Tag Archives: Whiteness

“Grace,” #MeToo, and Our Binary World

20 Saturday Jan 2018

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Water buffaloes in mud, January 2017. (http://reddit.com).

Part of me knows that some of you will assume that I shouldn’t be discussing this on my blog at all. I’m a man, a Black man, a middle-aged Black man, so what do I know, really? I haven’t been on a date with anyone other than my wife since 1995. And my own history with hypermasculinity and sexism combined with my exposure to patriarchy and misogyny should disqualify me from making any comments on Babe.net’s “Grace” piece, right?

But I do have a few things to say. That is, after a week of reading tweets, articles, Facebook posts, as well as conversations with my wife and a couple of friends. Most of the divide has been between those adamant that “Grace” was a #MeToo victim of some form of sexual violation and those who believed that her evening with Aziz Ansari was little more than a bad date. This is yet another time in which the American penchant for seeing the world as white or black, or in computer code, as 0s or 1s, can literally blind most from the truth. Both sides are sort of right and sort of wrong. And like an electron (which can be in two places seemingly at once), this isn’t a binary issue. It’s a both-and situation.

Either-or thinking, December 2014. (http://survivingchurch.org).

Ansari was a doggish pig. Period. His intent with “Grace” was purely sexual. He saw her as a piece of meat (or, really, a “piece of ass”). That would explain both Ansari’s words and actions as Katie Way wrote them last week. Does that make his sexist? Of course!

Ansari also tried to persuade “Grace” into full-blown intercourse a couple of times after she had expressed her uncomfortability with moving beyond kissing, oral sex, and other fondling. Coercive behave is also doggish, venturing toward the misogynistic. All of this is true, and is certainly part of how entitlement and patriarchy can work together in sexual relationships.

Context, however, is always important in any situation. Especially one that isn’t as cut and dry as what Way described regarding “Grace” and her Ansari date. So many have harped on the idea that questioning “Grace’s” decision-making in any form is the equivalent of what misogynists do to rape victims. Not true. Not when the power dynamic is limited and diffuse at best. Not when Ansari never used physical coercion or the threat thereof to get the sex he obviously wanted.

And certainly not when “Grace’s” actions didn’t line up with her word. Some have argued about the inability of men to read the subliminal subtext of women when they are saying “No” or “I’m leaning toward no.” And for many men, this may well be the case. For so many women, being too direct may well lead to a verbal or physical confrontation with a misogynistic man. But that negates the context of Way’s piece. “Grace’s” physical responses and cues throughout the sexual encounter either belied her words, or her words were simply unclear.

Truth is, after their first try, Ansari should’ve not only just stopped, which he did. He should’ve also immediately called “Grace” a cab and sent her home. But in even writing this, isn’t this as much a form of ceding power to patriarchy as it would be a sign of sexual maturity, at least on Ansari’s part? 

Truth is, “Grace” should’ve also have been clearer with herself about what she wanted from her date. And should’ve just ended the date, rudely, discreetly, with clearer words and clearer actions, either at the restaurant or after the first sign of being uncomfortable. Because feminism is about taking charge of one’s own womanhood, and not just merely resisting patriarchy and misogyny with mealy-mouthed language.

Truth is, “Grace” had very different expectations of Ansari and that one-and-only date. The kind of expectations that are a bit immature, especially for a women who thinks that “[y]ou guys are all the same. You guys are all the fucking same.” That the main divide among women who’ve commented on “Grace” is age (with the over-under around 35 years old) is telling. Some will say that women (especially younger women) shouldn’t put up with legal yet boorish behavior, either. So don’t!

Truth is, “Grace’s” story via Way’s article is a hit piece, a sort of revenge for Ansari bursting her internalized image of him as one of the few “good guys.” “Grace” got to violate Ansari’s private life because she was enraged that Ansari saw her as little more than a piece of sexual meat. And while Ansari showed himself on this date with “Grace” to be a sexist pig, this isn’t a #MeToo moment.

Unless, of course, we distance ourselves from context, privilege, and intersectionality. Most assume that “Grace” was a 22-year-old White woman. Probably. But even if not, Way’s article about “Grace” is drowning in Whiteness. Especially when considering “Grace’s” relatively lofty expectations that Ansari would be different from other men. Especially when taking the approach that she wanted Ansari to calm her down after the awkwardness of their first sexual try. What made “Grace” think that he was so different? What made her actions as confusing as they were?

A lock of blonde hair (an allusion to Pope’s Rape of the Lock), June 18, 2013. (http://allure.com).

The Sturm und Drang over this hit piece reminds me of when I read Alexander Pope’s mock epic poem The Rape of the Lock in tenth grade. I might not remember much from Mrs. Buckley’s otherwise boring-ass English class in 1984-85, but I do remember the story of how a war started because a baron cut a lock of Belinda’s hair and kept it. It’s also typical of how race riots and lynchings of Black men often occurred, over perceived slights and embarrassing winks.

Speaking of intersectionality, where have all the “Grace” defenders been this week on serious #MeToo issues? Where have they been on Jade Martin for the past week, as a video of her assault at the hands of a Pizza Milano manager in Pittsburgh went viral, an instance of both racism and misogyny? Where have they been on the sentencing phase for Larry Nassar, a man who sexually assault over 100 young women and girls over decades? Where are they on the Rohingya, as the Myanmar security forces have admitted killing and raping women and children while driving them out of the country?

No, for so many privileged, younger, and White American women, a bad sexual encounter with a man whose sexual sexism was obvious is more important that the felony assault of a Black women for wanting to use the bathroom. The last week has shown yet again the racial, ethnic, class, and even age divide that has plagued #MeToo ever since it became more about White women and less about marginalized women and people.

Black Power Generation

24 Wednesday Feb 2016

Posted by in 1, Academia, Boy @ The Window, culture, Eclectic, Movies, Politics, Pop Culture, race, Religion, Youth

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Black Panther national chairman Bobby Seale, wearing a Colt .45 and defense minister Huey Newton with a bandolier and shotgun, poster, Oakland, CA, 1968. (AP via http://pbs.org).

Black Panther national chairman Bobby Seale, wearing a Colt .45 and defense minister Huey Newton with a bandolier and shotgun, poster, Oakland, CA, 1968. (AP via http://pbs.org).

This year marks a half-century since the official shift of the Civil Rights Era from the traditional Civil Rights leadership of the Black Church toward one of “Black Power.” Between Stokely Carmichael/Kwame Touré’s famous 1966 speech, Huey Newton and Bobby Seale’s founding of the Black Panther Party that October, and riots that began with Watts in L.A. the year before, this was a pivotal year in American and African American history. Of course, as historians and other scholars like Peniel Joseph and Alondra Nelson have illuminated in recent years, while 1966 was a pivotal year, it was not a departure from a long history of the Black freedom struggle, but part a continuity. For Joseph and Nelson (not to mention, Robin D. G. Kelley and Michael Eric Dyson), Black Power was a continuation of radical ideas and actions in order to stand in opposition to American capitalism and racism as an intertwined system of oppression. The roots of which go at least as far back as Black sharecroppers and their union organizing efforts during the Great Depression, if not in fact to the radicalism of Martin Delany of the 1850s.

These wonderful scholars are absolutely right to dump the simplistic narrative of Black Power as a symbol of/departure from the struggle for civil rights or as a philosophy that advocates violence against Whites, especially Whites in law enforcement. They are also more than right to point out how Black Power and the Black Panther Party did way more good on a policy level than most Americans would ever give their leaders credit for. Fred Hampton and Newton and the Free Breakfast for School Children Program that started in Chicago and Oakland between 1969 and 1972. The People’s Free Medical Centers (PFMC), Free Ambulance Service, and other direct community involvement to provide free access to health care and screenings for thousands of impoverished Black families. Free food programs for the destitute.

Angela Davis on Newsweek cover after 1970 arrest, October 26, 1970. (http://pinterest.com). Qualifies as fair use due to adjustments for low resolution.

Angela Davis on Newsweek cover after 1970 arrest, October 26, 1970. (http://pinterest.com). Qualifies as fair use due to adjustments for low resolution.

But more than that. The idea that Black communities could work to provide services and opportunities otherwise denied to them by American society was to be a major takeaway from this era of the overall Black freedom struggle. And of course, the idea that police served as an oppressive occupying force, and that Black citizens had every right to defend themselves against police brutality. Though direct armed struggle with law enforcement was in the Black Panther Party toolbox, the notion of policing the police, community control over schools, a community using its available resources, is still more positive than negative. These remain implementable ideas that have and do provide an outlet to the daily grind of racial discrimination and deep poverty in so many parts of the US.

Culturally, the freedom struggle as expressed through Black Power and the Black Panther Party, particularly by leaders like Angela Davis, Assata Shakur, Amiri Baraka, and Kwame Touré, was one of what we know would call Afrocentricity today. This was/is far more than wearing Afros, daishikis, sea shells and beads (or for that matter, black turtlenecks and tight pants). It would mean advocating for and getting universities (both predominantly White universities and HBCUS) to adopt Black Studies programs. It would mean influencing a whole generation of Black artists (the arts, music, and cinema) to adopt a “I’m Black and proud” stance in their work, from Marvin Gaye and the Lost Poets and Gil Scott Heron, to movies like Shaft and that first mainstream miniseries, Roots.

The Black Power Generation (kind of like Prince and The Revolution that tried to incorporate a mesh of messages between 1979 and 1986), for all of the elements that survived Huey Newton and his purges of the 1970s and early 1980s — not to mention their continuing influence in American pop culture, in Black intellectual thought, and in Black movements in general — was hardly perfect. Some, like the late Kwame Touré, promoted Black Power as a sort of authentic Blackness, a kind in which one had to buy all of the options on the table in order to be authentic. The “Uncle Tom” accusation or its equivalent was thrown at Martin Luther King, Whitney Young, Arthur Ashe, and others whose support of Black Power was less that full-throated. Not to mention, the tensions between leaders within the Black Panther Party and among African American intellectuals who attempted to ride the wave of Black Power, as nearly forgotten Black intellectuals Harold Cruse and Nathan Wright, Jr. noted in the late-1960s.

Gemasolar Thermosolar Plant (solar power concentration, converting solar energy to thermal turbine power generation), Fuentes de Andalucía, Seville province, Spain, June 22, 2014. (Wikipedia via http://vice.com).

Gemasolar Thermosolar Plant (solar power concentration, converting solar energy to thermal turbine power generation), Fuentes de Andalucía, Seville province, Spain, June 22, 2014. (Wikipedia via http://vice.com).

That lingering legacy of Black Power is part of its appeal and one of its limits — the ability to redefine ourselves and retell our history in a way that brings nuance and truth. But nuance and truth are not always absolutes. In many respects, Black Power over the generations shares a similarity with Marxist thought and action. Just as Marxism represents a dialectical opposition to capitalist oppression, Black Power has always represented a dialectical resistance to Whiteness and the racist/capitalist oppression that comes with Whiteness. It just doesn’t represent the only form of resistance there is, at least not as Newton, Touré, and others lived their resistance. Black Power is more than resistance, and more than just an amorphous idea standing in opposition to Whiteness. It’s just not the only form of Blackness there is. My own upbringing would be a further testimony to this (to be continued…).

My Private Aftermath of the O.J. Simpson Verdict 20 Years Ago

01 Thursday Oct 2015

Posted by in 1, Academia, Boy @ The Window, Carnegie Mellon University, culture, Eclectic, Pittsburgh, Politics, Pop Culture, race, University of Pittsburgh, Work, Youth

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O.J. Simpson with his attorneys F. Lee Bailey (left) and the late Johnnie Cochran (right) after being found not guilty, October 3 1995. (Myung J. Chun/Los Angeles Daily News/AP, via http://theguardian.com)

O.J. Simpson with his attorneys F. Lee Bailey (left) and the late Johnnie Cochran (right) after being found not guilty, October 3 1995. (Myung J. Chun/Los Angeles Daily News/AP, via http://theguardian.com)

To think that it’s only been two decades since the overhyped “Trial of the Century” came to a close with a clerk’s initial mispronunciation of Orenthal James Simpson’s first name. And of course, with O.J. Simpson’s acquittal. It’s amazing to think that so many would become so emotionally caught up in a double-homicide case involving what at one time was one of the world’s most recognizable faces. But it did happen, all of it in a sixteen-month span, and the reaction was as predictable as the sunrise, racial profiling, and police harassment.

During the Ford Bronco chase on I-5 on Friday, June 17 (during my Knicks’ Game 5 of the NBA Finals against the Houston Rockets), I hoped that the police wouldn’t shoot Simpson before he had a chance to go to trial. The L.A. riots were just two years before. I feared that the issue of race would be front and center, with Simpson’s issues with his now dead White ex-wife.

O.J. Simpson on the covers of Newsweek and Time Magazine, (the picture on right altered to make Simpson appear darker and caused an outcry), June 27, 1994. (Theo's Little Bot via Wikipedia). Qualifies as fair use due to low resolution of image and relevance to subject matter.

O.J. Simpson on the covers of Newsweek and Time Magazine, (the picture on right altered to make Simpson appear darker and caused an outcry), June 27, 1994. (Theo’s Little Bot via Wikipedia). Qualifies as fair use due to low resolution of image and relevance to subject matter.

I was naive, thinking that our world of ’94 would simply attempt to determine if Simpson was guilty or innocent. Instead what I saw within ten days of the Bronco chase was an artificially darkened Simpson on the cover of Time. I saw Blacks who became angrier about the coverage, even as Whites grew more confident about Simpson being convicted, losing his fortune and fame, and possibly getting the death penalty (or at least, life imprisonment). My Mom proclaimed that O.J. was innocent long before the prosecution botched the trial. Some of my grad school colleagues — all White, mind you — made all kinds of assumptions about where I stood on O.J. They didn’t like the fact that I was willing to wait until the trial to make up my mind.

When the verdict came down on Tuesday, October 3, 1995, it was stunning to watch ecstatic Blacks and angry, dejected Whites react to the “Not Guilty” verdict. And not just on TV, although it was obvious newsrooms were actively looking for a racial divide. My friend James (who’s Black, by the way) from my Pitt grad school days spent his lunch break in my apartment gritting his teeth in anger as the verdict was read. I was more shocked than anything else. I smiled, but it was one of bewilderment observing the reactions, as if we all had some deeply personal stake in the trial and verdict.

That smile disappeared as I went through my day editing and printing out chapter drafts of my dissertation. That was my real focus, not the soap opera enveloping the rest of the country. Late that afternoon, I went to Carnegie Mellon to drop off a draft of a couple of those chapters for my thesis advisor Joe Trotter. Carl, a colleague of mine, one who I had called a friend up to this point, immediately started in on me about the verdict when I reached the grad student cubicles in the History Department. He kept literally spewing the media’s line about an all-Black jury, about jury nullification, about Johnnie Cochran. Carl was in a rage, belligerent, possibly drunk, and seemingly ready to throw down. Seriously, aside from showing up to drop off dissertation chapters, what did I do?

I politely pointed out that the jury was mostly, but not all Black (at least three members were White or Latino), and that the prosecution led by Marcia Clark and Christopher Darden left the door wide open for an acquittal. Carl assumed wrongly that I wanted O.J. free regardless of his “obvious guilt.” I asked my colleague what else could the jury do, given the compelling defense put together by the late Johnnie Cochran, the mistakes with forensics, with the glove, with putting Mark Fuhrman on the stand? I said that “I don’t represent all thirty million African Americans in this country,” and that “our conversation is over.”

Mary J. Blige, No More Drama (with extra tracks) album cover, 2002. (http://amazon.com).

Mary J. Blige, No More Drama (with extra tracks) album cover, 2002. (http://amazon.com).

That reminded me of how irrational supposedly rational, forward-thinking Whites often are on race matters. They either ignore, deny, or when compelled by some betrayal or injustice, badger, threaten and retaliate in response. Carl that day was no exception. I found that incident unsettling because this supposed friend was one of the few folks at Carnegie Mellon who had earned my trust. It reminded me if I were to ever date or marry someone White (not exactly my plan), there would be hell to pay. I had a grand total of three conversations with Carl after that between October 3, 1995 and August 6, 1999, the latter the week before I left Pittsburgh to live in suburban DC/Maryland.

I’m sure that I wasn’t the only Black person who had to confront Whiteness in all of its angry, hurt and juvenile forms in those first two weeks of October ’95. I’m equally sure that if the O.J. Simpson trial’s verdict occurred in 2015, Carl and his like-minded ilk would’ve set off race riots the likes of which this country hasn’t seen since Detroit in 1943, Tulsa in 1921, and Chicago in 1919. You know, the kind where Whites go into segregated Black communities and rape, kill, steal and destroy as much as they can. To me, Carl just represented the White privilege and resentment of millions, smoldering yet ready to erupt at a moment’s notice. Not that many haven’t benefited from the O.J. Simpson effect in the years since.

Carl has a professorship somewhere in New York these days, and we are professional colleagues who maybe exchange an email one or twice a decade now. I’m sure, though, that he avoids the topic of race in US history like most would want to avoid catching Ebola. Especially given his reaction to one jury verdict twenty years ago.

Aside

Running Away, 30 Years Later

25 Tuesday Aug 2015

Posted by in 1, Boy @ The Window, Christianity, culture, Eclectic, eclectic music, Jimme, Marriage, Mount Vernon High School, Mount Vernon New York, music, My Father, Pittsburgh, Pop Culture, race, University of Pittsburgh, Youth

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Today’s date marks three decades since I took on my idiot stepfather Maurice Washington, and actually won, even though I didn’t realize it at the time. I’ve written about the incident and my twenty-three-hour trek through Mount Vernon, my dreams, prayers, and wishes, and my confrontation before, here and in Boy @ The Window. (Even now, the baseline to Pharcyde’s “Runnin'” (1995) is running in my head, temporarily replacing my writing theme song for the past week, Maverick Sabre’s “Emotion (Ain’t Nobody)” (2011), but that’s how my mind works). So I won’t go over all of the details again. Still, there are a few important takeaways that puts Sunday, August 25, 1985 in my lifetime victory column.

Michigan WR Jeremy Gallon's spin move gif on way to a 61-yd TD against Notre Dame, Ann Arbor, MI, September 7, 2013. (http://thebiglead.com/).

Michigan WR Jeremy Gallon’s spin move gif on way to a 61-yd TD against Notre Dame, Ann Arbor, MI, September 7, 2013. (http://thebiglead.com/).

1. Physical advantages. It never occurred to me until Maurice tried to blindside me in the apartment hallway with a punch that I had much faster reflexes than the idiot. It also never occurred to me that I had a better sense of balance. I managed to avoid the punch and spin around him by using his 350-400 pounds of bulk against him (I really hated having to touch the unwashed, greasy fat frog of a man), and in only a foot of space between the two of us. That’s how I escaped Maurice’s punch and grasp, and got out of the apartment to begin my trek. Knowing what I know now, I should’ve tried out for basketball instead of baseball in eleventh grade.

2. Not finding my father. I kind of wished I had, just to have a few hours that day not to think about my present and future. But my alcoholic dad was a significant part of my present, and his absence gave me real time to think about how jacked up my family life was. I knew, if nothing else, that Maurice, Mom, and Jimme couldn’t pin that on me.

3. Walking up Gramatan Avenue and into Fleetwood. It was partly a walk that reminded me about how the other half of Mount Vernon — affluent and predominantly White — lived. I knew that I’d never be a part of that Mount Vernon, and not just because most of them would run me over with a car sooner than say “Hello.” It was the sense of exclusively, the ability to check in and out of progressive issues, like Humanities and magnet programs, that made me see. These folks I could never befriend.

St. Ursulas Roman Catholic Church, 213 East Lincoln Avenue, Mount Vernon, NY, August 2012. (http://maps.google.com).

St. Ursulas Roman Catholic Church, 213 East Lincoln Avenue, Mount Vernon, NY, August 2012. (http://maps.google.com).

4. MVHS overnight dreams and Catholic church prayers. Both reminded me that if I played my cards right, I could be on my way to college in two years, twenty-four months, 730 days. I could cope with 616, Maurice, my older brother Darren and my younger siblings and high school and Humanities for that much longer, I thought. But I also knew I needed to make a conscious, almost single-minded effort to do so. Even then, I was tired of burying my thoughts and emotions and playing the role of enigmatic weirdo, though. I realized this was going to be a battle with myself.

Yet what I didn’t learn from my ordeal would also be two more reasons to leave Mount Vernon. I wouldn’t learn those reasons and lessons until the spring and summer of ’87, when the respectability police, the good middle class folk of Black Mount Vernon, would give me just the push I needed…

Aside

“White Privilege,” “Privileged Whites,” and Other Clarifications

01 Saturday Aug 2015

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"White Privilege-Amex," April 2014. (http://theblacksphere.net/).

“White Privilege-Amex,” in black and white, April 2014. (http://theblacksphere.net/).

It is hard to discuss race. It is definitely so in the US, where virtually everyone believes that their individual good intentions mean more than systemic oppression and ugly truths. And it is really hard on people of color when they/we discuss race with most Whites and some people of color (e.g., Black conservatives, the elite of color, those with internalized racism issues), as their belief in American exceptionalism and individualism is so strong that any evidence to the contrary must be wrong. Especially if the person providing the evidence is Black, Latino, Native American or Asian, and even more so if they are women of color.

One thing that’s been on my mind lately is the lazy use of terms by the media around race. And their laziness is our collective and individual laziness as well. So much so that most Americans use the terms for discussing race about the same way most Americans eat — they say “gimme lots of fat” while refusing the vegetables and healthy, but “put everything on it” at the same time.

Mr. Moneybags of Monopoly (1934) fame, July 31, 2015. (http://streetsmartbrazil.com/).

Mr. Moneybags of Monopoly (1934) fame, July 31, 2015. (http://streetsmartbrazil.com/).

For example, most Whites see the terms White privilege and privileged Whites and assume they mean the same thing. They don’t and can’t. White privilege refers to both systemic and individual racial discrimination and disparities that almost no one White would ever have to deal with in most circumstances. It has little to do with socioeconomic standing, level of education, social networks, or any other variable to which most Americans who play devil’s advocate often refer. Privileged Whites, though, refers to the fact that this socioeconomic group is either upper middle class or wealthy, often with high education levels. The latter can also refer to White privilege, but then again, that’s already assumed in America’s racial construction of itself.

Anyone who is White and poor and also assumes that White privilege (or, to use W.E.B. Du Bois’ term, Whiteness) is ascribing to them a socioeconomic status that they do not possess, that’s just incorrect. As Du Bois wrote in Black Reconstruction (1935), even the poorest Whites received societal compensation, at least in part, through a “public and psychological wage.” In Jim Crow times, it was one in which poor Whites “were given public deference…were admitted freely…to public functions and public parks.” At the same time, the “police were drawn from their ranks and the courts, dependent on their votes, treated them with leniency” (pp. 700-01). Come to think of it, much of this still applies in 2015, even though the Civil Rights Movement dismantled Jim Crow, no?

But it’s not just terms like White privilege and privileged Whites that throws off all but a small minority of Americans. Most use terms like race, racism and bigotry interchangeably, as if they work at an Apple factory in the Longhua Subdivision of Shenzhen, in Guangdong Province, China (it’s outside Hong Kong) making iPhones and iPads. Race is a construct and not a biological fact in the case of Homo sapiens, since humans are all part of one species, albeit with some rather interesting surface variations. Racism is the result of a construct to justify social and economic advantages in the US and all over the globe, as well as the systemic construction and maintenance of such advantages. Bigotry, though, is something we as individuals all possess, regardless of race, gender, ideology, religion, atheism, or any other variable. There’s more, but I’ve already written a post about this.

A clip from The Colbert Report in a segment about the end of stop and frisk in New York City, August 2013. (http://globalgrind.com via http://billmoyers.com).

A clip from The Colbert Report in a segment about the end of stop and frisk in New York City, August 2013. (http://globalgrind.com via http://billmoyers.com).

And there’s this whole notion of color blindness, the idea that millions of Americans who see everything in color can claim that they’re colorblind to race. “I don’t care if you’re white, black, red, green or purple. It doesn’t matter to me,” most Americans often say. There’s two problems with this statement and these phrases. One is that unless someone is actually, physically and neurologically colorblind, what one is doing is choosing to ignore differences, which is completely different from tolerating, accepting or embracing difference. One might as well say that they don’t see the homeless in the middle of Central Park in New York, that’s how ridiculous — maybe even tone-deaf and callous — this idea is.

Two is that there aren’t any green, purple, blue or other weird hues of humanity anywhere on this planet. Heck, technically, Whites are pink, Blacks are varying shades of brown, Native Americans have reddish undertones (and then only some), and so on. The point is, this idea of color blindness to race is straight horse manure, allowing many Americans to feel good about their views on race, racism and bigotry without any serious thought about their country or the people in it at all.

And that is why conversations on race in the US remain a pipe dream for some, and raise the fear of the specter of Judgment Day for others.

Easter Seder 1995

08 Wednesday Apr 2015

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Matzo and a cup of wine in a Kiddush cup for first evening of Passover, April 7, 2015. (http://www.timeanddate.com).

Matzo and a cup of wine in a Kiddush cup for first evening of Passover, April 7, 2015. (http://www.timeanddate.com).

Like most of my posts, this is a story of irony, sarcasm and identity. It may be a bit out of time, since the first night of Passover and Easter already occurred last weekend. But it’s still Passover week for those who do more than eat matzos and chicken liver paste with a glass of Manischewitz on the first night.

In all, I have been present, prayed, dined, wined and whined at four Passover Seders. Three of them were during the Hebrew-Israelite years, 1982, 1983, and 1984. All of them involved a roasted leg of lamb, bitter herbs, and chewing down raw horseradish while chugging super-sweet wine to chase away the five-alarm-fire in my mouth, throat and stomach. Endless praises to Yahweh, too many exhortations of Moses, and awkward snorts toward being strangers among strangers in a strange and oppressive land. That was my Passover experience in a lifetime and timeline determined by my Mom and idiot stepfather Maurice, before I turned to Christianity, before I gave up on the idea that I could be from one of the Ten Lost Tribes of ancient Israel.

My fourth Seder, though, came eleven years later, in mid-April 1995. I’d been a Christian for as long as I hadn’t commemorated Passover as part of my religious birthright. I wasn’t sure about the idea of attending this celebration, as it wasn’t even at sundown on that year’s first day of Passover, Saturday, April 15. My friend Carl and his/our respective Carnegie Mellon history grad school mates Alan, Jeff, and Susannah were holding their little Seder on Easter Sunday, April 16, as the first two rented a house together in the Point Breeze (really, the White end of Homewood-Brushton, which asked for a race-based divorce in 1961) neighborhood of Pittsburgh.

Picture of the Henry Clay Frick Mansion, or "Clayton", located at 7200 Penn Avenue, Point Breeze, Pittsburgh, PA, March 21, 2010. (Lee Paxton via Wikipedia). Released to public domain via CC-SA-3.0.

Picture of the Henry Clay Frick Mansion, or “Clayton”, located at 7200 Penn Avenue, Point Breeze, Pittsburgh, PA, March 21, 2010. (Lee Paxton via Wikipedia). Released to public domain via CC-SA-3.0.

They had invited me a week earlier, a few days before my Spencer Foundation Fellowship application went from no-go to a go. I thought about saying no, but generally, I didn’t do anything on Easter Sundays, anyway. Even as a member of Covenant Church of Pittsburgh, the one Sunday I didn’t attend church was Easter Sunday. It the holiest of days, like Passover, and for so many people, the only day all year they attended church. For so many, it was show-off-my-new-spring-clothes day, not Jesus’ Resurrection Day. I didn’t like the overcrowded-ness that came with an Easter Sunday or Christmas service. It smacked of hypocrisy, my own included.

So I decided for one Sunday to attend a Seder prepared by folks who’d only known themselves as Jews both ethnically and religion-wise their whole lives. Except the stern, orthodox, full of bitterness and tears, joy and triumph that were the Seders of my Hebrew-Israelite days was a lighthearted affair. It was as unorthodox a Seder as could’ve expected, with lots of conversation about grad school, about my dissertation fellowship, about life and sports and music in general. No raw horseradish, but lots of chicken liver paste. No Manischewitz, but some Mogen David, along with more traditional red and white wines, and an empty seat for Elijah.

Manischewitz wine, in bottle and a wine glass, September 11, 2012. (http://tabletmag.com/).

Manischewitz wine, in bottle and a wine glass, September 11, 2012. (http://tabletmag.com/).

Carl and Alan, of course, expressed surprise when I did ask questions or make comments. Like about the kosher-ness of eating mashed-up chicken livers, or the differences in taste between the traditional Pesach beverages, or how peanut butter and jelly went well with matzo crackers. Alan, about to be a one-year-and-done CMU history doctoral student, did ask me, “Where did you learn about Passover?” I said, “This is my fourth Seder.”

I knew better than to fully unlock everything I knew about Pesach, Judaism, Jewish history, the Ten Lost Tribes, being a Hebrew-Israelite, and the racial privileging that I had observed growing up in Mount Vernon between “real” Jews and us “weird” (read “not White”) Jews. For a few hours, though, I had to confront a part of my past that I’d all but locked away by the beginning of ’90. Not just locked away. I’d taken everything from between April 13, ’81 and July 23, ’89, wrapped it in Saran Wrap, put that in a Ziploc bag, thrown it in a safe, locked it, and then built a force field to keep out intruders.

I was relieved when I finally left Carl and Alan’s Easter Sunday/Passover Seder and walked back to my apartment in East Liberty. I wasn’t ready yet to take a look back at what I lived through during the Reagan Years. I was all about moving forward, and the previous days and weeks of dissertation research followed by a major-league dissertation fellowship made me feel like the completely different person that I believed I actually was. At least ninety-five percent of the time.

Fifty Shades of White People’s Imaginations

15 Sunday Feb 2015

Posted by in 1, culture, Eclectic, Movies, Politics, Pop Culture, race

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"Take a bow, James" screen shot from Wonder Boys (2000), starring Michael Douglas, Tobey Maguire, Katie Holmes, and Robert Downey, Jr., September 29, 2009. (http://rosekohl.tumblr.com/).

“Take a bow, James!” screen shot from Wonder Boys (2000), starring Michael Douglas, Tobey Maguire, Katie Holmes, and Robert Downey, Jr., September 29, 2009. (http://rosekohl.tumblr.com/).

So far this Valentine’s Day/Presidents Day weekend, Fifty Shades of Grey is making a killing at the box office, over $30 million on its official release on Friday alone. A movie with an estimated twenty-minutes’ worth of sex scenes, coming on the heels of the most successful self-published book in history? Take a bow, E.L. James, take a bow!

Oops, I didn’t mean to go there, Ms. James! Submitting to a bow would likely conform too much to one of the big themes of your book and movie. The idea that a college-educated millennial would play the role of submissive to a business magnate and engage in an unworkable romance, is, well, a theme straight out of Hollywood producer’s ass. Or, rather, a Hollywood porn producer’s average shoot!

Really, between the book, the movie and the reviews, it seems that Fifty Shades of Grey is really about affluent White folks all over the world attempting to be comfortable with what some would call “taboo sex” in the early twenty-first century. It’s like a whole generation of British Commonwealth and American Whites haven’t taken the time to see 9½ Weeks (1985) or Body Heat (1981), or at least, like to pretend that everything that is new is actually new when it’s not. At best, the book is like eating too much cotton candy at an amusement park while drink a fifth of vodka, getting on a roller coaster, and then vomiting on your five year-old (luckily, I didn’t spend money to read it). But really, Fifty Shades of Grey is a symbol of Whiteness played out in power fantasies, hardly sexual at all.

Most Americans (and many affluent Brits and Aussies as well) celebrate books and movies that aggrandize their ability to experience orgasms and overpower each other in relationships. It’s a reflection of a world without consequences, because everyone in James’ world is already on top, and need not fear falling into the real world. Where love, sex, struggle and self-discovery are about much more that belts and chains.