Hey Mister She's my sister

Sally Hemmings was by most decent accounts

Martha Jefferson's half sister.

That's all I could think about for the past week and half.

Wherever she was on the pedestal Ms. Ann was our sister.

Whatever else happened while Martha was growing up and after the babies started coming, Sally was her sister.

And then I think of the word sisterhood and laugh

and cry.

The issue of this love affair in particular is also amusing to me because whenever it is talked about it seems that this is avoided.

We need to be loved. We want to be loved.

BFP,People don't consider the possibility of actual basic love in this because they don't believe.

That we we need basic love.

That we like everyone else want some on to love us best, to be inside us , our spirits our body that we value our own selves even when told not to.

That doing that even when told not over and over again fucks up your head in ways , that makes you angry, makes you frightened, makes your fragile in ways that nobody will ever EVER understand , that it is part of us to wake up and feel wanted feel preferred.

It's the fact that when it does dawn that there may be love, it's not seen as a basic human feeling between humans

but a cosmic lineage that must move the test of earth and time and reset the space continuum .

Sally must be above all sorts of beauty and it must be an EPIC! ROMANCE of EPIC PROPORTIONS

for them to be willing to be related to us.

Meanwhile teenage Sally knows her sister's husband is either having her when she doesn't want him

or must take him however she gets him.

It's why whenever we are actually close enough to be claimed we must be " indian princess/chinese scholar/ disabeled savant/"

It is never enough that we are good people , people, are good to you to ourselves.

and god do I know this. The right kind of black , what the hell happens when you're every type of black and every type of everything .

and we have no right to it any of it.

We have no right to be angry to want loveto be afraid to be anything but strong

anything but accepting and dealing with whatever comes.

and they say that is what happens . and it is because after awhile we stop talking. We stop fighting outwardly at least.

Because after awhile how many times can you be told you aren't worth defending as your own entity not as a reflection of someone else's desires before you believe it.

That the issue with much of the Hemming analysis is not that people don't believe that she could be in love or that it was a great epic love but that outside of the book BFP mentions

They don't care.

Until Sally Hemmings has something they want.

The thing about black pussy being close to bestiality isn't isolated to the men.

When you can't get what you need and you don't know any other way and no one will blame you

how can you do anything but weep .

How can you do anything but weep and gnash because even if she is your rival you know at the end she is a beast

and it is big and raw and painful and real

and it's scary because you can't ever defend yourself.

Because it's sits in your throat every time they cry , they sit , and they tell you they are in a sisterhood.

Like you don’t have the same daddy and the same society and the same patriarchy and the same blood running through your veins

Like you don’t know that every time she swears it’s okay to trust her because we’re in this together, you don’t know what it’s like have your whole world destroyed because the man who stole into your bed at night no matter if you wanted him there or no liked you better

or at all

or that you dared look/act /speak /be in any way that might draw any attention from the pedestal she was on

or that you had to fight her cause a daddy and your sisters cause of you/your mama and your high yellow

or be called a liar cause of you and daddy and your dark brown

or cutting out your tongue cause you messed her dress

or looking at the back of the last girl her beau looked at to hard and wondering

can scars scars have scars that ever heal

and seeing into the future where you babies are scared to defend themselves because no matter what strong women don’t fight back

and they should be thankful

and how dare they want everyone else NEEDS.

and meeting their eyes when they look back at you

Every time you hear a " new" girl's first name Madison, Mckenzie, Lehigh that's just a reminder of the last name you still have

that could be because there was love, could be because there was pain , could be because

But they never have to think about that.

Because as soon as you have something they want , as soon as you could be part of them you must be moved by heaven and earth

because that's what it would take for them to believe you ,

Because they have to approve of what you say , of how you are

as much as anyone could approve of a beast

or a dunce

or cripple

or ghost

and one is as good as another.

Or that the worst thing ever could be to hear from what these people are.

and of course we can’t talk about the negative side of it.

We shouldn’t remember last week let alone a hundred years ago

and even if we do the only thing that we remembering is the fact it hurt us.

if we talked about the negative

they'd have to work on it

or we'd have to talk about us

and we'd be real and competition and we're not supposed to be that

and it twists our insides and it forks our tongues and locks our throats and we tr to be right and right
and
and
scared of who we love

of what we feel and

how we survive and we have to trust her this time

and it's so HARD for her and

it is

it is it s it is

and we know

cause

after all

she is our sister

but we should never forget

daddy loves and loved her best
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I don't think we ever explained it to them.

This post works better if you have the SPEAK! CD( and if you don't why don't you?).

I have shitty days

and I'm a drama empress and I'm a leo sun/virgomoon/scorpio mars/libra rising.

Which means I'm dramatic, critical, dark and evil to the center of my shiny seeming soul/and people always believe I am okay and I can often fool myself into thinking that.

Except when I can.

And besides hugs and pudding , very few things can pull me out of it. But there is one that without fail works all the time.

It's the last track on the CD .

It is my Little Light.

and i listened today and it felt really good.
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When your tied to the train tracks you don't ask for permission to save your own ass.

So people have liked my idea of not " boycotting" Feministing and counterpart sites/systems idealogy per say but I feel like I should clarify/ empty my own head.

Boycotts are a commercial response.

Plainly in my own mind when I boycott something I am trying to cut off it's financial viability. Which is why so often to these ( as previously has happened ) the response has been.

WE DON'T MAKE ANY MONEY/ WE AREN'T RICH!!

which is patently false because if you put it in your byline as work and a paying your bills off that byline you are making money.

They are tooting their ability to MAKE money on an inclusiveness and equality generated by having " hits" and " mentioning" everything.

in this post at Lisa Harney's Ali someone kinder than me assumes ' they don't know better"

except that's not true .

They do know better if they are as ear to the ground as on the field , they know better. In fact they have admitted to knowing they need to do better

and absconded of it by pointing out that to maintain their model to maintain their cachet they

WON'T

or that when they do do better people don't respond

as if they're aren't a multitude of ways that are organized by many other stats that find ways to emphasize

IMPORTANT ISSUES in many ways ( i have many ideas and I won't go into them cause frankly don't want em stolen)

Boycotting implies that we are protesting our right to purchase or interact in an exchange way with PRODUCT.

We are not product. We are NOT consumable , and even if they did act right or less like idiots

the desire isn't to participate in the increase of their commerce. It's not to get their eye

as relevant issues

It is to NOT need it.

I don't want to have to meet someone else's metric as a human and as cool and worthy to get

BASIC HUMAN DIGNITY.

the issue isn't that their product is wrong or that their business practices is wrong. It's because presented with a chance to interact in their space in a way that is essentially good and even reasonably fair.

We are and always will be de-prioritized for keeping their hit count up and getting their press kits larger .

Which will always work because the "brand of feminism" they comport them selves with ( and substitute brand of feminism with social justice etc etc etc)

is beneficial to middle class white or forgiving of white centered discourse " liberal " college educated self indulgent/ed cosmopolitans.

Let's be clear

It DOES NOT take a lot of effort or any real change to do what they do . There is a reason this long line of feminism ( that starts with stanton and steinem and continues here) is lauded while Wells Davis etc are not

They will ALWAYS before we will receive the support of hegemony and ablism and cis genderism etc etc etc

Intersectionality will always rule towards those of us that aren't actually at INTERSECTIONS.

UNLESS

they say outloud they will NOT allow that to happen.

and they will.

PResented with the possibility of experiencing even momentary discomfort at making your lives better and our lives better

THEY not only won't do it they will increase our discomfort for

EVEN ASKING.

That's ot boycottable really .

Because after a few times having it presented to you at the level and consistency it has been to them.

It's not a doesn't know moment

it's a doesn't care

they know better they won't do better

and I don't have a moral judgement of it ( well not one 'm willing to say in this blog.)

but the important thing the NECESSARY thing isn't making them pay attention to us but making whatever attention they pay wherever matter less.

and no it's not mean or cruel

It's our damn lies on the traintracks of race and gender. It's your spoons, your right to not be presented as a rapist for wanting love.

and no we don't got that kind of time to teach.

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Fruit and Cake

I was linked by Quixotess in a post requesting the boycott of Feministing due to the massive failure that is the disability discussion.

And I want to have something deep and insightful to say about it but I’m not sure I have much.

I am not in touch with my hopeful right now ,in terms of the “ feminist movement” but I kind of don’t want you to boycott Feministing.

Please believe I’d like you to stop reading them because frankly a decently constructed google feed provides essentially the same service.

But I want you mostly to support your/ourselves

I keep reading about the Stupak amendment and the hay made over it.

And the constant conclusion that most of the LOUD voices ( all white , or on predominantly white sites) is that some middle class white woman is very angry that this happened cause it threatens “ women”.

Even though most of her response will be directed not at identifying , shielding and supporting the “ women” it hurts but pointing and laughing at the men who are causing the pain.

Because honestly at the end of the day this women usually coastal, “liberal” keeps forgetting to mention

She is NOT one of the women this actually targets.The women it actually targets are the ones she spends most of her time telling a) shut up we have a career to make or b) stealing from and then.

These are the women who were the actual fights, are the actual fight . Do they deserve health care , love security safety.

And just like her “ adversaries” she believes they don’t and worse so she will feed herself on the illusion she believes they do.

While these women will often bemoan and gnash teeth ( in large publications with jobs and full bellies) the sadness of people’s rejection of feminism.

They will in the same arguments ignore all of the twists and valleys of the landscape.

History is rewritten no harm no foul.

Because those you harmed and those you fouled are expendable anyway.

And your “ enemies” agree with you. It isn’t a mystery or an unlinked phenomena that the groups pushed to the fringes in feminism and liberalism are the groups that others who are against these ideals come from.

It is a signal sent along the boundaries of whiteness , ability, gender age and citizenship, that when push comes to shove we don’t and will not protect these people.

This week is the National Women’s Studies Conference and like most people who paid attention in 2008 there is an obvious desire to capitalizd on creating a stronger feminism through “ embracing diversity” by having a theme called difficult dialogues.

Which I find funny because in their downloaded packet are full page ads honoring Seal Press that stil has the offensive pictures in Marcotte’s awful book.

I want to avoid being petty and pointing out that these voices of young feminism and open dialogue are now all walking into their thirties and being confronted by a chorus of voices younger, older , hiper and from such a wide variety of backgrounds.

I want to point out that Stupak was a pointed commentary on how well Washington believes that women political leaders can mobilize their base.

Or I want to point out that yet and still there ahs been no concerted effort to actually confront the deep schism exposed in the 2008 election besides a series of appeals to the most middle class, comforting ( for them) pieces of WOC they can find.

But mostly I want to point out that these machinations, these lines being reached are exactly the kind of top down “ stay in your place” moves that are the direct problems with much of our discourse and evidently more of our public policy.

The truth is that the Democatic party, much of the left, etc etc. have worked consistently to NON accountability.

We’re too big!

We have One of you, we can’t be ----ist!

We tell people we are good therefore we are good.

Not a single one of these excuses addresses the fundamental concern of getting BETTER for ANYONE BUT THEM. There are voices mind you we steal and shout down ( or wring our hands while others do it) but progress .

The want to have their cake , eat it, and get even more on the fact we go breadless.From perverting intersectionality to justify silencing concerns with procedure by substituting for voices that don’t make them comfortable

To sitting idly by and allowing what was essentially the criminalization of trans bodies ( ahh Robin Morgan your legacy she has survived no matter how much I pray it goes dead) and having the fucking gall to listen to it described as rape.

( and can I take a moment to ask you NOT to vote or support Courtney Martin in ANY WAY as a voice for women but the ones like her and acceptable to her. IF you like her writing fine , but she has been shown to participate in racist , transphobic, abelist dialogue with a solipsistic narcissism that goes above and beyond the scope of simple privilege. She communicates with people as if they are beneath her . We get this from plenty of people already that at least don’t have the gall to use feminism as a hook. If she loses because of misogyny that is unfortunate and unacceptable but to have her win on “change” when her self important liberal flouncing and condescension are par for the course with American editorial ESPECIALLY in light of this . An inability to honor agreements made in PUBLIC to her readers and a weak disloyalty to standing by any work that doesn’t get the reception she wants would be ghastly. I actually have little hope for that being put forth but hey)

The point is not that there needs to be a boycott of Feministing, though please don’t read or support that if you feel that you are allied in any way with the folks who have requested it,but that there needs to be a fierce , concerted love of ourselves. This positioning and tooling about has a root.

The belief that we , do not deserve to be listened to , to have health care , to be difficult, to be angry and damn sure not be seen

If it messes with “ their” agenda. And as long as we are them and not part oftheir highly vaunted us we never will be .

So please don’t boycott feministing. Support something ELSE. Don’t ask to be bigger find something effective and small, and share it, hold ourselves to that accountability .

We will always be better served by the fruits of our labor than their cake.

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Deeply Deep: Good Hair Alison Samuels Class and the World

So I saw Good Hair."

Now there is something about Sydette that when I said I was going to see Good Hair that let every person who had ever seen it go

" Ooh I want to know what you think?
the entity/ies on my head.

Yep , I got hair

Or as the wonderful stylist from Philly who did it for graduation noted

"THIS! THIS IS HAIR"



I don't actually think it's that great of a movie. I think it reinforces some nasty stereotypes,was kind of short, but I was moved good and bad by more than a few moments in the film . I liked it because it brought to bear my issues with Blackness. I tend to have three main issues with blackness and black media.

Class. Globalization/inter nationality .

and Race.

Yep I manage to have Race issues with my blackness and a lot of it is in my damn hair. And speaking of hair beauty too! But first the movie.

It was a Chris Rock movie, There were cheap shots and passing comments at women of the hood and their vanities. his trip to india involved a crack about scary black women that kind of made me want to punt him. HARD. While it led to a striking moment the trying to sell black hair seemed mean and forced. The hair show bits often seemed designed for laugh at not laugh with and he found all of one natural sister to speak.

Rock talked a lot about the blackness of the black hair care industry.His "gag" at confusing Chinese people and Koreans was bit cheap but the moments of the Black Hair Care workers
describing the production hierarchies and the scene of the Asian AND Black hair store worker/owner describing the dislike of African hair were visceral in their common placeness.
His time at the Dudley Center , and his interviews ( really short) with the women in them . Talk about something that is a very real part of this exchange. While many prefer to talk about the sheer money that black folk spend as evidence of avarice .

But Rock talked to the Dudley's, and the hair care owners and while I damn sure didn't like the talk ( MY three year old in a perm chair over my nappy headed corpse) but he talked to them. He didn't smash em into a collective and demand they transcended. I was really enamored of watching Chris Rock listen he didn't pretend to be unbiased but he did listen. He made sure to note that black people , maybe not where they used to be or at the heads of these things survive and thrive on it.

This post is inspired by four highschool girls , beautiful young women were asked about how they feel about natural hair , which one of them had. And it was an interesting scene, because we had to listen as this beautiful girl was told by her beautiful peers about how unserious , unprofessional she would seem. and then...

the camera cut away and she never got to answer.

SHE NEVER GOT TO ANSWER!!! She was in the room she was the funnel and vehicle by which they were discussing their own prejudices and fears , there framing of their sophistication and prejudice and she is admirably calm and quiet and serene and she never GOT TO ANSWER?!?!?

That for me was an almost perfect encapsulation of how I feel about so much of my experience as a black woman in my own skin.

and hair.

Very recently Allison Samuels published an article in Newsweek ( and a rebuttal) about the hair of Zahara Pit Jolie.

that was very widely discussed and refuted that led to a really interesting commentary.

And I felt left out of all of it.

Because while it is all well and good for people to say Allison Samuels is wrong headed ( cause she is) but I do have a deep problem with the pretense tahts he is not coming from a very reasonable place.

The fact I disagree with her doesn't make her wrong to be apprehensive about the welfare of ZPJ, meddling perhaps but not wrong.

Heck the website that Latoya Peterson has her rebuttal on has deep coverage on it.

We can sit and talk about how she is breeding a conformity , and how it's stifling to little girls and what not but on the very basic level when Black people lose jobs first in economic downturns despite education, when the rape ,torture,disappearance and death of black women as secondary subjects is a very real and continuous phenomenon, and Don Imus makes shots about nappy headed hoes.

I detest what she says but I will damned if I am going to act like it's unbased and the source of the trouble. We can say that it is problematic but while Samuels does not say it a loud couching it in an African American "dialogue" it's real, and how does that response look if we admit and I mean without the moral superiority that she's not incorrect to be worried.

I wear my hair natural,three pictures are included, me right out of bed, me washed and "curly" styled and my " OH CRAP NOTHING WORKS" style. In that order.I wanted to make sure you saw it because let me be really clear on this ,

I wear my hair natural because I have enough cultural currency, privilege and resources to do so. I love it I love the feel of my hair I love the look of it , I love the stuff i get to use in it ( I do not NOT like the rate at which the stuff I use in it and the subsequent issues with pricing, No seriously I smell like,Vanilla ,Olive Oil, Sugar cookies most of the day.), I love having my hair played with( if I know you! and approve), and leaned on , love it love it love it.

And I am going to say right now , it is a difficult thing to do and I my self esteem gets knocked around on a regular basis. People regularly compliment me on my strength ( aka YOU ARE WILLING TO GO OUT IN PUBLIC LIKE THAT?!?!) while talking about loving good hair on a woman. I understand where the fear comes from and to categorize it as arbitrary policing is hard to read. Not because it is mean but because it minimizes the very real ish it comes with. Of course some of the meanest people to black people are OTHER black people.

They are often the only ones NEAR us and for better and worse our destinies our fiercely locked. This isn't jsut oh my god how backward and holding us back . This is real connective tissue that hurts on all sides. They are not ESPECIALLY mean , they are in special circumstances, and I am sick of the well I got teased memes being played to justifying the policing charge. We are ALL going through and need to be real with that, just because I dislike what you say doesn't make teh system and prejudices I talk about disappear for you.

Writers, bloggers, stylists, and other members of culturally elite spaces seem very quick to forget that those positions and occupations aren't " average person" jobs . They are not AS bound ( for me to say they aren't at all would be folly) to the norms that other professions and to answer Samuels without acknowledging the deep reality that it still matters isn't transcendental or pushing forward new blackness , its insulting to people who really and truly have to make real considerations on this.

And speaking as a multilingual multi racial ( this is getting long so I will leave my harangue about race and blackness for later) I also boggle at the postulate that being a " Third Culture Kid" means that Samuels is applying an incorrect framework. Samuels IS African American and she is narrowing her focus but TCK's more so than anybody else have a very deep and long connection to conditions of white supremacy and hegemony . Point blank it's why they are where they are. If you are a military brat, very rich, or the child of someone very educated, or a missionaries child. You are there BECAUSE there is a very deep acceptance to you and your parents being able treat the world as an experience . Colonialism,militarianism or just plain wealth advocate for your ability to mix and match cultures in ways that are not available to people who are FROM the culture itself or even from the two cultures you are intermingling. The ability to look right or acceptable with in it is a HUGE HUGE part of MY Afro/Indo/asian BLACKNESS and yes it is not the African American experience, but it IS very much influenced by white hegemony and heteronormativity and a whole bunch of other thins that while do not apply to Samuels do not make her observations NECESSARILY flawed. While the AA isn't the only one there really isn't a fault in framing the RECEPTION of ZPJ hair with it, it's just not the only one.


( full disclosure I have interacted on this topic about such a thing with Racialicious before)

Also Peterson is not a TCK ( as I have read it and I apologize if I am wrong) so using a definition that does not apply to her herself to critique another women's reading is aggravating. As a Caribbean/South American/American 1G the progressive need for Americans to analyze race by using their privilege and ability to travel to my home country and countries like mine ( Brazil , DR,PR, Cuba) to speak on race is grating, especially it is there not BEING from the country that allows them the access they have.

My "hair story" centers around my mothers fear for my ability to love myself, take care of myself . It relates to her ( and my dad ) having their entire family abandoned in some ways for being to black, for having beaten for being to "red".

When and this is a very VERY rare when my hair is straight my mother gushes over how " coolie" I look. How now you can see the Indian in me , how finally you can see the red she gave me. She fought me to my hairdresser before I started college for that reason, she thought it was a gift I needed .

and now she checks my from everyday she sees me and is using what little internet knowledge she has to find me product ( she stops people on the street my mom is a cutie)

Being "strong" with my hair is fun and I like it and it's grand but in LIVING IT , in having to write about seeing a woman called a terrorist for having it!?!? I am gonna need more than positive thinking and theoreticals when discussing it.

Because when Nia Long gets a look of utter vulnerability about how taking a shower with someone is more intimate than having sex,because they may see her real hair.When ( and yes it is misogynistic and reductivist ) men talk about feeling a real distance from their partners, but also jsut as quickly make sure to say the understand WHY, because they can't run their fingers through their hairs or touch it all.

Samuels is wrong dead wrong, but this is NOT the open and shut, lets make a better world or flick this off wrong that it's being presented as something that is not, has is not and will not continue to be

REALLY DAMN HARD and really damn real.

And reading people get offended as if she is a bad person ,as if she ahs no basis for this , even though I AGREED WITH THEM was rough.

Samuels and Rock both take on hair , and it is a deeply deep ( yep I said it) , fraught, twisted , tense intimate interaction for black people, which they are. And the work they produced shows it.

While ultimately Samuels tries to couch her own struggle and issues in a concerned voice while not doing as well to hide her preconception and bias towards natural hair, dismissing her out of hand with pats on the back ,ain't actually gonna lead to the the future where hair doesn't matter. Nor should it . Having been through the fire, the pressing comb and the burn , my hair matters to me.

It is as Dr Angelou says in Good Hair my glory,a growing, changing, money INHALING testament to my history,senses,preferences, thoughts that I share with the world.

I don't want that to not matter, i just don't want people to SUFFER for making a different choice and I really would like to be expected to suffer for mine.

At the end what both me and my friend Jaz liked most about this was at the end of the day whether or not I loved it a lot . Good Hair was movie made for me, Not about me for the consumption of others, not mostly for profit, not for explaining me to someone else. He searched and talked and interacted with people I felt as part of my community as if he expected them to be able to see and hear his product, and that he thought WELL of me for doing so. He used what HE had and was eal about where he was coming from.

and the deeply deep reality is even with that even liking that the natural girl, didn't get to speak.

So I am now.
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