The White Media Sure Loves To Promote Black Woman Angst Don’t They?

Faith — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 12:50:00 +0000

The White Media Sure Loves To Promote Black Woman Angst Don’t They? is a post from: Acts of Faith In Love & Life

If I have to read another tired article about how black women have such a hard time with:

a) Our hair

b) Our dating prospects

c) Our bodies

I WILL SCREAM!

“If your hair is relaxed, white people are relaxed,” the comedian Paul Mooney, sporting an Afro, says in the documentary “Good Hair,” which won a jury prize at the Sundance film festival and comes out in October. “If your hair is nappy, they’re not happy.”

Le sigh. There is no political related ideology in wearing our hair with or without chemical processing. It’s a personal choice! This is why I am wary of having black men try to deconstruct issues that pertain specifically to black women. Or give dating advice when they themselves haven’t had successful relationships. I mean I don’t see any movies helmed by us about how their anatomy has been erroneously touted as a means of boosting their insecurities. It would be considered insulting, yet here we are having other people tell us what our “issues” are.

Ladies you shouldn’t fall for it. Despite some of the serious issues we discuss here and across the blogosphere these discussions initiated in outlets like the New York Times don’t necessarily have our best interests at heart. Considering how the majority of the staff – especially upper management is 99.99999% white and male – I have a hard time believing the our stories are of such interest. What has happened is a heightened combination of curiosity and contempt from numerous quarters since Michelle Obama became First Lady that serves as a catalyst for this.

Now one agenda is to do coverage that serves as the back-handed compliment and the white editors make certain to hire a writer with some black heritage to pen it. In other words to deflect any charges of bias they’ll say the (condescending or derogatory) tone and content was at the discretion of that writer. They were of course pulling the puppet strings. At any time they could find a writer who could produce a quality piece of substance that is equally compelling and informative.

Another agenda is to do these types of black people 101 stories where they do a superficial exploration of something that has been a bone of contention for many. Like our hair apparently. It’s either feast or famine apparently. They have gone from ignoring us completely or only reporting the worst offenders to having an axe to grind. When do these shrinking sources of legit media offer an exhaustive, inspiring or accurate portrayal? It’s a fluke but it does occur from time to time.

Not that I don’t welcome media coverage for things like the population of missing and exploited women and children. Or having our beauty touted in a favorable light. There’s just no balance. It can’t all be about our First Lady or some variation of ” Black Woman It Sucks To Be You”. There’s a fine line to be had in discussing obstacles and in evaluating stereotypes or exposing pathologies. How we respond is equally as important for we can do things that help elevate our image or chip away at recent progress.

We need to be wary and evaluate who wants to engage in these conversations and why. It is often not designed to be helpful in removing barriers but to reinforce them. Why are we letting other people dictate what should be our own agenda with a message we take responsibility for and protect?

My Observations On Quincy Jones Questioning Michael Jackson’s Blackness: Pot Meet Kettle

Faith — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 14:03:00 +0000

My Observations On Quincy Jones Questioning Michael Jackson’s Blackness: Pot Meet Kettle is a post from: Acts of Faith In Love & Life

Was anyone else as perplexed as I was reading this Men.Style.Com article? We know how writers can take things out of context or let’s be blunt – lie – about what an interview subject says to generate a salacious headline. So I was personally waiting for some sort of public protestation from Mr. Jones to clarify any of his comments as featured. Looks like they’ll stand as is so I wanted to have a conversation about it. Talk about fair weather friends!

Q: Have you been crying?

A: Oh, man, it’s more than that. It’s way more than that. It hurts my soul, man. It’s just a lump down there.

Q: You were there to witness the strange evolution in Michael’s appearance. Did you ever step in and saying anything about it?

A: Oh, we talked about it all the time. But he’d come up with, “Man, I promise you I have this disease,” and so forth, and “I have a blister on my lungs,” and all that kind of b.s. It’s hard, because Michael’s a Virgo, man—he’s very set in his ways. You can’t talk him out of it. Chemical peels and all that stuff.

Q: Did you believe him about the disease?

A: I don’t believe in any of that bullshit, no. No. Never. I’ve been around junkies and stuff all my life. I’ve heard every excuse. It’s like smokers—”I only smoke when I drink” and all that stuff. But it’s bullshit. You’re justifying something that’s destructive to your existence. It’s crazy.

Q: But it must’ve been so disturbing to see Michael’s face turn into what it turned into.

A: It’s ridiculous, man! Chemical peels and all of it. And I don’t understand it. But he obviously didn’t want to be black.

Q: Is that what it was?

A: Well, what do you think? You see his kids?

Read the entire interview. I wanted to make sure I included the excerpt about how much he missed Jackson before getting into it. I thought he was very observant and blunt….but after all of these years Jones is well aware of what audience he’s speaking to when discussing certain things. This wasn’t an interview in Ebony. He was speaking to a predominantly white audience about Michael Jackson’s behavior that went against established norms of other groups. That was a very calculating move on his part.

Let me be blunt: Quincy Jones made some valid points but he is the last person to be questioning another black man’s “blackness”. I was discussing this interview with a friend born in Italy who’s staying in California for the summer and the first thing she asked about was Jones’ penchant for dating white women – and she’s white! This friend of mine holds no compunction about asking me direct questions about her own observations regarding this and other situations related to race, class and gender. She says she’s always wanted to know about things of this nature but had no one to ask or didn’t feel comfortable with potentially offending anyone. So white people do notice even if they’re not saying anything.

So to be clear, this isn’t about Jones’ mating rituals and I could care less. For as long as I’ve heard of Jones he has been with anyone but a black woman - but that is his choice. If Enrique Iglesias was available and asked me if he could be my Hero, he’d get an emphatic yes. Trust and believe that! More black women need to cast a wide net, meet and mate with a much larger variety of decent men than the wading pool selection of guppies they’re picking through right now. We also need to do it for ourselves and not care what anyone else thinks! After three marriages, several children and numerous alliances I’m certain Jones has lived a very full life. He’s a contemporary of Duke Ellington so he’s been around for quite some time now.

I don’t remember what magazine featured a story on him but there was an accompanying photo of his children – that’s when I found out that he had in fact been married to and had children with a black woman but it was before I was born! Anyway, my point is that he has biological children whose appearance looks very similar to MJ’s kids. Is he confirming his own desire to escape from blackness by trying to have the whitest-skinned children possible. Is he telling us this is what some (many? most??) black men who mate with non-black women are trying to do? I don’t get the pointed dig at bringing them into that conversation. They have nothing to do with his relationship with himself or Jackson and I thought that was very declasse of him.

The other issues he brought up, about blacks who want to change their appearance to be more comfortable in their skin was very telling. Michael Jackson was an extreme case because he was so famous and under such scrutiny. It has me wondering now if it is in fact more common for black males to feel that need to be a different phenotype. Regardless it is black women collectively getting pressure from other black men to be different from who they are. We can observe this in noticing those who publicly express their desire for all women who aren’t black, or have to fit a narrow definition of blackness based strictly on appearance. It’s a pretty vicious cycle that goes back to the core weakness of a few dictating terms for the majority.

The observation of Jackson’s struggle with his identity is one that can be applied in a broader sense to other black men who don’t feel comfortable with who they are in their skin when a sizable portion chose to mate with women who look nothing like the women who begat them. It’s all a choice and that choice is an individual’s right, but what motivates it and to what lengths? When you have high-profile black men choosing non-black women and elevating them as the preferred choice that’s where I protest. That doesn’t seem to be about determining who’s best for you and being in an affirming reciprocal relationship. That’s about black-on-black racism and disdain for black women. I cannot abide by that.

In “Michael Jackson On Race – His Race” an article featured on CNN.com, Carmen Van Kerckhove delves very eloquently into the intracacies and contradictions of our struggle with race and identity.

Each of our individual histories and the histories of our ancestors act in concert to shape who we become and what we value. And when personal histories are complex (as most are), they often result in a racial identity that is equally complex and sometimes even contradictory.

About Jackson: Race cannot be separated with precision from body dysmorphic disorder, hatred of his tyrannical father, or any potentially relevant theory being discussed right now.

Why?

Because if he hated his body, he was hating a black man’s body. If he hated his father, he was hating a black man. Race ran through it all; we cannot and should not dismiss its effect.

*****

So in our own history of being black in this country where does the conscious, healthy, non-colorist behavior begin and when has the “hatred” or its varying degrees of discomfort ended?

Acts of Faith In Love & Life » Exploring Self-Esteem

The White Media Sure Loves To Promote Black Woman Angst Don’t They?

My Observations On Quincy Jones Questioning Michael Jackson’s Blackness: Pot Meet Kettle