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Black women and feminism...

I have to say this quickly.
I'm at work and for some reason they don't care about theory here.

Being a feminist doesn't mean that I can't expect my male partner to protect me, provide for me, etc.

Everybody knows my 'formerly' personal philosophy ...

Don't bring your feminism into the bedroom.

There are lots of things 'feminists' would not do that you might like. (smile)

(Wouldn't that suck?!)

Seriously, there are places we haven't teased and searched yet in order to describe the place that feminists/womanist theory and politics have in our bedrooms, living rooms, and such. There is a crazy amount of hidden "femiguilt" (same as white liberal guilt but with woman - don't cha' just love interchangeable labels?!) that we need to let go and live our lives!

It's okay to perm your hair and cook dinner for your man!

There. I. said. it.

Languish

languish -  

–verb (used without object)
1. to be or become weak or feeble; droop; fade.
2. to lose vigor and vitality.
3. to undergo neglect or experience prolonged inactivity; suffer hardship and distress: to languish in prison for ten years.
4. to be subjected to delay or disregard; be ignored: a petition that languished on the warden's desk for a year.
5. to pine with desire or longing.
6. to assume an expression of tender, sentimental melancholy.
–noun
7. the act or state of languishing.
8. a tender, melancholy look or expression.
Origin: 1250–1300;

I'm a slacker 2

I only said 2 because Adiva beat me to the punch in revealing her 'slackness' in posting. However, I think something else is going on since I happen to have a couple of already written posts (its a long subway ride to work) that I just haven't 'posted'...what, what could it be...a sudden desire to not post?

At this moment I would guess that I have reached a critical mass of having shown too many people my blog and have gotten blogshy. Its kinda like when you know that someone is watching you take your test and then that thought prevents you from doing anything else - - including taking the test.

What if my ideas don't make sense? What if I'm wrong...? as though those things don't happen anyway - - forgive my ego, its omniscient, has its own zip code, and always get underfoot. It is under pressure, my ego, with the thoughts of attending Graduate school, which is the most significant decision I have made in the last year. At least I know why I 'stalled' - clarity is beauty, yes? I will keep you posted buuuuuut I wanted to share this article... sooo now the banks can't take the houses back because they have been split into so many pieces that they can't come back to take the houses they sold? Isn't this crazy?!?! So you keep your house because it's not even worth enough for the bank to foreclose on it - - but you can't have it back until it's destroyed by vandals...What is this world we are living in?? We need Jesus!

BTW - heroes was excellent 2night.

Voting Matters...

I awoke this morning...
yes, almost recovered...
opened my NYT (that liberal rag)...
and saw that the dems have repealed the Rockefeller Drug laws...
and I wonder if the universe just knows to convince you to hang on just a little bit longer...

just knows what to give you to get you to pop that faith pill and get back to work.

Recovery.Priceless.

recovery...a dream deferred

*Snif

I'm at home, not quite sick, but aware that there are tiny microscopic organisms staging an all out war on my cells...I always win though, this year more than others. My awesome doc tells me that the measure of your health is your ability to get over a cold...when you stop "recovering" then we have a problem....

*clear throat

Well now, recovery....
May I make a stretch of a connection, can you bear with me?

I am not recovering.

Last week I had cornel west standing next to me with his arms around my shoulders telling me to hold on and keep planting seeds - thats the work we do. Not changing people, but planting seeds...

Intellectually I get it, I know you know that, I've said it before...

But I end up trying to convince people to have compassion, to not call her a whore, to care about the poor... I don't mean some abstract 'what would jesus do' moment... but don't shut down Ms. X case for no reason (she won't receive her food stamps).... Don't kick Mr. X out of the program because you think he is dangerous (he will violate his parole)... Dont lie to Ms. Y, there are other things she can do besides maintenance work...

Oh and then to watch C-span and see Mr. Limbaugh say, upon reflection no less, that he hopes the president fails... We knew this was coming, that their very ideology demands that Obama fail in his efforts of equality...should he even remotely succeed it would mean the utter destruction of his base...

You know what? 52% of the voting public voted for Obama, I take that to mean that about 52% of people are standing up for right, are sane, don't believe that our president is a Marxist, a socialist, and isn't a citizen...

But that means that 48% of people are not standing up for right. They look at the choices and choose to follow Rush Limbaugh?!? That is a whole lot of seeds to plant...

and at this point I'm tired of trying to convince people to embrace compassion on a micro and a macro level. Do you know what it feels like to discover how many of those seeds need to be planted in your backyard...your own..house? I preferr to sit here in the dark on the couch watching Family court...well, right now its Ellen - watching her show is like being in the movie Charlie and the Chocolate Factory without all the didactic violence against the children...

Maybe I will recover tomorrow - uhm will someone check on me?!

Shhhhh...

the state of the black union is on C-span!

Banks are evil...

In the not so distant past I have spent more money than I had available to me. Not on frivolous things - but things I needed - mostly. I was a young naive girl who hastily went to an expensive school, in an expensive city, in an expensive neighborhood and building where they only sold the absolute best in everything...food (ahh the markets of the UWS....), stationary, clothing - you name it, I can assure you it was the best...and the most expensive.

But, walking up to the JP Morgan chase with my tiny tiny work study check - which would allow me to hold my head up high as I walked my sale laden happily broke student butt back to my expensive apartment, in the expensive neighborhood, at the expensive school - I would find out that
"Hmmm you cannot cash your check because you owe us money AND you can not cash that check here until Thursday if you are not going to put it into your bank account", said the mean teller lady.
She continued, "If you put it into your bank account we will take it because you owe us money. "

I am very aware that that was a long heavy sentence and that is how my life felt in that moment - long and heavy.

There was such a feeling of disdain coming from behind that thick Plexiglas. A damming judgement of having mismanaged my money. And more precisely to JP Morgan Chase, the larger crime of having so very little to mismanaged in the first place. There was a time when I had unknowingly overdrawn my account and they charged me 30$ for each subsequent swipe of my card...10$ at Duane Reade (30$), 5$ bucks at Starbucks(30$).....all 4 of them....

And so when I went to put my tiny check in the back I was forced to first have 120$ in fees given to the bank in repayment.....

Having been held so roughly, so quickly, so finally accountable for my innocent actions I am steaming quietly but consistently at the idea that these banks would knowingly and by design do the same thing with little or no consequence for their actions. To read that they woo and market tax shelters with the sole purpose of keeping rich people, with more than they deserve, from paying their fair share to the government, to us, to me is a crime of such immense portions, an injustice that is unimaginable for the evil of its consequences.

AND wait...THEN take government bailouts....my money...your money...ugh...there are no words...

'Peggy' from Mad Men Season 1 ep 8 said it best:

"I don't understand I try to do my job, I follow the rules... and other people, people who are not good, get to walk around doing what they want, its not fair"



I understand Peggy...but what the hell to do about it?

Happy Birthday Darwin!

As you already know, I am religious (uhm, most days) and trained as a scientist, had I been able to put all that literature down and really care about the vestigial components of the bird wing I'd had have my nerdy eye pressed to a microscope right now.


I am contemplating if Darwin's theory could affect how we interact with the Bible. It's almost like when the Bible was first released, like what.... 2500 years ago or so, we came to it as a 9 year old. Our adolescence, then, would be when Darwin released the Orgin of the Species in 1859. Or something like that, work with me here. We were rebellious teens, pimply faced, sneaking out late at night with a flashlight to see what was so scandalous about this book (the Orgin not the bible - although there are some stories in there the likes of which you find only Jerry Springer). But now we are adults, and as adults, our access to the a ridiculous amount of information and history and facts requires that we move to a sophisticated reading of the Book and the world and our place in it.

What would a sophisticated reading of the Bible look like?

I never have ever tired of the classic 'What would Jesus do' as a moral guide, but - alas - it has been shown (uhm, by me) to be too easily co-oped by the ego. It doesn't have the construct to really inform you, against your own desire, of a more caring way to handle that moment of questioning.

So a sophisticated reading of the Bible, means that it is possible that everything that is written in that book - and its hundreds of translations - may not have taken place (Bill Maher loves to hark on the talking snake ad nauseum right?). It means that all the values espoused may not be right....okay, the xstain pc phrase would be - the values espoused may not translate for our cultural moment. Whatever. If we could be honest with ourselves and admit that!! Admit that Lot giving his daughters up to be gang raped by the mob to their deaths to protect the mysterious house guests (later revealed as angels) is not a morally perfect story. It simply is not a morally instructive story, it requires that we say some shit was wrong there and not feel as thought the entire Bible - the xstian religion - our moral fiber does not meet its destruction at that exact moment.


I could go on, and I will.

It means that it is a ridiculous ideal for a man to have 600 wives. Biblically lots of women are portrayed as smart and are often the saviour of the hard headed men - but for that intelligence to be relegated to manipulation, mental and sexual (uhm, Ruth), in order for them to have access to power and stability because of oppresive patriarchal (and wrong) notions of what women are, or rather should be, is a crime! On a day to day level espousing this man over woman ideal is a dangerous and incompatible to our ideals of equality. At its most dangerous it leads to emotional and physical violence against women; at the very least it leads to women not being taught the hard sciences as rigorously as men and a lack of women's presence at the higher levels of fortune 500 companies. Clearly this isn't a referendum on women's intelligence but on the idea of where we believe women should be...


So lets bottom line this....

Is it possible that a sophisticated reading of the Bible and its moral teaching would require us, as adults, to see where it was correct in its moral dictum's and where, alas, it was wrong?





If we could admit that it..may.. be wrong it would allow us to 1. admit that there are somethings it says and stop trying to pretend it says something else (women are the second sex, it is wrong to be homosexual, the earth is only 7 "god" days old) and 2. have a complex conversation about what jesus would really do and open our communities to the best representation of that vision of equality.

jezuz, it's what he'd do!

Guess who's back?

Not me.

I have a ridiculous amount of things that I want to rant about but my tiny brain cannot filter them into coherent thoughts - plus i hate my job and don't want to think. Think, you're really hungry and can't get all that thick, oddly yellow, Velveeta cheese on those steaming noodles because you made the hole too small and you're too impatient to cut the hole larger because it would take too much time - delaying the eating part, see?

So slowly.

The republicans are evil. Transparently prioritizing their own agenda over the health of the country. Not that Obama is perfectly handling everything. Ugh, does anyone else want him to shut. up. with the "I made a mistake"? In the jungle you don't rub cooking grease all over your ass and run pass the lions. Can you just see the commercials in 4 years?!

Ominous voice, "Even he says he can't handle the job, he makes mistakes!" Dun dun dun

Anyway, I'm hungry.

Oh oh oh - Repubs determined to keep him from being successful because he is a Democrat...or a, ah African-American? ponder....

Ugh - - the simple genius of it all...

Update

Folks:I'm still on my holiday/my computer is broken (yes I am going crazy) hiatus but my good friend was kind enough to post this for me. Nuff said? Validation is wonderful.... hope to innundate you soon! Kebs.
http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/2009/01/09/race_prop8/index.html?source=rss&aim=/politics/war_room
Prayers for the middle east civilians and the people in zimbabwe.