On the Color Caste, or; Are You Light Enough in Here?

Posted on January 7, 2006 by tlewisisdope

I’ve often said to folks that the biggest thing holding black folks back was not racism or white supremacist thought, but the degree to which we have collectively internalized racism and white supremacist thought.

There is a difference.

In most circles, internalized racism is known solely as self-hatred. But this is a very amorphous term, self-hatred. In reality, the politics of race, gender, and class are understood to be much more complex. A lot of black people do wonderful things for the community, mentor young blacks, live “upstanding” lives, but still unconsciously uphold white supremacist ideals.

This is most prevalent in the realm of aesthetic beauty. Bre22 We as black people, far more than white folks it would seem, have bought into white supremacist beauty standards. And it is such a widespread phenomena that entire industries base their decisions on how much we devalue black beauty.

What this means is that black folks who have Eurocentric features are far more likely to be successful, both in the larger culture and the black community, than those who’s features are coded as “African” or “ethnic”.

The success of Beyonce is a well-known testament to this fact. Matthew Knowles studied well from the Berry Gordy school of economics. Destiny’s Child was created so that any of the four (then, three) girls could be a little girl’s favorite. This is why all the girls’ hair color, especially in the beginning, was different. But Matthew Knowles knew that Beyonce, as the lightest, would be the most “captivating” girl — simply because she was lightest. So she was made the front-woman. And she was lightened in magazines and given blonde hair.

Beyonce1

This was very purposeful on Matthew Knowles’ part. It was not just some arbitrary decision. It was a conscious choice. He understood the color struck black bourgeoisie and White America. He knew black folks would hail her as a beauty, the way Halle was hailed before her. He also knew little white girls would see a little of themselves in her and “identify.”

Let’s face it, there is a reason that Halle Berry, Beyonce, and Alicia Keys are the only black women to get on the covers of major magazines last year — they are relatively light-skinned women.

Of course, the tragic irony is that all three of these women are darker than they appear in magazines. They are always lightened for magazines, particularly when featured in a high-end magazine.

Now, it’s important to impress upon people that a discussion of the way in which light-skinned women are perceived is not to slight their talent or their skill or their accomplishments. We must begin to understand the reality that the avenues to success are not the same for all black people. Light-skinned women are accepted as beautiful before darker-skinned women.

This was readily apparent in the most recent season of America’s Next Top Model. The last three finalists were Nicole (a white girl with brown hair), Nik (a light-skinned black girl, possibly biracial, with blondish hair), and Bre (a dark-skinned black girl from Harlem).

Bre was always presented as angry and unrelenting. And she was always coded as “street.” Every single time she came before Tyra and the judges, euphemisms for “dark” and “black” were used to describe her. And such descriptions were both good and bad depending, mostly, on how her competitors were judged. So when the white girls were kinda bland or boring or generic, Bre’s “edginess” made her standout. When the other girls were “fierce”, then Bre was “too edgy”.

What this means is that while the other girls were competing against each other, Bre was competing against the other girls and herself — her blackness.

Bre8 Bre88 We have to become aware of the way that competition was set up to be much more difficult for Bre. The last competition was a Cover Girl photo shoot. Cover Girl, for decades, didn’t use black models–of any hue. Cover girls are the “all-American girl”, which is nearly always coded as “white.”

Now, the reality that Cover Girl doesn’t even make products for darker complexions should be a well-known fact and should have been a signal to viewers of the show that something was off about the competition.

Of course, Bre wouldn’t win. Not over Nicole and Nik who are the kind of “look” that one normally associates with Cover Girl.

Many responses to this season talked about racism but only because Nik wasn’t picked. The reality that on BET.com and other black websites, black folks were saying Tyra was racist for not picking Nik is a sad testament to the reality that we so narrowly understand the complexity of racism and how we’ve internalized it.

For most black people, Bre’s loss made sense. She wasn’t good enough. She was too “edgy.” She had “too much attitude.” She was too “street.” Nearly every blog or webposting or review talked about Bre as having “too much attitude” as if models are the sweetest girls on the planet.

All this means is that Bre was too black.

Bre66

Bre44

 

A friend of mine, Mikey , told me that there have been more dark-skinned supermodels than light-skinned and that means that Nik should have won. He is right.

But what folks have to understand about skin colors in modeling is that dark-skinned models were always shown to be exotic, not beautiful. Exoticization is not beauty. They are not synonyms. When it comes to beauty, or white supremacist standards of beauty, dark-skinned women are at a disadvantage.

Bre could never have won that contest. It was designed to be unfair to her. Whether or not it was purposeful is irrelevant. That is what internalized racism means; it’s not on purpose.

Tyra, as the executive producer, would probably say that Bre wasn’t “versatile” enough. This is just sidestepping the issue. The reality is that the show was rigged to make the competition harder for Bre. Tyra knows better than anyone how hard it is for darker-skinned models and she played the game well for the last 15 or so years (with the weave and sublimating black vernacular in her speech).

Now that she’s retired, she’s crying on her talk show about how hard it was for her and how she wants to make it easier. But she’s not doing that. She’s playing by the rules of the modeling industry that says if you are non-white you better look a little white or work the weave. And if you are black, you can’t be “too black.”

Darker-skinned women shouldn’t have to be “versatile.” They shouldn’t have to sublimate their blackness and try to look “all-American.” Who they are should be enough. A diversity of beauty should be celebrated. Black beauty should not be acceptable only when it can be exoticized or “enhanced” by a few European features.

With people of color there are only two routes you can go in the modeling world — emphasize European features (in photos or with blonde hair or straight hair of any color) or exoticize non-European features.

This is what happened with the early darker-skinned models like Iman and Beverly Johnson where their blackness was always coded in opposition to white beauty, as exotic because it wasn’t white beauty. Black folks think of it as just beauty, but in reality we did passively understand that the politics of opposition reinstates, reinforces, that whiteness is still the barometer of beauty, the penultimate.

Darker-skinned models’ exoticization only serves to reinscribe the primacy of white beauty.

I say all this not to say that light-skinned women don’t deserve their success. But we must begin to understand how we enable such success to occur by our overvaluing of lighter-skin. We need to understand that we don’t champion our darker-hued women with talent enough. We need to, as my boy Mikey says, “love the spectrum” of blackness.

What that means is we need to have a darker counterpart to Beyonce, to Halle, to Alicia. It shouldn’t be darker-skin = less sexy. But it is.

We need to change that.

There is a reason that 702 didn’t explode, beyond discussions of whether or not their songs were any good. Meelah is a beautiful dark-skinned woman. As such, she doesn’t have the same “appeal” that Beyonce did as lead singer of Destiny’s Child.

The fact that we even have to “choose” is a testament to how the larger culture pits us against one another and only allows one person of color at the top at a time. It is perfectly legitimate to like both 702 and Destiny’s Child, but that needs to occur to a degree that 702’s label would feel obligated to promote 702 as much as Destiny’s Child is promoted. So they would be on “equal” footing.

With black artists, there is usually one star and then a bunch of “lesser talented” “lesser attractive” people pulling up the rear.

Why can’t they all be on the same level, whatever that level may be?

What that means is, we need to show more love for darker-skinned people. This is not unfair. What you are doing is balancing the scale. It’s called equity. By doing so, you are not devaluing lighter-skinned.

Think of it like a seesaw. For centuries light-skin has been getting all the love and reaping the rewards of society. Dark skin has been undervalued. So that means that the end with light skin on it is on the ground with dark in the air. By adding more dark to the side of the seesaw with dark skin on it you start to level the seesaw.

This is equity. You aren’t lessening light skin, you are balancing.

Posted in Culture, Music | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 7 Comments

Music 2005–Making My Year a Gesture of Resistance and Integrity

Posted on December 29, 2005 by tlewisisdope

This piece was originally written for Epinions.com. An archive version of it can be found here. Links have been updated.

Another year, another Tigger round up, folks!

This year found me getting more and more dissatisfied with music and culture. It began this winter with the release of Tweet, Faith Evans and Amerie. These ladies released disgustingly overrated albums and singles.

Tweet and Faith have yet to reach their full potential. Their abundant talent does not automatically mean their albums are good. Why that is a difficult concept for Americans is lost on me. Amerie is a producer’s dream. Vainglorious and shallow, she pimps a hot beat like the Beyonce clone she’s supposed to be and that makes her both adored (a Lady of Soul award for Entertainer of the Year!!!!?????) and loathed (the album tanked, justifiably so).

It seemed that the kind of co-signing of mediocrity that allows mainstream artists like Ashlee Simpson, Coldplay, John Mayer and the like to become media and critical darlings has seeped into black popular music.

Where, in the past, albums by Ciara, B2K and their contemporaries were critically destroyed, now it was the case that we were just gonna give critical passes to people because of one hot single or because that artist has a niche (particularly Tweet who has a rabid, loyal fanbase).

So any number of friends who so loyally put up with my constant ranting and (what I consider to be perfectly reasonable, well-founded) disgust with music didn’t hear a single positive word from me till Mint Condition and Common dropped their gorgeous, brilliant albums in late spring/early summer.

Hip hop continues to depress me as it seems to be either disgustingly misogynistic or so focused on ingenuity that it lacks the fire of sheer exuberance that made legends like Rakim, LL and Big Daddy Kane such a joy to hear.

I firmly believe that we’ve lost our verve in hip hop. Blackalicious’ and K-os’ latest albums are cold and boring, Kanye West tried to radicalize his image and was met with indifference (mostly due to the snoozefest he calls Late Registration and his milquetoast, bourgeois persona), and Lil Kim gets 5 mics for continuing to be this generation’s Michael Jackson of self-loathing whilst trying to “outFoxy” Foxy Brown (and failing miserably).

This is hip-hop?!

Am I really supposed to jump for joy because Kanye was on the cover of Time? No, I jumped for joy when he decried homophobia in hip-hop. Because that was so much more a profoundly radical and brilliant and important thing to do. That such a statement caused no stir in hip-hop is proof positive of how divorced the community is from corporate artists.

Still, none of this erases the reality that his album is pedestrian.

For me, integrity became the word of the year. Which is really interesting, because that word was the most looked up word on Dictionary.com this year. So I’m not the only one. Which makes me feel good.

For me, it became about being honest (“real”, so to speak) about the realities of how deficient music truly is. It became about me saying that yes, I am happy Mariah is back and successful, but no, I’m not gonna pretend like the windblown album cover and staccato light vocal arrangements weren’t cheap attempts to Beyonce-fy her image.

Jermaine Dupri is gifted but he hasn’t done right by Mariah by turning her into a cheap knock-off of an artist nowhere near her vocal league. Mariah doesn’t need to be shouting “like that y’all”. Why? Because she can’t do it convincingly. Because to oversexualize her is to cheapen what makes her the artist she is. Because to oversexualize her is to say that even the most talented women are nothing but their p-ussies.

Plus, most of the songs just really suck!

For the 2nd year in a row, in my opinion, consumers (esp. black consumers) seem to have a real hard time balancing their moral world with their music world.

No self-respecting self-loving black person should have purchased Gwen Stefani’s album. This goes beyond aesthetics. The continued pillage of black musical tradition should be resisted. Her album and her videos, with the rampant superficial use of enthnic images, is offensive to the nth degree. This feeling of entitlement to other cultures is really f-ing disgusting. For little kids to see such images divorced from any kind of context is to cheapen them, it’s appropriation at it’s worst and most insidious. We should go beyond our desire to just shake our asses. Reducing all choices to just what you “like” ignores social realities that are harmful. Gwen Stefani’s album and its accompanying videos were so disgustingly racist in the way they superficially appropriated and represented ethnicity.

No self-respecting self-loving black person should have bought the Lil Kim album. This goes beyond aesthetics. The continued self-hatred that Kim displays should be resisted. Her disgusting attempt to turn her case into street cred should be resisted. Imagine how she might change if all her people, sh-it if at least Brooklyn, said to her…”Kim you were beautiful the way God, Jehovah, Buddah, whoever made you.” Do you think if her paper were threatened, the work of self-love would be work that she’d start doing?

Anyway, all this to say, it was a very uneven year for music, particularly black music. We need to be honest about the way in which the quest for mainstream love and attention compromises the art. It has to. By definition, what mainstream audiences see in us is very different from what we see in us. That is just the way it is.

But the only way that changes is to for us to strive to recognize the best in us and represent that.. The real in us. The complex in us. We are sexual. We can be violent. But that’s not all we are.

This is not a question of good versus bad imagery (to wit, Scarface says awful things in his work, but his work is still brilliant, moving, and illuminative of a segment of blackness), its about balance. It’s about understanding the intersection between commerce, art, and audience – audience, because we need to begin to recognize that who the art is directed at informs its production.

These albums on my top 10 list represent choices, art of integrity. This does not mean they are necessarily “positive” pieces of work. Rather, they represent the vision, the complex humanity of the artists. That’s a lot to ask for nowadays (apparently). To choose music morally, radically, as a gesture of resistance means to think more than how mindlessly you can shake your a-ss and how easily you can suspend reality in order to be a part of the mainstream.

BEST SINGLE OF THE YEAR–Ciara featuring Ludacris, Oh!
It’s important that this be my favorite single released this year. Because my pre(r)amble might make you think that I just blindly hate all popular music and none of it is good.
Not so, my friends.

Ciara hit paydirt with this slow wind. She’s comes into her own on this track by Jazze Pha. Her first two singles are complete garbage, mostly because Ciara’s charisma was mostly in videos, not in the studio. But here she achieves Aaliyah like coyness and sensuality that cements her rise to prominence as more than just ordained by the men-of-powers-that-be.
Plus Luda puts it down hard, y’all.

BEST NON-SINGLE SONG OF THE YEAR–112, What The Hell Do You Want
112 made a terrible album all over again. They tend to do that, so there is comfort in their consistency. But there is also that infuriating-this-group-is-better-than-this feeling too.
But Daron Jones, the principal songwriter of the group, knocks this one out of the park, right here. This is beggin, down-home, southern soul beggin. I’m in church beggin. Daron and Mike’s passion is limitless as they use their full range to ask this lady exactly what it is that he needs to do to make it work.

WORST SINGLE OF THE YEAR–Gwen Stefani, Hollaback Girl
I wish I could find an interesting and moving way to convince you this is the unmitigated, putrid garbage that it is, but I can’t do it. The offense, sing-songy way that mainstream artists appropriate black vernacular, in this case “hollaback”, is the bane of my f-ing existence. It should be for you too. Spend your $.99 on real blackness and buy any number of black artists who say “hollaback”. It’s a gesture of respect for a culture that is not your own.

WORST ALBUM–Mariah Carey, The Emancipation of Mimi
It’s not that I hate Mariah Carey because I really don’t. Quite simply, it’s because not only do I not buy her as a ghetto hood chick, I think it’s an insult to her talent, her legacy, to be promoted in such a way. That she may have chosen her new post-Motolla image is beside the point. Societal pressure on women to behave the way Mariah is behaving is omnipresent. Furthermore, Jermaine’s gorgeous tracks aside, her music is all the same. Wispy, weapy, oversimplified platitudes about love.
Yawn…

MOST DISAPPOINTING ALBUM OF THE YEAR–112, Pleasure & Pain
112 is a collective force. With Daron’s writing skills, Q’s movie star good looks, Mike’s ability to arrange vocals, and Slim’s nasally-distinctive voice, 112 is instantly recognizable as a group. However, they have yet to pool all those talents into a brilliant full-length album. Part III was their best effort, but it was marred by too much Slim, too much Puffy, and not enough Daron.
Moving away from the childish come-ons to the maturity of Daron’s What The Hell Do You Want would be a welcome change, one that could broaden (in a good way) their appeal. There is no male group that can touch them, all things being equal, so it’s time for them to stop coasting.

MOST SLEPT-ON ALBUM OF THE YEAR–Mint Condition, Living the Luxury Brown
It’s easy to see why this was slept on. It’s a band. They had no promotion. And well, for some reason, those are bad things. Not really sure what that’s about. But all I know this is a fine return to form from the Mint, with strong vocals yet again from the criminally underrated Stokley.

BEST HOLDOVER FROM LAST YEAR–Truth Hurts, Ready Now
This album did not make my list at all last year. But interestingly, it has stayed in constant rotation. Truth Hurts is a singer of great simplicity. She doesn’t use lots of vocal tricks, she doesn’t seem to have any range to speak of, and she favors very simple, hard phrasing. However, the refreshing honesty with which she writes her lyrics and melodies makes her overt sexual persona much more personable than other women of song who do what she does. And with Catch-22, she has a brilliant sad love song that is on par with any sad love song you can name.


MOST PROMISING NEWCOMER–(tie) Trey Songz, I Gotta Make It
I changed this category to Most Promising because Best would go to Leela James and she’s in my top 10.

Trey Songz is a real singer y’all. Unfortunately, he’s also adorable as sh-it and so the powers-that-be will sell him as a junior Usher with a real voice (which is dumb considering the senior Usher has a real voice, but whatever I’m not a publicist).

Because of this decision, Trey’s album is a mishmash of R. Kelly light psychosexual bullsh-it that he can’t remotely make believable and gorgeous harmonies straight out of Philly Soul. The force of Trey’s pure ability and innate likeability (his videos showcase his innocent charisma, like no one since Tevin Campbell, to stunning effect) shines through even the most banal tracks and lyrics. You know, you can just feel how much better than this he is. I Gotta Go is one of the best songs of the year hands down.  The album, however, is not.

BEST SONGWRITER—Raphael Saadiq
This year Ray Ray outdid himself, creating songs for everyone from Anthony Hamilon to Warren G, Kenny G to Will Smith. And what makes him so good is you can’t recognize his work. Because he fully collaborates with his artists the songs have a unique quality that is beneficial to the artist. His work on Jaguar Wright’s album and his collaboration (both vocally and creatively) with Mary J. Blige on I Found My Everything are highlights of yet another fascinating, satisfying year for music courtesy of Ray Ray! Kudos, brotha!

MOST OVERRATED–Gwen Stefani
This is an easy choice. Gwen is pretty in that I-died-my-hair-blonde-to-fit-with-conventional-beauty-standards way. She’s also that annoying girl in high school who tried so hard to be a mish-mash of styles and be so cool and original and just succeeded in being annoying to those confident enough to say it and really popular for fools who can’t see past aesthetics. I’ve already mentioned the offensive videos from her debut album, but let me say again, this kind of appropriation is not homage, it’s not respect, it’s not even clever, it’s just yet another case of white folks feeling entitled to a culture they don’t bother to try to understand.

The reality that her solo album is a nostalgic throwback (the source of 95% of its appeal) that neither sounds organic nor completely terrible is a testament to its producers, not Gwen. I could be wrong that Gwen is lacking in talent or I could insult her fanbase by saying it has to be a “woman” thing, the source of her appeal. However, I don’t believe I’m wrong and I don’t really enjoy insulting audience’s intelligence.

Suffice it to say, this lil diatribe will barely register to anyone currently a Stefani fan (which is sad), but that doesn’t make it any less valid.

MOST UNDERRATED–Kelly Clarkson
Kelly Clarkson’s new album is the kind of polished made-for-the masses stuff that just doesn’t get done anymore. Kelly manages to sell even the silliest of songs because she’s so blissfully open a singer. She connects with the cheesiness of her songs, not because she denies their cheesiness, but because she believes in the simplicity of their sentiment. This is rare.

Kelly is also blessed with one hell of a voice. Freed from her need to do bad Mariah/Whitney/Celine style yelling, Kelly seems to have figured out a nuanced way of singing the same old pop rock that we all love, but don’t want to tell anyone about.

She does what Avril thinks she’s doing. What Ashlee Simpson could never do. And what we all love about her is that she’s completely comfortable doing it.

THE LIST

10. Mary J. Blige, The Breakthrough
Mary J. is already platinum. In something like 9 or 10 days, the Queen has conquered her last hurdle – mainstream love and adoration. And she’s done it always on her own terms. It took mainstream consumers 10 years to figure out that Mary J. Blige is the truth. It took them 10 years to figure out that what she does is for everyone, even if it’s steeped so richly in her own experience, in the experience of black women. This is true crossover. Bono came to Mary. Elton came to Mary. She did not come to them.

So it’s a good thing that this album is as strong as it is. She breezes effortlessly through the more generic stuff of No One Will Do and Enough Crying and settles in to a run of some of her best work to date including Baggage, The Father in You, and her masterpiece with Ray Ray, I Found My Everything. And for good measure, she injects some good old soul into U2’s One without taking over the song, without rearranging it into some cheesy homage to black music.
All Hail the Queen!

9. Keyshia Cole, The Way It Is
Keyshia Cole put new wrinkles in the woman as victim strain of soul music of which she’s chosen to be a part. She teaches a master’s class in melisma on Love, hits new heights of sadness with her vamp on Love, I Thought You Had My Back and outshines Jadakiss on Guess What, making her the most welcome new voice in black pop in a very long while. Oh, and she wrote nearly all the lyrics and melodies (very complex melodies) herself. Kudos, ma!

8. Rob Thomas, Something To Be
I was not a Matchbox Twenty fan and I still think Smooth is one of the weakest songs on Supernatural, so there was no reason for me to even pick up this record. That is until I heard the pulsating first track, Lonely No More. His work is intimate, even though it features anthemic rhythms. This makes for a record that is classy and universal without being silly, stupid, or pandering to any audience.

7. Anthony Hamilton, Ain’t Nobody Worryin’
I think it’s fascinating how this album doesn’t even touch his debut, Comin Where I’m Comin From, in terms of sheer, raw emotion, but manages to be somehow a much more pleasurable listening experience the whole way through. Perhaps it’s the fuller arrangements. Perhaps it’s Anthony’s willingness to dial back the harmonies and give his voice free reign to dominate a song. Or perhaps it’s just that he’s brilliant. You choose.

6. Mint Condition, Living the Luxury Brown
Mint Condition is easy to overlook. They are an R&B; band that sounds nothing like any other R&B; band in history. They don’t just parrot their influences, the Mint can do contemporary soul wit the best of them. And Stokley’s voice is emotive perfection. He’s not as sharp as Rahsaan or Tevin, but he’s got such a command of his range it’s astonishing. Once again, we are reminded that music like this should never have gone away.

5. Stevie Wonder, A Time To Love
Stevie’s new disc is his best in years. It sounds like Stevie at his height in the mid-70’s. Everything from the vocal arrangements, the thrilling lead vocal performances (how does he get all that sound out?!!!), to the lyricism just makes you feel good about the world. Stevie, given his radicalism, puts life into perspective, he gives you hope. When he challenge If Your Love Can Not Be Moved, you really feel that it can’t – you pray that it can’t.

4. Raheem DeVaughn, The Love Experience
Raheem’s album is like a book of poetry. Each song is so unique in its construction, yet the album is very cohesive. Since he’s a DC native, I’ve seen him live tons of times and let me tell ya, brotha has got it! His style is all his own, which is remarkable given how much work his producers have done for other artists. If you don’t fall in love with Breathe, I don’t know what to tell ya.

3. Common, BE
There is a reason this is the lone piece of hip-hop on my list. Passion. This represents the pinnacle of craftsmanship right here. Interestingly, I came to a fuller appreciation for Common after a corrective from madtheory about this album. On his review, I commented that what was most striking about BE was the way the themes in the lyrics complement the sample choices. I extolled the virtues of Kanye’s work as that much more impressive because of it. Mad reminded me that the tracks were pre-made and that Kanye couldn’t have known what Common would say over them. This corrective doesn’t slight Kanye, rather, it puts more fully in to perspective just how thoughtful and meticulous Common’s rhymes really are. To understand the tonal implications of his music, not just the rhythms, is to understand how to write a song. Common has done this here.

2. Dwele, Some Kinda
Dwele continued his brave exploration of subjectivity this year with a masterful follow-up to Subject. What is so enjoyable about Dwele’s music is how seriously he takes his conceits, he never shies away from them (even on the absurdly affecting Flapjacks). It requires more work from listeners than most music and so to not enjoy it is perfectly legitimate. To slight such superior craftsmanship is another matter, and completely unjustified.

1. Female Black Music (Jaguar Wright, Divorcing Neo To Marry Soul; Lina, The Inner Beauty Movement; Leela James, A Change Is Gonna Come; Vivian Green, Vivian)
In 2003, I discussed how men in black music had redefined their role in the form by expanding their ability to be multi-dimensional and emotional. That piece talked briefly about how black women are always at the fore of American musical revolution and how implicit in such a centuries-long dominance is an uninterrupted critique of patriarchy in music and in America.
This year, four black women leapt to the fore of American black music by continuing in this tradition of strong, passionate, well-crafted music that challenges conventional ways of seeing women, relationships, and music.

Vivian Green’s album is a study in loving oneself as a solitary being. Bell hooks once said (and I’m paraphrasing) that most women find it hard to feel comfortable when they aren’t serving others needs. On Vivian, we are invited to share in the joy that Green feels as a divorced, single woman. Refusing to wallow in the past, Green creates a fascinating portrait of a woman reborn, without it sounding as if she is in denial of her true feelings or ignoring her past love. Many a person who’s heard this album says they don’t understand why it’s so happy, why a woman who lost the love of her life could be so full of joy. This is just it, she just can.

Jaguar Wright’s sophomore album sounds like a new person. She’s rid herself of much of the overt hip-hop sound. But what is most striking is how she’s rounded out her abrasive persona so that it takes on new dimension. So what we have is an assertive woman who isn’t afraid to show her sensitivity. This is exceedingly rare and flies in the face of most people’s view of who women like Jag are.

Leela James’ debut gets right the joy of the blues. Too often, folks mistake blues for misery, but it’s not. Blues is about joy, it’s about the joy of struggle and what it does for character. Everything from My Joy, to Mistreating Me to Soul Food is steeped in a profound sense of self-love, self-reflection and pride.

Lina is the most criminally ignored woman currently working in black music. And it has everything to do with her desire to be her own artist. With her own label, an outreach program for teens in Cali funded by her music, and a sound that is wholly her own, Lina stands as a testament to integrity in music. Her sound blends operatic vocals with swing and jazz and blues to create an aural experience like none other. The Inner Beauty Experience is a concept album about loving oneself. Its simple theme gives way to complex emotion on It Could Be and Let It Go and musically you just won’t hear anything like Come To Mama anywhere else.

If you don’t have these four albums, rectify that post-haste.

Posted in Music | Leave a comment

Doing the Work of Interrogation; or “Whatever, as Long as He’s Gettin’ Paid.”

Posted on November 6, 2005 by tlewisisdope

I recently got into a little argument, no, let’s say “discussion” about so-called “gangsta rap. Basically, the guy I was having this “discussion” with made the argument that hip-hop isn’t about integrity and creativity anymore and judging it on those terms is unfair. People will make the kind of music that they believe will make them the most money. My argument was, essentially, that is fine but it doesn’t make the music good just because it will sell, or because it fits neatly into some “idea” of a sub-genre.


Black people have this odd tendency to make money the great equalizer. This means that if you have it, everything you do is better, easier, more valuable, etc. If you have it, then you aren’t subjected to the same rules and regulations as “regular” people, except when you screw up badly (rape or murder, etc) then the rule inverts (because you have money you are obviously guilty).


This is dangerous thinking. It can lead to lazy and reckless behavior. And it can lead to lazy consumers who no longer interrogate their choices when consuming.


One of the biggest oversights of the civil rights generation was misjudging the extent to which becoming upwardly mobile would gut black communities and how much the subsequent generations would assimilate white middle class values (mostly, the overvaluing of attaining status and money). Prior to the civil rights movement, black folks lived a lot of their home and private lives away from white society. In these spaces, black neighborhoods and whatnot, black people could do the work of resisting the racism of white society and affirm the worth of their children without interference. This is much harder to do now, living in predominantly white suburbs.


Moving into white suburbia meant we had to play by their rules. Get the cars they drive. The house they buy. The “language” they speak. Gone are the schools and neighborhoods that were created to insulate young blacks from harmful thinking that exists in white society. And the result is a generation growing up internalizing rampant consumeristic, capitalistic ways of thinking.


Hip-hop has become a billion dollar industry. In the past year, black music has dominated the Top 10 on the Billboard charts, dominated scoring in commericials, and Be Cool is a huge studio movie about hip-hop, “The Industry”, staring white boys John Travolta and Vince Vaughn alongside black cultural icons The Rock, Cedric the Entertainer, and Andre Benjamin.


Black culture is being appropriated yet again.


This is to be expected. It’s the nature of a society that is built on imperialism and immigration. All these different cultures vie for dominance (or, shit, just recognition) in mainstream America.


What is disturbing is that black people, in their nice middle class berths, no longer have organized dialogue about the political and social ramifications of this newest wave of white appropriation. We are always and only concerned with the bottom line. No matter what the social ramifications of this appropriation are. We don’t question why and to what degree and what aspects of black culture are consumed by non-blacks.


This is dangerous.


You risk being labeled a “hater” if you have any kind of thought-out critique of people making money. A little over two years ago, the Neptunes and Timbaland created Justin Timberlake’s debut album, Justified, and Justin, at least in the media, received a large (some would say disproportionate) amount of the credit for the album’s creative success. Take note that when the Neptunes created Kelis’ well-received debut album, Kaleidoscope, there was a significant number of articles and discussion around how much of her “image” and “style” was created by the Neptunes. And Aaliyah was adored but she was widely considered a Timbaland protégé, even though she hand-picked Timbaland out of obscurity to help create a handful of tracks on her sophomore album, One In A Million.


But when it’s the “heir-apparent” Justin Timberlake, suddenly the fact that he lied about having created the tracks with the producers (the Neptunes tracks were rejects from Michael Jackson’s Invincible project) was barely reported in the news. Not as much as the, “I was raised in Memphis, the cradle of blues, black music is in my soul” offensive platform that the album was promoted on.


I spent a lot of time critiquing not only Justin’s racist behavior, but the complicity of the Neptunes and Timbaland in that behavior. And I got called a “hater” too many times to count. My argument was simple though. And I believe it is independent of whether or not the music is any good.


For the record: Justified is derivative and corny, well-made, yes, but lacking in a unique sound and identity. Justin comes off like a giddy fan paying homage to his influences, not a full fledged artist like he is capable of becoming.


The integrity of the Neptunes’ and Timbaland’s art was compromised when they allowed it to be perceived as less a product of their talents than it really was. And sure they are huge celebrities and work with lots of “big” (read: white) artists, but at what cost? How many people really believe that Justin wrote those songs, how many people really believe Justin is “down”? No one seemed to bat an eye at the aping of Michael Jackson’s style in the video for Like I Love You.


Similarly, where was the outcry when companies started marketing ringtones like “Where My Hoochies At?” And where was the outcry at 50 Cent’s marketing of himself as a man who was shot 9 times? Where is the outcry at Puffy, who continues to act as if his part in the media war of the East Coast/West Coast feud (and remember, it was mostly a war in print, instigated and perpetuated by media, white and black alike) wasn’t just as disgusting and manipulative as Suge’s? Where is the outcry at the changing appearance of Lil’ Kim into a living black Barbie doll?


It is not about saying that what people are doing is wrong or bad; it’s about interrogating the impact that such moves are having on other black folks. Questions like, is it a fair trade that Puffy might inspire lil’ Rasheed in Cabrini Green to be a media mogul when people have died or been injured in major events he has put together? Is it a fair trade that lil’ Tennisha in Flatbush will be a fully sexual being because she listens to Lil’ Kim if it will be undermined by her insistence in ridding herself of black “signifiers” like a wide nose and dark skin? Is it a fair trade that Will Smith is a huge movie star when he has said in interview that Jada needs to not “limit” her work to films that only “interest” black viewers, like Menace II Society? What is the message being sent to young black women? That they can’t make their own decisions? What is the message being sent to black children? That a career of your own cultural expression that caters to your people isn’t truly viable, isn’t worthwhile, isn’t as “good” as courting mainstream love and attention?


These are the kind of questions black people aren’t asking anymore. There is no critical engagement with how and to what extent our culture is being marketed. Everyone talks about BET and how all they play is booty shaking music 24/7. A more useful critique would be to interrogate why the over-sexualization (or the perception) of black women and the hyper-violence (or the perception) of black men is what middle class whites love to consume. Or, are white folks running out in droves to purchase Common records at the same rate they are purchasing 50 Cent records? Why aren’t they? I mean, there is a reason that those are the videos chosen. Would we make the same outcry if all you saw were Pharoahe Monche, Q-tip and Common videos? Is the question really about balance?


This is important work, people.


We need to understand the way in which we are perceived. It is more than just negative versus positive. It’s about balance. So-called “gangsta” rap has its place. But the only way so-called “conscious” rap will have its place as well is if we interrogate why one is favored over the other. We need to be honest about all facets of black culture. We need to drop essentialist ideas about black men as violent and “reality” as the ghetto. We need to drop essentialist dichotomies like black women are either earthy mammies (Oprah and Jill Scott) or foul temptresses (Lil’ Kim and Ciara).


It has to become about so much more than, “Well, they makin’ their money.” That statement is a copout. It means you don’t have to think about what your doing, what your consuming, what you believe in. It means you aren’t doing the work of interrogation. At what cost are a few black people becoming millionaires and (in a few instances) billionaires? What was the price paid in the socialization of a new generation of black children when Bob Johnson sold BET to Viacom and now the station is essentially MTV? So what if Bob Johnson is the only black billionaire. What was the cost?


We don’t ask these questions.


If after asking these questions, a person comes to the conclusion that all these things are okay, it’s okay that people died around Puffy (whether or not it is his fault is irrelevant, we’re discussing a climate surrounding his dealings…why are we so willing to demonize Suge and not even critique Puffy?) for instance, then that’s valid.


Because that person did the work of interrogation.


We all need to create a climate where someone can say something as simple as “Ashanti can’t really sing and that’s something she should work on,” without someone else saying “you’re a “hater. We need to remember that so-called “hateration” is not when someone has a valid and accurate critique–Ashanti isn’t the strongest singer, that is an accurate statement–but when people blindly dislike and disparage someone for no apparent reason.


It’s just as dangerous to like someone for no reason or for flimsy reasons like “they makin’ dat money” as it is to not like them. Hating Ashanti because she’s beautiful and successful is just as useless as liking 50 and Puffy because they are rich.


The Civil Rights Movement, The Black Power Movement…they had shortcomings. We know that now. They made mistakes, they took risks. We know that now. But there is a plethora of documentation of the leaders’ thought processes and rationales for why they made the choices and decisions they did.


Where is Puffy’s? Where is 50’s? Where is Oprah’s? Where is Will’s? And where is the general public’s response? Why is the only reason people give for their behavior, or the main reason, that it will make them money? At what point do we truly own our culture and our cultural icons and subject them to serious critique and standards of morality we hold ourselves to?

Posted in Culture | Leave a comment

A Critical Interrogation of Rev. Willie F. Wilson’s July 2nd Sermon.

Posted on September 28, 2005 by tlewisisdope

It has been about 6 weeks since Rev. Willie F. Wilson, pastor of Union Temple Baptist Church in Southeast Washington, DC, gave a sermon where he hysterically claimed that (essentially) lesbianism is “about to take over our community.” And every single progressive (or gay/bi/lesbian) person in this city who has heard of this mess has been up in arms over Rev. Wilson’s rampant homophobia. Given that he has been one of the few black ministers to have, in the past, opened up his church to same gender loving individuals, his “turn around” hit the community pretty hard.


And understandably so, we must now as a community, interrogate Rev. Wilson’s behavior. Are these comments an indication of some latent homophobia? Has past inclusive behavior served us any good? Was it offered to same gender loving individuals as a way to heighten Rev. Wilson’s stature in DC? Have we become, yet again, political pawns?


These are important questions. Ones no one has seemed willing to ask in the media. As usual, it’s been a lot of name-calling, a lot of threats and a lot of hurt and angry feelings. And through all of this, after 6 weeks, I have not heard one person talk about what Rev. Wilson’s comments really meant.


His statements have almost nothing to do with a hatred of homosexuality, and everything to do with hatred of women.


No one has mentioned, even in passing, that his comments are far more femiphobic — defined here as hatred and fear of women as independent people — than they are homophobic. Or rather, that his hatred of women fuels the homophobic sentiment.


Black folks have a hard time talking about and acknowledging rampant patriarchy and femiphobia in our culture. Sure, we love to castigate rappers for objectifying women but we have a hard time talking about the black culture underlying hip-hop culture that devalues, hates, black women. That would mean we would all have to be held accountable.


Rev. Wilson’s language is steeped in the rhetoric of the black power movement, a movement that put forth the idea that black self-determination for the race was achieved through male autonomy. Leaders of the movement felt that women should be subservient, that true equality in America would happen when black men could have the access to power and money that white men had. As such, any deviation from ideals of male primacy was made synonymous with race disloyalty. Homosexuals then were infected by the white man’s perversions and black female (and male) feminists, working to end gender inequality, were in league with the white man to keep the black man down.


Rev. Wilson’s statements are more clearly anti-woman than anti-homosexual primarily because he focuses solely on lesbianism, alluding to a strain of intellectual thought that says that, unlike male homosexuality, lesbianism is a choice that women make to escape men and male oppression.


This perversion of the legitimacy of lesbianism as having a (possible) biological determinant is just a way for patriarchal men and women to continue to put the male at the center.


One need only look at Wilson’s sermon to see how patriarchal his thinking really is. The concern and worry that he has for the black family is focused solely on the plight of black men. He says, “We live in a time when our brothers have been so put down, can’t get a job, lot of the sisters making more money than brothers.” Here we have the assumption that only men can make money and for a woman to make money is to emasculate the man. Note the next sentence: “And it’s creating problems in families.”


This is the framework in which Wilson’s statements exist. His statements have almost nothing to do with homosexuality at all, not directly. He’s talking about heterosexual marriage and its problems when women “step out of (their) place.”


He makes a wide leap from all this heterosexual “dysfunction” to wildly suggest, “And that’s one of the reasons many of our women are becoming lesbians.” Where did this come from? A woman can’t get respect for earning her own money and so she must turn to another woman? This is the implication, is it not?


What Rev. Wilson does here is lock black men and black women into roles so limiting and constrictive; they have no choice but to reject them. It would be outside his capability as a patriarchal man to encourage black men to redefine what it means when a woman makes more money than he does. It would have been out of the question for him to discuss the realities that yes, black men and women are fighting but what they are fighting about is the shifting of gender roles (what they are, what they have been, what they can be) and what that shift can mean in black life. He makes it seem like black women exacerbate family strife solely by abdicating their “responsibilities” and taking up with other women.


These statements are the hysterical ravings of a black male patriarch who sees the black family falling apart and decides to blame the black woman. One might say this is new, what with all the whining and moaning that black men aren’t in the home…why not blame women now a bit? Right?


Not so much.


When black men aren’t there, the underlying assumption is (oftentimes) that the black woman can’t keep a black man. So not only are women the reason families are falling apart when a man is there, but when a man leaves or doesn’t stick around, it’s her fault as well. No wonder women are running to lesbianism, they can’t win!


Rev. Wilson goes on to castigate women who say they don’t need a man. Here he might have made a very nice point by saying that we all need each other; that black women, independent of their sexual proclivities, should love and care about, for, with black men. But he does not do this; his statements – “Well if you don’t need a man, what’s left?” – again make the situation for black women an either/or deal. He says, essentially, that to not “need a man” (the implication is romantic need) is to automatically “need a woman.” This simplifies a complex situation nicely doesn’t it?


Too bad it isn’t remotely accurate.


The rest of the sermon focused on lesbianism is the kind of heterosexist shit that has been quoted ad nauseam in the media. This sermon is a hysterical rant that men are being left behind. It’s why he talks about his son and his inability to get a date because girls are lesbians. Even if such a claim weren’t disproved in the most recent Washington City Paper as being totally made up, its truth is not the issue here. It’s the way in which he characterizes women that displays his overzealous need to show how antiquated his notions of gender are.


Note that his worry for his son is not that there aren’t any straight females. It’s that there are only two. Because a man needs to have plenty of choices. Obviously.


Women become ciphers in this part of the sermon. It’s like those old sex ed Super 8 reels where they show a silhouette of a man and then they populate silhouettes of a bunch of women around him, one-by-one; man at center, women there merely to be chosen at random (what happens to those not chosen is not considered).


Furthermore, he states that the two straight black women left for his son to choose from are ugly. Here it gets quite complicated. Obviously women are not only ciphers and have no agency or will of their own, they must also be pretty for a man. Would he be so upset about lesbianism’s “supposed” sweep of Black America if the straight black women left for his son were beautiful?


From there he goes on to say the usual stuff about how men and women belong together and it’s natural, blah blah blah. Two points in this part of the sermon are worth noting. One, his disgust at strap-ons and two, his insistence in equating making a connection with intercourse (“You can’t make a connection with two screws. It takes a screw and a nut!”).


The strap-on reference is just Rev. Wilson reaching for a way to characterize lesbianism. He clearly doesn’t know anything about it. Penetration is of no interest to many lesbians. In many ways, penetration becomes very hard for lesbians because it very much puts them into the dominant/submissive role characterized by heterosexist roles. They often repudiate such things. This is not always the case however; use of a strap-on or a dildo can be very much about subverting (at least in their own mind) gender roles (i.e. women get to do the penetrating).


Penetration then, is really the focus for patriarchal men like Rev. Wilson. The idea of any sex or “connection” existing without it is impossible for patriarchal men. It’s classic over-identification with the penis. His “screws” analogy only makes sense if one accepts the idea that connections can only be made if someone is penetrated.


What is sad about people like this is that they are far too common and we, the same gender loving black community, have not developed a sophisticated enough way to call this swill what it is: femiphobic hatemongering. Rev. Wilson is not concerned with homosexuality, not really; it’s why he can say so convincingly in his quasi-apologetic statement that he’s not homophobic. He probably can rationalize male homosexuality, what with men being at the center, lots of penetration and heterosexist dynamics like dominant/submissive, top/bottom all over the place.


He truly believes women should have no agency; their sole purpose is to be fucked and pop out babies. That some women “choose” to break from this limiting role (in Rev. Wilson’s view) through lesbianism is infuriating. He could not have gotten all the whoops and hollers and applause from his congregation if he had put forth the idea that women getting a job and not having babies were the real problem. He had to reach for something that the black women in his audience would accept. They could ignore their (possible) guilt at being successful by refocusing it on hatred of lesbianism.


All of this really means that what we need is a more complex discussion in Black America about gender and sexuality. Simple acceptance of homosexuality on the surface clearly doesn’t help. For many black men and women, black lesbianism is race disloyalty; in their minds, the sexuality is not the issue at all.


Originally written on August 14, 2005

Posted in Current Affairs | 1 Comment

On Integrity; or You Don’t Know Nearly as Much as You Think You Do.

Posted on September 28, 2005 by tlewisisdope

For the past month or so, I’ve been in a self-imposed exile from any kind of real intense communion with people. What this means is that I haven’t really gone out socially. I’ve minimized any kind of workplace fraternization (which, incidentally, has been difficult as this job is relatively new and I should be getting to know my colleagues). And I’ve not really been talking as regularly to the people in my immediate sphere.


The reason for this is quite simple: Self-critique.


I’m not obsessed with myself to the point of distraction the way that may sound, but I realized when I got my new job and didn’t feel as settled as I had expected to be that there was obviously something else making me relatively unhappy.


Moving to DC was a conscious choice. One that worked one every level except socially. My “career”, if you can call it that, is in a good place. I’m doing work I think is important and I’m nicely, but not disgustingly, compensated for that work. I have ample time and opportunity to finish my personal writing which was something I could not do in Pittsburgh to the same degree.


However, DC is a remarkably harder place to find a niche than in Pittsburgh.  In Pittsburgh, I very much had my circle of friends and people who felt very similar to me. In DC, people have more money, less time, and (at times) no regard for the fact that they are only one of a couple trillion people on the planet. This makes it hard to find outlets socially that allow for the kind of relational interaction that I have found to be most rewarding.


People (or most of the ones I’ve met) tend to want to engage in activity that is not rewarding to me personally and that dilutes any true healthy relational interaction. Shopping is mind-numbingly boring to me and the conversation tends to be equally as banal. Going to the movies is difficult because folks don’t want to see what I want to see and loathe talking about it afterward, which I also find confounding. And to just sit and chill makes most people I’ve met so uncomfortable that they’ve literally left me sitting alone for significant amounts of time.


People I’ve met here either find me to be weird, overly serious, or aggravating. Sometimes all three. At the same time.


So upon realizing that things were not as balanced as I had hoped, I decided to re-evaluate myself. It’s a periodic process I engage in to help me correct the things about myself that contribute to my feelings of inbalance.  I believe that since one has so little control over the actions of others, the least one can do is change the parts of themselves that are problematic and hope that it makes relational interaction easier.


What I found is that sometimes, most times in fact, I overstep my bounds in speaking my truths. While I don’t necessarily believe that what I say is wrong or right, I realized that this is beside the point.  What I didn’t do in the past was give whoever I was talking to the courtesy of deciding whether or not they wanted to hear what I had to say in the first place.


This is unhealthy. It has made getting to know even the most well-meaning, nicest and most compatible (upon first or second glance, of course) of people turn away from building a friendship at all. I always knew that I came off abrasive, but in my head, I told myself that people don’t like the truth.


This is true. But it is truer that people don’t like unsolicited truths. I can probably be quoted by any number of friends and acquaintances as having said that “a true friend doesn’t allow you to enact unhealthy behaviors.”


I still very much believe that.


But I think now it is more important for me to only say certain things when they are requested. Because people don’t hear what you say, they hear what they want to hear. So I should wait to tell them when they are ready to hear it.


Now, of course, this seems like common sense and it is a wonder why it took me so long to get to this place in my life.  But once you learn something, you do often wonder how you never knew it.  Such is life.


A series of events happened that triggered this minor epiphany.


First, I was talking with a friend who was really excited about a date he had. When I asked for information about the guy he was going out with, he rattled off his stats. This struck me as very odd. I wondered almost instantly if my friend would then hold this man to a standard set by his preconceived notions of what those stats represented to him. I felt he was setting himself up for disappointment because he just didn’t seem interested in allowing for the guy to be different, or more accurately, to be more than his stats. It was all about aspects of this person that were very quantifiable and very superficial.


I was offended and I wasn’t even the date. I immediately told my friend that he should not approach his date with a checklist to make sure he wasn’t “lying” or “inconsistent” (to use his terminology) before he even really knew him well enough to know whether or not he was a “liar” or “inconsistent”. How similar someone is to their stats is important, but only so much.


He said, “don’t start.” And I, rather callously, pressed on.


The second instance was an acquaintance that graciously attempted to help me figure out how I could become a mentor here in DC. He mentioned, in his list, a couple of black fraternities. I didn’t have any initial reaction, but when I asked whether or not participation was predicated on being in the frat, I realized that the missions and goals a black fraternity might espouse, even inadvertently, wouldn’t jive with my own principles.


I didn’t say it nearly as nicely to him as I just did here. And I really did offend him. While not intentional in the slightest, it was definitely one of those times when you just don’t hear how you sound.


Integrity is very important to me. I think it is the number one reason why we, black folks, have not progressed nearly as far as we could given our unprecedented access to “the American dream.”


Going through these processes of recognizing the things you do that are detrimental to building healthy relational interactions is a necessary process. It is very much something that I value and it feels good to “make progress” toward becoming the kind of person that I very much would like to be.


When I embarked on my little journey into myself, most of my friends and acquaintances found it very odd and off-putting. People who like you, rarely if ever, think there is anything so wrong with you that would warrant this level of self-analysis. That’s wonderful to know. But it’s not really true. Everyone could stand to re-evaluate themselves more frequently.


I know that. I would love that. But I’m not gonna say that anymore.


It is important to me that my relationships, both platonic and otherwise, be based in interactions of integrity and not be rooted in a heterosexist power dynamic where everyone is trying to see how much the other person is “doing” for them and vice versa. This way of behaving has always struck me as profoundly silly.


But I realize that while I think this is silly, most other people do not. They have no problems with creating relationships that fit their ideal instead of ones that fit who both people as individuals. They have no problem playing games to see if the other person slips up. They have no problem “stacking screw-ups” to use against the other person later instead of stopping in the moment and calling attention to hurtful behavior.


This is socially sanctioned. Relationships are a game. It’s a race to see who wins.


Being alone is frighteningly okay with me. To the point where I do sometimes wonder if I am anti-social. And yet, I do feel lonely. Pervasively so. It is like an underlying emotion in my day-to-day life. Something that is always there. All my closest friends are in other cities and 90% of the people I’ve met here don’t end up making it very long with me (both because of me and because of them).


The willingness to live a life of integrity is always foisted on the other person. Everyone has numerous requirements for their mate and their friends. Look at any personals site. Endless ads listing likes and dislikes.  Very few of these people own up to the things that they do that inhibit healthy relational interactions.  And while I try to do that, this was an aspect of myself I just didn’t see before.  I had to once again figure out how I sabotage relationships.


Ultimately, I realized that while I would like people to have certain qualities and I’m not willing to compromise on a few things, I can’t badger people into such behavior by constantly reminding them of the way they behave. Especially if I’m not asked as much.


Again, why this took me so long…I don’t know.


Originally written on July 26, 2005

Posted in Self-reflection | 1 Comment