a black girl

Let me begin here...

Wednesday, October 18, 2006

First thing's first. You must experience it:

Get music video codes at Bolt.

*sigh*

Lets go get em...

Many of the issues in this video/song have already been noted i.e. his blatant homophobia by saying "gay" to call out the "fake ass emcees" as he dubbs them. Also is use of the word nigga is contestable. I ain't here to talk about that (entirely) I just want to focus on some of the gendered issues at play here.

Certainly inspired by recent comments made by Bill Cosby (who he notes as a man who calls all of them out too) there is some serious blame the victim here. While I am down for the whole calling out mainstream rap's obsession with bling, hypersexualization etc. I think there is a fine line between critique of prorities in rap music and a kind of fire and brimstone about what it is Black people should do to prove themselves respectable citizens. I think this becomes most evident in his critique of women in videos ("video vixens" and emcees alike) who do exploit thier sexuality. While it is clear that I have my own beef with that, what NYOIL does not do is critique the misogyny at play within the two worlds he critiques together yet implies are seperate. Basically, there is no examination of how misogyny influences what role black women take in rap videos and popular culture. While critiquing these "hoes" (yes he calls them hoes) he demands the same migonynistic powers that are demanded of them in the videos to "suck his dick." Not only this but he differentiates young queens from these women-- aparently these women have been dethroned. But I could be asking too much of him. Clearly he stated his mission and purpose in his critique of male rappers. Citing who they are and what they do as "gay." The misogynistic overtones of anything that comes in his critique of women will certainly spill over into his assumptions about what being a woman and a man is. He posits in one of the verses, a case in point where a black woman is being sexually and violently abused/used by a white man this juxtaposed to his liberal use of the term gay to describe these "Uncle Tom" (in service to white people) rappers looks to me like some of the historical associations of gay men and women as traitors to the race (read heterosexual black men). The first for as Eldridge Imagined in his pivotal text Soul on Ice the "faggot" would allow the white man to fuck him in the ass (of course black gay sexuality was constructed around interracial relationships). This fucking allies the gay black male an intimate way to white power, thus selling out "the race." This black women in this pseudo rape vignette is allied to the white man similarly without regard to the power issues he set forth in his verse--she is traitor for her act because in allowing this white man to "nut in her face" she has rejected the black man (read the black race).

Its classic and nauseating. I'm just comforted by the fact that I know hip hop can be more intersectional in its presentation.

p.s. I don't think Malcom, Martin, Garvey, or even Oprah would agree that any of these emcees should get lynched. I just want to go on record as having said that.

Labels: culture, hip hop, history

uttered by a black girl at 1:08 AM. | 5 comments

. . . . . . Catalclysm

Thursday, October 12, 2006

This semester is, so far, a combination of fustrating, amazing, violent, painful, invigorating, and frightening. It is all of these things and not just one that characterize my day to day feelings about my life here in the ivory tower. I am learning how to take care of myself--which is really the stuff that matters in this learning expereince. It is quite easy to forget myself when so much is demanded of me.

This weekend I was slated to attend the Cave Canem Reunion. I've decided not to go in order to catch up on some work, get ahead in some other areas, and try to settle down in my new environment. It is unfortunate that I cannot do this. The workshops I would be attending would surely be a help to perfecting my craft. But I have other opportunities and other carfts to perfect. This weekend, instead of sitting in auditorums with Nikky Finney and other amazing poets, I can be working on my project--learning lithography. I will have other opportunities (maybe next summer!) and other venues to do such things.

I am also in an amazing and fustrating class on Queer Theory which is busting open my assumptions about interdisciplinary and location within my own field(s). I have never been so wrong, so often than in this class and I am thankful for it. Learning was becoming repetitive and unchallenging. I enjoy the challenge and the hard work that must be set forth in order to succeed in this course and in the process of gaining and creating knowledge.

Passing on, or sharing knowledge is another one of my duties these days. I am currently teaching Introduction to Women's Studies. It is an interesting site where my position of power (as educated) is complicated by issues of age (most of my students are exactly my age or older), location, race, class, gender, sexuality... all of these things. For example, I never quite thought about the implications behind explicitly positioning myself as a Black, lesbian, feminist in class because I feared that my authority would be questioned well enough by virtue of me being black and woman. I realized that in actuality, that doesn't really matter. That if my position as educator would be questioned because of those factors, then equally, I am legitimated in my position. I am allied with students who are taught to feel as though they have no place in institutions of learning. I am learning that situating myself with these students at all levels does as much good for those students as it does bad.

I've also learned that I am a pretty darn good teacher.

All of these things (and others that I wish not to devulge here) are really shaping the nature of how I will choose to walk through this earth. In so many ways my undergraduate expereince was not the self questioning expereince that it promised to be. It is here where I am asking myself questions I had never before asked, and it is here that I am shaping and differently molded everyday.

Labels: school, teaching, work