"Now there was a time when they used to say
That behind every great man
There had to be a great woman
But in these times of change, you know
That it's no longer true
So we're coming out of the kitchen
'Cause there's something we forgot to say to you
We say... sisters are doing it for themselves."

The times they are a-changing. Every conservatives nightmare has just come to pass. The Jezebel who represents the liberals playground that is San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury is just a mere two indictments away from the Oval Office. But when Nancy Pelosi took her oath as Speaker of the House and used that inaugural opportunity to imbue the event with tales from the apron strings, out came the claws from the right, left and those in between. Here was the highest-ranked woman ever to achieve elected office in the United States, proudly speaking about crashing through the barriers of the U.S. Capitol, but flooding the dais with children and bragging about her journey from "kitchen to Congress." What gives? I certainly don't think of myself as a hardliner, Birkenstock-wearing, bra burning feminist of the highest order. And I don't feel like Speaker Pelosi committed an act of treason. How unfair is it to ask women who stump on the Hill to somehow transcend their gender when every other facet of their political life is dictated by lack of a Y chromosome?

What Nancy Pelosi did was share unashamed pride on her brood. Too many on the Right pay lip service to children and family. Too many on the Left (particularly feminists, go figure) are quick to disrespect a woman who chooses to be a parent, let alone a good one.

It's not so much that she felt compelled to publicize her familial history, but as of now that sort of thing that remains the exception for male politicians but still the rule for women. A very wise columnist once said that every woman running for office must mention her husband and kiddies, and how she "plans to combine her work with her family," but nobody expects a man to discuss the same. Several decades later, this is still pretty much the case. Pelosi has impeccable "woman credentials" for all those who are afraid of castrating spinster bitches in power.

Perhaps what our elected officials need is a daily reminder of why this all matters. Imagine the career of Strom Thurmond had he chosen to include all of his children. Including Essie Mae Washington, the unplanned and unwanted result of a funny valentine I like to call rape. It would be quite a doozy for our elected officials to also invite to the podium each of their adulterous affairs, as well, and any offspring they produced.

In the heart of New England, if you thought a Black candidate didn't have a snowball's chance in hell of getting elected to the governor's office, it wouldn't seem all that far fetched. Especially when you consider that Beantown isn't exactly known for being the Eastern seaboard's bastion of racial harmony in its not-so-distant past. After 16 years of divisive wedge issue politics and presidential posturing by a fraud like Mitt Romney, I'm ecstatic that with Gov. Deval Patrick at the helm, the people of Massachusetts will be able to reacquaint themselves with what good government feels like.

As progressive and inherently superior as we in the Western world tend to view ourselves, it's interesting to note that three Muslim nations (Pakistan, Bangladesh & Indonesia), two of which have very strong fundamentalist movements of their own, have elected women as prime ministers. So when it comes to equality and freeing the Middle East from tyranny, we've still got a long way to go in our own backyard.

The first Black governor elected to represent MA and only the second overall, period. The first ever female speaker of the House. Small steps for mankind, quantum leaps for this country as a whole. Politics as usual? Let's hope not.

"This is an historic moment - for the Congress, and for the women of this country. It is a moment for which we have waited more than 200 years. Never losing faith, we waited through the many years of struggle to achieve our rights. But women weren't just waiting, women were working. Never losing faith, we worked to redeem the promise of America, that all men and women are created equal. For our daughters and granddaughters, today we have broken the marble ceiling.

The election of 2006 was a call to change - not merely to change the control of Congress, but for a new direction for our country. Nowhere were the American people more clear about the need for a new direction than in Iraq.

The American people rejected an open-ended obligation to a war without end. Shortly, President Bush will address the nation on the subject of Iraq. It is the responsibility of the President to articulate a new plan for Iraq that makes it clear to the Iraqis that they must defend their own streets and their own security, a plan that promotes stability in the region, and that allows us to responsibly redeploy American forces.

Let us be the Congress that rebuilds our military to meet the national security challenges of the 21st century.

Let us be the Congress that strongly honors our responsibility to protect our people from terrorism.

Let us be the Congress that never forgets our commitment to our veterans and first responders, always honoring them as the heroes they are.

The American people also spoke clearly for a new direction here at home - they desire a new vision, a new America, built on the values that made our country great."

Labels: Congress, Democratic Party, Deval Patrick, feminism, history, Nancy Pelosi, politics, race, women

"Jesus was black, Ronald Reagan was the devil and the government is lying about 9/11."

And that was just the introduction clocked in at 1 minute, 36 seconds and counting. The socially distorted world so vividly drawn on daily UComics strips is brought to sharply animated life in Cartoon Network's adaptation of The Boondocks.

Welcome to life in Woodcrest, a surbuban enclave outside of Chicago that centers around 10-year-old rebel with a cause Huey Freeman and his 8-year old younger brother Riley (both convincingly voiced by actress Regina King) who've moved from the South Side for a better life with their grandfather Robert (smartly cast with the always entertaining John Witherspoon) who serves as their caretaker.

The strip, and now the series skillfully illustrate a world where the generation gap never seems wider and the truth about what's Black, White and uncomfortable all over are never out of sight, nor out of mind. At first blush, The Boondocks is a welcome blast of fresh air that lives up to its considerable hype. It's frequently funny, fearless and brutally frank in its approach. And while the pressure is on creator Aaron McGruder to keep the shock value high for ratings' sake, the central theme that comes across on the newspaper page isn't lost in translation — Huey consistently left disappointed by the antics of the shades of him while raging against the establishment of White folks in general, and Riley, whose personal credo is less protests and more "it don't mean a thing, if it ain't got that bling."

From his perspective, McGruder has commented he isn't concerned with what White people think about The Boondocks. Nor, for that matter, Black people. It's this unwillingness to ingratiate for the approval of self-appointed media gatekeepers of African-American imagery (yes Bill Cosby & company, this means you) that separates this series from anything you've seen before. While the first episode from last week's launch, The Garden Party, felt a bit too eager to flaunt the creative freedom allowed on the Adult Swim banner with N-bombs crammed in a 22 minute space (the "look how edgy we are!" undercurrent toed the line of subtlety a bit too often), last night's imagined day in court for the urinary tract infection of R&B in The Trial Of R. Kelly was a breakthrough of utter proportions. I haven't been shocked and brought to the brink of side-splitting tears so many times in one sitting (by a cartoon, no less!) in ages. From the courtroom clash of the Pied Pisser's backers and protesters (which included of all people, Cornel West) to Uncle Ruckus's unabashedly racist stance towards his own, it shines an unflinching, unairbrushed look at the reflection we've refused to examine for so long. Ourselves.

Labels: Aaron McGruder, race, The Boondocks, TV

You all know the type. The incense burning, poetry spouting, toe ring wearing, two-strand twisted or with the prerequisite mushroom cut of curlicues spouting sonnets of love, peace & hair grease. Haiku reading, finger snaps subbing for applause, soy milk drinking flower children all about finding their chakra's center. No naturally exotic first name? No problem, the slave moniker would be spiced up to something suitably ethnic. Hyper militant Huey's in training or aspiring Angelas to be just happened to wind up with someone White after extolling the virtues of all "cracka devil bastards." Happy to be nappy, chamomile tea sipping Black "eccentrics" that melanin-deficient, bleeding heart Dems jizz themselves over to prove us coloreds are in their circle of friends. The bulk of these pretentious phonies who acted if neo-soul was The Last Temptation of Christ set to Stax samples tap danced on my last nerve with the finesse of a Nicholas Brothers routine. Crackin' on chicks who didn't know an ankh from a conk until after Erykah Badu provided a Madonna-like awareness for the masses gave me enough punchlines to spawn the headwrap spin off of my daily zingers.

But something weird happened on the trips to the health food store...

You've seen them among you and more often than not cringed inwardly whenever they opened their mouth to speak. Gum snapping, finger wagging, neck rolling broads from the block with "ryde or die chick" wishes and Courvousier dreams, equipped with the must-have essentials: rhinestone encrusted celly in one hand and bag of salt & vinegar Bon Ton's in the other. Better versed in the groundbreaking literary works of Omar Tyree, Carl Weber and Kashamba Williams than say... Kurt Vonnegut, random vignettes of the Maury Povich variety play out on urban radio advice hours before amused audiences who just can't get enough. Casual Fridays means wearing the tightest Parasuco jeans fresh off the wire hangers in the hall closet. Pictures adorning your desk all feature your girlfriends in the club with the same half-drunk pose — ass pushed out, Dixie cups raised. Aptly named after either a luxury automobile, alcoholic beverage or fashion designer, the likelihood of being told where to go by one in decibels approaching a sonic boom was a safer bet than wondering whether the flamboyant hairdo was thanks in part to yaki straight #5B or Spanish deep wave #9. Their utilities may be in collections for the second straight month, but dammit... isn't this multicolored Dooney & Bourke worth giving a bill collector a tongue lashing over? Mining the ghetto girl specimens for comic relief was about as easy as using a lunch hour to have a silk wrap and airbrushing at the nearest Korean.

But the strangest thing occurred on the way to the bodega...

You're well acquainted with her ... the quintessential BAP, that singular cross section of money, grooming and an insular pedigree befitting the créme de la créme of our kind of people's elite. She's attended the expensive private schools, vacations abroad in exotic locales, seasonal cotillions and debutante balls are the only sports worth following and namedropping places like Sag Harbor and Martha's Vineyard as if it were your neighborhood Big K-Mart is commonplace. Striving for perfection in every aspect of life is the mantra programmed from the minute these pampered princesses make their grand entrance out the womb. Raised with a mindset no different than your average Park Avenue Pollyanna who's all-American, but the inevitable "pigment figment" ensues when they learn the hard way that a comfortable upbringing doesn't wipe away that pesky inconvenience of brown skin. The elitist navigation through the Negro geography of "what-neighborhood-do-you-live, where-did-you-go-to-college, where-did-you-grow-up, how-much-money-does-your-Daddy-make, what-clubs-do-you-belong-to, are-you-lighter-than-a-brown-paper-bag" smacks about as relevant as a Hilary Banks quotable. Incessant chatter about Lilly Pulitzer and sing-a-longs of "Where And When I Enter" have the potency of an OD on Shoot. Me. Now.

But a detour made me veer off course en route to the bistro...

"Black is not just ghetto. Black is not socially or aesthetically inferior. Black is vital to American culture." — Karen Grisgby Bates, [source: Salon.com, Young, Black and Too White]

Right around the time I finished college as a wide-eyed optimist ready to tackle the world, I began letting my ghetto membership renewal lapse to branch out and embrace... *gulp* buppiedom. The days of wearing a name plate, Timbs and a North Face as my daily uniform was long over. I traded in placing my takeout orders through bulletproof glass to sidewalk cafés in the sitcom-ready areas of Fort Greene, the East Village and SoHo. Flipping through Stress, Rap Pages and Honey wasn't gonna cut the mustard anymore. I needed substance over style, so it was The Nation under my arm and The New Republic added to my subscription roll call.

"Oh, you think you too good to just eat a damn burger now...with all your chichi highfalutin' shit," a grammar school pal sneered when I opted for Mangia over Mickey D's during a lunch meeting. A bitch can't even decide to go for a non-artery clogging culinary choice without having my realness questioned.

Even since junior high, I was always paranoid about coming off too uppity for my own good. If I knew the answer to any random factoid, I'd purposely keep my mouth shut to avoid the "know-it-all" sideways glances. Reared in a lower middle class West Indian household, the only Jack & Jill I knew of were the ones who went up a hill to fetch a pail of water — however, while I was on the fringe of the rough & tumble areas of Brooklyn, my block was a curious oasis of well-manicured lawns, concerned neighbors, peaceful night's sleep and tree lined streets. While it was light years away from the bastion of brownstone bourgeoisie, I still got painted with the "she think she got it like that" brush from girls who didn't know the least bit about me. So I did what any self-conscious girl would do. I overcompensated...out went the prim and proper buns, in went baby hair slicked into god awful squiggles with Let's Jam (what the hell was I thinking?!), gold dangled from the lobes the size of hula hoops, fitted Guess jeans, one too many coats of Bonnie Bell lip smackers and a healthy dose of attitude to cover up the nerd lurking beneath the surface.

Being lumped in the census category of mere minorities aren't enough since the kissing cousin of race — class splinters us into further subdivisions. The melange of experiences for women of color are always shoehorned into the shopworn variety of ghetto, granola, geek or glam. All too often we expect shades of us to fit into rigid classifications of what a Black woman is supposed to look like, talk like and act like. We retreat to tactics of scorn and ridicule at the first hint someone isn't "down" and roll our eyes in exasperation at the ones atop the Blacker than thou soapbox. Sistas on the supreme side of siddity get the cold shoulder and we discard the round-the-way girls altogether.

"The status of having choices is assumed, still, to be a 'white' thing." But is the black culture they're being exposed to reinforcing values of delayed gratification, hard work and integrity, or frustrating them? We have the right to be culturally discerning — to exclude the videos, music, movies, or friends who undermine our values, regardless of their color."

Black culture is far too rich, far too reaching and far too diverse, a brilliant gumbo of different styles and culture from around the world and the point that bares repeating to the slumbering masses who cling to archaic definitions of ethnicity is this: There is no one way to be black, nor is everything labeled black worth including in their lives. Sentences that begin with "Black people don't..." makes me wanna scream like Janet and Michael trapped in a spaceship too.

• Black people do watch other media outlets outside of BET.
• Black people can and do eat sushi.
• Black people can have aversions to watermelon.
• Black people can and do pay attention to politics.

Oversized bamboo earrings with Valentino, noshing on BBQ ribs in Frette linens, or listening to the Dixie Chicks at full volume without wondering if anyone was secretly eavesdropping on the A.M. commute and silently passing judgment ain't a thang but a chicken wing anymore. My tastes, no matter how scattered don't determine my cultural awareness. In the mathematical patterns of Black Like Me, being a prime number suits me just fine. That's just me.

Labels: culture, feminism, race

"Omigod, President Bush's helicopter is cruising outside!"

This sighting yesterday prompted all the merry minions to scurry from their cubicles and align themselves at the windows with uninterrupted sights of the Brooklyn Bridge and FDR Drive from our office. Choruses of "ooh's" and "ah's" just made me roll my eyes and continue working. I suppose my blatant indifference to the commander 'n thief's arrival for annual UN general summit meetings were blinking in neon letters because Al*, the resident GOP-flag bearer was incredulous that I had no intention of craning my neck to see what was happening. I politely demurred, but it seemed as if he needed to phone a friend to take a fucking hint. Little did he know I had a lifeline of my own in store.
It's at this point where I could suppress the Sista Souljah wanting to rage against the machine not a second longer and a bitch had to check this clueless cracker right quick.

Respect? You want me to pay respect to a drunken frat boy who hid out in the luxuries of Air Force One rather than heading down on the ground where people were dying in New Orleans? I'd really like to send my regards with a phlegm-laced token of appreciation for such a bang up job. How many Marlboro Lights do you think I'd have to chain smoke downstairs to hit my mucus quota?

Bullseye.

He skulked away from my desk back to the East River view, smirk full of smarm replaced with visible contempt of the "how dare that negress use that tone with me!" variety.

It's uneasy exchanges like these I've tried to avoid since Katrina wrought her fury. Simply because by and large, White people just don't fucking get it. My Kanye West moment happened out of the sheer repulsion of listening to these condescending assholes talk long enough to reveal what really lies beneath. And just as the hurricane ripped through cities to lay bare the ugliness of truths we've tried to sweep under the carpet, the apathy of White America has come squarely into focus in the aftermath of such a publicized cauldron that resurfaces about every decade without any real discourse to address the roots of the problem.

In the fallout of thousands from New Orleans and elsewhere along the Gulf Coast decimated by the destruction, fingers have been quick to point out class as the prevailing issue which left so many residents stranded without a way to escape. A not-so-clever tactic to walk on the eggshells of that dirty 4 letter word non-minorities avoid like the plague. RACE.

Who are the poor? With whites making up 72 percent of the population, the United States contains more poor whites than poor blacks or Hispanics. In fact, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities reports that the increase in white poverty in nonurban areas accounts for most of the recent uptick in the poverty rate. But only a little more than 8 percent of American whites are poor, compared with 22 percent of Hispanics and nearly a quarter of all African-Americans (in a country that is 12 percent black). This represents a significant advance for blacks in recent decades, thanks to the growth of the black middle class, but it's still a shamefully high number. By contrast, immigration has sent poverty among Hispanics up, though it has not been as intractable for them across generations. - source, Newsweek.com [The Other America]

It's impossible to disconnect the complexities of race and class when weighing in on the repercussions of what went on in the Big Easy. The uncomfortable truth is that the color of one's skin not only determined how skewed press coverage would be in the mainstream media [ex: the now-infamous Yahoo! press photo captions, incessant loops of young Black men looting] but in how evacuees were being unwelcomed with not-so-open arms in nearby cities.

White suburban police closed at least one bridge to keep a group of blacks from fleeing to white areas. Over the course of two days, a white river-taxi operator from hard-hit St. Bernard Parish rescued scores of people from flooded areas and ferried them to safety. All were white. "A n--ger is a n--ger is a n--ger," he told a NEWSWEEK reporter. Then he said it again. When they did focus on race [in the aftermath], many Louisianans let their fears take over. Lines at gun stores in Baton Rouge, La., snaked out the door.

The new catchphrase of this debacle is "the blame game." As if pointing out the obvious for the sake of banding together for photo ops will do any good at this point. It's been said that the very definition of insanity is repeating the same mistakes and expecting a different result every time. Well, it's high time that America check itself into a psych ward because the self medications with dimestore salves instead of cold, hard therapy will ensure more casualties ahead to rouse the majority still wandering around eyes wide shut.

Labels: George W. Bush, Hurricane Katrina, race, rants

Ever wondered where those seeds of "compassionate conservatism" were planted in the bible thumping soul of our President of the United Mistakes of America? Look no further than the mother of the village idiot — Barbara Bush.

After being defrosted earlier than usual from the cryogenic tomb at the North Pole which keeps her elderly Mrs. Claus facade intact for the annual Christmas society balls, the former First Lady found a way to look at the bright side of things after visiting with evacuees at the Houston Astrodome. Surveying the victims who were disproportionately Black residents of the New Orleans area prompted this nugget of empathy in an interview with American Public Media's Marketplace.

"What I'm hearing, which is sort of scary, is they all want to stay in Texas. Everyone is so overwhelmed by the hospitality. And so many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway, so this [slight laughter] is working very well for them."

Could Marie Antoinette script this slice of verbal diarrhea any better?

I mean, of course it's working well for those displaced Negroes! What beats having your home torn apart like papier-mâché, worrying whether loved ones are dead, alive or shipped off to a separate state, huddled together with over 10,000 other perfect strangers in less than ideal conditions and winding up unemployed in the blink of an eye! Fold out cots squeezed together and the cries of children forced to adapt to life in a makeshift halfway house in a football stadium just seems like pennies from heaven, don't it?

I'm amazed this decrepit fart took the Grey Poupon-stained silver spoon out of her mouth long enough to drop such a heartfelt gem. I'm sure just the thought of all those unwanted undesirables in the Lone Star state just makes your catheter a wee bit looser. Fucking senile douche bag. Like mother, like alcoholic devil spawn.

Labels: Barbara Bush, Hurricane Katrina, race