Yes ladies and gents--I'm talking about the (or my) favorite girl group from the early 90s and into some years after that.
Sisters With Voices (maybe not the catchiest name these days) could SANG!
They make me happy. . .and a little bit weak in the knees
Tuesday, October 16, 2007
Wednesday, October 10, 2007
Maybe we should start using nooses like we use nigger...
Columbia Univeristy hangs nooses too
A few friends (okay, just a couple...read: two) have suggested that this posting needs a little more than just a title and a link.
One friend's response was simply, "What does 'Maybe we should start using nooses like we use nigger' mean?"
I get it--I can't just live in my head, assuming you all know how to read what's inside with no direction. Well here goes a brief, tired at the end of the day, attempt for the masses:
Right now there's a huge backlash/uproar surrounding the Jena 6 case and many angry and disgruntled racists in this here country we call America are choosing this moment to "copycat" the use of nooses to drive attention to the fact (that several Americans like to disregard) that racism is as alive today as it was 300 years ago. . .
Jena Six case spurs copycats nationwide
By Marisol Bello
USA Today
On the campus of the University of Maryland, where a third of the students are minorities, a noose is found hanging from a tree in front of a building that houses black organizations.
At the Model Secondary School for the Deaf on the campus of Gallaudet University in Washington, D.C., seven students, six white and one black, assault a black student and scrawl KKK and swastikas all over him.
The incidents are among at least a dozen racial incidents across the country found in news reports since the case of the "Jena Six." The six black teens were charged with beating a white student after a series of racial incidents that included white students hanging nooses from a schoolyard tree.
Most of the dozen occurrences in the past two months involved a noose left anonymously at a school or workplace, including nooses found in a Long Island, N.Y., police locker room, at a Pittsburgh bus maintenance garage and at several high schools.
"For a dozen incidents to come to the public's attention is a lot," says Mark Potok, director of the Intelligence Project of the Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks hate groups. "I don't generally see noose incidents in a typical month. We might hear about a handful in a year."
Several of the recent events are being investigated by police as hate crimes - crimes motivated by prejudice based on race, religion, sexual orientation or ethnicity.
Criminologists and civil rights advocates say there is usually a spike in hate crimes after events such as the Jena case, although recent data are unavailable. The most recent statistics are for 2005.
"Any time you have a case that receives national notoriety, you see an uptick in copycat offenses," says Brian Levin, executive director of the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University, San Bernardino.
After 9/11, FBI reports showed the number of anti-Muslim hate crimes shot up from 28 in 2000 to 481 in 2001.
Copycat offenses are most often committed by men under 22 who are bored or drunk and looking for attention, Levin says. They generally are not members of hate groups, he says, but they harbor racial animosity or feel threatened by racial groups they think have unfair advantages, such as affirmative action.
"Those prejudices are already there for the most part, and what the Jena incident did was give them a green light on repeating this novelty," Levin says. "It's a way of reasserting their importance."
Scholars and civil rights advocates say the rash of episodes reflects the country's continued tensions over race.
"It's something in our culture that never goes away even though all this progress has been made," says Philip Dray, a New York writer on black history who authored "At the Hands of Persons Unknown: The Lynching of Black America." "Below the surface remains a hostility and distrust that can be easily awakened. ... You can have a situation where people go along for years, and then an incident triggers it and you have this kind of eruption."
He says nooses are an unmistakable act of hostility toward blacks, given the country's history of 4,000 lynchings of black men in the 19th and 20th centuries.
The Model Secondary School, where half of the 175 students are minorities, hired a consultant after the Sept. 29 attack to train the faculty and staff to deal with racism, says Dean Kathy Jankowski.
She says the school already sponsored diversity assemblies and cultural festivals and assigns students to sit at different tables during lunch so they can learn about other groups.
That's why the attack was so surprising, she says.
"It's very disappointing," Jankowski says. "We have done so much to promote diversity, and it still happens. ... It tells me we need to do more."
On Sept. 20, the day more than 20,000 people from across the country rallied in Jena, La., to support the Jena Six, Rosalyn Carpenter of Nashville couldn't believe it when she saw a red pickup truck drive by with a noose hanging from the back.
She and other demonstrators were in Alexandria, near Jena, waiting for their tour bus home.
"It was so bizarre," says Carpenter, president and CEO of the Urban League of Middle Tennessee. "To me it spoke to where we were, in the Deep South, and what is acceptable and what is allowed. ... We need to get it together when it comes to issues of race."
Two males, 18 and 16, were arrested. The older teen was charged with contributing to the delinquency of a minor, driving while intoxicated and inciting to riot.
In Winchester, Ky., four teens were charged in August with terroristic threats for taunting a black classmate with drawings of a noose, a Confederate flag and someone being whipped and lynched. The mother of one says her 17-year-old son wasn't doing it because of Jena.
"I know he meant nothing by it," says Lois Cotton. "I know he's not racist. He said he was just joking around. They were passing time in class."
She says her son didn't understand the impact of the drawings and has apologized. "I think he understands how serious this thing is," Cotton says.
My sarcastic and (wanting to be slightly humorous, but quite serious) response to the random noose hangings is, why not treat nooses like so many African-Americans use the word "nigger"--or, should I say "nigga"?
Somehow, we've ascribed the term that degraded us for so long (and still does) with some kind of inherent power. Of course, we're only okay with its use when we are the ones who use it. My nigga!!! or Nigga, please!, which to me mirrors the beloved Bitch, please!
None of it is acceptable. Self-hatred, or as my girl Karyn would say, "self-loathing" really is quite unbecoming, and it speaks volumes to our capabilities and future trajectories.
My "maybe" statement was only meant to raise eyebrows at what could so easily (thanks to our collective creative energies--though not always synergized) become a laughable moment in time. To remind us to be conscious and to not take things lightly. Not that anyone is taking the Jena 6 lightly. . .I hope.
Sign it, seal it, deliver it.
A few friends (okay, just a couple...read: two) have suggested that this posting needs a little more than just a title and a link.
One friend's response was simply, "What does 'Maybe we should start using nooses like we use nigger' mean?"
I get it--I can't just live in my head, assuming you all know how to read what's inside with no direction. Well here goes a brief, tired at the end of the day, attempt for the masses:
Right now there's a huge backlash/uproar surrounding the Jena 6 case and many angry and disgruntled racists in this here country we call America are choosing this moment to "copycat" the use of nooses to drive attention to the fact (that several Americans like to disregard) that racism is as alive today as it was 300 years ago. . .
Jena Six case spurs copycats nationwide
By Marisol Bello
USA Today
On the campus of the University of Maryland, where a third of the students are minorities, a noose is found hanging from a tree in front of a building that houses black organizations.
At the Model Secondary School for the Deaf on the campus of Gallaudet University in Washington, D.C., seven students, six white and one black, assault a black student and scrawl KKK and swastikas all over him.
The incidents are among at least a dozen racial incidents across the country found in news reports since the case of the "Jena Six." The six black teens were charged with beating a white student after a series of racial incidents that included white students hanging nooses from a schoolyard tree.
Most of the dozen occurrences in the past two months involved a noose left anonymously at a school or workplace, including nooses found in a Long Island, N.Y., police locker room, at a Pittsburgh bus maintenance garage and at several high schools.
"For a dozen incidents to come to the public's attention is a lot," says Mark Potok, director of the Intelligence Project of the Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks hate groups. "I don't generally see noose incidents in a typical month. We might hear about a handful in a year."
Several of the recent events are being investigated by police as hate crimes - crimes motivated by prejudice based on race, religion, sexual orientation or ethnicity.
Criminologists and civil rights advocates say there is usually a spike in hate crimes after events such as the Jena case, although recent data are unavailable. The most recent statistics are for 2005.
"Any time you have a case that receives national notoriety, you see an uptick in copycat offenses," says Brian Levin, executive director of the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University, San Bernardino.
After 9/11, FBI reports showed the number of anti-Muslim hate crimes shot up from 28 in 2000 to 481 in 2001.
Copycat offenses are most often committed by men under 22 who are bored or drunk and looking for attention, Levin says. They generally are not members of hate groups, he says, but they harbor racial animosity or feel threatened by racial groups they think have unfair advantages, such as affirmative action.
"Those prejudices are already there for the most part, and what the Jena incident did was give them a green light on repeating this novelty," Levin says. "It's a way of reasserting their importance."
Scholars and civil rights advocates say the rash of episodes reflects the country's continued tensions over race.
"It's something in our culture that never goes away even though all this progress has been made," says Philip Dray, a New York writer on black history who authored "At the Hands of Persons Unknown: The Lynching of Black America." "Below the surface remains a hostility and distrust that can be easily awakened. ... You can have a situation where people go along for years, and then an incident triggers it and you have this kind of eruption."
He says nooses are an unmistakable act of hostility toward blacks, given the country's history of 4,000 lynchings of black men in the 19th and 20th centuries.
The Model Secondary School, where half of the 175 students are minorities, hired a consultant after the Sept. 29 attack to train the faculty and staff to deal with racism, says Dean Kathy Jankowski.
She says the school already sponsored diversity assemblies and cultural festivals and assigns students to sit at different tables during lunch so they can learn about other groups.
That's why the attack was so surprising, she says.
"It's very disappointing," Jankowski says. "We have done so much to promote diversity, and it still happens. ... It tells me we need to do more."
On Sept. 20, the day more than 20,000 people from across the country rallied in Jena, La., to support the Jena Six, Rosalyn Carpenter of Nashville couldn't believe it when she saw a red pickup truck drive by with a noose hanging from the back.
She and other demonstrators were in Alexandria, near Jena, waiting for their tour bus home.
"It was so bizarre," says Carpenter, president and CEO of the Urban League of Middle Tennessee. "To me it spoke to where we were, in the Deep South, and what is acceptable and what is allowed. ... We need to get it together when it comes to issues of race."
Two males, 18 and 16, were arrested. The older teen was charged with contributing to the delinquency of a minor, driving while intoxicated and inciting to riot.
In Winchester, Ky., four teens were charged in August with terroristic threats for taunting a black classmate with drawings of a noose, a Confederate flag and someone being whipped and lynched. The mother of one says her 17-year-old son wasn't doing it because of Jena.
"I know he meant nothing by it," says Lois Cotton. "I know he's not racist. He said he was just joking around. They were passing time in class."
She says her son didn't understand the impact of the drawings and has apologized. "I think he understands how serious this thing is," Cotton says.
My sarcastic and (wanting to be slightly humorous, but quite serious) response to the random noose hangings is, why not treat nooses like so many African-Americans use the word "nigger"--or, should I say "nigga"?
Somehow, we've ascribed the term that degraded us for so long (and still does) with some kind of inherent power. Of course, we're only okay with its use when we are the ones who use it. My nigga!!! or Nigga, please!, which to me mirrors the beloved Bitch, please!
None of it is acceptable. Self-hatred, or as my girl Karyn would say, "self-loathing" really is quite unbecoming, and it speaks volumes to our capabilities and future trajectories.
My "maybe" statement was only meant to raise eyebrows at what could so easily (thanks to our collective creative energies--though not always synergized) become a laughable moment in time. To remind us to be conscious and to not take things lightly. Not that anyone is taking the Jena 6 lightly. . .I hope.
Sign it, seal it, deliver it.
Thursday, October 4, 2007
'Nuf Said
Luther, at his best
I love you Luther!
God, if I'd have had the chance to meet him before he went home...
This is what's keeping me alive at the end of my work day, and it's SO worth it.
I love you Luther!
God, if I'd have had the chance to meet him before he went home...
This is what's keeping me alive at the end of my work day, and it's SO worth it.
Last Standing Poet
Name: Samantha Thornhill
Age: 26
Status: Effing Amazing
The Deal: She's got CDs, poems to read, and a book upcoming
Website: www.samathaspeaks.com (click the "Journal" link for her blog)
(read: CHECK HER OUT!!!)
I had the initial (and clueless) pleasure of meeting miss Samantha a few years ago through Quraysh Ali Lansana, a longtime friend from Chicago whose poetry show I had just missed seeing (because I am eternally late) at the Bowery Poetry Club. I was new to New York and it was my first time there...I still haven't really learned my lesson about being late, but I haven't completely missed anything since then--I promise!
After trying to apologize to Quraysh profusely on a Sunday afternoon, I accepted defeat and leaned into the introduction phase. Samantha was there and she hadn't missed the show. To make up for my absence, I followed the group of family and friends out to a Chinese restaurant. We ate, exchanged information--I left.
During the intro phase and through supper (dinner pre-6pm), I did mention my then strong and living desire to get my MFA in Creative Writing, similar to many at the table that afternoon turned evening. And while no one was unfriendly in the least, no one seemed as happy or excited as the counselors whom I'd just left behind at Howard just a few months before. It was then I started to understand that whatever I wanted in life would have to be mine, and I would have to own it. No one was necessarily going to push me or cheer me on. I'd had to establish a self-endorsing team of my own and in myself.
Back to Samantha and her amazingness. She reached out. Albeit, her reach out (otherwise known as adding me to her email list) had nothing to do with my desire to "do" poetry. At the time, I was also completely clueless with regard to this theory of recklessness. It's growing on me. [The idea of throwing one's self into a task or into a passion directly seems slightly difficult, especially with my varied and extensive list of interests (singing, knitting, writing, dancing (sometimes)), as well as painful--the actual throwing, that is.]
... SAMANTHA (i digress easily, as you can see) added me to her list and I started learning about her slamming and poetry. I never went to her shows. I hardly ever really read her emails. I was too busy working at Random House! The one email that did finally catch my eye had to do with her needing mentors for a program she was heading up at the Children's Aid Society that fall. I needed to do community service for my soul. I responded. We reunited. (A story about a girl named Doriza who stole my heart away to the Philippines shall one day follow.)
One of the interesting things about Sam is (at least from my perspective) her sincere and true dedication to everything she engages in. She's a poet, an artist, and an amazing one at that. But she's also a teacher, mentor, organizer, lover, human.
This kind of messed me up in the head. How come SHE can be all focused and I'm all over the place? I still wonder this. I think they call it focus.
Only just now, about three years later, am I finally finding myself really able to read and devote some real time to "hearing" Sam's ridiculous talent. Why? Because I'm kind of following her example. Doing something with this devoted focus thing.
I just read her poem (A Memory) about Amina Baraka, wife of Amiri Baraka, who I heard recently read a poem at the Bowery about a red dress and a purple hat. (I've got to find the footage of that poem.)
If you're seriously not made to smile by "A Memory" like I was, go away.
Or, you can just go to Sam's page and find something you do like. She will become yours, and hopefully, you'll jump to task quicker than I did.
Age: 26
Status: Effing Amazing
The Deal: She's got CDs, poems to read, and a book upcoming
Website: www.samathaspeaks.com (click the "Journal" link for her blog)
(read: CHECK HER OUT!!!)
I had the initial (and clueless) pleasure of meeting miss Samantha a few years ago through Quraysh Ali Lansana, a longtime friend from Chicago whose poetry show I had just missed seeing (because I am eternally late) at the Bowery Poetry Club. I was new to New York and it was my first time there...I still haven't really learned my lesson about being late, but I haven't completely missed anything since then--I promise!
After trying to apologize to Quraysh profusely on a Sunday afternoon, I accepted defeat and leaned into the introduction phase. Samantha was there and she hadn't missed the show. To make up for my absence, I followed the group of family and friends out to a Chinese restaurant. We ate, exchanged information--I left.
During the intro phase and through supper (dinner pre-6pm), I did mention my then strong and living desire to get my MFA in Creative Writing, similar to many at the table that afternoon turned evening. And while no one was unfriendly in the least, no one seemed as happy or excited as the counselors whom I'd just left behind at Howard just a few months before. It was then I started to understand that whatever I wanted in life would have to be mine, and I would have to own it. No one was necessarily going to push me or cheer me on. I'd had to establish a self-endorsing team of my own and in myself.
Back to Samantha and her amazingness. She reached out. Albeit, her reach out (otherwise known as adding me to her email list) had nothing to do with my desire to "do" poetry. At the time, I was also completely clueless with regard to this theory of recklessness. It's growing on me. [The idea of throwing one's self into a task or into a passion directly seems slightly difficult, especially with my varied and extensive list of interests (singing, knitting, writing, dancing (sometimes)), as well as painful--the actual throwing, that is.]
... SAMANTHA (i digress easily, as you can see) added me to her list and I started learning about her slamming and poetry. I never went to her shows. I hardly ever really read her emails. I was too busy working at Random House! The one email that did finally catch my eye had to do with her needing mentors for a program she was heading up at the Children's Aid Society that fall. I needed to do community service for my soul. I responded. We reunited. (A story about a girl named Doriza who stole my heart away to the Philippines shall one day follow.)
One of the interesting things about Sam is (at least from my perspective) her sincere and true dedication to everything she engages in. She's a poet, an artist, and an amazing one at that. But she's also a teacher, mentor, organizer, lover, human.
This kind of messed me up in the head. How come SHE can be all focused and I'm all over the place? I still wonder this. I think they call it focus.
Only just now, about three years later, am I finally finding myself really able to read and devote some real time to "hearing" Sam's ridiculous talent. Why? Because I'm kind of following her example. Doing something with this devoted focus thing.
I just read her poem (A Memory) about Amina Baraka, wife of Amiri Baraka, who I heard recently read a poem at the Bowery about a red dress and a purple hat. (I've got to find the footage of that poem.)
If you're seriously not made to smile by "A Memory" like I was, go away.
Or, you can just go to Sam's page and find something you do like. She will become yours, and hopefully, you'll jump to task quicker than I did.
Monday, October 1, 2007
Knowing the News
“A little butterfly in Panama beat her wings and created a storm in China.”
Not at all could I ever say that I love what was turned up (as noted in the story, linked above) but I do love ordinary people, of which I am certainly one. Eduardo Arias in Panama seems to have just saved many lives, where several thousand had already been lost--to a poisonous ingredient in toothpaste being manufactured in China.
One of my favorite church songs is "Ordinary People," (not the John Legend version) where the lyrics read:
Not at all could I ever say that I love what was turned up (as noted in the story, linked above) but I do love ordinary people, of which I am certainly one. Eduardo Arias in Panama seems to have just saved many lives, where several thousand had already been lost--to a poisonous ingredient in toothpaste being manufactured in China.
One of my favorite church songs is "Ordinary People," (not the John Legend version) where the lyrics read:
Just ordinary people
God uses ordinary people
He chooses people just like me and you
Who are willing to do as He commands
God uses people that will give Him all
No matter how small your all may seem to you
Because little becomes much as you place it in the Master's hand
(the rest of the lyrics can be found here)
So, I'm just thankful for the ordinary people who are willing to step outside of themselves every now and then to do something that may seem little, but that truly becomes much more than that.
Also, a shout out to Coalton Bennett, a friend of mine, who in true form, incited a brief but meaningful conversation with me regarding the news. I was saying I just don't pay that much attention to the news because it's so biased and, in general more disturbing than I feel is necessary for my life. I admitted to living in a comfortable, though potentially ignorant and dangerous bubble, most of the time. I went on to admit that my laziness and opposition to knowing all of what was in the news was leveraged by my constant exposure to like-minded people who do my leg-work for me. He suggested that even they have biases when they give me my daily dose of what's important in the world--and that I should be informed; that my brain was the filter I should rely on, and not the people or random media sources that come into my psyche.
At the end of the conversation, there was no right or wrong--there was just a truth that I couldn't deny. Bubbles are for kids. And it's time for me to up my news game, so I don't end up, like my friend suggested, finding out about something three years late that really mattered.
...and so here I am, adding a news component to my favorite things. Because being informed (and always smart) really is one of them.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)