Tuesday, January 25, 2005
To scream one requires an audience. Effective communication of personal desire needs the dissonant soundwaves of frantic rage to submit to one's commanding directives for order and sensibility; in essence, for people to listen to your good sense your mind must first make sense. Today I've struggled to make sense of my life, and learned that no one is listening.
Today was a day filled mostly with second season episodes of The West Wing. I've reread some of Will Kylimicka's Multicultural Citizenship and compiled notes of the overview chapter of The Cambridge Companion to Nietzsche to write my comic script, Superman: Ubermensch. Concentration eludes me. I'd like to believe that this writing will one day soon better my condition, but I've never been one for irrational hope, or blind optimism. No, I live as a man without faith, a disbeliever in the evidence of things not seen, by choice a hopeless heretic harried by helter-skelter humanity. Usually, this innate cynicism serves me well, prevents subscription to popular simple explanations of complex sociopolitical interaction. Today I'm paralyzed.
The situation: soon after the beginning of this new calendar year, Angel and I received 'save-the-date' notices of the upcoming nuptials of two of our friends, Angel's high school pal Gingerale, and my pre-Cornell friend Deidra. Needless to say, these happy events prompted abundant smiles and well-wishes from us, even though we know that people will continue to ask when Angel and I plan to follow suit. The answer? No time soon. On the real, people would be lucky to see me married before I'm thirty-five, if ever. I love Angel, with all my heart and soul. Too bad that doesn't matter in the slightest. Marriage is pain. To love is to suffer, and to marry your love is suicidal. You should know better. I've watched my parents argue about everything possible for the entirety of my short life. Every time I return to Virginia, I become the unwitting subject of their arguments whether I waste their money without sensible contribution or promote a counter-balancing aggressiveness detrimental to their household. My parents always argue, because marriage is about argument. Anything else isn't true love, and not worth the joint-filing tax benefits.
Deidra-s marriage in McKinney, TX to Mr. Keven Morris will occur on May 21, 2005 and Gingerale's wedding to Pierre Duez happens a week prior on May 14th in Singhampton, Ontario. Angel and I responded to both save-the-dates with eager happiness. Weddings are wonderful events, filled with smiling happy people, and I missed my friends Xander and Willow's wedding so I promised myself that I'd be financially stable enough to attend these pre-scheduled initial moments of holy matrimony. My generation is growing up quicker than I expected, but with a world filled with terrorist threats of dirty nuclear bombs, Ashley Simpson live concerts and Secretary Rumsfeld's private international Metal Gear Solid 3 covert-ops unit, childhood no longer remains a luxury we can afford.
Now, in our lives, I have never met or spoken to Gingerale, and Angel has never met or spoken to Deidra, yet Deidra addressed her notification to both Angel and myself while Gingerale addressed her notification to Angel alone. Both women have held prior knowledge of my relationship to Angel for some time. In response, Jenn and I composed thank you letters to both women for their notifications. On the letter to Gingerale, however, Angel added a curious interrogative, asking whether it would be alright with the happy couple if I accompanied Angel to their wedding. Now I have next-to-zero experience with weddings, but the couple I've attended in my life have been fairly sizable affairs, held in Southern Black churches, where people were happy to accompany others, whether or not the formal protocol of an RSVP had been signed, sealed, and delivered to the happy couple's publicist or wedding coordinator. I know not how other cultures handle this stuff; recently when Angel attended her cousin's wedding with her sister and mother, she drove down and had a wonderful time. I don't believe her presence was heralded in Pinyin calligraphy, but whatever. The point is that I questioned the necessity of asking Gingerale's permission to bring me. Angel thought it necessary at the time to prevent planning snafus, in case reception seating numbers were thrown off by my accompaniment. I tossed my quizzical countenance aside, and moved on. Angel and I responded, and had a pretty good night together, watching reality television and doing other couple stuff.
Of course, the differences in address were not invisible to my perspective; part of me felt at the time that Angel was needlessly reminding her friends of my relationship to her. Gingerale and Pierre have known for some time that Angel and I have been dating and living together. Honestly, her excuse about reception seating sounded at that time like a weak, flimsy reason to ask someone else's permission to allow my attendance. Angel's request bothered me. She could have written a response that simply assumed that I would join her and fulfill the notification issue completely. "Gingerale, thank you so much for the notification, and congratulations on your upcoming marriage to Pierre. James and I wouldn't miss your wedding for the world! Keep us posted on logistical issues, and again, congrats!" No, Angel's statement included something to the effect of "Would you all mind terribly if..." or "Would it be alright if James also attended..." or "Is it ok if James came along ...", like I'm some annoying little puppy that can never be left alone for extended periods of time without annoying puddles of yellow urine on the carpet and chewed up shoes in the closet, but has no place, given an utter lack of home training, at any formal gathering, much less a life-altering perfectionist's event like a wedding.
I felt the question alone belittled me, reduced me to unnecessary baggage at best or at worst, a dirty, disgusting Golem best kept segregated, incarcerated, secret from the affairs of honorable men. I had to tell myself that it didn't matter, that the foci of the happiness were the weddings, and I shouldn't allow myself to wallow in petty interpretations of simple correspondence. I focused on meeting the one woman from my girlfriend's past with whom she possessed the most mysterious and misunderstood relationship, filled with teenage angst, Gothic pretension, female drama, adolescent teasing, and unresolved tension. I never understood Angel's friends; whether so overbearingly, obnoxiously effeminate to the point of Carson Kressly Queer Eye for the Straight Guy parody or so hypersocially apolitical Lucy Liu resembles Michelle Malkin, Angel's Torontoians were always people I thought she should keep in touch with, if only for the nostalgic camaraderie of talking with people who already 'get' you. I'll be honest - after five years in the biz, I still don't 'get' Angel; her daily surprises still astound the eye and confuse the understanding. Frankly, I relied on those who grew up with me to endure some of the rough spots Cornell University provided me; without the Squad, I doubt I'd have made it. I didn't understand Angel's obvious reluctance to keep in contact with her old friends, but I still feel that Gingerale's interaction had something to do with the frozen contact. Now that my Squad is dead and buried, a deceased union no longer politically viable or personally prudent, I find Angel's reaction obvious: a person trying to make a new start needs no tethers to an unforgiving past. Gingerale and Angel are both friendly competition and antagonistic competitors; whatever the source of their tension, it was enough to prevent any movement on Angel's part to seek out Gingerale for further contact once her collegiate years emerged, a raucous silence ever-widening their lacerated friendship.
What's past is prologue, they say. After we sent our response to Gingerale, my hope was to test my theories concerning Angel's interaction with her at her wedding. Last weekend, Angel and I received our response.
To be honest, I really didn't know how to take this. I was being told that my presence at this most perfect of possible days was not now, nor had ever been, required or encouraged. Basically, I should keep my ass at home. Angel was immediately irate, but I told her without hesitation that she should attend the wedding, that there's no reason that she shouldn't go and have a good time there even if I wasn't invited. I suppose that should have been the end of it; further discussion averted by my uncharacteristically cool nonchalance concerning her friend's "please come alone" regulation. But I simply couldn't push the issue out of my mind. Paralyzed, frozen, disappointed, distant, I couldn't discern why Gingerale would decree such an obvious rejection. She didn't want me there; all that stuff on keeping the affair small seemed a small, minor excuse for another more pressing concern with my attendance. She doesn't know me; I refuse to presuppose a racial concern, but I am a tad weary with being told I have no place around Angel's friends and family. Frankly, I'm left confused. Given that she really doesn't know me and we've never met, what is the point of her written ostracism? Am I really so unwanted?
I've read Gingerale's blog for the last year and a half, at least; keeping up with the thoughts of this friend of Angel's seemed sensible if only to understand Angel's perspective and personal history better. I doubt I've been successful. Gingerale's writing strikes me as needlessly pretentious and faux artistic, the minuscule ravings of a short, forgettable, bland writer who wears horn-rimmed black spectacles with matching chopsticks clad with orange pseudo-Oriental printing as hair accessories while typing furiously into her Sony Vaio some ardently artsy deconstruction of Milton's Paradise Lost, who sips mint tea with ginger in a smoky college-town coffee shop called Stella's or Buster's or Ezra's, filled to capacity with thirty other literature majors all hell-bent upon individual distinction through personal quirkiness and outward counterculture fashion choice yet plainly identifies as uniform post-suburbanite trust fund beneficiaries as they pen droll, uninspired theses on the same three Joan Didion essays in Slouching Through Bethlehem while they overuse the same Max Factor rouge monotone and Clairol midnight black lipstick and as they wear nigh-identical pleated black schoolgirl skirts from Hot Topic and bleached white tank-top shirts under Clorox white frilly Euro-trash blouses from La Chateau to reach with slow, deliberate, background studio audience daytime television grace inside dark Emily the Strange handbags for the cutesy handkerchiefs and scarves picked up at bargains from the local hemp store. You can check for yourself.
Still, my confusion endured. Of course, Rei Ayanami would expect me to indulge in what she terms my penchant for "racial paranoia", but without a first-contact scenario I'm reluctant to make that assertion. It could be anything - jealous prevention of any other appearance of a long-term relationship amongst her friends outside of her own on her wedding day, an anti-Angel assertion of dominance to prevent her from arriving with backup in case any tension between the two emerges, even a simple truth that space really is at a premium. Sadly, my past experiences with Angel's family and friends will not allow me a moment's peace. My mind wanders; the real reason for my requested absence could be that Gingerale never wanted a militant Black man to appear amongst her family and friends arm-in-arm with one of her lifelong Chinese-Canadian female friends. In real-time, full audio/ visual imagery, open for personal one-on-one interaction, Angel and I could intermingle with all the other wedding guests, in-your-face human examples of the ebony midnight of Asian female outmarriage into interracial relationships. The relevant point here is that I don't honestly know what her motivations are in asking Angel to attend her wedding alone, but I don't believe that her excuse about 'space considerations' provides full disclosure about any real issues with my attendance. Maybe I simply do not trust Gingerale anymore than she trusts me. We've never met; do not know each other. At this point I doubt we'll have the opportunity to alter that status quo.
It shouldn't matter to me, I know. I should not be offended. Or bothered. Or irritated. It just pisses me off, frankly. Too many times in the five years I've loved Angel have people from her past deemed me, both directly through confrontation or indirectly through secret discussion and quiet disapproval, inadequate and insufficient of Angelic affection, and derided me as wholly undeserved of her heavenly love. I've come to realize through bitter tears and dehumanizing sacrifice that I will never stand as 'good enough' and appear as worthwhile to the vast majority of Angel's extended family and personal friends. Angel's parents look upon me as a nigger, the lowest form of quasi-humanoid brute, the criminal, aggressive, coarse Black savage more likely to rob than read, more likely to rape than write. I am no more the athletic Supermasculine Menial than I am the dirty urban crack fiend armed with spasmodic switchblade and amphetamine adrenaline in the abysmal darkness of metropolitan alleyways. No academic achievement, no persuasive argument, no psychological assessment, no personal recommendation will change this obvious and uncompromising fact. If Gingerale agrees with this assessment, that is unfortunate. I don't believe she needs to in order to justify barring my arrival at her wedding. It's her day; she can assemble who she wants.
Still, it is quite difficult for me to interpret this as anything less than another amorphous, transparent, completely unopposed anti-nigger episode. I really don't want to, and I'd probably shrug off this entire refusal of my presence if Angel had not asked Gingerale's permission to allow me to escort her to the wedding in the first place. I feel that Angel either knew or suspected that there was a possibility that I was not welcome in Singhampton, Ontario during the May 14th 2005 weekend. It's unnerving; I second-guess Angel's immediate anger towards the note, re-interpret her vitriolic flash as too easily satiated by my easygoing, mild-mannered initial support of her attendance at Gingerale's wedding, wonder quietly if I was simply playing the requisite 'supportive boyfriend amidst unconquerable racism' role, simmer in stereotypical silence so typecast as the brooding, furious 'angry Black male' I'm eligible for confessional close-ups on MTV's The Real World. Angel did not seriously share with me the possibility that Gingerale would refuse my presence, perhaps because she never believed it possible, perhaps because she feared what would be my irate questions protesting such an event. Now that the event has occurred, I find myself oddly sobered. My mother always told me to never go where I was not wanted, but what I have learned so far in my brief and moderately eventful life is that to travel anywhere one desires, one must travel where one is not welcome. My short lifetime includes several examples of boldly going where no one would rather I visit. I have lived with Angel for years; every minute here I reside where I am publicly repugnant. My graduation weekend from Cornell University involved several instances where my presence within the warm amber confines of Angel's innocent love caused public strife and personal dissonance. My life is a journey of the unwanted.
Gingerale's wedding is just another example, just another painted wooden sign warning "No Dogs, No Jews, No Niggers!" in the segregated North American backwaters of my atheistic, liberal, college-educated, terror-stricken, "Vote or Die", Pimp My Ride slogan-fed generation. Cultural diversity and multicultural tolerance can not exist within modern Western liberal democracies as long as individual citizens are both unwilling and unlikely to question their own prejudices and attitudes toward the various racial, ethnic, national, religious, gendered, and sexual identities they encounter in fellow citizens, and within themselves. There is no monolithic mainstream within a modern Western liberal democracy. At best, minority multiplicity ricochets individuals into each other, pinballing increased conflict and catastrophic crises until cooperation and compromise allow combatant citizens short respite until the next anarchist's paradise. Pretend not, dear readers, today's capitalist-imperialist public order has not evolved Western civilization beyond the Hobbesian acid trip; under the Leviathan George W. Bush, John Q. American still endures a solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short existence, supplemented only by iPods, American Idol, and blockbuster remakes from Ron Howard and Tom Hanks.
My war for this world is as yet incomplete. Even though I've found someone to love who loves me back, I feel shamed by the illogical inadequacy imposed upon my person every time our connection emerges before her family and friends. I always end up wrinkled and degraded, pissed upon by racial uncertainty's acid rain, left alone by personal distrust and public hate. I should never have let this damnable note bother me.
Today was a day filled mostly with second season episodes of The West Wing. I've reread some of Will Kylimicka's Multicultural Citizenship and compiled notes of the overview chapter of The Cambridge Companion to Nietzsche to write my comic script, Superman: Ubermensch. Concentration eludes me. I'd like to believe that this writing will one day soon better my condition, but I've never been one for irrational hope, or blind optimism. No, I live as a man without faith, a disbeliever in the evidence of things not seen, by choice a hopeless heretic harried by helter-skelter humanity. Usually, this innate cynicism serves me well, prevents subscription to popular simple explanations of complex sociopolitical interaction. Today I'm paralyzed.
The situation: soon after the beginning of this new calendar year, Angel and I received 'save-the-date' notices of the upcoming nuptials of two of our friends, Angel's high school pal Gingerale, and my pre-Cornell friend Deidra. Needless to say, these happy events prompted abundant smiles and well-wishes from us, even though we know that people will continue to ask when Angel and I plan to follow suit. The answer? No time soon. On the real, people would be lucky to see me married before I'm thirty-five, if ever. I love Angel, with all my heart and soul. Too bad that doesn't matter in the slightest. Marriage is pain. To love is to suffer, and to marry your love is suicidal. You should know better. I've watched my parents argue about everything possible for the entirety of my short life. Every time I return to Virginia, I become the unwitting subject of their arguments whether I waste their money without sensible contribution or promote a counter-balancing aggressiveness detrimental to their household. My parents always argue, because marriage is about argument. Anything else isn't true love, and not worth the joint-filing tax benefits.
Deidra-s marriage in McKinney, TX to Mr. Keven Morris will occur on May 21, 2005 and Gingerale's wedding to Pierre Duez happens a week prior on May 14th in Singhampton, Ontario. Angel and I responded to both save-the-dates with eager happiness. Weddings are wonderful events, filled with smiling happy people, and I missed my friends Xander and Willow's wedding so I promised myself that I'd be financially stable enough to attend these pre-scheduled initial moments of holy matrimony. My generation is growing up quicker than I expected, but with a world filled with terrorist threats of dirty nuclear bombs, Ashley Simpson live concerts and Secretary Rumsfeld's private international Metal Gear Solid 3 covert-ops unit, childhood no longer remains a luxury we can afford.
Now, in our lives, I have never met or spoken to Gingerale, and Angel has never met or spoken to Deidra, yet Deidra addressed her notification to both Angel and myself while Gingerale addressed her notification to Angel alone. Both women have held prior knowledge of my relationship to Angel for some time. In response, Jenn and I composed thank you letters to both women for their notifications. On the letter to Gingerale, however, Angel added a curious interrogative, asking whether it would be alright with the happy couple if I accompanied Angel to their wedding. Now I have next-to-zero experience with weddings, but the couple I've attended in my life have been fairly sizable affairs, held in Southern Black churches, where people were happy to accompany others, whether or not the formal protocol of an RSVP had been signed, sealed, and delivered to the happy couple's publicist or wedding coordinator. I know not how other cultures handle this stuff; recently when Angel attended her cousin's wedding with her sister and mother, she drove down and had a wonderful time. I don't believe her presence was heralded in Pinyin calligraphy, but whatever. The point is that I questioned the necessity of asking Gingerale's permission to bring me. Angel thought it necessary at the time to prevent planning snafus, in case reception seating numbers were thrown off by my accompaniment. I tossed my quizzical countenance aside, and moved on. Angel and I responded, and had a pretty good night together, watching reality television and doing other couple stuff.
Of course, the differences in address were not invisible to my perspective; part of me felt at the time that Angel was needlessly reminding her friends of my relationship to her. Gingerale and Pierre have known for some time that Angel and I have been dating and living together. Honestly, her excuse about reception seating sounded at that time like a weak, flimsy reason to ask someone else's permission to allow my attendance. Angel's request bothered me. She could have written a response that simply assumed that I would join her and fulfill the notification issue completely. "Gingerale, thank you so much for the notification, and congratulations on your upcoming marriage to Pierre. James and I wouldn't miss your wedding for the world! Keep us posted on logistical issues, and again, congrats!" No, Angel's statement included something to the effect of "Would you all mind terribly if..." or "Would it be alright if James also attended..." or "Is it ok if James came along ...", like I'm some annoying little puppy that can never be left alone for extended periods of time without annoying puddles of yellow urine on the carpet and chewed up shoes in the closet, but has no place, given an utter lack of home training, at any formal gathering, much less a life-altering perfectionist's event like a wedding.
I felt the question alone belittled me, reduced me to unnecessary baggage at best or at worst, a dirty, disgusting Golem best kept segregated, incarcerated, secret from the affairs of honorable men. I had to tell myself that it didn't matter, that the foci of the happiness were the weddings, and I shouldn't allow myself to wallow in petty interpretations of simple correspondence. I focused on meeting the one woman from my girlfriend's past with whom she possessed the most mysterious and misunderstood relationship, filled with teenage angst, Gothic pretension, female drama, adolescent teasing, and unresolved tension. I never understood Angel's friends; whether so overbearingly, obnoxiously effeminate to the point of Carson Kressly Queer Eye for the Straight Guy parody or so hypersocially apolitical Lucy Liu resembles Michelle Malkin, Angel's Torontoians were always people I thought she should keep in touch with, if only for the nostalgic camaraderie of talking with people who already 'get' you. I'll be honest - after five years in the biz, I still don't 'get' Angel; her daily surprises still astound the eye and confuse the understanding. Frankly, I relied on those who grew up with me to endure some of the rough spots Cornell University provided me; without the Squad, I doubt I'd have made it. I didn't understand Angel's obvious reluctance to keep in contact with her old friends, but I still feel that Gingerale's interaction had something to do with the frozen contact. Now that my Squad is dead and buried, a deceased union no longer politically viable or personally prudent, I find Angel's reaction obvious: a person trying to make a new start needs no tethers to an unforgiving past. Gingerale and Angel are both friendly competition and antagonistic competitors; whatever the source of their tension, it was enough to prevent any movement on Angel's part to seek out Gingerale for further contact once her collegiate years emerged, a raucous silence ever-widening their lacerated friendship.
What's past is prologue, they say. After we sent our response to Gingerale, my hope was to test my theories concerning Angel's interaction with her at her wedding. Last weekend, Angel and I received our response.
11 January 2005
Dear Angel,
The Save-the-Date was exactly that - a reminder for all our out-of-town friends that need to make travel arrangements; we will be sending formal invitations later. We are afraid, however, that the invitation was intended for you alone - we are trying to keep the wedding/ reception small, and both of us have a significant number of extended family members that must be invited. We hope that this won't prevent you from coming; it would be lovely to see you again.
All the best for the new year,
Gingerale.
To be honest, I really didn't know how to take this. I was being told that my presence at this most perfect of possible days was not now, nor had ever been, required or encouraged. Basically, I should keep my ass at home. Angel was immediately irate, but I told her without hesitation that she should attend the wedding, that there's no reason that she shouldn't go and have a good time there even if I wasn't invited. I suppose that should have been the end of it; further discussion averted by my uncharacteristically cool nonchalance concerning her friend's "please come alone" regulation. But I simply couldn't push the issue out of my mind. Paralyzed, frozen, disappointed, distant, I couldn't discern why Gingerale would decree such an obvious rejection. She didn't want me there; all that stuff on keeping the affair small seemed a small, minor excuse for another more pressing concern with my attendance. She doesn't know me; I refuse to presuppose a racial concern, but I am a tad weary with being told I have no place around Angel's friends and family. Frankly, I'm left confused. Given that she really doesn't know me and we've never met, what is the point of her written ostracism? Am I really so unwanted?
I've read Gingerale's blog for the last year and a half, at least; keeping up with the thoughts of this friend of Angel's seemed sensible if only to understand Angel's perspective and personal history better. I doubt I've been successful. Gingerale's writing strikes me as needlessly pretentious and faux artistic, the minuscule ravings of a short, forgettable, bland writer who wears horn-rimmed black spectacles with matching chopsticks clad with orange pseudo-Oriental printing as hair accessories while typing furiously into her Sony Vaio some ardently artsy deconstruction of Milton's Paradise Lost, who sips mint tea with ginger in a smoky college-town coffee shop called Stella's or Buster's or Ezra's, filled to capacity with thirty other literature majors all hell-bent upon individual distinction through personal quirkiness and outward counterculture fashion choice yet plainly identifies as uniform post-suburbanite trust fund beneficiaries as they pen droll, uninspired theses on the same three Joan Didion essays in Slouching Through Bethlehem while they overuse the same Max Factor rouge monotone and Clairol midnight black lipstick and as they wear nigh-identical pleated black schoolgirl skirts from Hot Topic and bleached white tank-top shirts under Clorox white frilly Euro-trash blouses from La Chateau to reach with slow, deliberate, background studio audience daytime television grace inside dark Emily the Strange handbags for the cutesy handkerchiefs and scarves picked up at bargains from the local hemp store. You can check for yourself.
Still, my confusion endured. Of course, Rei Ayanami would expect me to indulge in what she terms my penchant for "racial paranoia", but without a first-contact scenario I'm reluctant to make that assertion. It could be anything - jealous prevention of any other appearance of a long-term relationship amongst her friends outside of her own on her wedding day, an anti-Angel assertion of dominance to prevent her from arriving with backup in case any tension between the two emerges, even a simple truth that space really is at a premium. Sadly, my past experiences with Angel's family and friends will not allow me a moment's peace. My mind wanders; the real reason for my requested absence could be that Gingerale never wanted a militant Black man to appear amongst her family and friends arm-in-arm with one of her lifelong Chinese-Canadian female friends. In real-time, full audio/ visual imagery, open for personal one-on-one interaction, Angel and I could intermingle with all the other wedding guests, in-your-face human examples of the ebony midnight of Asian female outmarriage into interracial relationships. The relevant point here is that I don't honestly know what her motivations are in asking Angel to attend her wedding alone, but I don't believe that her excuse about 'space considerations' provides full disclosure about any real issues with my attendance. Maybe I simply do not trust Gingerale anymore than she trusts me. We've never met; do not know each other. At this point I doubt we'll have the opportunity to alter that status quo.
It shouldn't matter to me, I know. I should not be offended. Or bothered. Or irritated. It just pisses me off, frankly. Too many times in the five years I've loved Angel have people from her past deemed me, both directly through confrontation or indirectly through secret discussion and quiet disapproval, inadequate and insufficient of Angelic affection, and derided me as wholly undeserved of her heavenly love. I've come to realize through bitter tears and dehumanizing sacrifice that I will never stand as 'good enough' and appear as worthwhile to the vast majority of Angel's extended family and personal friends. Angel's parents look upon me as a nigger, the lowest form of quasi-humanoid brute, the criminal, aggressive, coarse Black savage more likely to rob than read, more likely to rape than write. I am no more the athletic Supermasculine Menial than I am the dirty urban crack fiend armed with spasmodic switchblade and amphetamine adrenaline in the abysmal darkness of metropolitan alleyways. No academic achievement, no persuasive argument, no psychological assessment, no personal recommendation will change this obvious and uncompromising fact. If Gingerale agrees with this assessment, that is unfortunate. I don't believe she needs to in order to justify barring my arrival at her wedding. It's her day; she can assemble who she wants.
Still, it is quite difficult for me to interpret this as anything less than another amorphous, transparent, completely unopposed anti-nigger episode. I really don't want to, and I'd probably shrug off this entire refusal of my presence if Angel had not asked Gingerale's permission to allow me to escort her to the wedding in the first place. I feel that Angel either knew or suspected that there was a possibility that I was not welcome in Singhampton, Ontario during the May 14th 2005 weekend. It's unnerving; I second-guess Angel's immediate anger towards the note, re-interpret her vitriolic flash as too easily satiated by my easygoing, mild-mannered initial support of her attendance at Gingerale's wedding, wonder quietly if I was simply playing the requisite 'supportive boyfriend amidst unconquerable racism' role, simmer in stereotypical silence so typecast as the brooding, furious 'angry Black male' I'm eligible for confessional close-ups on MTV's The Real World. Angel did not seriously share with me the possibility that Gingerale would refuse my presence, perhaps because she never believed it possible, perhaps because she feared what would be my irate questions protesting such an event. Now that the event has occurred, I find myself oddly sobered. My mother always told me to never go where I was not wanted, but what I have learned so far in my brief and moderately eventful life is that to travel anywhere one desires, one must travel where one is not welcome. My short lifetime includes several examples of boldly going where no one would rather I visit. I have lived with Angel for years; every minute here I reside where I am publicly repugnant. My graduation weekend from Cornell University involved several instances where my presence within the warm amber confines of Angel's innocent love caused public strife and personal dissonance. My life is a journey of the unwanted.
Gingerale's wedding is just another example, just another painted wooden sign warning "No Dogs, No Jews, No Niggers!" in the segregated North American backwaters of my atheistic, liberal, college-educated, terror-stricken, "Vote or Die", Pimp My Ride slogan-fed generation. Cultural diversity and multicultural tolerance can not exist within modern Western liberal democracies as long as individual citizens are both unwilling and unlikely to question their own prejudices and attitudes toward the various racial, ethnic, national, religious, gendered, and sexual identities they encounter in fellow citizens, and within themselves. There is no monolithic mainstream within a modern Western liberal democracy. At best, minority multiplicity ricochets individuals into each other, pinballing increased conflict and catastrophic crises until cooperation and compromise allow combatant citizens short respite until the next anarchist's paradise. Pretend not, dear readers, today's capitalist-imperialist public order has not evolved Western civilization beyond the Hobbesian acid trip; under the Leviathan George W. Bush, John Q. American still endures a solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short existence, supplemented only by iPods, American Idol, and blockbuster remakes from Ron Howard and Tom Hanks.
My war for this world is as yet incomplete. Even though I've found someone to love who loves me back, I feel shamed by the illogical inadequacy imposed upon my person every time our connection emerges before her family and friends. I always end up wrinkled and degraded, pissed upon by racial uncertainty's acid rain, left alone by personal distrust and public hate. I should never have let this damnable note bother me.
Monday, January 17, 2005
I need a haircut. Badly. I don't resemble Don King or Lil' Jon yet, but I have an important job interview this week in DC and I'd like to look halfway presentable. My father would say I shouldn't go there looking all 'woolly-bully 'bout the head', and I couldn't agree more. Yet on this observed federal holiday commemorating the birthday of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Ithaca, NY is a ghost town on ice, a college town ice cream dessert following a visit from the larcenous Mr. Freeze. At this writing, local temperatures hover around 16 degrees Fahrenheit (-9 degrees Celsius) and my public transportation towards Mr. J.C. Knight's Barbershop proved a colossal waste of time and money (not as much as the newly terminated military search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, but close), as Mr. Knight was nowhere to be found. It's snowing heavily here, and he commutes from Rochester, NY, so I'm not really surprised or mad. I'm just severely inconvenienced and questioning what I should despise more: the weather, or the holiday.
Usually, at least in the past two years, my attempts at self-improvement discombobulate in the final stretch, a weary World War I biplane taking fire while losing fuel, rivets, and overall structural integrity in a final sweep of the Kaiser's palace over Berlin. I've written an entire seven-book epic overview for a comic book series retelling the origins of DC Comics superheroes, kind of a "James Lamb Presents" for the Original Universe. (And yes, my stuff is better than Stan Lee's.) With titles like "Batman: The Minstrel Show" and "Superman: Ubermensch", I know I have some great ideas. I've even completed a working script for the first chapter of the Superman story, thanks to Angel's often maddening but always appreciated encouragement. Still, I can't really see DC Comics paying a unknown twenty-three year old Cornell alumnus United States legal tender for unorthodox Elseworlds origins of classic franchise characters loved the world over that more often than not either debunk traditional comic mythology or engage the characters in situations and conversations not suitable for children, the target audience of too many comic books in the modern age. I want to finish this stuff, but outside of Angel and Frank White, no one else has read my first completed comic script, and the cajoled arm-twisting I'd have to do to get others to partake simply isn't worth the stress.
Or take my essays. All last week, when I should have been writing the other five or six posts on my "Need to Blog About" list, I've been working on a post concerning the Armstrong Williams controversy. Now, many others have spoken on this subject around the blogosphere, but after reading LaShawn Barber and Michelle Malkin, I was incensed enough to write my opinion on some questions the "Pay to Pander" scandal raises for our polarized political discourse. It's really too long for posting here, so when it's done, I'll add the piece to my essay section and link it in. Hopefully it won't be too dated and dusty for any real impact. But then again, I never posted my essay on Rei Ayanami, "Mechanical Animals 2", either. I found the piece useful, but it's more in need of editing than the National Review Online, not to mention absurdly verbose and unduly inflammatory. Angel and Milkshake both cautioned me about ever allowing the work to see the light of day; that protecting the innocent trumps serving my private trust. I know they are right, but their goes another couple of weeks of writing. Like Ashley Simpson at the Orange Bowl, sometimes you realize too late that you don't belong in the arena.
Needless to say, I love my writing. I'm not really doing a pleasant job of it right now (Blogger sacrifices style for speed) but in these past two years of wilderness reflection my only sanity, my only real skill, is my writing. I write because my thoughts on this world we share need to be questioned, attacked, deconstructed. I write because I'm egotistical enough to believe I have something important to say. I write because I have to - it's the only real way a person can make others understand his motivations and ambitions, his virtues and his vices. I write because I have to. Still, sometimes I despair, under the belief that I'm just wasting my time with my essays. The personal essay, in my opinion, is the most overlooked and technically efficient form of exposition available in the English language today. Starting with Michel de Montaigne, the essay allows a person direct connection with a reader, exposing his barest soul and thoughtful complexity towards a naked, mewling, violent, nasty, contentious audience that need neither like not agree with your perceptions, yet knows them all the same. Twentieth Century masters of the medium like George Orwell and James Baldwin prove successful and readable today because of the timeless artistry displayed in their sharing of a kindred intellect's unfiltered thoughts with the multifaceted, multihued, always disparate and diverse mass audience. To read "Marrakech" or "Shooting an Elephant" rockets one back to Imperial Burma, where a youthful officer of the British Empire grapples with the grunt work maintenance of his homeland's wealth, power, and prestige, threatened by the militaristic rise of Nazi Germany and created through the oppression and misuse of millions of African and Asian indigenous peoples who never harmed nor threatened the shores of grey Britannia. Baldwin's "Here Be Dragons" has to be one of the smartest renderings of androgyny, false masculinity, and racism I have ever encountered in print: no one recalls today that identity politics multiplicity existed before both the Stonewall rebellion and Rosa Parks' revolutionary laziness, but they did, and Baldwin's reverberate double vision on his discretely similar double oppressions still educates and appeals.
However, the unimpeachable master of the Twentieth Century essay, the author of the last century's expository masterstroke, was none other than the reason for today's snowy federal holiday. Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "Letter from Birmingham Jail" still stands out as the most powerful persuasive piece in the modern era, as his unceasing, unending binary dualism makes plain the urgent need for eliminating racial discrimination without an easy pardon for its perpetrators. No ingratiating forgetfulness weakens King's rhetorical force; unlike the easily recalled and quickly ignored absent holy man recalled in conservative anti-affirmative action political speeches, "Letter from Birmingham Jail" recalls the best of America -- a dedicated, thoughtful social leader who tempers his incessant anger at the accepted shackles impeding his people's progress towards effective, consistent, nonviolent action for social change. Reading his essay makes me wish I possessed such discipline.
Today, CNN reports that the American wealth gap presents the most chilling evidence that American racial parity still exists only in the forgotten sleep of fallen dreamers. I can relate -- driving to Washington, DC in a snowstorm on a shoestring budget sounds like a funny icebreaker until you have to walk the talk. I'll never stop writing essays; neither Orwell, Baldwin, or King, I'm still groping for good sense in a Virginian midnight, breath visible, skin overlooked, sanity questionable. One day, I'll be a writer. I may even be blessed with leadership in some fantastic future. Today, I need a haircut.
Usually, at least in the past two years, my attempts at self-improvement discombobulate in the final stretch, a weary World War I biplane taking fire while losing fuel, rivets, and overall structural integrity in a final sweep of the Kaiser's palace over Berlin. I've written an entire seven-book epic overview for a comic book series retelling the origins of DC Comics superheroes, kind of a "James Lamb Presents" for the Original Universe. (And yes, my stuff is better than Stan Lee's.) With titles like "Batman: The Minstrel Show" and "Superman: Ubermensch", I know I have some great ideas. I've even completed a working script for the first chapter of the Superman story, thanks to Angel's often maddening but always appreciated encouragement. Still, I can't really see DC Comics paying a unknown twenty-three year old Cornell alumnus United States legal tender for unorthodox Elseworlds origins of classic franchise characters loved the world over that more often than not either debunk traditional comic mythology or engage the characters in situations and conversations not suitable for children, the target audience of too many comic books in the modern age. I want to finish this stuff, but outside of Angel and Frank White, no one else has read my first completed comic script, and the cajoled arm-twisting I'd have to do to get others to partake simply isn't worth the stress.
Or take my essays. All last week, when I should have been writing the other five or six posts on my "Need to Blog About" list, I've been working on a post concerning the Armstrong Williams controversy. Now, many others have spoken on this subject around the blogosphere, but after reading LaShawn Barber and Michelle Malkin, I was incensed enough to write my opinion on some questions the "Pay to Pander" scandal raises for our polarized political discourse. It's really too long for posting here, so when it's done, I'll add the piece to my essay section and link it in. Hopefully it won't be too dated and dusty for any real impact. But then again, I never posted my essay on Rei Ayanami, "Mechanical Animals 2", either. I found the piece useful, but it's more in need of editing than the National Review Online, not to mention absurdly verbose and unduly inflammatory. Angel and Milkshake both cautioned me about ever allowing the work to see the light of day; that protecting the innocent trumps serving my private trust. I know they are right, but their goes another couple of weeks of writing. Like Ashley Simpson at the Orange Bowl, sometimes you realize too late that you don't belong in the arena.
Needless to say, I love my writing. I'm not really doing a pleasant job of it right now (Blogger sacrifices style for speed) but in these past two years of wilderness reflection my only sanity, my only real skill, is my writing. I write because my thoughts on this world we share need to be questioned, attacked, deconstructed. I write because I'm egotistical enough to believe I have something important to say. I write because I have to - it's the only real way a person can make others understand his motivations and ambitions, his virtues and his vices. I write because I have to. Still, sometimes I despair, under the belief that I'm just wasting my time with my essays. The personal essay, in my opinion, is the most overlooked and technically efficient form of exposition available in the English language today. Starting with Michel de Montaigne, the essay allows a person direct connection with a reader, exposing his barest soul and thoughtful complexity towards a naked, mewling, violent, nasty, contentious audience that need neither like not agree with your perceptions, yet knows them all the same. Twentieth Century masters of the medium like George Orwell and James Baldwin prove successful and readable today because of the timeless artistry displayed in their sharing of a kindred intellect's unfiltered thoughts with the multifaceted, multihued, always disparate and diverse mass audience. To read "Marrakech" or "Shooting an Elephant" rockets one back to Imperial Burma, where a youthful officer of the British Empire grapples with the grunt work maintenance of his homeland's wealth, power, and prestige, threatened by the militaristic rise of Nazi Germany and created through the oppression and misuse of millions of African and Asian indigenous peoples who never harmed nor threatened the shores of grey Britannia. Baldwin's "Here Be Dragons" has to be one of the smartest renderings of androgyny, false masculinity, and racism I have ever encountered in print: no one recalls today that identity politics multiplicity existed before both the Stonewall rebellion and Rosa Parks' revolutionary laziness, but they did, and Baldwin's reverberate double vision on his discretely similar double oppressions still educates and appeals.
However, the unimpeachable master of the Twentieth Century essay, the author of the last century's expository masterstroke, was none other than the reason for today's snowy federal holiday. Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "Letter from Birmingham Jail" still stands out as the most powerful persuasive piece in the modern era, as his unceasing, unending binary dualism makes plain the urgent need for eliminating racial discrimination without an easy pardon for its perpetrators. No ingratiating forgetfulness weakens King's rhetorical force; unlike the easily recalled and quickly ignored absent holy man recalled in conservative anti-affirmative action political speeches, "Letter from Birmingham Jail" recalls the best of America -- a dedicated, thoughtful social leader who tempers his incessant anger at the accepted shackles impeding his people's progress towards effective, consistent, nonviolent action for social change. Reading his essay makes me wish I possessed such discipline.
Today, CNN reports that the American wealth gap presents the most chilling evidence that American racial parity still exists only in the forgotten sleep of fallen dreamers. I can relate -- driving to Washington, DC in a snowstorm on a shoestring budget sounds like a funny icebreaker until you have to walk the talk. I'll never stop writing essays; neither Orwell, Baldwin, or King, I'm still groping for good sense in a Virginian midnight, breath visible, skin overlooked, sanity questionable. One day, I'll be a writer. I may even be blessed with leadership in some fantastic future. Today, I need a haircut.
Friday, January 07, 2005
The problem with being me is that I can never turn off my brain. I know some of you are sometimes unhappy with this fact; you're probably not going to like this post either.
What happened to my generation? Raised on My Little Pony and Mikhail Gorbachev, steel-gray Transformers and shades of grey Reaganomics, a deficit-ballooning prosperous poverty masquerade of supply-side insanity, one would think that the She-Ra's and G.I. Joes of my generation would just say no to the uncut cocaine of simple explanations and media whitewashing. Sure, I'm probably asking too much, but let me be clear: I don't give a shit about Heidi Klum's impending marriage to Seal. Unless one is willing to delve into this latest example of an open public rejection of Black women by a dark-skinned Black man for a used, skinny, blonde-haired, blue-eyed cave bitch, then shut the fuck up!
Entertainment has never been informative news. Tiger Woods' recent nuptials and Taye Diggs recent hate mail also publicized interracial multiculturalism and a publicly acknowledged reinforcement of the stereotypical heroin chic platinum blond White woman as most desirable, most beautiful, and most feminine worldwide (Western tested, global approved!). Our socially liberalized American corporate media easily sells stories of rich Negroes joining symmetrical White women in unholy matrimony because the demand never fades.
To be general, the ethically honest marketing executive at CNN or wherever would promote this story because women (excluding the sistas) gravitate towards the 'cross-cultural bonding over ethnic differences' element as an easy inroads into their sexually explicit fantasies of the Mandingo warrior -- replete with rippling LL Cool J muscles and thirteen inch Alabama blacksnake -- who ravishes each anonymous Missy Anne in the wooden slave quarters of their pornographic mental plantations in 102 degree South Carolina heat, while the men (excluding the brothas) can both ogle the supermodel White chick with nubile breasts and high cheekbones and wish they could absorb Seal's ebony sensuality without speaking ebonics. (Supermodel my left testicle -- Heidi Klum looks like Michael Jackson wearing Beyonce's weave.) This is America -- racial diversity decided through market share by a heavily Confederate viewing audience that self-reinforces base stereotypes about those too dark and too destitute to care about. In this country, your skin is your sin -- don't let MTV's leftist Real World propaganda fool you.
Now myself, I'd take a phat ass and a smile any day, but some brothers enjoy the bleached toothpick look. Whatever. Not my thing, but I'm not one to judge. But, before anyone responds to this rant trying to point out a glass house, let me make something quite clear. Yes, I am in an interracial relationship, and have been since September '99. Not trying to leave it. In fact, I've never dated a woman inside my race. Ever. Don't plan to. The point? Whatever relationship Seal and Heidi Klum have is their business, completely unimportant to the racial politics of our era. True love or Grammy ploy, it really doesn't matter, as it is their personal private business. It's not 'news'; you're not helping the terrorists if you remain unaware of their wedding plans. Hell, maybe the real reason news agencies publicize this information is because of the famed celebrity of the individuals involved, but I'm not that naive, nor should you be.
Going back further than boxing legend and heavyweight champion Jack Johnson, the sociopolitical purchase (often enabled through extreme financial wealth) of attractive White women for marital bliss with famous Black men has always taken its worse effects upon Black women, reinforcing in the public and private eyes of John and Jane Q. Public unfortunate stereotypes of masculine brutishness and ogre confrontation that continually reduce most Black mothers and sisters and daughters to Shrek. Black men today not only socialize and outmarry in record numbers but also create and maintain a multi-billion dollar multimedia misogyny industry called hip hop that wastes creativity by openly demeaning Black women in word and deed and mind, with hyperbolic Jazze Pha baselines adding a radio-playable soundtrack. Every voluptuous caramel posterior bouncing lewdly on BET, every reference to Black women as "bitches" in a club (only Eminem references Tipper Gore), every film or video or hip hop art revealing Black women's oral cavities as pink targets for the slimy, smelly, salty ejaculate of some low budget rapper with low self esteem and too much money (Snoop Dogg and Lil' Jon -- this means you!), exposes the all-consuming, omnipresent race hate Black men hold for Black women, adding precedent and credence to the larger civilization's sadistic demonization of the African American fairer sex.
Think about it -- what was Omarosa Manigault-Stallworth from The Apprentice but a Black man's nightmare -- a stalwart, sensible, assertive Black woman with dark skin and no-nonsense attitude turned 'sista ya love to hate' after her realization that she could never be judged by her White peers by her deeds instead of their prejudices? Midway through that season, something clicked in Omarosa's mind, a notion registered, a door slammed. A dream deferred. She understood that she was not an applicant given an equal shot at honest competition; rather, she was the perennial Black Bitch, a woman so utterly vitriolic in speech and psychological manipulation that even her own racial companions (genetically athletic, violent, and criminal to modern America, Willie Horton cripwalking) flee in abject fear from her side to avoid the grapes of her wrath. Omarosa became the most evil woman on the planet through Mark Burnett reality editing. Every great drama needs a great villain, and one can always count on the White person's hatred of Black people to boost ratings and sell advertising.
Omarosa' toned, Angela Basset upper-body definition and cold practicality frighten all -- especially the Black men that helped create her through centuries of emasculated cowering from White supremacist control of Black lives, labor, bodies, and minds. Before American history congealed Southern Whites solved labor issues through the triangular trade, bred today's Supermasculine Menials from sturdy African transatlantic slave ship survivors. Throughout this race trauma, the color-conscious American predilection for Victorian, fair-skinned, empty-headed, weightless white wraiths too foolish to consider the unfree labor of the porcelain doll, etched itself into the race history of the American Black man, envious of his master's house and all his possessions yet kept too unskilled to outthink the master, Jayson Blair meets Jayson Williams. Black men's desire for 'the white man's prize' continues to our modern era; the underlying political sentiment publicized relationships like Seal and Heidi Klum exude to the American public (without choice or conscious thought for the personal-as-political needs of the participants) involve illicit lust, exotic miscegenation, devolved bestiality, orgasmic animalism, rear-entry transactions, desperate prostitution, Puritanical revulsion, public outcry, and mob violence; Emmitt Till in a white Bronco running 90 mph down an L.A. freeway. Melanin is merciless, escape impossible: most of us can't Mariah Carey even if we wanted to.
We simply end where we begin. Wednesday night, during a commercial break in the hit ABC castaway drama Lost, I spied Omarosa in a McDonald's commercial silently scaring the excrement out of four twenty-something office workers simply by walking in and looking around. Fully caricatured for White audiences now, I doubt Omarosa recalls the moment she first burnt cork. Why should she -- her bank balance proves to all concerned that righteous indignation over racial violation leaves one pissed off and broke, as opposed to just plain poor (unless, of course, you can sell it by demeaning yourself like Michelle Malkin and Larry Elder). Still, Omarosa provides a useful example of the bitter acidity of the modern Black woman of my generation -- willing and able to corrode all in search of the impossible, the heterosexual mate within her community that will treat her as she deserves to be treated, regard her as the obsidian Amazonian of man's nocturnal emissive phantasmagoria warm, soft, peaceful, neither saint nor sinner but compassionate to all; supple, strong, sexy, the lover, the mother, the teacher, the soldier, a doctor, lawyer, President or Ayatollah.
But this is wishful thinking. The general public won't respect Black women as more than sluts and servants until Black men forge that new social paradigm, and Black men have no incentive to do so whatsoever. Call it self-hate, call it selling out, call it colorstruck -- and the point is long missed. Black men, still conflicted and traumatized from American race oppression, still envy the master's possessions, including his easy, nonchalant, institutionalized sexism. Essentially, Black men want to dominate the women of their homes, churches, and communities as easily as their white counterparts, and are tortured by their tasteless envy and absent despotism. Plus, Black men's sexual freedom becomes largely compromised and realistically nonexistent if the Black woman emerges as his sole acceptable sociopolitical sexual option. The collegiate Black community grapples with these concerns almost daily, especially in mainstream historically White colleges and universities, as Black women realize the despondent dearth of available, suitable, upwardly-mobile, heterosexual Black men and they find their Pierre Delacroix's sauntering across campus arm in arm with either Ashley Nicole Rockefeller, Maria Rodriguez, or Kim Soon Li Wang. Darling Nikki Johnson from Atlanta, Georgia stares at the straight hair, the prepubescent bosoms, the miniscule buttocks, and the bright complexions of her newfound competition, and shrugs in disgusted defeat, as she recalls nearly two decades of grocery-store checkout lines and bookstore newsstands that include popular woman-hating publications like Cosmopolitan, People, Maxim, and FHM, that promote with colorful photography and obnoxious headlines thin, drugged Cameron Diaz ice princesses Nikki can never resemble, no matter how many Tae-Bo and Pilates DVD workouts she performs. No wonder Prince caught her masturbating with a magazine; she might as well get some use out of it.
Black men have more reasons than self-hate to discard Black female sensuality, even when for some, self-hate or light pigment fetishism is a driving factor in the dismissal. Still, the promotion of Seal and Heidi Klum's engagement -- a private affair between public people -- unmasks as a political attack upon certain American constituencies, and can be analyzed for the damage it may cause. The laser scalpel demarcations of red and blue America hide our identity politics' confused complexity under a translucent shawl of speech codes and martyred reputations, but without useful analysis of unethical news symbolism, all of us are left smiling and happy, neutered adults waving rice at Seal's wedding to some white girl we can barely remember wondering how the hell we got there. Now who's burning cork?
What happened to my generation? Raised on My Little Pony and Mikhail Gorbachev, steel-gray Transformers and shades of grey Reaganomics, a deficit-ballooning prosperous poverty masquerade of supply-side insanity, one would think that the She-Ra's and G.I. Joes of my generation would just say no to the uncut cocaine of simple explanations and media whitewashing. Sure, I'm probably asking too much, but let me be clear: I don't give a shit about Heidi Klum's impending marriage to Seal. Unless one is willing to delve into this latest example of an open public rejection of Black women by a dark-skinned Black man for a used, skinny, blonde-haired, blue-eyed cave bitch, then shut the fuck up!
Entertainment has never been informative news. Tiger Woods' recent nuptials and Taye Diggs recent hate mail also publicized interracial multiculturalism and a publicly acknowledged reinforcement of the stereotypical heroin chic platinum blond White woman as most desirable, most beautiful, and most feminine worldwide (Western tested, global approved!). Our socially liberalized American corporate media easily sells stories of rich Negroes joining symmetrical White women in unholy matrimony because the demand never fades.
To be general, the ethically honest marketing executive at CNN or wherever would promote this story because women (excluding the sistas) gravitate towards the 'cross-cultural bonding over ethnic differences' element as an easy inroads into their sexually explicit fantasies of the Mandingo warrior -- replete with rippling LL Cool J muscles and thirteen inch Alabama blacksnake -- who ravishes each anonymous Missy Anne in the wooden slave quarters of their pornographic mental plantations in 102 degree South Carolina heat, while the men (excluding the brothas) can both ogle the supermodel White chick with nubile breasts and high cheekbones and wish they could absorb Seal's ebony sensuality without speaking ebonics. (Supermodel my left testicle -- Heidi Klum looks like Michael Jackson wearing Beyonce's weave.) This is America -- racial diversity decided through market share by a heavily Confederate viewing audience that self-reinforces base stereotypes about those too dark and too destitute to care about. In this country, your skin is your sin -- don't let MTV's leftist Real World propaganda fool you.
Now myself, I'd take a phat ass and a smile any day, but some brothers enjoy the bleached toothpick look. Whatever. Not my thing, but I'm not one to judge. But, before anyone responds to this rant trying to point out a glass house, let me make something quite clear. Yes, I am in an interracial relationship, and have been since September '99. Not trying to leave it. In fact, I've never dated a woman inside my race. Ever. Don't plan to. The point? Whatever relationship Seal and Heidi Klum have is their business, completely unimportant to the racial politics of our era. True love or Grammy ploy, it really doesn't matter, as it is their personal private business. It's not 'news'; you're not helping the terrorists if you remain unaware of their wedding plans. Hell, maybe the real reason news agencies publicize this information is because of the famed celebrity of the individuals involved, but I'm not that naive, nor should you be.
Going back further than boxing legend and heavyweight champion Jack Johnson, the sociopolitical purchase (often enabled through extreme financial wealth) of attractive White women for marital bliss with famous Black men has always taken its worse effects upon Black women, reinforcing in the public and private eyes of John and Jane Q. Public unfortunate stereotypes of masculine brutishness and ogre confrontation that continually reduce most Black mothers and sisters and daughters to Shrek. Black men today not only socialize and outmarry in record numbers but also create and maintain a multi-billion dollar multimedia misogyny industry called hip hop that wastes creativity by openly demeaning Black women in word and deed and mind, with hyperbolic Jazze Pha baselines adding a radio-playable soundtrack. Every voluptuous caramel posterior bouncing lewdly on BET, every reference to Black women as "bitches" in a club (only Eminem references Tipper Gore), every film or video or hip hop art revealing Black women's oral cavities as pink targets for the slimy, smelly, salty ejaculate of some low budget rapper with low self esteem and too much money (Snoop Dogg and Lil' Jon -- this means you!), exposes the all-consuming, omnipresent race hate Black men hold for Black women, adding precedent and credence to the larger civilization's sadistic demonization of the African American fairer sex.
Think about it -- what was Omarosa Manigault-Stallworth from The Apprentice but a Black man's nightmare -- a stalwart, sensible, assertive Black woman with dark skin and no-nonsense attitude turned 'sista ya love to hate' after her realization that she could never be judged by her White peers by her deeds instead of their prejudices? Midway through that season, something clicked in Omarosa's mind, a notion registered, a door slammed. A dream deferred. She understood that she was not an applicant given an equal shot at honest competition; rather, she was the perennial Black Bitch, a woman so utterly vitriolic in speech and psychological manipulation that even her own racial companions (genetically athletic, violent, and criminal to modern America, Willie Horton cripwalking) flee in abject fear from her side to avoid the grapes of her wrath. Omarosa became the most evil woman on the planet through Mark Burnett reality editing. Every great drama needs a great villain, and one can always count on the White person's hatred of Black people to boost ratings and sell advertising.
Omarosa' toned, Angela Basset upper-body definition and cold practicality frighten all -- especially the Black men that helped create her through centuries of emasculated cowering from White supremacist control of Black lives, labor, bodies, and minds. Before American history congealed Southern Whites solved labor issues through the triangular trade, bred today's Supermasculine Menials from sturdy African transatlantic slave ship survivors. Throughout this race trauma, the color-conscious American predilection for Victorian, fair-skinned, empty-headed, weightless white wraiths too foolish to consider the unfree labor of the porcelain doll, etched itself into the race history of the American Black man, envious of his master's house and all his possessions yet kept too unskilled to outthink the master, Jayson Blair meets Jayson Williams. Black men's desire for 'the white man's prize' continues to our modern era; the underlying political sentiment publicized relationships like Seal and Heidi Klum exude to the American public (without choice or conscious thought for the personal-as-political needs of the participants) involve illicit lust, exotic miscegenation, devolved bestiality, orgasmic animalism, rear-entry transactions, desperate prostitution, Puritanical revulsion, public outcry, and mob violence; Emmitt Till in a white Bronco running 90 mph down an L.A. freeway. Melanin is merciless, escape impossible: most of us can't Mariah Carey even if we wanted to.
We simply end where we begin. Wednesday night, during a commercial break in the hit ABC castaway drama Lost, I spied Omarosa in a McDonald's commercial silently scaring the excrement out of four twenty-something office workers simply by walking in and looking around. Fully caricatured for White audiences now, I doubt Omarosa recalls the moment she first burnt cork. Why should she -- her bank balance proves to all concerned that righteous indignation over racial violation leaves one pissed off and broke, as opposed to just plain poor (unless, of course, you can sell it by demeaning yourself like Michelle Malkin and Larry Elder). Still, Omarosa provides a useful example of the bitter acidity of the modern Black woman of my generation -- willing and able to corrode all in search of the impossible, the heterosexual mate within her community that will treat her as she deserves to be treated, regard her as the obsidian Amazonian of man's nocturnal emissive phantasmagoria warm, soft, peaceful, neither saint nor sinner but compassionate to all; supple, strong, sexy, the lover, the mother, the teacher, the soldier, a doctor, lawyer, President or Ayatollah.
But this is wishful thinking. The general public won't respect Black women as more than sluts and servants until Black men forge that new social paradigm, and Black men have no incentive to do so whatsoever. Call it self-hate, call it selling out, call it colorstruck -- and the point is long missed. Black men, still conflicted and traumatized from American race oppression, still envy the master's possessions, including his easy, nonchalant, institutionalized sexism. Essentially, Black men want to dominate the women of their homes, churches, and communities as easily as their white counterparts, and are tortured by their tasteless envy and absent despotism. Plus, Black men's sexual freedom becomes largely compromised and realistically nonexistent if the Black woman emerges as his sole acceptable sociopolitical sexual option. The collegiate Black community grapples with these concerns almost daily, especially in mainstream historically White colleges and universities, as Black women realize the despondent dearth of available, suitable, upwardly-mobile, heterosexual Black men and they find their Pierre Delacroix's sauntering across campus arm in arm with either Ashley Nicole Rockefeller, Maria Rodriguez, or Kim Soon Li Wang. Darling Nikki Johnson from Atlanta, Georgia stares at the straight hair, the prepubescent bosoms, the miniscule buttocks, and the bright complexions of her newfound competition, and shrugs in disgusted defeat, as she recalls nearly two decades of grocery-store checkout lines and bookstore newsstands that include popular woman-hating publications like Cosmopolitan, People, Maxim, and FHM, that promote with colorful photography and obnoxious headlines thin, drugged Cameron Diaz ice princesses Nikki can never resemble, no matter how many Tae-Bo and Pilates DVD workouts she performs. No wonder Prince caught her masturbating with a magazine; she might as well get some use out of it.
Black men have more reasons than self-hate to discard Black female sensuality, even when for some, self-hate or light pigment fetishism is a driving factor in the dismissal. Still, the promotion of Seal and Heidi Klum's engagement -- a private affair between public people -- unmasks as a political attack upon certain American constituencies, and can be analyzed for the damage it may cause. The laser scalpel demarcations of red and blue America hide our identity politics' confused complexity under a translucent shawl of speech codes and martyred reputations, but without useful analysis of unethical news symbolism, all of us are left smiling and happy, neutered adults waving rice at Seal's wedding to some white girl we can barely remember wondering how the hell we got there. Now who's burning cork?
Wednesday, January 05, 2005
Death, destruction, and disease.
The world's most powerful earthquake in forty years struck on December 27, 2004, deep under the Indian Ocean, setting off the most devastating series of tsunami in recent memory. Walls of water dismantled homes and churches and businesses and livelihoods like tissue paper, while smothering and crushing hundreds of thousands of people. All that's left now are scenes of utter depravity and inhuman pain, like something out of a Ridley Scott movie.
Here in middle-class Southern Black suburbia, few people can say that they've lived through something so naturally heinous. Sure, every few years a hurricane or four comes through and demolishes a couple of homes, but the level of complete annihilation witnessed by the South Asian tsunami victims emerge unparalleled by modern human terms.
But we don't care, because the victims aren't white.
Now, at this point, some of you are thinking, "Dammit, can't he leave race out of this! This is a humanitarian crisis of biblical proportions happening clear across the world. Doesn't he have the simple human decency to leave race alone for once!?!"
Nope. Sorry.
I laughed openly at Spielberg's Amistad; I'm not gonna turn off my brain to soothe your pathetic Western guilt. Days ago, when the first information about the natural calamity reached the airways as the waves crashed, the first stories discussed tormented white tourists inconvenienced by the roiling waves. Images of young Hannes Bergstroem, aged eighteen months, played continuously on Live at CNN days after the event, creating massive, chaotic, wide-angled shots of devastated dark-skinned South Asians in areas like heavily Muslim Indonesia running from impending doom or strewn about the shattered infrastructure like so many colored toothpicks awaiting a cleaning order in writing and a strong broom held by some graying bent-backed Negro trustee clad in a gleaming light blue United Nations uniform. I don't give a damn about lost supermodels or dead Nordic tourists anymore than the hundreds of thousands killed and wounded for the sad happenstance of living in the wrong poor countries at the wrong time.
Our international media sought out images and stories from rich white tourists in order to provide their clients, the uninformed public, easily identifiable human victims and survivors for your viewing pleasure. As always, the unspoken inference is as follows - The only important deaths happen to white people. In order to be concerned about global hardship, white people have to be involved. The angered waters of the Boxing Day Tsunami wash clean Frantz Fanon's wretched of the earth, poor, starving, naked and subsisting; for the liberal American television viewer they are still nothing more than George Orwell's "undifferentiated brown stuff" from 1953's Marrakech, undeserved of anything more than a couple of words of insincere solace and token pennies for rebuilding from the wealthy Western white world.
And President George W. Bush didn't want to give that! Coming under severe fire for his perceived coldness to the victims of the tsunamis, Bush dispatches brother Jeb and everyone's favorite Uncle, Colin Powell , to the scene. America was willing to watch CNN and feel false empathy for the suffering people, and then change the channel to Desperate Housewives and forget all about the rising butcher's bill, but today, I read that roughly $3 billion dollars in aid have been amassed to assist the struggling region. So, I have some questions for you, dear readers.
Given the recent earthquake and tsunamis in Southeast Asia and the worldwide humanitarian response to these natural disasters, I wonder, is it possible to have a reasonable financial response from the world's wealthiest nations to such a crisis? How much money is enough money to deal with sudden death and destruction on such a massive scale?
Are you pleased with the United States' current levels of pledged aid? Do you believe that Americans can and should do more, or that the Bush Administration was pulled kicking and screaming into having to care at all about the widespread death and destruction of the past few days?
Lastly, have you given personally? Is your decadent white guilt satisfied? Did CNN Sandra Bullock your wallet open?
Your comments, as always, are appreciated.
The world's most powerful earthquake in forty years struck on December 27, 2004, deep under the Indian Ocean, setting off the most devastating series of tsunami in recent memory. Walls of water dismantled homes and churches and businesses and livelihoods like tissue paper, while smothering and crushing hundreds of thousands of people. All that's left now are scenes of utter depravity and inhuman pain, like something out of a Ridley Scott movie.
Here in middle-class Southern Black suburbia, few people can say that they've lived through something so naturally heinous. Sure, every few years a hurricane or four comes through and demolishes a couple of homes, but the level of complete annihilation witnessed by the South Asian tsunami victims emerge unparalleled by modern human terms.
But we don't care, because the victims aren't white.
Now, at this point, some of you are thinking, "Dammit, can't he leave race out of this! This is a humanitarian crisis of biblical proportions happening clear across the world. Doesn't he have the simple human decency to leave race alone for once!?!"
Nope. Sorry.
I laughed openly at Spielberg's Amistad; I'm not gonna turn off my brain to soothe your pathetic Western guilt. Days ago, when the first information about the natural calamity reached the airways as the waves crashed, the first stories discussed tormented white tourists inconvenienced by the roiling waves. Images of young Hannes Bergstroem, aged eighteen months, played continuously on Live at CNN days after the event, creating massive, chaotic, wide-angled shots of devastated dark-skinned South Asians in areas like heavily Muslim Indonesia running from impending doom or strewn about the shattered infrastructure like so many colored toothpicks awaiting a cleaning order in writing and a strong broom held by some graying bent-backed Negro trustee clad in a gleaming light blue United Nations uniform. I don't give a damn about lost supermodels or dead Nordic tourists anymore than the hundreds of thousands killed and wounded for the sad happenstance of living in the wrong poor countries at the wrong time.
Our international media sought out images and stories from rich white tourists in order to provide their clients, the uninformed public, easily identifiable human victims and survivors for your viewing pleasure. As always, the unspoken inference is as follows - The only important deaths happen to white people. In order to be concerned about global hardship, white people have to be involved. The angered waters of the Boxing Day Tsunami wash clean Frantz Fanon's wretched of the earth, poor, starving, naked and subsisting; for the liberal American television viewer they are still nothing more than George Orwell's "undifferentiated brown stuff" from 1953's Marrakech, undeserved of anything more than a couple of words of insincere solace and token pennies for rebuilding from the wealthy Western white world.
And President George W. Bush didn't want to give that! Coming under severe fire for his perceived coldness to the victims of the tsunamis, Bush dispatches brother Jeb and everyone's favorite Uncle, Colin Powell , to the scene. America was willing to watch CNN and feel false empathy for the suffering people, and then change the channel to Desperate Housewives and forget all about the rising butcher's bill, but today, I read that roughly $3 billion dollars in aid have been amassed to assist the struggling region. So, I have some questions for you, dear readers.
Given the recent earthquake and tsunamis in Southeast Asia and the worldwide humanitarian response to these natural disasters, I wonder, is it possible to have a reasonable financial response from the world's wealthiest nations to such a crisis? How much money is enough money to deal with sudden death and destruction on such a massive scale?
Are you pleased with the United States' current levels of pledged aid? Do you believe that Americans can and should do more, or that the Bush Administration was pulled kicking and screaming into having to care at all about the widespread death and destruction of the past few days?
Lastly, have you given personally? Is your decadent white guilt satisfied? Did CNN Sandra Bullock your wallet open?
Your comments, as always, are appreciated.
I still don't know what happened. I tolerate the red light, watch cars pass at the low-level commercial corner of Hodges Ferry Road and Portsmouth Blvd in Portsmouth, Virginia. A white sports utility vehicle stared me down from the opposite side of the road, progress similarly impeded by shaded photons. Green light. I ease my foot off the brake, check around my field of vision, and nudge the gas ever so slightly, making a properly signaled left turn. At best, I do twenty-three miles per hour.
I complete the turn. Pedaling along, I search mirrors, my textbook active gaze belies an overeager hawk itching to prove his predatory existence is not a mistake, his licensed survival non-regrettable. True, Virginia was colder than in recent memory and some rain froze on the highway, but I had not and would not cause any trouble behind the wheel of my mother's 1993 aqua-blue Mercury Grand Marquis. The plan was to retrieve Frank White in Churchland following a small detour at the local mall to breathe a toothy hello to a high school acquaintance, and this world was my Chesapeake oyster. Mugsy graduated from Old Dominion University before my very eyes only four hours earlier; the Freak Squad's collegiate chronicles completed amid the mild Atlantic winter. Educated, sexual, and strong, clad in a black three-button, $500 Kenneth Cole suit identical to one modeled by Brad Pitt with matching black tie, I drive, both careful and carefree, a solo traveler in an almost perfect world. Today, the only thing I'm sure of is that I made that damnable turn.
Sudden fishtails suck. Barely noticeable at first, the rear of my mother's clipper ship sways to the right, an unforeseen imbalance that crescendos into the most harrowing control loss I've ever experienced wearing clothing. Frantic memory flashes display shattered calm, as my strained steering wheel grapple unmasks a desperate battle against Clint Eastwood inertia - too ancient, too grizzled, too primal to show mercy on the brash unforgiven. I really didn't feel in trouble until I hit the fence; I doubt less than five seconds transpired between the first rear tremors and the passenger side gray picket fence impact. After that, I struggle to not die. Careening toward the other side of the four-lane street, I spy several cars in line at the light. A newly graying, somewhat middle-aged Southern white woman of modest build and modern sensibilities sits patiently in a navy blue pantsuit, talking to a passenger in her 2002 black Chevy Trailblazer, Sunday's Best with Monday morning's conference call to Los Angeles on the brain instead of the Apostle Paul. Ms. Money looks up sharply at my too-fast-too-avoid approach with the widest hazel eyes I've ever seen, another scared white woman terrified by the impending doom of a black man's coming. And I can't hate her for it. At that moment, I resolve to live. Unhurt.
With all deliberate effort I wrench the steering column to the extreme right, slam into the concrete and soil median. Something clicks. My father's driver's education training telegraphs his stern admonition into my motor neurons like Dr. Nooian Soong neural net programming animated by the Brent Spiner Pinocchio. Take your foot off the gas! Switching to the brake, I flip around, complete a 300-plus degree Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas spin before finally coming to Newtonian rest facing oncoming traffic in my lane. Fighting the urge to shake and wring my hands in public, I awkwardly slap my mom's Titanic in park, release the seat belt, burst open the driver side door, and stand erect, an affirmative action Abercrombie & Fitch model surrounded by what I can only hope doesn't resemble a scene from Final Destination 2. Eyes commanding, mouth taut, I bark, "Is anybody hurt?" at quickly amassing witnesses. Someone hands me a cell, and I promptly call my father at our Cavalier Manor residence. I was sure he'd be available; I'd only left six minutes prior.
I complete the turn. Pedaling along, I search mirrors, my textbook active gaze belies an overeager hawk itching to prove his predatory existence is not a mistake, his licensed survival non-regrettable. True, Virginia was colder than in recent memory and some rain froze on the highway, but I had not and would not cause any trouble behind the wheel of my mother's 1993 aqua-blue Mercury Grand Marquis. The plan was to retrieve Frank White in Churchland following a small detour at the local mall to breathe a toothy hello to a high school acquaintance, and this world was my Chesapeake oyster. Mugsy graduated from Old Dominion University before my very eyes only four hours earlier; the Freak Squad's collegiate chronicles completed amid the mild Atlantic winter. Educated, sexual, and strong, clad in a black three-button, $500 Kenneth Cole suit identical to one modeled by Brad Pitt with matching black tie, I drive, both careful and carefree, a solo traveler in an almost perfect world. Today, the only thing I'm sure of is that I made that damnable turn.
Sudden fishtails suck. Barely noticeable at first, the rear of my mother's clipper ship sways to the right, an unforeseen imbalance that crescendos into the most harrowing control loss I've ever experienced wearing clothing. Frantic memory flashes display shattered calm, as my strained steering wheel grapple unmasks a desperate battle against Clint Eastwood inertia - too ancient, too grizzled, too primal to show mercy on the brash unforgiven. I really didn't feel in trouble until I hit the fence; I doubt less than five seconds transpired between the first rear tremors and the passenger side gray picket fence impact. After that, I struggle to not die. Careening toward the other side of the four-lane street, I spy several cars in line at the light. A newly graying, somewhat middle-aged Southern white woman of modest build and modern sensibilities sits patiently in a navy blue pantsuit, talking to a passenger in her 2002 black Chevy Trailblazer, Sunday's Best with Monday morning's conference call to Los Angeles on the brain instead of the Apostle Paul. Ms. Money looks up sharply at my too-fast-too-avoid approach with the widest hazel eyes I've ever seen, another scared white woman terrified by the impending doom of a black man's coming. And I can't hate her for it. At that moment, I resolve to live. Unhurt.
With all deliberate effort I wrench the steering column to the extreme right, slam into the concrete and soil median. Something clicks. My father's driver's education training telegraphs his stern admonition into my motor neurons like Dr. Nooian Soong neural net programming animated by the Brent Spiner Pinocchio. Take your foot off the gas! Switching to the brake, I flip around, complete a 300-plus degree Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas spin before finally coming to Newtonian rest facing oncoming traffic in my lane. Fighting the urge to shake and wring my hands in public, I awkwardly slap my mom's Titanic in park, release the seat belt, burst open the driver side door, and stand erect, an affirmative action Abercrombie & Fitch model surrounded by what I can only hope doesn't resemble a scene from Final Destination 2. Eyes commanding, mouth taut, I bark, "Is anybody hurt?" at quickly amassing witnesses. Someone hands me a cell, and I promptly call my father at our Cavalier Manor residence. I was sure he'd be available; I'd only left six minutes prior.
Tuesday, January 04, 2005
JamesLambJr.com has now joined blogger. We are sellouts.
Happy New Year to all; my bad for not saying this to many of you before. I'm in Virgina now, trying to find employment in DC.
More updates to come. Thanks for reading jameslambjr.com.
Happy New Year to all; my bad for not saying this to many of you before. I'm in Virgina now, trying to find employment in DC.
More updates to come. Thanks for reading jameslambjr.com.
