Insomnia.

I cannot sleep. Maybe it is because I have had trouble sleeping for quite some time now. Maybe it is an early onset of insomnia caused by stress, and fears, although I am on vacation. (Thats when it strikes most horribly eh?)

Maybe I am excited/worried/confused about tonight's (last nights no?) breaking news. Obama has won the candidacy.

I watched the speech. I watched him wax poetic about his grandmother, about Hillary Clinton, about John McCain. Then I saw him go on about his stances that are much aligned with mine: healthcare, new energy, the war on Iraq. There were moments when I cried because the speech writers intended it that way. By the end I was sobbing, and it had nothing to do with speech writers.

As the commentators began their blustering dialogues (This is all one can do after Obama's speeches. They are impeccable, and he has drawn from an oratory tradition made to make souls weep and chakras spin.) I watched him.

More accurately, I watched Michelle. I watched her get on stage. I watched her wave to the crowd. I watched her say "I love you" in Obama's year.

I watched him look down and away. He waves, she waves. I watched him turn to her, look her in the eyes, and say "thank you..." and something else hidden by her cheek. I imagine its something tender and moving.

I watched him say "Let's go."

I saw her being helped by him down the stage. A white man with a heavy build holds her hand. I noticed the shiny black belt cinching her tiny waist.

I watched her like this because on my heart was Cynthia McKinney, and a host of other Black women.

In my ear was the voice of my mother, urging me like she's never urged me to do anything in my life, to vote for this man.

In the other ear were the voices of radical elders... urging with my own mind... the rightness of a third party. The importance of it.

A black woman is running for president, and another black woman is running for first lady.

I looked at both of them, I looked at him. And I cried. Mostly because I am confused. I want to believe everything he said. I want to believe that he will never again have to disavow another Black leader, although to disavow one's preacher is enough. He had to... he had to right? Right. I want to believe it all matters anyway.

I want to believe him because I know my vote will be in the right direction if I do not vote for him, but I know if anything is right in this world--he will win.

And I want to believe in him.

So I steadied my eyes on Michelle, and my heart on Cynthia. And the past two years became vivid: Dunbar Village, The New Jersey Four, Megan Williams, Tynehsa Stewart, The Duke Rape Case, The Rutgers Basketball team.

My own black girl/woman self.

Something's gotta move.


Some woman, some black woman, will be in the white house.

And if worth her salt, she will be unable to sleep too.

The Beauty Battle Royal

A black girl was chilling in contemplative hibernation, reevaluating the content of her blog (and by that I mean, not thinking about it at all) when she opens her email and finds a message from a mindful sister that gave her notice of some crazy ish on the internet that needed some vigilant lip pursing.

Okay out of third person.

This email I received made me aware of an online blog/mag named Jezebel with a centrally white readership that is asking for pictures of embarrassing hairstyles from Black women. (I’m not even going to the not-so-ironic-irony of the name of the magazine.) In light of a past two years of white-supremacist fetishization over Black women’s hair (i.e. Imus, Boortz) you’d think white folks would just pretend they don’t have an issue. Instead, the recent years has merely given permission for frank white-centered discussions about how different, crazy, wild, and wacky Black women look.

I’m actually not offended by the idea itself. We (women across the racial spectrum) all have embarrassing photos of our hair at one point or another—particularly if we’ve lived more than two decades. For example, I have a picture of an ear-to-ear bang via the 80s that is absolutely INSANE and in my teens I rocked a wave-nuveau which was inevitable for me in killer Kali. Sisters can crack up about it as much as I do (especially those who know what I wave nuveau is!). But in the real estate of thought its all about context, context, context. There is a way in which this racialized voyeurism (i.e. white chicks wanting to specifically look upon Black chicks) lends itself to a Beauty Battle Royal of sorts. A spectacle of excessive Blackness through black hair, that also is a reminder to Black women of the unattainability of Eurocentric beauty.

Look but don't look, they say. Don’t desire this thing, this thing is not yours.

The racial context of this contest raises an eyebrow, and rightfully so. I would like to see how this whole thing pans out—how far viewers comments go to dance around their horror, awe, and amazement of the gravitational defiance of Black women’s hair. Lets see how many or how few comments directly drop the p word (I don’t mean pussy.) to describe youthful female blackness. We’ll see if "nappy" even comes up, with arms folded, lips pursed, eyebrows raised.

We’re looking at them, looking at us. Defiantly.

And so the post blackness of my generation allows that much. Allows the chance for the white gaze to do its thing as it will (they will even look at us as we look at them). As we watch, analyze, and understand ourselves in the process. I’d hope we’d heal, as is the call for much of our "take the power back" discussions. Not through this kind of ish, but in spite of it. I cringe when "take the power back" means join them in their jeering and peering. It’s as sad as teased children making fun of themselves in the face of bullies. I’d hope that we’d heal not by joining them, but by putting the burden where it belongs, in the arms of white supremacy. By pointing to the irreverent and insensitive racism. By gazing back. Relentless, unforgiving gazing back. This has certainly been a process for me.

An un named uber leftist white woman with… matted hair tries to make comparisons to my locks and share "hair stories." I simply reply no, and look at her (as to not embarrass her in the professional setting we were in) so as to remind her that her hair is blond, long, and fine, and her eyes are blue. "We" have no shared hair stories this was not MLK’s dream.

I’m with a friend who has been invited to her neighbors’ house. Her neighbors are a white lesbian couple who have recently adopted a black baby boy. They hem and haw around the issue that they don’t know what to do with his hair (acknowledges collective exasperated sigh from sisters everywhere). What they’ve told me is that they wash his hair every day and put tea tree oil in it. They still don’t know why his hair is dry. I give some basic pointers for the sake of the poor kid and hope the books we’ve given, along with the little djembe my friend has given him will give him some smoke signals early on.

(I’ll discuss the unhealthy black hair generation to be raised by "colorblind" gay white folk some other time.)

This is not to say that I cannot talk to white people about hair in general. This can happen (and it has with white folks who know that there are hair differences not only visually, but historically), what cannot happen is a conversation about hair that assumes a similar and parallel history when it comes to my embodiment as a Black woman. I cannot be the one to consistently educate white people on Black hair and the politics of it. Ignorance of some of these basics is merely evidence of white supremacist notions of racial and aesthetic normalcy that results in a "what’s the difference?" "black people are so sensitive" response to Don Imus or Neal Boortz’ comments on Black hair that reveal a deeply historic and psychic fetish about Black hair.

The very moment calls for a direct and serious gaze back. To let folks know that they are looking, and looking as if difference merely belonged to us. To let them know that our sensitivity is rooted in a history that has maintained whiteness as normal and default. That we are gazing back not only to neutralize their gaze, not only to reveal to them their outright racism, but to access our embodied power, to challenge the fetish. To take off our blindfolds in this battle royal.

Black hair, white fetish Part II

I had to stop and think about this for a moment. McKinney's hair looked fly to me. So much better than her braided coif with the huge bow. It definitely brought her into the twentieth century, and surely, she is adamant about wearing her hair without chemical straighteners. This would look quite different if your image of a woman is that of a white woman. If the hairstyle was placed on a white woman's head, the aesthetic rooted in Black natural hairstyling would not be there. Cynthia decided to have a hair-style that registered with Black U.S. Americans. I'm not saying all Black folks love the do, but they definitely recognize it as a real and socially acceptable aesthetic.

For this white man, it references savagery, wildness, and "hideousness."

Black folks have definitely made the link from our hair to our African roots. This is definitely why the Afro became a popular hair style in the seventies. It was a way to shed a white standard of beauty from imposing on our Black bodies. It embraced the "nap"* and although the Reagan years brought on an unfortunate descent into the Jheri Curl, the black community held on to natural hair as a referent to our African roots. That is what is unacceptable here—the ways in which the nap is an outright rejection of American (read white) standards of beauty and respectability. The nap does not conform, it is not restricted, it does indeed go "in every conceivable direction." That's what makes it beautiful.

And so Black hair becomes, in many ways, a cite where politics are imprinted on the body. The choice to "go natural" or to wear thick, kinky, un-straightened hair is one that reveals a kind of personal politics. We (U.S. Americans) know the politics of respectability. We know that kinky hair is not acceptable. To wear it reveals, in many ways a political choice not to cooperate with that politic. (Note I specified the politics of respectability in regards to what hair means in U.S. American society, not radical politics in general.) This is not to suggest that there are not radicals who straighten their hair. I’m talking about here, how it is imprinted on the body by kinky hair.

Kinky hair also invokes issues of class. Who can afford to get their hair "done," and who can't? While kinky hair is far from low maintenance, it is certainly cheaper (in most cases) as it does not require the monthly purchase of cream crack (store bought no-lye relaxer), the one-time purchase of a stove heated hot comb, or the bi-monthly trip to the beauty salon to get it pressed or relaxed. So who has their hair straightened, how straight (i.e. bone straight), and how often certainly wears an air of respectability, and wealth that, at least to the outside community (read white folks) do not immediately register. We all know this to be a farce, as for a while I was paying $80 dollars a visit to have my thick head of locs maintained (I have since found a better deal at $65). We know that twists and braids can cost upwards of $50 and some times go into the hundreds. Oh, black folks can find a way to consume. But this is a truth, I expect white folks not to really know. It’s a relatively new development, this natural hair stylist, locatician, etc. movement. Since Madam C.J. Walker, Black middle-class-ness has looked straightened, and "respectfully" styled. That has changed dramatically as means of straightening have become more accessible to the poor (for a while now, keep up white folk) and natural hair for Black folks actually suggests that someone is financially secure enough to not have to depend on white standards of respectability in order to keep their jobs. White folks may not have caught up with this class dimension reality, but that doesn’t make them any less obsessed with Black hair. In fact, natural or not, the major image of Black women is tied to this aspect of our hair so regarldess if the Rutger's basketball team has/had straighetneed hair (which look at the roster pictures and you will see they mostly do have their hair straightened) the overarching image of black women, especially for white racists becomes attached to the "natural." Symbol: black women. Sign: nappy headed ho.

But lets get back to the psychological aspect of this whole hair deal. "Natural" hair references a rejection of a respectability aesthetic based in European standards of beauty. It politically symbolizes (whether intentionally or not) Black U.S. American historical ties to Africa which, for white people, continues to be a place that represents the primitive. White supremacist ideas of Africans as not only primitive, but savage, oversexed, and immoral therefore get tangled up in our kinky, African hair. This is how "ghetto," "ho," and "slut" easily slip into a reference to Black women, especially in regards to our hair.

Lets look at it from another perspective. Rewind: Above I stated, "...back to the psychoanalytic aspect of this whole hair deal. "Natural" hair references a rejection of a respectability aesthetic based in European standards of beauty. It politically symbolizes (whether intentionally or not) Black U.S. American historical ties to Africa which..." (I would like to insert here.) references the history of the middle passage, slavery, the nadir, and jim crow. (Note the semi-linear timeline.) It is a site that brings down heavy upon some white folks—white guilt. The guilt mired with the fascination and fetishization of Black hair results in the well-known intrusive behaviors of some of our white friends. Uninvited touching, a mirage of questions (often accompanied by intrusive touching) "I just love your hair. How do you make it do that?" "Do you wash it? How often?"

It reflects itself on any point of the political or cultural spectrum, a fascination with our hair. So lets return to the jerks at hand.

Imus' "nappy headed ho" reference, and Boortz’s "ghetto slut" reference. The former being a recent follow up to the latter, if actually discussed in a public forum would have the potential to put white America’s psyches on blast. Instead Imus has successfully, single handedly given us the distraction of hip hop, an issue he clearly knows is one of contention within the Black community, to cover white America's ass on the issue. This isn't the first time. It won't be the last. Every five seconds a white person is referring to a black woman as a nappy headed ho (or some variation thereof).

In love and nappyness,

a black girl

Black hair, white fetish Part I

This is a long one. It's broken up into two parts. This is part one.

So, here we are again: back to Black women's hair. Somehow with war, genocide, AIDS, and any other number of things threatening the lives of humans (mostly of color) on this planet we come back to the issue of Black women’s hair.

Recently, Don Imus was thankfully fired from his post at WNBC for referring to the women of Rutger’s basketball team as "nappy headed hos." This statement was of course followed by a media frenzy that included an interesting twist: blaming hip hop for the source of Don Imus' comfort with saying "nappy headed hoe." As if, somehow, white men weren't saying derogatory things about Black women’s hair and sexuality before the onslaught of hip hop in the 1970s. This also comes up as the boys from the Duke lacrosse team are released from charges of rape of a Black woman. Let’s not act like the shit ain't linked. I could go there. I could go down the road of how Imus' invocation of hip hop is purely a way to distract attention from himself, and dissemble what could be a fruitful conversation about the U.S. American audience’s complacency for violence verbal or physical against Black women’s bodies. But I want to stay on a topic that seems benign in all of this. The issue of Black women’s sexuality is certainly hot, and certainly needs healing. (For Black women in the DC metro area, please contact me, as I will be having a circle on May 3rd to discuss issues around the body for Black women.) I am going to talk about that. But first, I would like to make a small observation.

So Don Imus gives us the double whammy of referencing Black women’s hair, and Black women’s sexuality in one poignant moment that reveals, I would argue the psychological underpinnings of U.S. American fears, fetishes, whatever of Black women’s hair. Let me focus on it as a fetish: white people have a fetish around Black women’s hair. Well, actually white people have a fetish around Black women’s bodies period. Here I am talking about hair. Hair that is a combination of awe, disgust, fear, and hatred. It is as if our kinky roots are what Joseph Conrad calls The Heart of Darkness. Our bodies have been the maps of imperialism, and our hair strikes a chord of dread (no pun intended, but get why you don't call my hair by that word) and fascination in their hearts.

Let me back it up. I made a generalization. I said white people have a fetish around Black women’s hair. Just wanted to acknowledge that. No apologies, challenge me on that later.

As I was saying, white people have a fetish around Black women’s hair. I don’t know the source of this. I think looking into this will require a space as a chapter in my dissertation. I do have a few ideas. Don Imus’ comments reveal that fascination. How exactly does Black women’s hair become the marker for an entire basketball team that includes white women? This is clearly evident of a predisposed fixation of Black women’s hair. But he ain’t the first one in recent history. Can we back up almost exactly a year ago when another radio personality, Neal Boortz described Cynthia McKinney’s neo-afro as making her look like a “ghetto slut.” That’s not the only thing he gives us. Boortz goes on in a spiraling psychological (here is a moment where I invoke the postmodernist ability to make up my own words) Conradian descent into the depths of his fear, hatred, and awe of this Black woman’s hair. May I share?

It just flies away from her head in every conceivable direction. It looks like an explosion in a Brillo pad factory. It's just hideous. To me, that hairstyle just shows contempt for -- no, it's not an Afro. I mean, no, it just shows contempt for the position that she holds and the body that she serves in. And, I'm sorry, there's just no other way to -- it's just a hideous and horrible looking…

More on this issue here.

Let me be specific. It is the "natural" that frightens white folk the most. No such comment has made of one of the most prominent Black women in pop culture at this moment: Beyonce. (Outside of the Black community's whisperings on how bad her weave can be.) Boortz can barely contain his contempt for the natural. For him it actually "shows contempt" for her position as a government official. Black women’s hair in this state is something that can never be professional, that is always tied to our "primitive" roots, and most of all locates us on the lower rung of an aesthetic and moral hierarchy. Black women's kinky hair is evident of our sexuality. Note how Boortz references in horror "It just flies away from her head in every conceivable direction. [...] It's just hideous [... It’s just hideous and horrible looking."

[continued on next blog]

Black Fat

This is a rough expansion of a few previous blogs on fatness, race, and sexuality including:

Revisiting Aunt Jemima's Big Black Ass

Revisiting Aunt Jemima's Big Black Ass #2

Eating, Sitting, Loving, Living, While Fat

There, I speak more of the intersection of race, fatness, and sexual objectification which is only a part of my feelings towards race and fatness. While I have not read or shared on the experiences of women of color who are not black... I do feel the expereince of fatness for Black women is quite particular. There is an amazing article on the subject by Doris Witt in Kimberly Wallace Sanders' Skin Deep Spirit Strong called "What (N)ever Happened to Aunt Jemima" (it is also in an issue of Discourse I dont know which. It talks about perceived notions of Black peoples' acceptance of fatness, and the racialized notion of appetite for Black women. There is this broad beleif that somehow for Black women it is more acceptable to eat (and therefore become fat) because "we" (black folks) are more accepting of fat on women. Simultaneously you have this fat Black woman trope called the mammy. The mammy is always fat and associated with food (Aunt Jemima for example), and therefore the archetype of a particularized Black womanhood: the fat Black woman.

The racialized notion of Black women's appetites is so pervasive in culture and science that medical doctors concluded that Black women simply eat too much although their research proved otherwise.* Some Black women under-eat and remain at with slow metabolisms. The perception has also blocked the reality of Black girls' and women's eating disorders which are not only over eating but involve anorexia, and multiple forms of bullemia, and dangerous yoyo dieting.

My expanding thoughts on that essay would be to interrogate those attributes attached to mammy further for example: her a-sexuality, her willingness to nurture all but her own, her attitude, her duties in the mater's house, her relationship to other slaves on the plantation, her location in the house etc.

The mammy archetype of course is something Black women choose to run away from... just as we have historically run away from the other tropes: Jezebel, Sapphire etc. So, in actuality, in the lives of Black women, appetite is not acceptable. Within the Black community fat is only acceptable in certain amounts and in certain places on the body. Other fat women are jokes, ("She looks more like Freddy Jackson!" - Friday) sidekicks (think of every Black film or TV show with a female protagonist... Kim to Moesha in Moesha, Love Jones, Jason's Lyric, Two Can Play At That Game, The Preacher's Wifeand the PATHETIC role of Gloria in Waiting to Exhale) or aggressive Bitches (Queen Latifah's role in Set it Off and Bringing Down the House, even Sophia in The Color Purple).

While history has shown that it was in fact mammy, who was continually raped and brutalized the need to see her as a-sexual of course stems from her corpulance. Ideaologically, her corpulance distances her from femininity, and is therefore pushed to the masculine. This trips up the other stigmas of the mammy:

In regards to her place in the house would also push us to think about how white women attach themselves to fat black women. It would be interesting to do a run down of white women's attachment to Oprah (examine what happened with her audience when she lost weight for example) or white feminists' attachment to Audre Lorde (why not June Jordan if one must dig a Black feminist lesbian?) Early white feminists' attachment to Sojourner Truth...

I would argue that fat black women epitomize the inverse of what it is to be woman (again expanding the discourse on the notion of black women--with no disctinction on size--as the anti woman). A woman has restraint (doesn't overeat and therefore become fat, isn't sexually uncontrollable and therefore is not Black) she is also frail and managable ( fat women aren't physically managable and too solid to be frail, Black women are too angry, masculine etc. to be managable or frail... think Sojourner Truth) women demand coddling and attention (mammies are made to cater to those needs... even and especially when it involves taxing demands on her own body -- wet nurses for master's children without breastfeeding her own. Mammies never have needs of thier own. I am reminded there of a moment in Gone With the Wind where Rett Butler gives Mammy a red silk petticoat. She is given it as a joke...

Why the hell does mammy need a silk petticoat? She has worn the same dress every day for the past 30 years... The luxury of the gift mocked her status as slave. Also it was red silk--a very erotic fabric and color... again to mock her a-sexuality. In the scene Mammy is extremely bashful about it... like a 13 year old girl who has gotten her first compliment.

Oprah with all her money has always had to tuck away her sexuality. Even the richest woman in the US is not free of those things because of her race. The discourse around her and Steadman is extremely sexless. Therefore the new discourse that speculates her homosexuality makes complete sense. A-sexuality brings about the spectre of homosexuality for women. Where there are no men who are present as sexual releases for women they are speculated to be with women. Black women have always been placed in this strange space where not only where they a-sexualized into lesbianism, but also oversexualized into it as well:

Sarah Baartman for example was pathologized into lesbianism because of her physiology....

Even Audre Lorde with all of her talk about her sexuality and her own desires is suppressed in the literature of those who laud her. Her words in the "Erotic as Power" are taken as cautionary earth mother goddess advice rather than open discussions on her sexual relationship to her body (we are much more interested in how she dealt with her dying body). Masani Alexis DeVeux speaks a little on white women's attachment to Lorde in her Biography Warrior Poet.

I could go on but these are just a few ramblings to pin down some of the racilized aspects of Blackened fat. Watch for the developing queered black fatness version... (That was more of a threat than an announcement.)

*As a food for thought: Black women die in the largest numbers of stress related diseases such as hypertension and heart disease. Science has blamed this on fat and unhealthy diet, not on daily traumas of racism that cause the heart to beat rapidly for short intervals. It would be fucking relvolutionary for science to admit that Black women are slowly dying of racism!

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