BE BOLD BE RED

BE BOLD BE RED
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Why You Don't Have Black Friends

Oh boy

Well I guess it was coming , we all knew it was, and of course one week before election day , a brim with vino and freshly cried out for reasons I won't explain

I have decided to do something I say i never do but I guess I implicitly do all the time but for one drunken monday before break I am going to do explicitly.

I am going to tell you , why you have no black friends.

I am going to tell you why you want more but don't have them

( please understand all are opinions of author)

I am probably going to curse reopen old wounds and start crying but hey this is information you need and it will probably be gawked at and subsequently plagiarized and twisted beyond all recognition in a few degrees of separation but SHHH This is a PSA

Ready The FIVE reasons you have no black friends . This reasons have subsections but i'm trying to be basic.

1. You have no black friends because you don't give a fuck about black friends as people. This the primary reason you have no black friends. Becuase when push comes to shove at the edge of the knife , you will consistently ask your " black friends" to perform menial and dehumanizing tasks and maintain unhealthy unsatisying relationships for the sake of your interests. You will happily and gloriously ignore whatever we say ( mind you even if we jump up and WE ARE NOT ALL THE SAME therefore you might actually have to listen to *GASP* more than one of us at a time) to assert your right that we should take abuse.
2. When given the option of momentary discomfort to alleviate actual agonizing suffering and pressure mentally physically and physiologically for " black friends" you will instead throw a snitfit or perform great feats of twisting logic to sidestep that discomfort for feelings that affirm your a good person/worthy person/accomplished person.
3. You are horrible to YOURSELVES in ways that make any self respecting person who has an option of not being near you run like Usain Bolt before he knew he was winning , and you perform the double act of trying to enforce this level of self harm on us.
4. You aren't actually that interesting, just that omnipresent. You're like comcast in philadelphia. However you might suck we have very few options , so we try and keep it pleasant but most important we try and keep it moving.
5. You don't have that many if any " real friends" of any color. Black folk just ain't part of the shenanigans
   

In reference to the GQ article what I found amusing was the fact that it was written with the presumption of a white audience. Considering most of the GQ subscribers I know are black that says something of the GATE about the interests you presume to be ABLE TO SHARE WITH BLACK PEOPLE.. Also known as black folk are so ALIEN that you need to mount a search for a black friend( Woc authors, posters, safe spaces, the great damn pumpkin....... ) More importantly not a single word a peep an idea about WHAT BLACK PEOPLE THOUGHT ABOUT FRIENDSHIP

because that's not actually important. And I say this as a commendation to the author And I say this as a commendation to the author for writing honestly a halfway decent article about it. HE didn't lie he framed it excellently. And that's part of the problem. When people want or need or look for more " black friends" . They don't really actually care about how those folks feels, they don't want to make any adjustments , or go through any real period of growth or change to be Good TO the people they are looking for.

That's not actually the goal. The goal is to prove that your friendship circle /movement/school/dance theatre/ general immortal soul/hip bike club is GOOD .

Prime Example via Ilyka via Tekanji

I found this as i dawdled about my stat counter. But yeah this right here. OOh boy. I am not or well I will try to not fly amazon style machete first considering iam counseling on "friends". because all out through her main goal is not the repricussions or feeling of the people she calims to be " taking seriously" . It is instead " not handing trolls ammunition" . Whats worse is the psuedo put upon tone. Because at the ned of the day , caring for someone means that at some point their monumental pain and AGONY ( I love the subtle oh " she feels" rather than " she is being" ) is better than your moral victory or your precious image.

Friends don't ask friends to stay in places where they feel unloved and unhurt and unsupported to prevent them from damaging a movement or appearances.

If a friend is in an abusive relationship or an abusive situation, that causes them grief and a constant need to self isolate, maybe it's just me and my friends , but we tend to be from the " and how fast can the Uhaul come/ Portland might be great for you / there are OTHER FISH IN THE SEA/ job emails/ they'll never find them again , if you get hurt one more time/HAPPY TRAILS " school.

I would never reply to a woman who felt that she had been marginalized that she was just dreaming it or being overly-sensitive or playing the victim. I don’t know how many other ways to put it that you could understand. I would take her concerns seriously and try to understand them the best I was able and work to end that in good faith. But I would not tell her “happy trails” if she wanted to leave feminism over it.[...]I’m not arguing that the oppression exists, I’m arguing what we should do about it.

Why not? no seriously why not ? What reason can you give me that if a friend continually and repeatedly feels hurt and disrespected and your efforts to change teh situation aren'tw orking why wouldn't you go Happy trails(I have been blogging for what two/three years, Audre Lorde wrote to Mary Daly before I was born, Ida B Wells was pre 20th century I stick with black women here but you can extrapolate happily) , if this constant hurting of a friend ( and it is not a feeling because the women these women leave or DIE there is an " admission" wait it was true!) keeps happening.

And they are your main concern , why not go happy trails , why not go you know what until this gets better, until this stops hurting and destroying you. You need not be here. And taking concerns seriously is a mental exercise, that satisfies YOU not the person being hurt, so no you get no cookie.

MP:And yeah, I’m sure I am part of the problem, because I feel very strongly that feminism needs to do better, and not let these people go and just throw up our hands and say “you’re right, we’re a racist, classist, homophobic, transphobic, ablist institution. Off you go then, wish it could have turned out different.” [..,] I’m part of the problem because I don’t feel it’s fair to all of the feminists out there who are working to repair these problems to be attacked this way.

GQ:Reverend Jeremiah Wright, who while clearly an idiot in some ways, is certainly not an unfamiliar character in black churches. And his foolish theory that the American government invented AIDS and gave it to black people? That rumor’s been spread through the black community for twenty years. Hardly defensible, but hardly surprising.

She's being sarcastic,He a bit of a tool . I am being honest. You are part of the problem ( for many reasons but this is one of em). The primary concern is not the feelings of the women feeling attacked but fairness to these women working. Newsflash, when it comes to friends mental and emotional well being. I AM NOT FAIR . GOOD FRIENDS ARE NOT FAIR. Someone messes with the wife enough to make her feel despondent, after she trusted them ,(no one disagrees this is happening just that we should take more of it) That person and I have business.No but , I do not care if seven other women in that room didn't do anything (more so I tend to be getting angrier at them that something was not done as they let it happen and have no beef with the wife)but I'll be damned if I am gonna let my wife feel pain and then temper my words cause someone is uncomfortable. And the last thing I'm gonna ask is that she take more of it for someone else's feelings.

Consequently if said wife has history with people doing unforgiveable evil things to her and says so . I do not call her crazy. I do not qualify my her support of her , I do not excuse her, but I also don't say something is not defensible and ignore the very reason why well yes yes it is. ESPECIALLY in sensitive situations where in something VERY VERY Similar is true ( and if you don't have any idea what I could mean , this is a reason you may have no black friends)

Friends don't justify to other people why respecting their friends feelings history cultural backgrounds are important. Because guess what friends believe that is a given. Friends don't ask friends to take shit so other people feel better, and if friends disagree they find ways to communicate that MINIMIZE harm even while challenging.

2) Now here the author of the GQ article puts it in pretty boldfaced terms of course he kind of slides it in and then keeps it trucking to the next thing but I am not gonna let him get away with

Maybe it just felt too hard and everyone was relieved when they didn’t have to try anymore. But we don’t seem to have the stomach for that kind of change as a culture anymore, personally or politically—if that had been part of Obama’s message, he wouldn’t have made it out of Iowa.

Now replace everyone with people who have the option of or benefit from not trying ( it's not just white people but also upper middle class black people/ able bodied but remember only bout black folks so assume white folks) and your golden. Except oh happy man in happy white person with no black friends land. It's not a recent development homey, we NEVER had the stomach for that kind of cultural change, hence the idea of ongoing revolution, painful and fraught roads to friendship etc etc. People with good friends, even those of the same race GO THROUGH SOME SHIT, and it's worth it . Anything is , you don't become a dancer, a writer, or performer of any actual worth or fulfillment if you don't actuall work hard at it, IF YOU BELIEVE IT's WORTH IT! For many movements/people/orgs/schools black people have only now become worth it and being lazy/stupid/privileged/entrenched/annoying as all get out and they are shocked SHOCKED they'll have to exert energy cause they are good people ! ( THANK YOU fa_ikaika)

3) I am sorry but if your life causes you to want to punch yourself in the face because it is boring and stereotypical in it's consumptive white bread ridculousness that is not an advertisement for me to join up. I am still confused as to why you think any person with a choice and a lick of sense wants to join the band. It's the constant excuse of well it's hard out here for me or people are mean to me as well and and and. Great I am glad you feel ad treatment is the norm. I am over trying to get used to good treatment . It's one thing if you enjoy your life but find it kidn of corny, it's another if you spend half an article eing wistful at shit and then wondering why it's connected to your isolation to people like you and going hmm it's a race problem. In the UTNE reader article I was in( linked for running my gaber) Jessica Valenti was quoted as saying

"Jessica Valenti, executive editor of Feministing, says she’d like to see some of the “less trendy issues,” like poverty and international concerns, get more space in the feminist blogosphere. “But what happens with us is we put that stuff up and no one comments,” she says. “You put up a blog on abortion, and people do.”

I am quoting her because I hear that and it's encoded defense A LOT . My mentioning it is a critique of it and my critique means you need to giveus credit. But at the end of the day it's not me it's juts how things are and it's sad I do my little bit and I don't get why it's not enough , but I wish REALLY HARD . I commend your wishing but while your wishing I am OVER HERE!!!! PEACE. Frankly I Do not care one way or the other if your a good or bad person , if your orgs and dealings consistently result in ways where you feel they are inadequate and make you unhappy , what kind of fool am I to go SIGN ME UP !

4) Living with white folks is a necessity for some black people in certian dealings it just is. And ya know what it's not entirely unpleasant all the time but frankly wheen Civil Rights was passed the point wasn't integration but fair treatment. In face many black people then and now who LOVE the CR movement ( including this scribler here) feel integration was a huge problem, because it forced interactions people weren't read to have at the expense of our established networks of support. It wasn't about making sure there was enough black people in Harvard , it was about making sure that Howard wasn't treated poorly for not being HArvard and if black people MADE THE CHOICE to go to Harvard , they weren't asked to ride in different and worse subways THERE!
EVen GQ gets this one:

So I took a new tack. I’d ask Twan and Rem to introduce me to their friends. Twan and Rem, like almost every black person I’ve ever been friends with, each live in two different balls of yarn: They have a blacker world and a whiter world. I called them up. It’d be funny, I told Rem. But also serious. “I’ll be careful,” I said.

“Yeah,” Rem said. “You should.”

Our black and POC and non ablist and non stressful contacts are worth their weights in gold. we choose peopel we don't have to EXPLAIN ourselves to. Do you know what it's like to light up cause today you don't have to explain your hair or your culture references. ON some days the sight of Sylvia's screen name inspires chair dancing. I HAVE TO as most brown folks do deal with white folks. On my own time oh hell yeah it becomes a lot more vested in being with folks and things I find interesting and guess what MORE OF THE SAME SHIT I HEAR EVERYDAY ( the in jokes , appropriately erudite references, intellectualism by NYT checklist) not actually that attractive. Oh and Twan and Rem must have DEEP faith in you sir even to entertain this idea.

5) I am NOT using this to say the authors life is soulless and without joy. He himself says at his age their is a life he leads. And he's reasonably okay with it . He describes his present friends very specifically and he seems alright with that. He has the parameters for what he is and is notwilling to do. And you know what so do most people . Even the black ones. That tends to mean you won't have many friends.

The problem is not that you never had "black friends" but that for many people until Barack Obama's presidential candidacy , the various blow ups through out net roots , feminism, and the implosion of race relations in the democratic party.

No one thought actually having black friends was important.

Not in any way that treated " black friends" as equals, as people who didn't owe you something , or should be just overjoyed to be in your presence.

"Black friends" are friends. Simple and plain. People who mighth ave standards and even requiremnts and histories of their own before they magically allow you into their lives or find being with you worthwhile,and the benign neglect model , the colorblind, postracial model of interation, the we're in this together bullshit , hasn't worked because it's not true. It has not resulted in any lasting change or even exerted real effort .

Because for a long time it didn't matter if you " tried" and failed , you could retreat to other enclaves where you'd be commended or wait for the next " black friend" who HAD to deal with you or were forgiving, or simply left the discontent alone and were comfortable ( as a NECESSITY) to allow you to believe in your liberal/progressive/co existence utopia while they KNEW and KNOW better.

The magical wistful and un responsible way that your own discontent is expressed doesn't make you look like good people who just happen to be Wes Anderson charicatures stumbled into alife tehy can't explain surrounded by peopel their not responsible for. It just reminds us how easy adn s soft privilege is for you and how impressive your sheer demand at being coddled for it is. Because the extra sad thing even inteh often simplistic shallow and basic ways you define friends.

You could have black friends you just didn't care.

And what bothers you is now that you do, they more and more don't.
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So wifey,


I posted the link to Melissa Lacewell Harris as a primer because I wanted people to read that before I started , because I feel it deeply and disagree with it as well,but ultimately am there within it.

When you first mentioned Taking Over , I remember distinctly reading the article reviewing it and getting furious. I was especially incensed about the articles definition of characters as multifaceted because and I paraphrase till I can properly find the link " hated gentrification but like almond croissants". I hated that and was frankly prepared to be annoyed when we went to the show. It is an argument that I hear often whenever I am among people at work, online ( I swear to god If it wasn't for BRent,Carlos Kwaru and the other artists I knew I'd incinerate my facebook with glee), at social events " it can't be all bad if you get to consume ( insert random thing that is presumed only to have arrived with the gentrifiers)"

As a New Yorker for all but four years of my life, I in short terms HATE THAT SHIT. So here I am talking about necessities, safety, love,shelter,security, food and you are gonna define it as fair because of pastry and or some random fricking amenity that you only assume was lacking before hand. Because truly if our neighborhoods change we aren't supposed to be in tehm anymore we should boycott and not eat or drink or play even if we had been trying toget those things for years.

What Professor Harris, and Danny Hoch, and you to some extent get is the underlying invisibility that come with gentrification and that have been really painfully repeated iwth this election. The idea that my identity as a young black woman and a person still willfully connected to my roots I must continually prove my right to an existance. In the issue of gentrification it means having a gain and again to combat lies, untruths, complete erasure to justify why I believe kids should have a right to grow up. With this election has come the startling but stark realization that nobody wants to hear from me unless it can make their lives better. And if it was jsut me the person , I could deal . Butit's not me the person , it's me the black woman, it's me the immigrant it's me the educated poor woman, it's me the representative, it's the me I see in the girls on the subway , the boys i talk to on trains,the me I see in the women I write with, or the babies that toddle over to be picked up in parks. It's the constant feeling that through me I have to justify us being a live.

And the gnawing fear that if I justify anything we do too well , it will be ripped from us, that is what gentrification means to me.

When we did the Wifey Wander, I showed Fort Greene I as a neighborhood I have always dreamed of living in , ever since I was around 12 and in a friends car . Loving seeing buildings and brownstones and shops full fo people who looked and sounded like me.

How different it is now, and how vomit inducing. To here it described as an up and coming neighborhood , this place full of lack professionals, to hear it described as safer when crime was high only during teh period o f"benign" neglect and crack and really no more high than any other NYC area.

And as you hear it realize it is code for " white folks are willing to live here" . it doesn't talk about landlords who don't live here being unwilling to sell to the black middle class it doesn't talk about black families wanting to improve their homes being unable to even get the Landmarks service on the phone. It doesn't talk about all of the peopel that come through in the Hoch play.

And it doesn't talk about Melissa the professor and Sydette the agitator , it doesn't talk about how even mentioning these needs these wishes and these desires out loud signals us as whiners, or race card players.

What's worse is to know that for certain things .

You CAN'T talk about it.

I have walked the halls of privilege all my life. My name is ( much to my chagrin) atatched to almost every academic/athletic/artistic acheivement I have . I have been asked to make choices that you can never EVER dream off. And when I read Professor Lacewell talk about knowing what Senator Obama is going through

To know that the mere mention of racial politics brands you an outcaste, to see how being smart and capable makes others HATE you , to see that it renders you sexless and unloveable ( before marrying Barack Obama Muchelle Obama says that she had comitted herself to being alone), to see allies and even people you care for question your every loyalty , to be abandonded and discarded UNTIL someone decides hwo you will be discovered ina fashion that is palatble.

To feel the white hot fury that burns in you every day, and to be among people who truly have no love or care for what they end up stealing from you, or what the world conspires to gift them and bar you from completely.

Their is not soft unedged way to say this , but your wishes often coincide with the destruction of my dreams, of my safe havens,

And watching Obama run to KNOW the utter fury and sadness that must crop up and still he keeps on, to know that that is simply what it is like to be a black person trying to acheive what is claimed teh directive of this country.

And then to recieve emails about the shock white people feel. No matter that we been saying this would happen. That it is happening. And even if it is his year that this is not EVEN CLOSE to the end for us.

Wifey at times I cry for hours on end. I become touchy at being uncalled by stupid boys ( no you can't cap him in his knees), I become touchy at being noticed, I become rigid at having my photo's taken , i become confused at being excluded, i become PANICKED at even speaking my mind but even more so about staying silent because I know what's coming.

If it is bad it will be held up as a reason to destroy me , it will explain teh destruction of me, me in little black boys, me in raids, me in overcrowded school rooms on trains

If it is good, it will be taken , it will be used to pull me from those me's , to fix my voice, to put me in places where I should feel greatful for being told my life is wrong, where I am the only person their not behind a counter

and it will be " fixed" when they put up a photo of someone kind of like me and feel good about themselves by making him a Magical Negro made flesh in a cafe that got it's lease after they kicked out the natural food shop , that had been there for twenty years, but balks at the condo that " blocks their view", and ignores the dying theatre that has been their for half a century while bemoaning the loss of a burlesque house.

and then are proud because they fought the man rather than talked to a neighbor. Kaitlin? remember her selling t-shirts funded by her travels ( my litany against young white travelers for another time) Kaitlin becomes Williamsburgh by fuckings omeone as a native journey, and protesting developers.

Becuase iwth gentrification teh converstaion is always more important with the white people that came after you than the folks whose homes you are destroying

The thing is you can always choose. You mentioned putting down roots. I have roots many of them here For me gentrification, and this election tangentially have been about feeling my roots fill with water and hearing chainsaws in the distance.

Will it cut me down? Will it leave me? What is worse?

To n ot even know what to wish for

and to knwo that you make part of it happen.

At the talkbalk ( I never siad my fear ever kept my loud ass quiet) I spke of responsibility but I also think it has to do with memory . When Danny flashes back to the memory of seeing someone die and contrasting it with the artichoke , the problem isn't that the whole foods is there , but that what it came with is designed to make that mans life not even a memory.

That's what it is for me wifey what is it when our lives are deemed not even worth a memory so you can have a wish you can always decide to give back?
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Class

Read this

You'll need it for next post

aka thanks delux MLH wins

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Me too Donna

I feel like I say I am gonna write something and I get a full head of steam going and I think I don't want to be annoyed today so I give up.

and then I feel like this Ilyka a lot.

I just , maybe it's the 20008 year and my experiences with "feminist" " progressive" politics. Worse than hurt or sad , I am jaded and bored. I can deal with entitled , I can deal with even basic idiotic , but i Ma more and more getting teh feeling taht worse than not knowing about the schisms and teh problems of women , is taht when it comes down to it. PEople don't care . Not onlyt don't the care , but frankly teh enjoy teh dynamic.

People enjoy being able to laugh at Sara Palin and avoid anything of substance because itw ould mean tehy'd have tos huffle of teh stage . Peopel like having conversations about Middle america because if they can talka bout it rather tahn share perspectives , it means their not taht.

PEopel liek taking less tahn six hours on an SNL skit versus a week or so on a Mosque attack because tehy need to find a way to make it once again about the MSM and shaming them rather than the fact that MIDDLE AMERICANS can't celebrate a holiday without worrying about their sons daughters husbands and wives being attacked.

You can't be smater than love , more witty than compassion or more cool than work so let's not actually talk about those things


So instead well for now I want to talk about you know actuall stuff with peopel I love and I volunteer to anyone who would like to particip[ate , but my focus is now .

How do we make the coffee? HOw can I be more involved in actually doing things. How can I prepare for that unspeakable joy and ineveitable heartbreak. How can I make things and be part of teh world instead of spinning in circles?

SO I ask those I read and love and adore and read and argue with.

LL who do we answer to? How do we let them know we answer to them? How do we make l ove and hope from our own bare hands ?

PP How do we avoid becoming cliches? How do we deconstruct and look at our lives in a way that is forgiving to ourselves, and our peers ? While thinking critically and above all hwo do we not be boring and keep it hot. Can we work in the system and out of it.

BBP How do we keep our fierce amazing happiness in a world that would rather us unhappy? How do we raise women children and Black girl genii and queer warriors and allies of wonder in a world that frequently makes me woondering hwo can i turly make my self fly away?

Cripchick How do we get loud enough to make peopel stop thinking of our lives as charity in places where taht's all tehyw ant us to be. How do we navigate spaces that are not and were expressly designed not to house us? How do you stay tethered to your community

Adele , How do we get you to South Africa?

Cyberquilters , How do we war in warmth mediums designed for cold?

QBG How do we love what we love be proud of our quirks? How do I not go nuts at reminding peopel taht it is because not inspite of my blackness I am amazing

Sylvia How do we love the woman that gives us life in all her flaws. How do we be young black girl genius searching for more. Will we ever not be horny

DD How do you do your art and shed light on injustice. How do we bring beauty to places and peoepl so marred by human cruelty and do it while people insist it doesn't exist.

Heather How do aid young people in being proud of themselves and their sexualities, how do we do it with so little?

Joan How do we do it for ourselves?

Nez How do we remain witty and brillant ?

Kai How do we keep cool and smart and open minded and clear headed

Nadia how do I stay connected to my people so close and so far away. How do I find a way to make a job from this work? How do we heal our wounds? How do we turn better cartwheels?

Wifey , how do we get some?(me first) How can our awesome evil and our awesome love be combined to make awesome change.

Bint How do you wish for your daughter.

Fabi WHat are you finally wishing for yourself.

Sudy How do we have thes ethings deep close and important to us, how do we understand teh betrayal by something we had so much faith in and focus on teh important. How do we not end up exhausted in heaps?

Aaminah How beautiful can the simple act of remembering scarves be?

BfP my love How do we rember ourselves first and not catch up this time the next time. How do we make sure that even when our bodies don't agree we don't PUCH through as if weMust be super ?

So many others I don't think I have real questions for but I want to hear from. I gues I just want to hear from peopel making ocffee being real. What do we need to hear notw nat to hear feel good about hearing but need to hear?

In love,

BA
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