queen ifrica

Genocide

babylon a use might and a try fight right...
bloodsucking vampires, so they crawl by night.
we a go burn dem burn dem, til dem know themselves
wipe the tears from your eyes, love will never leave us down, i wear a upful crown
yeeeh!



Daddy

daddy don't touch me there
i'm gonna tell on you one day, i swear
can't you see i'm scared
you're supposed to be my father

to all the mothers out there
give a listening ear
pay attention even if the man a pastor
you haffi make sure before you trust him wid your dawta
plus him wi even try fi tek yu son as brawta...

if you know seh it a gwaan and turn a blind eye
then yuh judgement a go pile up bout a mile high


--> and, while i don't agree with 'before you know it is another baby,' i love this song too!


Below The Waist

you know me nah go box yuh down baby
no, me jus wan hol you down baby
him say, gwan go put on you thong, baby
and before you know it is another baby

you know we only going through a phase
so come tell me sorry soft inna me ears

nuh nasty up me house when me jus done shine
mi cyaan search you phone, but you waan search mine
a war when de whole a dat combine



love her!

what does it all mean?

on a personal level it's murky, because i care for him and we have established a real bond with each other. i felt betrayed, but i worry that i am also betraying something larger, breaking some ethical code.

he makes me happy. shouldn't i be able to enjoy that? how can i if he's unaware- if, at any moment, he'll slip into a comfortable whiteness and choose not to challenge racism or white supremacy?

this is confusing and challenging and necessary. we must confront this stuff if we're going to make it work.

hmmm. like i said:

love is the only way to sustain any such effort. a commitment to love on a grand or minor scale. it will take a lot, but thankfully love is infinite- so, we'll see...

then there's this

Marriage squeeze

A new term has arisen to describe the social phenomenon of the so-called "marriage squeeze" for African American females.^[11] The marriage squeeze refers to the belief that the most eligible and desirable African American men are marrying non-African American women, leaving those African American women who wish to marry African American men with fewer partnering options. According to Newsweek, 43% of black women between the ages of 30-34 have never been married.^[12] Several explanations of this phenomenon have been advanced. It may be due to the lingering effects of social ostracism to which white American men who married African American women were subjected in the past, although a recent survey found that one in five white Americans would consider marrying across the color line.^[13] It may also be the result of a desire among African American women to marry African American men due to concepts such as racial loyalty, and the internalized stereotypical belief that non-African American men would not find them attractive.^[13] There is also the lingering belief that negative social stereotypes preclude them being viewed as anything but sexual objects by non-African American men.^[13] Lastly, there is a desire among educated women of all races to "marry up" or at least within their social and economic class. With the great disparity that exists between African American women and African American men in this respect^{[citation needed]}, black women often face either "marrying down" or not marrying at all, when they choose to restrict their marriage prospects to African American men.^[14] Another confounding factor for African American women may be the disproportionate mortality rate between men and women in the black community: there are only approximately 85 males for every 100 females by the time they reach their child-bearing years.^{[citation needed]} Also, rates of incarceration for marriage age African American males are far higher than rates for females, further contributing to the male/female gap. As of 2002, 10.4% of all black males between the ages of 25 and 29 were sentenced and in prison. ^[15] The African American male-female disparity is highest between the ages of 25 – 29, when for every two African American men there are nearly three African American women. ^[16]

[edit] Education and interracial marriage

Using PUMS data from both the 1980 and 1990 US Census to determine trends within interracial marriage among White Americans, African Americans, Hispanic or Latinos, and Asian Americans, it may be seen that endogamy (marrying within race) was more prevalent for African American men at lower education levels.

In 1980, the numbers were as follows: African American males without a high-school diploma participated in endogamy at 96.5%; for those who received a high-school diploma, 95.6%; for those with a college degree and above, the percentage of endogamy dropped to 94.0%. However, the rates for African American women changed very little with different educational levels. For the African American woman who had not received a high school diploma the rate was 98.7%, high school diploma was 98.6%, with some college it was 98.2%, and college degree or higher, 98.5%. During this time there was a significant increase in marriages between whites and African Americans, maintaining that African Americans are most likely to marry whites over other groups.

The 1990 results show that rates of endogamy dropped for both males and females, albeit more for the African American male. In 1990, an African American male with a college degree and more was participating in endogamy at 90.4%; for an African American female with the same educational level, 96.4%. The results for the propensity of individuals at higher educational attainment levels to participate less in endogamy over the 10-year period were similar across races, including whites, Hispanics, and Asian Americans.

[edit] Immigrants and interracial marriage

It is found that racial endogamy is much stronger for immigrants as compared to natives.^[17] Immigrants of African descent are 4.9 times more likely than African Americans to marry interracially.^{[citation needed]} Additionally, immigrants of African descent have the highest rates of endogamy of immigrants. Also, African immigrants are much more likely to marry other same-race immigrants and African Americans, than to out-marry racially. Native-born white Americans are also 1.6 times more likely to marry a native-born African American than an immigrant of African descent. Female immigrants of African descent are generally more likely to marry native-born whites than their male counterparts.

[edit] Interracial marriage versus cohabitation

Rates of interracial cohabitation are significantly higher than those of marriage. Although only 7 percent of married black men have white wives, 13 percent of cohabitating black men have white partners. Black women are one-and-a-half times more likely to cohabitate with a white partner than to marry him. 25 percent of married Asian women have white spouses, but 45 percent of cohabitating Asian women are with white men—higher than the percentage cohabitating with Asian men (43 percent).^[18] These numbers suggest that the prevalence of intimate interracial contact is greatly underestimated when one focuses only on marriage data.^[18]

i don't know

it's more than a black-white thing. it's more than a you-and-i thing. if we are to be a we, i have to release some of the resentment that i've been pushing down over the years. if we are to be a we, you have to raise your awareness of race and ethnicity matters. it's not impossible, but i'm not the i-see-no-color person, though i do know that race doesn't exist genetically and that we are all human at the end of the day. things would be easier if i were that person, but i'm not.

context. we live in contexts. history is relevant. the past shaped the present. we all are shaping the future. you and your ideals don't live in a vacuum. i can't just be with you and your ideals. i need to know that you acknowledge and are aware of the world around you; of the injustices, the limitations, the challenges and the benefits that exist on the basis of race and ethnicity. i need to know that you are not just your history or the benefits accorded to your race; i have to acknowledge you and your ideals. it has to be a collaborative effort in the micro and macro, in our partnership and in the world.

love is the only way to sustain any such effort. a commitment to love on a grand or minor scale. it will take a lot, but thankfully love is infinite- so, we'll see...

looking at reality according to Wikipedia:

Asian and American Indian

Historically, Filipino Americans have frequently married American Indian and Alaskan Native people. In the 17th century, Filipinos were under Spanish rule. The Spanish colonists ordered the Filipinos to trade between the Philippines and the Americas. When Mexico revolted against the Spanish, Filipinos escaped into Mexico, then traveled to Louisiana, where the exclusively male Filipinos married American Indian women. In the 1920s, Filipino American communities grew in Alaska, and Filipino American men married Alaskan Native women. On the west coast, Filipino Americans married American Indian women in Bainbridge Island Washington.^[4]

[edit] Asian and White

Marriages between whites and Asians are becoming increasingly common for both gender combinations (Lange, 2005). In 1990, about 69 percent of married 18-30 year-old Asian women were married to Asian men, while 25 percent of married Asian women had white husbands. ^[5] In 2006, 50 percent of U.S.-raised, married Asian women were married to Asian men, while 41 percent of U.S.-raised, married Asian women had white husbands. 60 percent of U.S.-raised married Asian men were married to Asian women, while 30 percent of U.S.-raised, married Asian men had white wives (2006 U.S. Census Bureau). C.N. Le estimated that the gender gap is smaller among the American-born or 1.5 generation Asian Americans.^[6] Asian Americans of both genders who are U.S.-raised are much more likely to be married with whites than their non-U.S.-raised counterparts. Not all Asian ethnicities have similar intermarriage patterns, for instance, South Asian Americans were overwhelmingly endogamous, with a small amount of outmarriage to other ethnic groups. The interracial marriage disparity for South Asian Americans was low with outmarriage to whites slightly higher for Indian American males whereas all other major Asian groups had more outmarriage for women.^[6] A 2001 U.S. national survey indicated that 24% of the respondents disapprove of marriage with an Asian American. ^[7]

Black and White

Although mixed-race partnering has increased, the United States still shows disparities between African American male and African American female endogamy statistics. The 1990 census reports that 17.6% of African American marriages occur with White Americans. Yet, African American men are 2.5 times more likely to be married to white women than African American women to white men. In the 2000 census, 239,477 African American male to white female and 95,831 white male to African American female marriages were recorded, again showing the 2.5-1 ratio. In 2007, black-white marriage remains a rare event: 4.6% of married Blacks marry whites, and 0.4% of married whites marry blacks.^[8]

Asian and Black

With African Americans and Asian Americans, the ratios are even further imbalanced, with 598% more Asian female/Black male marriages than Asian male/Black female marriages. ^[2] However, C.N. Le estimated that Asian Americans of the 1.5 generation and of the five largest Asian American ethnic groups had black male/Asian female marriages 272% more than Asian male/black Female relationships.^[6] Even though the disparity between Black and Asian interracial marriages by gender is high according to the 2000 US Census, ^[2] the total numbers of Asian/Black interracial marriages are low, numbering only 0.22% percent for Asian male marriages and 1.30% percent of Asian female marriages, partially contributed by the recent flux of Asian immigrants. Filipinos appear to be the Asian group most likely to marry African-Americans. ^[2]

Historically, Chinese American men married African American women in high proportions to their total marriage numbers due to few Chinese American women being in the United States. After the Emancipation Proclamation, many Chinese people immigrated to the American South, particularly Arkansas, to work on plantations. The tenth US Census of Louisiana counted 57% of interracial marriages between these Chinese Americans to be with African Americans and 43% to be with White American women. After the Chinese Exclusion Act, Chinese American men had fewer potential Chinese American wives, so they increasingly married African American women on the west coast.^[9] In Jamaica and other Caribbean nations as well many Chinese males over past generations took up Black female wives gradually assimilating or absorbing many Chinese descendants into the black community or the overall mixed-race community.

[edit] White and American Indian

The interracial disparity for American Indians is low. According to the 1990 US Census (which only counts indigenous people with US-government-recognized tribal affiliation), American Indian women intermarried White Americans 2% more than American Indian men married White women.^[10]

What Can the White Man Say to the Black Woman?

By Alice Walker, address in support of the National March for Women’s Equality and Women’s Lives in Washington D.C., 22 May 1989

What is of use in these words I offer in memory of our common mother. And to my daughter.

What can the white man say to the black woman?

For four hundred years he ruled over the black woman’s womb.

Let us be clear. In the barracoons and along the slave shipping coasts of Africa, for more than twenty generations, it was he who dashed our babies brains out against the rocks.

What can the white man say to the black woman?

For four hundred years he determined which black woman’s children would live or die.

Let it be remembered. It was he who placed our children on the auction block in cities all across the eastern half of what is now the United States, and listened to and watched them beg for their mothers’ arms, before being sold to the highest bidder and dragged away.

What can the white man say to the black woman?

We remember that Fannie Lou Hamer, a poor sharecropper on a Mississippi plantation, was one of twenty-one children; and that on plantations across the South black women often had twelve, fifteen, twenty children. Like their enslaved mothers and grandmothers before them, these black women were sacrificed to the profit the white man could make from harnessing their bodies and their children’s bodies to the cotton gin.

What can the white man say to the black woman?

We see him lined up on Saturday nights, century after century, to make the black mother, who must sell her body to feed her children, go down on her knees to him.

Let us take note:

He has not cared for a single one of the dark children in his midst, over hundreds of years.

Where are the children of the Cherokee, my great grandmother’s people?

Gone.

Where are the children of the Blackfoot?

Gone.

Where are the children of the Lakota?

Gone.

Of the Cheyenne?

Of the Chippewa?

Of the Iroquois?

Of the Sioux?

Of the Mandinka?

Of the Ibo?

Of the Ashanti?

Where are the children of the Slave Coast and Wounded Knee?

We do not forget the forced sterilizations and forced starvations on the reservations, here as in South Africa. Nor do we forget the smallpox-infested blankets Indian children were given by the Great White Fathers of the United States government.

What has the white man to say to the black woman?

When we have children you do everything in your power to make them feel unwanted from the moment they are born. You send them to fight and kill other dark mothers’ children around the world. You shove them onto public highways in the path of oncoming cars. You shove their heads through plate glass windows. You string them up and you string them out.

What has the white man to say to the black woman?

From the beginning, you have treated all dark children with absolute hatred.

Thirty million African children died on the way to the Americas, where nothing awaited them but endless toil and the crack of a bullwhip. They died of a lack of food, of lack of movement in the holds of ships. Of lack of friends and relatives. They died of depression, bewilderment and fear.

What has the white man to say to the black woman?

Let us look around us: Let us look at the world the white man has made for the black woman and her children.

It is a world in which the black woman is still forced to provide cheap labor, in the form of children, for the factories and on the assembly lines of the white man.

It is a world into which the white man dumps every foul, person-annulling drug he smuggles into creation.

It is a world where many of our babies die at birth, or later of malnutrition, and where many more grow up to live lives of such misery they are forced to choose death by their own hands.

What has the white man to say to the black woman, and to all women and children everywhere?

Let us consider the depletion of the ozone; let us consider homelessness and the nuclear peril; let us consider the destruction of the rain forests_in the name of the almighty hamburger. Let us consider the poisoned apples and the poisoned water and the poisoned air and the poisoned earth.

And that all of our children, because of the white man’s assault on the planet, have a possibility of death by cancer in their almost immediate future.

What has the white, male lawgiver to say to any of us? To those of us who love life too much to willingly bring more children into a world saturated with death?

Abortion, for many women, is more than an experience of suffering beyond anything most men will ever know; it is an act of mercy, and an act of self-defense.

To make abortion illegal again is to sentence millions of women and children to miserable lives and even more miserable deaths.

Given his history, in relation to us, I think the white man should be ashamed to attempt to speak for the unborn children of the black woman. To force us to have children for him to ridicule, drug and turn into killers and homeless wanderers is a testament to his hypocrisy.

What can the white man say to the black woman?

Only one thing that the black woman might hear.

Yes, indeed, the white man can say, Your children have the right to life. Therefore I will call back from the dead those 30 million who were tossed overboard during the centuries of the slave trade. And the other millions who died in my cotton fields and hanging from trees.

I will recall all those who died of broken hearts and broken spirits, under the insult of segregation.

I will raise up all the mothers who died exhausted after birthing twenty-one children to work sunup to sundown on my plantation. I will restore to full health all those who perished for lack of food, shelter, sunlight, and love; and from my inability to see them as human beings.

But I will go even further:

I will tell you, black woman, that I wish to be forgiven the sins I commit daily against you and your children. For I know that until I treat your children with love, I can never be trusted by my own. Nor can I respect myself.

And I will free your children from insultingly high infant mortality rates, short life spans, horrible housing, lack of food, rampant ill health. I will liberate them from the ghetto. I will open wide the doors of all the schools and hospitals and businesses of society to your children. I will look at your children and see not a threat but a joy.

I will remove myself as an obstacle in the path that your children, against all odds, are making toward the light. I will not assassinate them for dreaming dreams and offering new visions of how to live. I will cease trying to lead your children, for I can see I have never understood where I was going. I will agree to sit quietly for a century or so, and meditate on this. (love this)

This is what the white man can say to the black woman.

We are listening.

have you ever

seen someone you're totally into become a stranger over a matter of hours? i swear i love this guy, but i can't be with him- with the person i saw today. i just can't. so that's that.

the end.

by the way

i'm totally self-absorbed.

absolutely narcissistic.

isn't it apparent?

just so you know that i know.



AND


i love this woman:


she's coming to philly in january, but it's for npr. she'll be in brooklyn that night. maybe i'll go catch the show.

i live for her!

happy new year

2008 has begun. i'm on the way to my first graduate degree. i'm in a relationship. i have a couple of jobs. i feel trapped.

why am i never satisfied?

how is it possible to feel bad for challenging someone too much? is part of the relationship compromise lessening the extent to which one is oneself?

If thou must love me (Sonnet 14)
by Elizabeth Barret Browning

If thou must love me, let it be for nought
Except for love's sake only. Do not say,
"I love her for her smile—her look—her way
Of speaking gently,—for a trick of thought
That falls in well with mine, and certes brought
A sense of pleasant ease on such a day"—
For these things in themselves, Belovèd, may
Be changed, or change for thee—and love, so wrought,
May be unwrought so. Neither love me for
Thine own dear pity's wiping my cheeks dry:
A creature might forget to weep, who bore
Thy comfort long, and lose thy love thereby!
But love me for love's sake, that evermore
Thou mayst love on, through love's eternity.

i know i have choices, and yet i make none.

how can i not feel trapped? i'm trapped by my own stagnation, my self-inflicted ossification! i don't have to work where i work! i don't have to be in this relationship! i don't have to get this degree! i chose these things. i made decisions. and i can decide again.

i suppose sometimes i get a little caught up in self-pity, but i am far from impotent. i need to appreciate my life more. and i do appreciate it.

it is a good life. it is my own creation. and it is evolving.

deep.

benazir bhutto is dead.

wow.

she was the first female political figure i ever knew. before winnie mandela, before margaret thatcher. the first. a brown woman. a liberator. a symbol of democracy and justice.

even when she was called down for corruption and deposed, she was still one of the few female figures in world politics dominated by bosnia, nato, haiti, china and taiwan, etc.

granted, she was corrupt. nepotism and accepting bribes were part of her practice and she was oppressive. but not initially. initially she represented freedom of choice, liberty, hope.

even in this election she was a symbol of democracy against an opponent who is a military leader and who just recently released control of the army (in addition to arresting opponents and removing supreme court justices).

she was strong. determined. brilliant. and resilient. she was a complex political figure with a long history in pakistani politics. and i am saddened by her death.

mary pumps the positivity

i can't sit still when this plays...
finefinefinefinefinefine- oooh!
cuz i like what i see when i'm looking at me when i'm walking past the mirror...
i won't change my life, my life's just fine!

(it doesn't hurt that michael's jamming alongside her in the tux.)

thanksgiving

met the parents and family... they were such fun and very sweet people. so things are moving on their rapid way and i wonder if that means to a rapid demise. i hope not, but life is unpredictable in the main- maybe it's actually predictable in the main and only unpredictable sometime. in any case, in this instance i leave our relationship in the realm of the enjoyably, solidly, unpredictable. his mom's funny and kind, his dad's sweet and kind, his sister's really chill and his brother's a pretty hot military gay. plus his grandma's down-to-earth and approachable. he likes my grandma, too. oh yeah, he met some of my family the day before. that also went well.

we fed him chinese food. they did the traditional thanksgiving thing. it was sweet. the desserts really were a treat- especially the vegan chocolate peanut bomb. wow.

after we left, i got myself a bacon cheeseburger and loaded potato skins. excellence.

some e.e. cummings

my sweet old etcetera
aunt lucy during the recent

war could and what
is more did tell you just
what everybody was fighting

for,
my sister

isabel created hundreds
(and
hundreds) of socks not to
mention shirts fleaproof earwarmers

etcetera wristers etcetera, my
mother hoped that

i would die etcetera
bravely of course my father used
to become hoarse talking about how it was
a privilege and if only he
could meanwhile my

self etcetera lay quietly
in the deep mud et

cetera
(dreaming,
et
cetera, of
Your smile
eyes knees and of your Etcetera)



---------------------------------------------------------------------------------


since feeling is first
who pays any attention
to the syntax of things
will never wholly kiss you;

wholly to be a fool
while Spring is in the world

my blood approves,
and kisses are a better fate
than wisdom
lady i swear by all flowers. Don't cry
--the best gesture of my brain is less than
your eyelids' flutter which says

we are for each other: then
laugh, leaning back in my arms
for life's not a paragraph

And death i think is no parenthesis

- both poems from 100 selected poems by e.e. cummings
_____________________________________________________


being a sentimentalist, i chose these two poems.

when cummings wrote his poems, did he aspire to greatness or to just write? was he influenced by others? had he studied poetry extensively? when viewing his work, did he see through the lens of structural rules established through academic study? was every word positioned strategically, or was the process more organic- an innate talent?

i'm sure there has been exposition of his method in some book or article out there. maybe he has discussed it himself. i guess i'll take a look around.

if anyone reads this and wants to add a favorite cummings poem to this post or information about his method, please do.

school

either i'm the biggest dummy or i'm just not cutting it. ok. granted i've only gotten A's in my grading. but i wrote my draft abstract for my master's project. yes, it was a very rough draft. my preceptor took a look at it and then wrote a two-pager which eliminated most of the language i used and every place where i'd gotten creative with describing the study's parameters! to make it worse, he used 'track changes,' so i can see every little part of my work that he discarded. ouch.

maybe it's because i think i'm a pretty good writer that makes this feel like such an affront. i want to revise his revision and eliminate almost everything that he did, out of spite. i can't do that though... i'm in this position to learn and this is a huge lesson.

LESSON:
an abstract for a study or a paper is not an introduction for an essay.

just when you think you know some shit, you learn you don't know nearly as much shit as you think you do.

blah.

i need to catch up on everything...

male aggression

and male oppression. i've got a lot of work to do around this stuff- i need to have some real conversations, especially with men, and do some hardcore reading.

i'm largely ignorant and the scope of it, from preliminary discussion and thinking, is immense.

any volunteers? i listen well...

aaaagh!!!!

my baby just surprised me by coming home early!!!! i'm so happy!


yes! worrrrrk!

stop violence against women

did a small demonstration in response to the call for a day of action on October 31st. The BE BOLD. WEAR RED. campaign was really important to me. i'm glad i made the space for it and that other folks came out. altogether there were 10-12 folks- mainly women- that attended. the call was in response to some violent acts perpetrated against women of color in the recent past; i recognize the racism that makes it ok to ignore violence done to brown bodies and the silence that surrounds violence done to women of color and i acknowledge that violence towards any woman is steeped in a history of sexism and patriarchy, so it was imperative that I act. i also wanted to make it more universal, so the sign i made said 'stop violence against women.' i love koyuki. she's a great friend. mike's a lucky dude to have her in his life. she helped me a lot.

two women came up and told their stories. it made the act worthwhile. i think of all the stories we didn't hear, but the women that may have felt encouraged by our making our stance. i also felt a little weird about putting something that i care about on such a public platform. it went well for two days worth of planning though...

here's the text of the call:

be bold be brave be red stop the violence http://documentthesilence.wordpress.com/

Recent events in the United States have moved us to action. Violence against women is sadly, not a new phenomenon in our country or in the world, however, in the last year women of color have experienced brutal forms of violence, torture, rape and injustice which have gone unnoticed, received little to no media coverage, or a limited community response. We are responding to:

* The brutal and inhumane rape, torture, and kidnapping of Megan Williams in Logan, West Virginia who was held by six assailants for a month.

* Rape survivors in the Dunbar Housing Projects in West Palm Beach, Florida one of whom was forced to perform sexual acts on her own child.

* A 13 year old Native American girl was beaten by two white women and has since been harassed by several men yelling "white power" outside of her home

* Seven black lesbian girls attempted to stop an attacker and were latter charged with aggravated assault and are facing up to 11 year prison sentences

In a Litany of Survival, Audre Lorde writes, "When we are silent, we are still afraid. So it is better to speak remembering we were never meant to survive." These words shape our collective organizing to break the silence surrounding women of color's stories of violence. We are asking for community groups, grass-root organizations, college campus students and groups, communities of faith, online communities, and individuals to join us in speaking out against violence against women of color. If we speak, we cannot be invisible.

Join us and stand up to violence against women!

* Be bold, be brave, be red. Wear red on October 31, 2007. Take a picture or video of yourself and friends wearing red. Send it to: beboldbered@gmail.com. We'll post it!

* Take Your Red to the Streets! Know of a location where violence occurred against a woman of color? Have a public location where you feel women of color are often ignored? Make violence against women of color visible by decorating the space in red. Be sure to send us pictures and or video of your display!

* Rally! Gather your friends, family, and community to rally. Check out the Document the Silence website for the litany we're asking participants to read together on October 31st. Be sure to send us pictures and/or video of the event! You could even gather where you created a display!
--
STOP THE VIOLENCE
WEAR RED ON OCTOBER 31, 2007
http://documentthesilence.wordpress.com/

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

and here's a tiny picture of us before City Hall in Philadelphia:

california

took my lover. well, now i can do some work and catch up on some sleep. get myself in order again. joy and sorrow intermingle at the thought of two weeks without him. it will feel really good to have my mind again, not that i won't think of him, but yeah- i'll be able to do some critical thinking about my program and projects. by the time he gets back, maybe i'll have figured out how to better balance school and infatuation. we can hope...

Starting over

listen children
keep this in the place
you have for keeping
always
keep it all ways

we have never hated black

listen
we have been ashamed
hopeless tired mad
but always
all ways
we loved us

we have always loved each other
children all ways

pass it on

****

won't you celebrate with me
what i have shaped into
a kind of life? i had no model.
born in babylon
both nonwhite and woman
what did i see to be except myself?
i made it up
here on this bridge between
starshine and clay,
my one hand holding the other; come celebrate
with me that everyday
something has tried to kill me
and has failed.

-Both poems by Lucille Clifton

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


This woman was a genius; truly gifted with the use of language. I think her work calls me to awareness in two ways- first, there is an internal pull that reawakens deep, personal knowing; second, there is a call to remember the stories that make up my past (the woman stories, black stories, travel stories, queer stories, Jamaican stories, etc).

Dating a white man makes me want to revisit these facets of my identity to maintain clarity and balance. Our connection is fulfilling, but it does throw into stark relief all the identities that I have actively and passively claimed. What does it mean for me to be queer-identified, to work in an LGBT community, to be visible in that way and to be partnered with a man? What does it mean for me as a black woman who is invested in black liberation/unity to be dating a white person? What does it mean for me as a womanist and feminist to be dating a nonfeminist man? As an immigrant woman, do I represent, to him, an exotic other for consumption? Can he, as a white US citizen, really see me and be with me on equal terms?

So far we haven't had any problems interpersonally, but I have had to- and still do- grapple with these questions. It helps that he is actively antiracist. It helps that he is totally enamored of me and my brain. It helps that he is not a homophobe, but is an LGBT ally.

I don't believe that I have to surrender any of these identities because of who I partner with, but I do think it requires examination so that I can avoid compromising or undermining myself. It's helpful to have read some of lucille clifton's work because of its effect on me; because it pushes me to investigate self and history. It stands to reason that I would have to see to my foundations so that I am able to fully meet and be with my partner. I'm sure neither of us would be very happy with an alexia that has lost her grounding.

Here's a quote from Michel Foucault that really fits this little post, "The critical ontology of ourselves... has to be conceived as an attitude, an ethos, a philosophic life in which the critique of what we are is at one and the same time the historical analysis of the limits that are imposed on us and an experiment with the possibility of going beyond them."

This relationship is definitely an exploration beyond my historical and personal limits. Thank goodness it's sexy and fun!

bendicion

BLESSING THE BOATS
(at St. Mary's)

by Lucille Clifton

may the tide
that is entering even now
the lip of our understanding
carry you out
beyond the face of fear
may you kiss
the wind then turn from it
certain that it will
love your back
may you
open your eyes to water
water waving forever
and may you in your innocence
sail through this to that



From Quilting: Poems 1987-1990 by Lucille Clifton. Copyright © 2001 by Lucille Clifton.

good vibrations

Let go of your worries

and be completely clear-hearted,

like the face of a mirror

that contains no images.

If you want a clear mirror,

behold yourself

and see the shameless truth,

which the mirror reflects.

If metal can be polished

to a mirror-like finish,

what polishing might the mirror

of the heart require?

Between the mirror and the heart

is this single difference:

the heart conceals secrets,

while the mirror does not.

- Rumi

Things are going well. Classes have begun and we're looking at really cool identity/difference/multiculturalism-type theory. It's exhilarating, somewhat and challenging- I won't pretend that the material is facile, but it's fun!

Other awesome things happening: my friendships are deepening and I'm opening up/connecting with folks more easily than I have in the past; I went on an interview for my Master's placement and the guy pretty much asked me to choose their spot for my work (wow!); my brothers and I have been having really, really good interactions (not fraught with tension and with fewer reservations); I've had some pretty good dates (HOT, in one particular case); K. and I have resolved that unresolved stuff and she's awesome; my mom and I are better friends, taking interest and joy in each other's interests and joys (I like, and cherish, that); my house mate and I are getting on famously; and finally, riding my bicycle just feels better each day- especially with the new tires and seat.

Though that paragraph (?) was not a paragraph, it hit all the necessary spots.

More anon...