the girls basketball volleyball team  I saw one girl get married on the Jerry Springer show while the show was still located here in the city and wasn’t the circus it became once it moved west.   Grace hadn’t seen it and wasn’t quite sure who I was talking about.

But now young black men who want to be black women and young black women who want to be black men are passing with their gender.  A lot of the young women who look a lot like young guys.  They come in with their frilly girlfriends and try to find a corner to sneak and make out, which doesn’t pass here no matter what your sexual persuasion is.

I never know what the proper pronoun is to use with them.  The young men are happy to be referred to as her, but I’ve never been friends with drag kings so are they also delighted to be called him? 

So I ask a young co-worker what kids his age call those whose gender they might not know or for those who might be a bit more feminine or masculine in appearance.

He shrugged his shoulders.  “We just call everybody dude anyway.”

Dude? Huh.  It could work.

I found a post over on the AverageBro.comabout Akon’s new clothing line.

I hate the fact that I love the colors because I can’t get behind it.  Do we really need more of this?

Or this?

Is there a rule that we have to aim for the lowest common denominator?  It’s getting kinda tired.

What I would really love to see are brothers like this:

from dangerous negro apparel

I’m hoping.

I’m just waiting.

I’m waiting for the news to sink in to Black community that in Chocolate City 7% of black men suffer from AID/HIV.

That the district’s HIV/AIDS Administration director, Shannon Hader, noted that the city’s rate of infection surpasses stats in West Africa and is “on par with Uganda and some parts of Kenya.”  It’s like we are a third world country within ourselves.

A few years ago news came out that African American women were the leading AIDS cases in the U.S.   The response on local black talk radio became heated as the women called in to place the blame on DL men and the men deflected saying it was black women who had it because the stats for black men didn’t bear out.

In DC, African American men who identified as heterosexual made up the bulk of the new cases.

Although the focus is on DC, I wouldn’t be surprised if the stats bore themselves out in other places because, lets get real here, black folks don’t like talking about fringe sexuality.

It’s that odd conservatism that plays out in our community.  You can sing about sex all day long, even think it’s cute when lil Dayquon sings along with “To the Window” by Lil John.  But to talk about homosexuality and to teach someone it’s okay to be that way or encourage them to protect themselves or to wait until the right one comes along for them (just because you are gay or lesbian doesn’t mean the same rules can’t apply) it just doesn’t happen.

It’s something I can’t explain.  I understand it, but I can’t put it into words why it is the way it is.   Why we are complicit in helping to maintain the grandiose image of black masculinity that we play down homosexuality or encourage someone bisexual to keep it under wraps.

Or that we look at lesbianism as another way of black women challenging black manhood, so again we try to marginalize them.  It’s particularly odd since the black community is a matriarchal one.

I don’t know what I expect.  But still, I’m going to wait.

(checking the time)

One day we are going to talk about this, for real.