Miley Cyrus--Girl Gone Wild?

I have seen the Miley Cyrus photo and heard it described, alternately, as soft core porn and as a publicity stunt. Either this 15 year old girl has been taken advantage of by all the adults around her, or she has taken her first step toward becoming the next tabloid train wreck.

I'm conflicted about this. My own 7 year old, like 7 year olds around the globe, is obsessed with Miley Cyrus as Hannah Montana. My knee jerk reaction was to be appalled that her parents allowed the picture to be taken, that Annie Leibovitz would even think to take such a picture, and to lament the hypersexualization of young girls in our culture. Yet...

I've also just returned from a conference where I (along with Alison) delivered a paper that argued, in part, that women's sexuality is marginalized/ignored/pathologized by mainstream society. We are deeply uncomfortable with female sexual desire and pleasure. Yet, paradoxically, it is exactly sexual pleasure and desire, or at least the performance of it, that we offer young girls/women as the means by which they assert their autonomy. I'm reminded of Jessica Simpson talking about how empowering it was to wear Daisy Duke's shorts in the Dukes of Hazard movie; of Anne Hathaway wanting to take the breast-exposing role in Brokeback Mountain in an effort to shed her Disney princess image; of Lisa Bonet in Angel Heart as she attempted to move out from under Bill Cosby's shadow; of Halle Berry's Oscar for Monster's Ball. One can easily imagine that Miley Cyrus, in the thick of her hormonal adolescence, perhaps feeling the claustrophobia of being a star in the Disney machine, fearing losing herself in the squeaky clean image of Hannah Montana, jumped at the chance to work with Annie Leibovitz and create the kind of sexually provocative images Leibovitz is known for.

Who knows? I do feel sorry for her, though. Not only will the outcry about this be huge (already prompting Cyrus to deliver an Obama-style repudiation of Leibovitz), but I also feel like we've ruined whatever kind of joy or power or solace she may have found in the picture, or by extension, her burgeoning sexual self.

Of Natural Hair and Role Models

I've talked in this space before about my fraught relationship with my hair. After getting my hair relaxed in October of last year, I decided to go natural. Being too chicken to cut all my hair off (the easiest way to go natural after having relaxed hair), I decided to let my relaxer grow out and try various hybrid hairstyles while decided exactly what to do with my hair. Alas, my inherent hair laziness kicked in and three weeks ago I was back at the salon getting my hair chemically treated. I thought a lot about the decision and thought I felt good about it (reading the comments on a post about natural hair at Stuff Educated Black People Like got me really thinking about the fetishization of natural hair in certain circles) until I went to work the next day.

Several students on separate occasions came to me to ask about my hair. Did I get a relaxer? Did I get my hair pressed? Was all that all my real hair? Not only was I caught off guard by those questions (who knew people were paying that much attention to my hair?), but I was also surprised at their sense of betrayal. These students, all young black women, were clearly very disappointed in me. I'd let them down.

I hate the very idea of making choices about my personal appearance based on other people's expectations, but at the same time I understand that my public persona is very important. Being a black professional in a place like Charleston, SC matters in very real, material ways. My very presence, my actual physical body as well as the idea of me, intervenes into all kinds of weird racial histories and tensions here, so it's important that I take seriously what that presence says. I get that. Yet...there also needs to be room for me to be the me that I'm going to be. And maybe that me has chemically straightened hair. I know that sounds defensive and maybe it is just my justification for participating in my own oppression. Who knows?

I haven't made up my mind about how I feel about all of this.

Barack Obama and Rev. Wright: Greta Van Susteren is Shocked and Offended

Are you fucking kidding me?

Right around the time the mainstream news started wetting themselves with excitement about Hilary Clinton's primary victories in Texas and Ohio (despite the fact that it changed nothing, despite the fact that Obama continues to maintain a near insurmountable lead in delegates, despite the fact that Americans of all stripes, regardless of how you break them down demographically clearly prefer Obama to Clinton) and Clinton egged them on by condescendingly graciously extending the office of the vice presidency to Obama, I went on a news black out. There are people out there who can live and breathe political news 24/7 and maintain enough emotional distance to write about it with clarity and wit and intelligence. I can't. So I try not to.

But tonight I'm flipping through the channels and all the talk is about Obama and the pastor of Trinity United Church of Christ. Lou Dobbs is taking a break from talking about immigration to predict the demise of Obama's campaign. Greta Van Susteren is talking to some poor, deluded, black man, forcing him to agree with her when she says, "We're as close as brother and sister" and feigns shock at the "offensive" statements of Rev. Wright. And what offensive statements you ask?

Web sites and television news shows recalled Wright's praise of Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan and played a greatest-hits compilation of Wright's most incendiary comments: that Sept. 11, 2001, meant "America's chickens are coming home to roost." That former president Bill Clinton "did the same thing to us that he did to Monica Lewinsky." That "racism is how this country was founded and how this country is still run."

Wright's statements, along with Michelle Obama's assertion that she is proud of her country for the first time, are being taken as signs that Barack Obama can't in fact bring us together, that he won't be the racially transcendent candidate that so many want him to be.

But let's call a spade a spade, shall we? Nobody gives a fuck that George W. Bush is not a racially transcendent candidate and never pretended to be. His administration is attentive and responsible to white male monied interests, and barely apologizes for that. When we say "racially transcendent" we mean "a black man that white people can like." That so many black people seem to like Obama (he got 91% of the black vote in Mississippi, as Pat Buchanan kept insisting, just before he told a black woman to shut up), that he goes to a decidedly black church, that his wife seems to be exactly the kind of black woman that makes white people nervous, that he is running his campaign with funds drawn from black wealth and the hard-earned dimes of working class black folk--all this makes white people nervous. Obama is fine as long as white people can chant "Yes We Can" at rallies and forward the will.i.am video to everybody in their address book. But point out America's racist past and present, suggest that the same American flag that you want me to get teary eyed over is the exact same one that my ancestors were slaves under, the same one that my grandparents were denied the right to vote under, the same one under which my mother attended segregated schools, the same one under which I didn't go to integrated schools until 1982, and watch all the warm, fuzzy, feeling fade away. Suddenly we are the racists and Greta Van Susteren is deeply hurt (you see, she's never heard a black person talk this way).

People believe hanging nooses from trees and professors' doors is funny. People see nothing wrong with displaying the confederate flag. John fucking Calhoun stands atop a giant fucking pedestal less than a mile from my office. Robert Downey, Jr. will perform in blackface in an upcoming movie. This is the country I live in. Maybe it's not the country Greta Van Susteren lives in. Maybe she's never been asked to be proud of a country that is more than happy to give her syphilis and then lie about it, or sterilize her without her consent, or leave her stranded for days as a city floods around her. I'm asked to be proud of that country every goddamned day. You'll have to forgive me if there are days that I can't quite muster the energy.

I've said it before and I'll say it again. Barack Obama is not a special black man, a superhuman racially transcendent black man. He is, simply, a black man, like lots of black men trying to negotiate a black identity and an American one, two warring souls in one dark body, as Dubois said. Any black man running for president of the United States clearly has a deeply felt patriotism. Otherwise, why subject yourself to this? At the same time, any black man running for president is still a black man and always feels his two-ness (to borrow another phrase from Dubois), always recognizing how all the contradictions of this country are embodied in him. As Melissa Harris-Lacewell writes,

Let's be clear. American democracy has always coexisted with vicious,state-sponsored racism. The nation's first presidents worked to establish aninnovative, flexible, radical democratic republic while simultaneouslycodifying enslaved blacks as a fraction human and relegating them tointergenerational chattel bondage.

After emancipation, as blacks helped make America the greatest industrialand military power on earth, the country stripped blacks of the right tovote, segregated public accommodations, provided inferior education to blackchildren, and allowed and promoted the terrorist rule of lynch-mob violence. This week Barack Obama was pressured to denounce Jeremiah Wright. But in the hundred years following the end of the Civil War more than five thousand African Americans were lynched and not a single president denounced the atrocities. Because of this history, black patriotism is complicated.

Black patriots love our country, even though it has often hated us. We love our country, even while we hold it accountable for its faults.

I *Heart* Indiana Jones

This is the picture that greeted me when I opened my mailbox and pulled out my favorite entertainment magazine. I'm told that I actually *squeaked* when I saw this photo of Harrison Ford at the height of his Indiana Jones glory. (I'm not convicned that I actually squeaked. Clearly Brian made that detail up.) What is it about Harrison Ford, as Han Solo and Indiana Jones and John Book? What doI find so irresistible? Certainly the kind of macho masculinity he embodies in Witness and Star Wars and the Indy movies are all iterations of masculinity that I object to and ultimately find damaging to men in general. But damn, if he isn't sexy as hell in this picture.

I'll be writing about the new Indy movie for the City Paper when it opens in May and will hopefully have something smarter to say than "Oh my god! Harrison Ford's cute. And so is Shia LeBeouf (but I feel wrong even thinking that)." But right now all I can manage is "squeak!"

Geeky Things I Love on Valentine's Day

I've had a really long and trying day and we haven't celebrated anything geeky lately here on Afrogeek Mom and Dad. So on this Valentine's Day, I offer geeky things that always make me feel better:



First, Neil Degrasse Tyson. I often think that if I had it to do all over again, I'd like to be an astrophysicist, but as I can barely tell time on an analog clock, much less do calculus, that dream seems unlikely to come true. I still think he's awesome.


Second, Fables. It's been ages since I've found a comic series I loved this much from the very first page. The description--characters from fairy tales, legends, and mythologies exiled from their Homelands in our world, fighting the Adversary--doesn't do this series justice. It's smart, funny, sexy, incredibly witty, well-written and plotted, everything you could want in a comic.



And third, Torchwood. I never got into Dr. Who and I really need another tv addiction like a hole in the head, but the sheer unapologetic geeky joy that permeates this alien-a-week series makes me incredibly happy. And the fact that Captain Jack Harkness is easy on the eyes *and* as likely snog a man as a woman makes it that much better.

Some Day I Will Write a Book About Blackness

Gary Kamiya, in a Salon article, writes about being biracial and how his own choice to completely eschew a racial identity is different than Obama's choice to embrace a black identity. Kamiya's article is really good at showing how he comes to not question Obama's choice to identify as black, despite being biracial, but really, perhaps, for the first time, recognizing what it means for someone who is biracial to make that choice and how that choice, paradoxically,brings Obama to a place where race is not the chief definer of his identity. Kamiya writes:

"The essence of Obama's politics, his call for reconciliation and unity, is thus deeply grounded in the long and painful creation of his own double identity. It is, almost literally, sealed in blood -- the mixed blood, black and white, that flows through his veins. With Obama, the movement is always toward a double affirmative. Not neither black nor white, which is the way I and many mixed-race people identify ourselves, but both black and something larger."

The other day I was talking to a colleague, a black Latin American woman, and we got to talking about the election (the place where all conversations seem to end these days). And we talked about how we recognized ourselves in Barack Obama, whether or not we wound up voting for him. We recognized in him the experience of being the only black kid in the room, being the first black person to hold this or that postion, accomplish this or that thing, being the black person who makes other people (read: white people) feel good about the possibilities of integration, the black person who stands in as the evidence of someone else's colorblindness. And we recognized in Obama the work that has gone in to fashioning a black identity that can navigate all of that. Because, while blackness is not always a choice for some of us (my colleague and I, because of what we look like, can hardly choose to be anything else within the American racial schema), how we understand and live our blackness requires the same kind of choice Kamiya describes Obama making. This notion, that is so prevalent currently, that blackness is monolithic, that black people identify primarily as black, that blackness is the chief definer of our experience, is so patently untrue as to be laughable to most black people. Every single black person has to figure out what it means to be black, has to figure what relationship they have to the "black community" [side note: in my book, perhaps I will seek out this "black community"--where is it located? do you need a pass to get in?], has to figure where an individual self does and does not share mental and emotional space with a black self. Of course Obama comes to a place where he is "both black and something larger." That's the place where most black people, not just "mixed race" blacks, live and that people continue to fail to recognize that is a testament to how much work around race still needs to be done in this country.

This Is How a Party Splits

What we have at this moment in the 21st century is a generation of black people born into a post-Civil Rights America, provided opportunities unimaginable to their parents, and rewarded with a world that, for many of us, is far more integrated than many could have hoped for. We have learned that a world defined completely by race (or gender or sexuality or religion) is an incredibly small world and have demanded, and continue to demand, that all aspects of our identities and lives be taken seriously. We can't be counted on to play the American race game as it's always been played. We can't be counted on to choose blackness over our gender or sexuality or class or religion.

But that doesn't mean blackness doesn't matter. That race doesn't still have a profound effect on our day to day to existence. That you can call me a nigger and get away with it.

And it doesn't mean that I have to pretend to be colorblind for your convenience.

Mickey Kaus over at Slate offered this advice to Obama, a strategy he can use to get out of the political ghetto he now finds himself in (read: how he can keep his white supporters despite his growing support among black voters):

The more obvious move is to find a Sister Souljah--after Saturday--to stiff arm. The most promising candidate is not a person, but an idea: race-based affirmative action. Obama has already made noises about shifting to a class-based, race-blind system of preferences. What if he made that explicit? Wouldn't that shock hostile white voters into taking a second look at his candidacy? He'd renew his image as trans-race leader (and healer). The howls of criticism from the conventional civil-rights establishment--they'd flood the cable shows--would provide him with an army of Souljahs to hold off. If anyone noticed Hillary in the ensuing fuss, it would be to put her on the spot--she'd be the one defending mend-it-don't-end-it civil rights orthodoxy.

So the only way Obama can win, the only way white voters will support him, is if he goes out of his way to show that he's willing to be unpopular with black people? Because black people liking you too much makes you suspect?

rikyrah at jackandjillpolitics in a post about "progressive" bloggers and the South Carolina primary had this to say:

So, let me get this straight - Hillary Clinton wins White women in New Hampshire, and it's this great victory, but if Barack Obama wins South Carolina, after ten months of campaigning, because of sizeable Black support, it doesn't REALLY count? What is this - are we back to being Three-Fifths once again? The Black vote doesn't count as much as the White vote? I'm going to say this as obviously as I can:

YOU DO NOT WANT TO GO DOWN THIS ROAD.

You simply don't. There is this underlying condescension that has been creeping into the "Progressive" blogs that, ' oh, well , THEY - meaning Blacks- have nowhere else to go. So, the Clintons and their proxies, who are actually race-baiting, but we'll say that they aren't, and tell those Blacks who are informing us as to what they see that it's in their IMAGINATION - well, they'll shut up, go SIT IN THEIR PLACE and turn up in November like they're SUPPOSED TO.' That's not a bet you want to take.

James Brown said it:
We'd rather die on our feet
Than be livin' on our knees

I am part of the Hip-Hop generation, and those of us who are Post Civil-Rights have learned our lessons well. We learned to hear the Dogwhistle of Racial Politics; our parents taught us that for SURVIVAL, but what they afforded us that they didn't have, was the option of getting off of our knees.

I hope this primary season goes down in American political and racial history as the season black people finally gets up off our knees.

Hilary vs. Barack: What's a Black Woman To Do?

Remember when this blog was about comic books and kids and random musings on life?

It's interesting being a black woman living in South Carolina these days. All eyes are on us, as if the press and politicians have just realized that we do in fact vote, and, more importantly, that we can't be counted on to vote with our black brothers or white sisters.

Of course this is all being played out most dramatically in the Democratic primary race between Barack Obama and Hilary Clinton. Neither the Iowa caucuses nor the New Hampshire primary contained a significant number of black voters, and each candidate's win is being contributed to women voters choosing one over the other. With black women making up the majority of registered black voters in South Carolina, we are suddenly historically important.

Now you would think that would translate into at least a little respect for the political power we wield (if only at this moment), but instead we're being told that we're naïve, politically regressive, or easily swayed by a good-looking face. We're being told that the civil rights establishment "doesn't know" Obama and that fact doesn't matter anyway because it was actually LBJ that made civil rights reform happen. The implication is clear--vote for Clinton (and not this shucking and jiving outsider) or forever be branded as the backward thinking cabal that brought down the Democratic party.

Alison over at Baxter Sez says she feels as if she's being asked to choose a team in this election. I feel the same way, only I feel as if I'm only being given one choice--Hilary Clinton. No one, besides the man himself, is asking me to vote for Obama. Voting for Clinton will somehow prove my rightness as a Democrat and a woman and a feminist, whereas voting for Obama, apparently, will prove only that I'm hanging on too tightly to the irrelevant category of race.

Like Alison, the last two weeks have been difficult for me because I feel torn. Like Mark Anthony Neal, I absolutely understand the importance of being black and claiming feminism as my own. It's a particularly public and political statement that demands feminism take the concerns of women of color seriously and a reminder to black people that we have our own gender work to do. But these days I'm agreeing with Aaminah Hernandez and remembering why we need a black feminist womanist movement and why it will be a while before I can be anything other than a reluctant feminist.

If Steinem's, and others', argument about voting for Hilary had been about feminism, about how a Clinton presidency would be good for the progressive feminist politics we presumably all share, that would be one thing. That's an argument I'd be willing to entertain. But of course this isn't what's happening. I'm being asked to vote for Hilary Clinton because she has a vagina and because she's white and if you doubt the "white makes right" tone of the post-Iowa push for Clinton, check out the race-baiting that her campaign has resorted to in order to drum up votes.

Is Obama the right person to be the next president of the United States? Maybe. Maybe not. But if Hilary's going to get my vote, she's going to have to do a lot more than show up with vagina and talk with a "black" accent. And I suspect a lot of other black women in South Carolina feel the same way.

More on Obama--Is it Bad to Feel Good?

Over at Diary of an Anxious Black Woman (a blog you should all check out), the author expresses some reservations about the Obama bandwagon the country seems poised to jump on. Her arguments are better read than summarized here, so I'll wait while you go read.

Her argument about the dems shooting themselves in the foot doesn't wash with me because first--the same can be said of nominating Clinton (that the nomination is setting the dems up for a loss because she's a woman and so many people don't like her); and second--obama isn't the establishment democrat choice. If he manages to get the nomination, it will be despite the wishes of the establishment, certainly despite the wishes of the civil rights establishment

A lot of people are skeptical about Obama's feel-good vibe and I get that. But couldn't we spin this another way? Couldn't it be that, maybe, after 8 years of an administration terrifying us into believing that we could do nothing but accept the fascist-like rule of presidential privilege, people are once again being reminded that it is possible to change the government because it's our government? The status quo is only the staus quo because we let it be? Obama hopes for change, sure, but he also advocates for action. As he told voters in Iowa--you can't just hope he wins the election, you have to show and vote to ensure that he does. And that--that ability to get people to show up, people who have been disenchanted and disillusioned with the whole process, to get those people excited about the process, to have hope in our collective future, *and* to get them to show up to work for that future is an impressive skill not to be taken lightly.

Spinning Obama's Victory

David Brooks had this to say in his op-ed about the Iowa Caucuses:

Iowa won’t settle the race, but the rest of the primary season is going to be colored by the glow of this result. Whatever their political affiliations, Americans are going to feel good about the Obama victory, which is a story of youth, possibility and unity through diversity — the primordial themes of the American experience.

And Americans are not going to want to see this stopped. When an African-American man is leading a juggernaut to the White House, do you want to be the one to stand up and say No?

Several NPR commentators suggested Iowa voters don't like to be told what to do (and this is why they picked Obama over Clinton) and a USA Today editorial maintained that the Iowa caucuses are not actually a good predictor of anything at all (despite the public being told otherwise for the last 12 months). Something smells fishy here. What these people seem to be doing is constructing a narrative that can be put in place in the event Obama becomes president--his election won't be about all kinds of Americans' desire for hope and change (as Obama says) but rather Americans' unwillingness to appear racist by not voting for him. It's just an upgrade of the anti-affirmative action argument--it's not that the black man was actually qualified for the job or better at the job than a white woman. It must be that the black man got the job because someone wanted to prove he wasn't racist.

I don't know what America David Brooks is living in, but in the America I live in, people are not all shy about being racist, and certainly aren't willing to elect a black man (no matter how charming and not-angry he might be) out of nostalgia for the American dream.

Frances Prepares for Santa

Frances took a picture of the note she left for Santa. She wanted to have a memory of it in case Santa takes it with him.

What's with all the Santa hate?

Does everybody hate Santa? Am I the only person who loves playing Santa for my kids and believes that no irreparable harm is being done to my children because they believe in Santa? My 7 year old already, mostly against my wishes, already knows about sex and war and racism. But she still believes in Santa Claus. What's wrong with that?

Rebecca Walker's Baby Love (or, How Pregnancy Can Apparently Short Circuit Your Brain)

I am a sucker for memoirs about pregnancy and motherhood. (I'm also a sucker for books about the lives of the Manhattan elite as detailed in books like the Nannies Diaries and Admissions, but that's another post). Perhaps it's because I found the state of being pregnant and being responsible for someone else's life to be profoundly perspective shifting (and continues to be so). I'm always eager to read about someone else's experience of that shift.

For these reasons, I picked up Rebecca Walker's latest book, Baby Love. In it Walker, daughter of Alice Walker and author of a famous essay in Ms. calling third wave feminism into being, details her pregnancy and the birth of her son. She also details the growing estrangement from her famous mother.

I want to like this book. I really do. There should be many more books about the craziness that is pregnancy (the way you practically inhale whatever food is placed in front of you, when you're not throwing up after smelling someone's too strong perfume; the way you question every life decision you've ever made; the way you want to do nothing but lay on the couch and watch birthing shows on TLC, even though every episode leaves you in a puddle of hysterical tears; the way you are convinced every other day that getting pregnant was a really really bad idea). This books offers up those kind of details, but it also comes to the following maddening conclusions:

--2nd wave feminism's deep ambivalence about motherhood, and the children they mothered, have left a generation of women deeply scarred and lost (this based on Rebecca's incredibly fucked up relationship with Alice)

--women are daughters until they become mothers; in other words, until you have grown a person inside your body, you are developmentally incomplete

--the love you have for a biological child is necessarily different from the love you have for an adopted or stepchild; it is impossible to love them the same way

--your connection to your child is forged and is irrevocable the moment you find out you are pregnant; biology dictates it

There are so many things appallingly wrong with these conclusions that it's hard to know where to begin. I will say this though: it is sad that Rebecca Walker, a woman who is an icon to so many young women, a woman who has made a career asserting the necessity of continuing the fight for gender equality, would write a book basically telling women that they are incomplete if they don't have biological children and are damaged in some way if they don't instantaneously fall madly in love with their unborn child. There are many criticisms to be lodged at the second wave, but surely, if it gave us nothing else, it gaves us the knowledge and the courage to believe that we are so so much more than our wombs.

And on a related note, Walker's brand of earth-mother, power-of-the-womb nonsense begs the question of fatherhood. Perhaps this is my on personal soapbox, resulting from the way Brian and I parent our kids and the decisions we've made about how to organize our family, but it kills me whenever I read an account of new parenthood that focuses only on the mother. I refuse to believe that my husband is the only father who went on his own perspective-shifting journey when he found out he'd be a dad, who has a deep, unshakeable bond with his children, whose idea of father-ing extends well beyond throwing a football and the ocassional disciplinary lecture. Rebecca Walker knows better than this, yet her book gives no indication that she remembers that fact.

In the end, I supposed that Rebecca Walker is allowed to have whatever experience of pregnancy that she has. She can only be the person she is , after all, even if that person is awfully self-absorbed and frustrating.

Things I Learned During Thanksgiving Break

1. Microwave pralines are pure evil.

2. Unless the rules are modified, a 34 year old can never ever beat a 7 year old at hopscotch. (#1 rule modification: the 34 year old shouldn't have to hop on one foot. #2 rule modification: the 34 year old absolutely can place one hand on the ground for balance when bending over to pick up her rock.)

3. Children will frolic in the surf, soaking themselves from head to foot, no matter how frigidly the cold the water may be.

4. I am congenitally incapable of grading papers until the very last minute.

5. "300" was a homophobic, racist, historically inaccurate, yet stunningly beautiful, film. Perhaps Brian and I will review it.

An Acrostic Poem by Frances

I often joke that the only things I can write consistently and well about anymore are mothering and my children. (Ask the members of my writing group how badly the introduction to my next book is going.) This does not bode well for the successful mass market book I need to write to fund my children's college education.

Luckily, however, where my creative skill has failed, Frances's has flourished. Here is an acrostic poem she wrote for school:

Bug bit me before lunch
Emergency room
Fire on my nose
Ouch!
Red and purple band-aid
Eek!

The Daring Book for Girls

I admit I was a little suspicious when I got The Daring Book for Girls in the mail to review. The problem with the similarly titled Dangerous Book for Boys is that its faux nostalgia implies that feminists are probably to blame for creating a world in which boys don't know how to tie knots or skip rocks or other stereotypically "boy" things. I find the very concept absurd.

So, when this book came in the mail, with it's retro green cover and silver lettering, I was prepared to be annoyed. But here's the thing: before I could get all riled up with righteous indignation at a world that still insists on making arbitrary distinctions between boys and girls, Frances got a hold of the book. As a general rule she is suspicious of anything too "girly," perceiving a surplus of pink and glitter and saccharine sentiment as sure signs of something not fun. But this book intrigued her. It showed her five karate moves, how to press flowers (which she thought would make cool bookmarks), how to play zombie and hot-lava monster tag, how to play the French version of hopscotch (which involves a snail shaped playing field and a lot of hopping on one foot--"the French really know how to live," Frances said), and how to make her own scooter. I don't know if Frances finds the instructions here "daring," but if the authors' (Andrea J. Buchanan and Miriam Peskowitz) intentions were to introduce girls to the self-made fun from girlhood past (remember the jump rope song, "Apples on a stick, make me sick..."), then they have succeeded.

Are You a Feminist?

The nature of my job and Brian and my's politics means that Frances lives in a world in which "feminism" is a word used often and "feminists" are people she actually knows and likes. (Cate lives in this same world, but as she spends most of her time ignoring all of us in favor of wandering, dancing to the music in her head, and playing with her toes, we are unsure of how much really registers with her.)

Frances has also discovered recently the kind of quizzes that seem to abound in girl culture: are you a tomboy or a girly girl? does he really like you? are you a hater? Answer 20 multiple choice questions and any given issue of YM or CosmoGirl can reveal the secrets of the inner you.

Frances devised a quiz to determine if you are a feminist. How do you fare? (answers below)*

1. Do you like to talk?
2. Are you okay with being gay?
3. Did you get extra homework in 2nd grade?
4. Do you like monkeys?


If you answer yes to all the questions, then, according to the ever insightful Frances, you are a feminist.





*1. Obviously you have to like to talk. Feminists go to a lot of meetings, according to Frances. (How sad is it that Frances preceives that all I do is grade and go to meetings?)

2. Feminists understand that you can love who you want as long as you are happy.

3. Frances says feminists are smart and clearly, like her, would have been rewarded with extra homework while in school.

4. Who doesn't like monkeys?

Stop Violence Against Women of Color

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 later charged with aggravated assault and are facing up to 11 year prison sentences

Today, people around the country are, among other acts of protest, wearing red, gathering, and reading aloud this litany.

Out of the Silence, We Come: A Litany
Out of the silence, we come
In the name of nuestras abuelas,
In honor of our mamas
In the spirit of our petit fils,
In tribute to ourselves
We come crying out
Documenting the torture
We come wailing
Reporting the rape
We come singing
Testifying to the abuse
We come knowing
Knowing that the silence has not protected us from
the racism
the sexism
the homophobia
the physical pain
the emotional shame
the auction block

Once immobilized by silence
We come now, mobilized by collective voice
Dancing in harmonious move-ment to the thick drumbeat of la lucha, the struggle

We come indicting those who claim to love us, but violate us

We come prosecuting those who are paid to protect us, but harass us

We come sentencing those who say they represent us, but render
us invisible

Out of the Silence, we come
Naming ourselves
Telling our stories
Fighting for our lives
Refusing to accept that we were never meant to survive

The McCann Sisters Perform

Here are our geeky, goofy girls (Catherine is 2 and is rarely still long enough to comb her hair; Frances is 7 and lives for the spotlight) giving a command performance for their parents.

My Inner Angela Davis

It's been pointed out to me by several folk (well, really, only one folk and she knows who she is) that this space has been rather quiet lately. There's a long, boring story about tenure and new responsibilities at work, coupled with my indecision about exactly what to do with this space that explains it all--but I won't bother you with that. Instead, I'll venture into the always fraught world of black women's hair.

Since May I've been sporting cute, shoulder-length single braids. I had braids in grad school and when I first got married and I loved them, primarily because I couldn't be lazier when it comes to doing anything to my hair. I stopped wearing braids for a number of reasons, including being too impatient to sit for the 8-10 hours it takes to do my hair, but also because I concluded (as does mainstream culture) that I looked less young and more professional without them.

My innate hair laziness took over this summer, though, and the braids returned. I loved them. I kept them in for our vow renewal in June and for the start of classes in August. And was all set to get them redone last week when a minor catastrophe occurred.

When I undid my braids, my hair was tangled at the roots, so much so that I became convinced that I would need to cut it all off. I have really thick, shoulder-length hair, so cutting all but an inch or two off is drastic. But I was willing to do it, reading the moment as the universe's way of telling me it was time to start growing a sweet Angela Davis 'fro.

The only problem was that I couldn't find anyone in Charleston to cut my hair. Admittedly, after the first two people, both black women, refused (both very matter-of-factly telling me I was mistaken about wanting to cut all my hair off), my resolve weakened. Maybe the universe wasn't telling me to find my inner Angela Davis. Maybe it was saying I needed to go back to my chemically-enhanced soccer mom ponytail.

Brian wound up having to untangle my hair. The third woman I went to relaxed and trimmed my hair, ooh-ing and aah-ing through the entire four hour process.

I wish I'd had the courage to cut it all off myself.

Afrogeek Mom and Dad review Chris Rock's "I Think I Love My Wife"

Inspired by Alison and my's review of "Becoming Jane," Brian and I bring you a review of Chris Rock's "I Think I Love My Wife." The basic plot is that Rock's character is married with two kids, not having sex, and allowing himself to be tempted by the sexy, available, willing woman from his past.

*********

Conseula: So, my constant refrain throughout this movie was "grow up!" Actually, I used a little more profanity than that, but this is a family blog. I spent the majority of the film being absolutely infuriated with Chris Rock's character (and maybe that's the point), but I'll come back to that later. What I really want to talk about is the pop culture's erroneous notion that married couples don't have sex, primarily because married women lose all interest once they get a ring on their finger.

Brian: Personally, I don't know anything about married women and sex, or anything about single women and sex. Actually, I don't know all that much about sex. [Indeed, the two children are a mystery.--C] What I do know about is horror movies. This movie scared the fluids out of me. How is it that Conseula can't sit through a decent flesh-eating zombie movie, but she can watch a relationship movie without flinching? I shivered, huddled deep under the covers watching the train wreck that was Richard's (Chris Rock's character) life bearing down on him. I think that the most frightening part of the movie was that I could see Richard's doom approaching, while he seemed to be completely oblivious to it. I identified with the male lead, and I saw his fate as my own. (Not that I'd ever consider infidelity. I'm sorta attached to my man parts, and I want to keep it that way.)

Conseula: (He's totally not kidding about the shivering and the huddling. It was kind of cute.) While Brian identified with the male lead, I couldn't really identify with the female lead. Well, there were moments of identification, those moments when Brenda (played by the always stunning Gina Torres) called Richard on his bullshit. But mostly I didn't get this sexless, domestic goddess content to go months on end with no intimate contact from her husband. I'm also really annoyed with this notion of marriage as the place you go to die. I mean what could be better that than finding the one person you want to talk to every single day of your life and then committing yourself to that person? That's not misery, people. That's amazing. And I guess that's the point the movie eventually got to, but the idea of marriage took quite a beating along the way.

Brian: Actually, the marriage thing is working out well for me. [That's good to know.--C] I was never one of those sex-god-use-women-up-like-tissue-paper guys. I guess that is because I always saw women as people with feelings, and for that reason I saw that there was more to them than simple objects of sexual release. In the little dream sequence where Richard fantasizes that he's consuming women like popcorn, I was a little embarrassed. I can't even fantasize about women without their permission, how could I possibly be a serial boinker? Being in a committed, stable, relationship with a woman I actually respect, who I can actually talk to, is a relief for me. It's much easier than trying to live up to some false, Mandingo pipe-slinger persona.

Conseula: And there's my public service to women everywhere--saving them from Mandingo pipe-slinging Brian. I do what I can.

Brian: So, in conclusion, committed relationships are good. Nostalgia for the single life of 20 year olds is okay, and normal. Acting on that nostalgia is always stupid. And I Think I Love My Wife was an okay movie.

The Parenting Season

This space has been quiet for a while, primarily due to the start of the new school year. Brian and I like to think of mid-August to early-June as the official Parenting Season. Unlike in the summers, when we certainly have to entertain children on an almost constant basis, we are, neverthless, free to do that entertaining in our own fashion and on our own schedules. Today we might go swimming, tomorrow we may hit the museum, the next day we may spend an afternoon eating ice cream and watching Nickelodeon. Plans can be made and changed at the last minute. Routines can be altered (though not too drastically lest the tightly wound among us freak out). Time can be frittered away as we master Jedi powers in the Star Wars Lego Playstation game.

But then mid-August comes and school begins and we are back on the treadmill. Make no mistake--Brian and I, and parents every where I am sure, breathe a great big sigh of relief that first school morning after children have been dropped off (there really is only so much Nickelodeon a person can watch and I'm sure whatever ancients invented mancala didn't intend for me to play it for hours at a time). But every fall I am struck with how quickly time gets eaten up with homework and PTA meetings and soccer practice and choir performances and Halloween costumes and birthday parties. And how little deviation there can be from the routine lest the whole thing come crashing down. In any case, here are pictures of the girls (affectionately called The Monkey and The Barbarian at home) as we begin the 2007-2008 Parenting Season.

Cate--who is never happier than when she's a wearing hat and glasses, spinning around in a circle and yelling "awesome!"


And Frances, future rock 'n' roll scientist and champion of PacMan World Rally.

Brian McCann is not the babysitter

Brian is in this month's issue of Skirt! magazine. And, as usual, his modesty prevents him from saying anything. Go check him out.

Punch Drunk at 2am

It's moments like these when I question my chosen profession. I have reached the end of this seemingly never-ending marathon that is the process of writing this book on James Baldwin. While I realize there will still be changes and proofing and indexing to be done once the editors see it, the backbreaking, soul-sucking, mind-numbing work of writing it will be done shortly. (I am just about done proofreading the last chapter.) But before I turn it in tomorrow, last commemorate the process. The following pictures were taken in my family's den. For the last three months my children have been unable to eat a proper meal at a proper table because my stack of James Baldwin stuff has gotten increasingly larger and higher.

Here are a mere portion of the books I have been using. Notice Stratego at the bottom of the pile? Brian and Frances had cleared a space on the table to play, and I kicked them off in a fit of writing inspiration.

Here's what my workspace looks like right now. Underneath all this paper is the draft of the next book, which needs to be at the publisher's in a few short weeks.

Here's the corner of my den. There are many, many, many corners of my place that look exactly like this. We've had to clear out kids' toys from our living room to make way for all my Baldwin crap.

I have been informed by my whole family that they will be happy when this is done.

International Blog Against Racism Week

I hunker down for a few days to finish this book and when I pick my head up, the whole world has gone mad. The NAACP is following up their burial of the N-word with a defense of Michael Vick. Al Sharpton is calling for a National Day of Outrage. Barack Obama is in Vibe Magazine (he is looking pretty hot, though).

But are any of them talking about this:
In September 2006, a group of African American high school students in Jena, Louisiana, asked the school for permission to sit beneath a "whites only" shade tree. There was an unwritten rule that blacks couldn't sit beneath the tree. The school said they didn't care where students sat. The next day, students arrived at school to see three nooses (in school colors) hanging from the tree.

The boys who hung the nooses were suspended from school for a few days. The school administration chalked it up as a harmless prank, but Jena's black population didn't take it so lightly. Fights and unrest started breaking out at school. The District Attorney, Reed Walters, was called in to directly address black students at the school and told them all he could "end their life with a stroke of the pen."

Black students were assaulted at white parties. A white man drew a loaded rifle on three black teens at a local convenience store. (They wrestled it from him and ran away.) Someone tried to burn down the school, and on December 4th, a fight broke out that led to six black students being charged with attempted murder. To his word, the D.A. pushed for maximum charges, which carry sentences of eighty years. Four of the six are being tried as adults (ages 17 & 18) and two are juveniles.

Or this:
After dark on June 18, the police say, as many as 10 armed assailants repeatedly raped a Haitian immigrant in her apartment at Dunbar Village and then went further, forcing her to perform oral sex on her 12-year-old son. They took cellphone pictures of their acts. They burned the woman’s skin and the boy’s eyes with cleaning fluid, forced them to lie naked together in the bathtub, hit them with a broom and a gun and threatened to set them on fire.


Gina, from my newest favorite blog, What About Our Daughters, has expressed my outrage and frustration much better than I can (check out her list of the Immorally Indifferent), so I'll just say this: in honor of International Blog Against Racism Week, I encourage you all to do something about racism. Bitching about rap music you don't get doesn't actually do anything about the degradation of black women in this country. Burying the N-word in no way addresses the structures of racism that makes the word still carry so much weight.

Instead, make some noise. Write your congressman. Donate some money. Donate some time. Call out racism when you see it (we live in Charleston people--we see it everyday). When someone tells you you're doing something racist and thoughtless, stop it. When you see someone doing something racist and thoughtless, make them stop. Step outside of your comfort zone and realize that changes you make in the way you live your life everyday--in the way you talk to and treat people, in the decisions you make, in the jokes you tell, where you send your kids to school and where you choose to live--can make a difference. It's not marching to Selma or refusing to give up your seat on a bus, but it matters.

Anxiety Dreams 'R Us

It's become conventional wisdom here at Casa Afrogeek that I am incapable of writing anything unless it's about myself. In grad school I was smart and clever and quick-witted, but 5 years on the tenure track and two kids have apparently addled my brain. So instead of having something smart to say about the NAACP burying the N-word (are they purposely trying to be irrelevant?) or how spot-on Mark Anthony Neal is when he suggests that many black intellectuals have a deep dislike of black youth and black youth culture, I will share this.

I've been working like a mad woman on the James Baldwin book (which is very near finished) and have found that I am more productive if I take a short afternoon nap instead of trying to write with sleepy brain. I woke up from this afternoon's nap in a panic because of this dream:

My daughters and I are riding on a CARTA bus on our way to meet Alison, my prolific and insanely smart friend. We never make it to our destination, though, because my daughters get off the bus at a beauty salon. Apparently I used to work there and when we enter everyone is happy to see us. The owner of the salon immediately gives me a pile of paper containing hundreds of messages from former clients. My waking mind recognizes all the client names as names of students. It is then that I realize that, in the dream, I used to be a college professor but am no longer. I don't know why I left my job or why I'm no longer a hairdresser either. The final message is from a student who is now in law school. She's telling me about having read Paul Laurence Dunbar's "We Wear the Mask" in one of her classes and how excited she was that she knew the poem already because she read in my class. When she offered a reading of the poem (the one she learned from me), however, the professor shot her down. "This poem," he said, "is not about the Negro's dissembly. It's about his dissemblage."

Then I woke up. Isn't that a crazy anxiety dream? And why is my sleeping brain making words ("dissemblage"?)? I look forward to finishing this book for lots of reasons, not least of which is a good night's sleep.

Afrogeeks Get Married!

Okay, so we were already married. But we did renew our vows a few weeks ago. Walter took the pictures. Here we are in all our geeky, sappy glory.

Are you some kind of feminist or something?

I am used to having repetitive, vaguely annoying conversations about my name. For instance, my first name--Conseula--is spelled unconventionally (the "u" usually comes before the "e"). This causes people to pronounce it in the oddest ways (I get Kon-soo-luh alot) and to tell me "You know, your name is spelled wrong" (this happens more often than you would think). My last name--Francis--is a homonym for my daughter's first name--Frances. Do you know how many times in the last seven years I've had to answer these two questions: "You named her Frances Francis?" and "Don't you get confused?" In response to the first question, I always say, simply, that my daughter has her father's last name, not my own. Which brings me to the name conversation I rarely have anymore.

I taught Governor's School this summer and many of the kids in my class were fascinated by the fact that I didn't change my name when I got married. Here is a conversation I had on the last day of class:

Student (as I am writing down my address for her): So what's your real last name?

Me: (briefly confused by the question): What?

Student: You know, your real last name, your husband's name.

Me: My *husband's* last name is McCann. *My* last name is Francis. I didn't change my name when I got married.

Student: You didn't want to claim your husband?

Me: I "claimed" him when we got married.

Student: But don't you want to show that you're married?

Me: What does my husband do to show that he is married?

Student: He wears a wedding ring.

Me: I wear the matching ring.

Student: Why didn't you change your name?

Me: Because I am a grown up with a life and identity and profession that didn't disappear when I got married.

Student: Are you some kind of feminist or something?

So many of things I take for granted--not changing my name, not staying home with my children (a whole other conversation), feminism--were new and exotic (and maybe a little disturbing) for her. It's been a long time since I've met someone like that. Though, to be fair, she was only 17 and still has lots of growing up to do. Maybe I will be the first step in her feminist awakening.

Vow Renewal and Groovy Shoes

There's been nothing but silence around these parts lately. Finals and the end of the semester bled right into Governor's School and it wouldn't be an overstatement to say that every waking minute of my day is filled with students or grades or kids or writing. In addition, Brian and I are renewing our wedding vows in celebration of 10th anniversary. While I could bore you with details about how we eloped the first time around, or how that elopement came after I cancelled two weddings, or how shopping for party supplies and planning a menu is not as much fun as one would hope, I will instead share with you my favorite part of this whole renewal process.

These are my wedding shoes. I love them. I'm wearing them right now. I walk around in them because they make me happy.

What Black Men Think PSA

Damned Straight!

I, for one, am sick of so many of the malicious untruths spread about black men.

I think that it says alot about our society, and how willing we are to believe these "facts" about.

I'm in a rush, so, I'll publish a more indepth post later.

Brian

Conseula and Alison on the Road

Alison and I went to Tucson this weekend to interview science fiction writer Joanna Russ. We weren't quite prepared for this interview when we left on Friday, so actually worked quite a bit on this trip (a lot of that work got done in the Atlanta airport during our 6 hour lay over). But, thankfully, we also go to play some. Over in her blog Alison has some pictures of the yummy frybread we got while we were on the Tohono O'odham reservation. Here are some more pictures.

We went to Saguaro National Park and got the most amazing views of desert life.

Here is Alison squinting at the sun (which was unbelievably, deceptively hot) and standing next to a small cactus.

Here I am (bottle of water in tow) next to a huge saguaro. Saguaros can grow to up to fifty feet tall and can weigh more than 8 tons.

Here is that same saguaro in bloom.

The prickly pear cactus was also in abundance. I brought home candy made from prickly pear juice.

Later that day Alison and I went to El Charro Cafe where we ate our fill of tamales and guacomole (and prickly pear and mango margaritas). Here I am enjoying the famous cheese crisp appetizer. It was so big it could have easily fed a small nation.

Market for Niggas--Taalam Acey

I came across this video this morning and thought I'd share.

An Armed Campus is NOT a Safe Campus

Immediately in the aftermath of the shooting incident at Virginia Tech the usual swarm of loudmouths scuttled out from under the cultural baseboard and began to scream long and loud to anyone within earshot that if the students and faculty at VT had been armed that they'd have been able to deal with the shooter. (I wonder why no one mentioned arming the staff.) In truth, yes, on a college campus with a large percent of its population armed, eventually a shooter would be wounded or killed, but would an armed campus be safer than a campus where only the university police are allowed to be armed?

Lets face facts, federal, state, county, and local law enforcement personnel are screened to weed out the unstable and the unreliable. They receive training in firearms safety, marksmanship, and the use of deadly force, still, law enforcement personnel manage to mistake innocent persons for perpetrators, they miss their targets and hit bystanders, and the occasionally use excessive force.

Last night, after going through a red light, I was stopped by a cop. I made a conscious effort to keep my hands on the steering wheel where he could see them because I didn't want a nervous, pissed off, or frightened cop to make my kids orphans. If I can't trust a trained police officer not to shoot me, what makes anyone think that I should feel safe on a campus full of people who haven't been screened and who haven't had weeks of special training?

In not one of the letters to the editor, blogs, casual conversations, or radio call-in shows that I've been privy to has anyone explained how anyone's supposed to identify the shooter. If you're making your way across campus, and a friend runs up to you and yells, "Hey! Somebody's shooting people in Maybank Hall!" After you draw your weapon on a campus with a large percentage of armed people, how are you supposed to know which armed person is the shooter, and which one is responding to the shooting? How do the other armed people on campus know that you're not the shooter?

When talking to people about deadly force, I gave them this scenario: You've walked into a room in which there is one person on the floor suffering from an obvious gunshot wound, and two people facing each other with guns drawn. What do you do? Every time I posed that scenario, I'd get this response, "I'd shoot both of them." I know that these people were trying to be witty, but it was their very wittiness that exposes one of the flaws of the armed campus. I can think of many more.

If your Spidey sense (or whatever) does manage to clue you in on the shooter, are you sure that you're accurate enough to hit him and no one else? What about the other vigilantes, are you confidant in their marksmanship? What about the background of your target? Are there no innocent bystanders on the other side of the shooter? What about on the other side of that sheetrock wall beyond the shooter? Maybe you'd better add x-ray vision to your Spidey sense. Are you sure that there's only one shooter? Maybe while you're stalking the guy you think is the shooter, his buddy's stalking you.

Also, when the campus police, the local police, or the mob of students and faculty (and staff) respond to the crime, how do you identify yourself as not the shooter? Why shouldn't they shoot you?

Back when I was in the Army, soldiers who had privately owned weapons had to keep them either off-post, or locked downstairs in the arms room. If you wanted your weapon you had to give the armorer twenty-four hours notice before he'd release it to you. I guess that the idea was to keep young hotheads from running downstairs, demanding their weapons, then running back upstairs to settle scores. If the Army, after having invested a LOT of time and money training soldiers in the benefits of firearms safety, felt that it wasn't a good idea to allow soldiers to sleep with pistols under their pillows, why would it be a good idea to allow college students to do so?

I remember when the Knights of the White Camelia (an even more bedraggled version of the Klu Klux Klan, formerly based in Louisiana) was recruiting on campus at the University of Southwestern Louisiana. They came in and set up their table alongside the campus groups who were likewise recruiting. Unlike the campus organizations, they quickly drew a hostile crowd. Harsh words were thrown back and forth, but there was no violence. The university police kept the peace and the worst thing that happened was that the KWK got free publicity out of the deal. Had guns been allowed on campus, the situation could have turned into something much worse. Some of the students would surely have been armed, and without a doubt, some of the KWK would have been carrying as well.

I'm sure that there are some readers who believe that had the students been armed that the KWK would have stayed off campus. Don't be fooled. Terrorist aren't cowards, if they were, they wouldn't be effective. A misunderstanding on either the part of the students or the KWK probably would have resulted in a bloodbath, and the university police would have been out manned, outgunned, and probably helpless to intervene. Think of all the emotionally charged incidents that take place on college campuses -- Sporting events that turn violent, political protests, rivalries between fraternal organizations that often turn violent, and all of these incidents can be exasperated by youthful hormones and sometimes alcohol and controlled substances. Who believes that adding guns to the mix would improve the situation?

Brian's Geekiness Pays Off

Brian wouldn't ever toot his own horn (does that sound dirty to anyone else but me?), but he was in Head2Head Trivia today and kicked butt. Go take a look.

Gunfighter Interviews Conseula

Over on Gunfighter 's blog, people were interviewing each other. Here are the questions he had for me:

1. I know that you appropriated the term "Afrogeek" from elsewhere, but why did it speak to you so emphatically? Do you know many fellow Afrogeeks? Do you network with them/us (I proudly claim status!)?
I thought the term "afrogeek" was a great straightforward description of black people like my husband and I and I was also excited to find out there were other black people who felt the need for a term. While I have few (maybe none?) black friends who are also geeky in real life, I have found several online communities (and a few blogs) where afrogeeks hang out. We should get t-shirts.

2. Who are your favorite superheroes? What makes them your favorites? Are you a Marvel or DC person?
I'm definitely a Marvel person, though I do have a weakness for all things Batman and a giant crush on the Martian Manhunter. I love that J'onn J'onzz can take any form and still chooses not to pass as a human on Earth. And when he does go about as a human, he chooses the form of a black American man because that identity is most parallel to his experience of isolation and marginalization. My Marvel preference is courtesy of my husband who has been a Marvel zombie since he was a kid. I didn't really start reading comics until he and I were married.

3. You are an academic, which I think is seriousy cool... what is your discipline? Is it a subject you always wanted to study? Are you teaching in the subject of your academic discipline?
I have a PhD in English. My specialty is African American literature, with particular interests in literary movements and black intellectual thought. I am indeed teaching in my discipline. I think that the moment I figured out there was a job that would allow me to read and write and talk about books, I was hooked.

4. I'm a bit of a headbanger. I have always loved a lot of the old-school heavy metal. Do you enjoy heavy metal? Tell me about your history with the band "Living Colour"
I enjoyed heavy metal a lot when I was in high school. Hair metal band posters covered the walls of my bedroom. I still think G'N'R's Appetite for Desctruction may be the best rock 'n' roll album ever. I remember loving Living Colour because they looked like me and they played the kind of music I liked and I believed they understood what it meant to be the only black kid at the Whitesnake concert. My love of metal gave way, though, to my love of conscious and alternative rap. I went from listening to Poison and Metallica to listening to Tribe Called Quest and De La Soul and Arrested Development. My musical tastes in general, however, are quite wide-ranging.

5. With all of the amazing history represented in Charleston, do you find that there is any attention played to the very serious contributions made by black patriots in the American Revolutionary war battles fought in South Carolina?
I think there is very little attention paid to the black contribution to anything in South Carolina. There are certainly good people doing good work to correct the misinformation and disinformation that exists about blacks here, but there's also a lot of resistance. Charleston has a very particular view of itself--genteel, tradition-bound, honorable, aggrieved--that it couldn't easily maintain if black people and their history were fully integrated.

6. Do you prefer Kirk or Picard?
Dude, easy one. Picard, for the sexy bald head alone. (My husband says he'd rather serve under Picard because Picard's the better officer, but that Kirk has the luck of the Irish.)

7. Was Hal Jordan The Green Lantern when you first started reading the Green Lantern comics?
I haven't ever read The Green Lantern comics but I do believe Hal Jordan was Green Lantern when Brian started reading them.

8. Brag about yourself for a moment. Go ahead, it'll be fun.
I was the first black woman to receive an honors baccalaureate degree from my undergraduate institution. I recently had an op-ed piece published in The State.


If you are interested in participating, please see the following:

DIRECTIONS FOR THE INTERVIEW MEME
1. Leave a comment saying, "Interview me."
2. I will respond by emailing you five questions (if I don't have your email address, you can email me instead). I get to pick the questions.
3. You will update your blog with the answers to the questions.
4. You will include this explanation and offer to interview someone else in the same post.
5. When others comment asking to be interviewed, you will ask them five questions.

Hey Ya! Charlie Brown Style

We obviously need a little bit of levity in this space. Here's what I've been watching when I'm need of a pick me up lately. Outkast and Peanuts--it doesn't get much better than this.

Conseula's Semi-Annual Breastfeeding Rant, or Why Mammies are Still a Bad Idea

Full disclosure time: I am troubled by the cult of breastfeeding. No, scratch that. The cult of breastfeeding culture pisses me off. When we had our first daughter we decided for very personal and very real reasons not to breastfeed. When we looked for information about formula feeding, we found very little that wasn't designed to induce feelings of guilt and inadequacy in mothers in didn't or couldn't breastfeed. Apparently our decision to use formula exclusively doomed our first born to be fat and stupid and lazy. When I came out of my new mother fog, I realized (as I did about so much of the American cult of motherhood) that breastfeeding culture (though not necessarily the act of breastfeeding itself) is a tool of patriarchy. "Tool of patriarchy" is a phrase that sounds archaic, as if it should only be used in an SNL sketch mocking second wave feminism. But the phrase exists for a reason. It exists because there are actual systemic forces that combine and conspire to keep women in proscribed roles that benefit men. Breastfeeding is one of these roles.

Breastfeeding is hard and exhausting. It is also, often, isolating and lonely. Breastfeeding makes going back to work full time more difficult than it otherwise might be. It makes getting a full night's sleep nearly impossible. It places the care of an infant squarely and necessarily on the shoulders of the mother.

That's just fucked up. I reject that the cult of breastfeeding. I reject the notion that I should breastfeed because doctors say it's best. Doctors once said giving a woman a hysterectomy would make her adapt better to her role as wife and mother. Doctors once said homosexuality is a disease. Doctors let my 16-year-old mother labor alone in a maternity ward for hours because "those women just pop them out like puppies." Excuse me if take what doctors say with a grain of salt.

I also reject the notion that feeding my child from my body is my duty and makes me a good mother. The greatest benefit of formula feeding, besides allowing me to hang on to my sanity and maintain some semblance of my life apart from my children, was that it allowed my husband and our friends the opportunity to bond with my daughters in a really fundamental way. I rarely got up for night feedings with my first daughter. 2am was daddy/daughter time and I am convinced that that time and my daughter associating her father with nourishment and comfort accounts in large part for the close relationship they share now. Formula feeding allowed my husband to participate fully as a parent in a way the cult of breastfeeding seems to think is unimportant.

This morning's breastfeeding rant was brought on by this article from Time magazine. It's about the rise of wet nurses in America. Here are some gems from that article.

"Advocates argue that milk sharing lets women be good moms while fulfilling other goals."
Because good moms breastfeed, you see, regardless of whether or not they can or want to. We might forgive your going back to work if you shell out the $1000 a week for a wet nurse.

One mother who cross-nurses with her neighbor says, "It takes female friendship to another level. You're trusting another person to nurture your child."
Because while hiring someone to care for my child while I work outside the home dooms me to a special place in hell (how often do working mothers have to answer to charges of paying someone else to raise our children?), we can forgive allowing someone else to breastfeed my child because it builds female community.

Here's the best part of the article, though:
Brenda (whose last name is withheld to protect her clients' privacy), 42, has wet-nursed 10 babies in the past seven years partly to help send her own two kids to college. She has mulled over the social implications of her work--because she's black and eight of the families she has worked for are white. "A friend asked me, Don't you feel like you're the mammy?" she recalls. But she finds her job fulfilling, and sometimes amusing. "If you're someplace with the family and the baby starts to pull at your blouse or put his hand in your bra, that can be embarrassing," she says, laughing.

Imagine this scene people. A nice middle class white family is out at dinner with the black woman who breastfeeds their kid. I bet the white couple tells friends that the black woman is just like one of the family. Am I the only one appalled? Remember those tools of patriarchy I mentioned earlier? Here they are at work. Poor black and brown women do not want to breastfeed privileged white women's kids. Yet they live in a society in which they feel that their most tradeable commodity is their bodies. So they scrub white women's floors and shake their asses in rap videos and, apparently, breastfeed other women's kids. That's the patriarchy at work. The same patriarchy that guilted all those white women into needing a wet nurse in the first place.

Of Nappy Headed Hos and Condoleeza

There's probably been more than enough said about Don Imus and the Duke rape case. And I have debated whether I should add my voice to the throng. I've drafted and deleted several posts. But this won't leave me alone. So here goes.

First there are two responses to all of this that drive me insane.

"What ever happened to free speech."
To which of course I might respond, what have ever happened to good manners or common decency. Putting aside for the moment the racist misogyny of Imus's remark, we have to recognize that calling somebody a "nappyheaded ho" is just rude. Yeah, the 1st Amendment gives you the right to be a dick. But having the right to do something doesn't mean that you should. Take this for instance.

"Why do people like Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson always play the race card? We will never get over our divisions unless people learn to let things go."
See, the 1st Amendment allows me to call this racist idiocy. But I won't because I was raised right. I might ask though what the hell this even means. Does it mean that racism will end if we let racists be racist in peace? We can live in a less racially divisive society if only I can learn not to bother you with the circumstances and consequences of my oppression? Your need to live free of discomfort is more important than my need to be heard? And what exactly am I getting out of this? The right to be called a "nappyheaded ho" on national radio? The right to be gang raped at a lacrosse party? Thanks but no thanks.

But here's what's really bothering me about this whole thing. In the rush to defend the Rutgers women's basketball team, it's clear that they have earned our support precisely because they are not actually "nappyheaded hos." They are not the young woman in the Duke case. That nameless young woman--a single mother, a college dropout, a former exotic dancer, as every article reminds us--didn't deserve our defense. We could be outraged on her behalf. We could rail against the white male privilege run amok. But defend her? No. Her very existence proves what so many black women try so hard to disprove--we are not welfare mothers. We are not video vixens. We are not "nappyheaded hos." But getting yourself raped at party full of white men where you were the sexual entertainment doesn't really prove that does it? So there will be no defense of her, no meetings with her, no rallying around her now that North Carolina has decided she's a liar.

But the Rutgers girls, these girls, are on the Condoleeza Path of Success. They have struggled, worked hard, followed the rules, played the game and it's paying off. They have been trotted out on TV, not a nappy head among them, looking every bit the bright, high achieving women they are. And the implication, at least to my eyes, is that they deserve our protection because they are good girls. What would have happened if they had been less than good?

Maybe this all bothers me because I was placed on the Condoleeza Path of Success early in life. I learned, even though no one ever said these words, that being smart and well-spoken and modest would protect me from many of the degradations that so many black women have to live with every day. And I succeeded. I live with a certain amount of privilege that many many many black women don't have. It's amazing how people's facial expressions and body language change when I introduce myself as Dr. Francis or mention that I'm a college professor. A whole set of assumptions about me get thrown out because of that PhD. But Dr. Francis isn't exactly tattooed on my forehead, is it? I walk around in my brown skin, appearing very much the nappyheaded ho to the Imuses of the world simply because of that brown skin. It's small comfort to think that, apparently, my only defense against that is trying really hard to be Condoleeza.

Condilicious

Brian ran across this online and thought it was hilarious. (Although it may not be hilarious if you're conservative or if you haven't seen the Fergilicious video.) Enjoy. Let him know what you think.

Crock Pot Meatballs

Brian and I are renewing our vows to celebrate our 10th wedding anniversary (which two months ago seemed like a really fun idea, but today seems like a lot of hassle, but I digress...). Anyway, we want to serve some of those yummy meatballs that people bring to potlucks in crockpots. But I don't actually know how to make those meatballs. And there are approximately 9,874,562 recipes on the internet. So that's not really a help.

Do any of you out there (all three of you reading this) have any good crockpot meatball recipes?

Also, expect a post soon from Brian about the death of his favorite superhero Captain America. He is none too pleased.