Killed Softly: Optimism dying

I'm 27 years old. Over the course of my life I have lived through some amazing shifts in our culture, nationally and internationally. How those shifts impacted me was greatly magnified based on the color of my skin.
  Being a member of what I choose to identify as the Black Community, (also referred to as the African-American community, here in the states) has with it a few DEEP rooted feelings and sentiments, ones that have been expounded upon by the likes of Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglass, Carter G. Woodson, W.E.B Du Bois, Booker T. Washington, Malcom X, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., bell hooks-- just to name a few. For many of these profound thinkers the historical legacy of the Black community in the world has caused this symptom or disease that continues to creep into generation after generation. They had different terms for it, I call it FEAR.
  Being a member and a witness to the Black community in the U.S means that we teach our young men to be careful of their actions for fear that they will wind up dead, or in jail. Being a member and a witness to the Black community in the U.S. means that we teach our young women to be careful about who they give their hearts to. One because we are concerned of young women becoming mother’s way too soon, and two in reference to my first point our young men face many challenges but the most prevalent- death or jail.  We encourage our younger generation to strive for greatness and excellence in their education and their own self-value and worth. The backdrop of this fear, a history riddled with genocide at the hands of others and our own.
  In the decades of my life the Black community has been ravaged by Crack-- Black men and communities destroyed by 6 x 8-foot cells. Miles away from the "mean streets" they grow up in and are ultimately placed into what only science and great philosophers would classify as "chaos" or "the root of civil societies."

In the decades of my life, I have listened to and seen  the stories members of my community crushed by poverty. I have listened to and seen the stories of members of my community gunned down story after story on the news of another life lost. We have seen police brutality on a daily basis, that sometimes within the community it is no longer about who it will happen to and more about when.
   Over the last few years the story of the young Black man in the U.S. has been this-- 50 shots took Sean Bell, a gun mistaken for a taser took Oscar Grant, and recently incomprehensible motives took the lives of Trayvon Martin and Jordan Davis. These are the names of the men that made national headlines, these are not even the start of the many countless men who have been murdered shot and killed, gone too soon and in only something that can be defined as senseless. The undertones in these stories bring back our nation's racist roots. Bringing back the subtle and sometimes not so subtle understanding that we haven't moved that far from the feelings of a polarized us vs. them, Black vs. white dichotomy.
  When was it okay to automatically assume that another individual could cause harm, based solely on the fact that he happened to be Black? Trayvon and Jordan both 17 years old, young men, living the life that my parent's generation cautioned mine about exhibiting, end up being gunned down because of a look, a stereotype about their behavior and who they are. Dr. King Jr. said, in his well-known speech I have a Dream, :
    I have a dream that one day my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of the character.

Today, I think that dream died and continues to die a little more when not only are our young men being judged, but they are also losing their lives because of the color of their skin.

TuPac in his song Changes rapped about the gun violence within the Black community. He also rapped about gun violence and brutality AGAINST the Black community. The chorus of the song: 

"Come on, come on
That's just the way it is
Things'll never be the same
That's just the way it is
aww yeah"

The song for me always made me think that maybe ‘Pac was too pessimistic. On the one hand he looks at the world around him and sees that the same stuff that plagued the community before, still plague the community, in his lifetime.  But towards the end, 'Pac tells his audience that we have the power to see the changes we want to see, but we have to be willing and almost ready to change. 

Whenever I heard this song, I would look out at the world around me and see that there were still the same problems that 'Pac addressed, but as I grew up, I began to feel that we were making bigger better strides for change.

It's in these moments, reflecting on a life that should have been promised for these young men, a life that was robbed from them, from their families and their friends that I think 'Pac might have gotten it right in the chorus- That's just the way it is. There is an EPIDEMIC within the Black community. I don't want to live in a world, where I must be pessimistic and think That's just the way it is, and we are going to have to forever keep protecting our children from the living out the stereotypes that are killing them. I'm tired of having to convince myself that the Black community has it wrong, that we must change, when all Trayvon and Jordan were doing was living their lives, being young men- walking home, or getting gas with friends. They didn't deserve to die, and we shouldn't continue to sit back and toss up our hands and think that this is what our lives must be.

  As a member of and a witness within the Black community, as a future mother, as an aunt to nephews, a cousin to young men in urban environments I don't want to live in constant fear that one day the image that flashes across that TV screen could be them.

 My heart is heavy when I read these stories and see the reports. It breaks and it is full of pain, and a constant reminder that there is still much work to be done, that when it comes to race relations in the U.S we are still taking one step forward and two steps back. We have a Multi-Racial (Black for those of you who must claim it) President and on the one side this descriptive representation of a HUGE part of this society, means absolutely nothing when we are still rife with racist undertones and young men who could have been future Presidents  themselves, are gunned down in this day and age. 

  I am 27 years old, and what I see over the decades that I have lived is that we still haven't learned, and the changes that we had been hopeful for are still far out of our way. I don't want to lose my optimism, but each day that we lose another one of our young generation and our future in this fashion, my optimism gets killed softly.

R.I.P- Sean[23], Oscar[23], Trayvon[17] and Jordan[17] and now Michael Brown[18] (see below)

(This post was originally published on 11/28/2012) 

At the time I was 27 years old. I am now 29 and due to an event on my birthday, the country has erupted yet again. His name was Mike Brown, he was 18 years old. He was unarmed. He was shot 6 times, twice in the head and he lost his life.  

The city of Ferguson, MO is aggravated, and all eyes are on this city. But it's not just Ferguson, it's cities all over the country and all over the world. 

My words above speak for this situation as much as they resonated at the sadness, I felt hearing about Trayvon and Jordan. When will it stop? When will this no longer be our story? 

Power of the Mic- Why I love Lupe Fiasco

If you read my other blogs, you know I love music! I love the way music transforms people, I love how music can make people think. I have am particularly fond of hip hop and rap music. I have clear definitions of what these are.. Hip hop for me sparks people to think deeper, it provokes action. I look at Hip Hop starting in the 80s and still going on today, except back in the 80s you could count that Hip Hop was largely all of the music that you heard from certain artists and now only a few rappers I feel still fit in the Hip Hop Column. And Hip Hop today in my opinion is a dying breed where Rappers might dip a little into the genre but they are too mainstream and bubble gum producing the same trashy music- that yes I admittedly will play, but that produces an image of a culture that was very much far from what I think the forefathers of Hip Hop were trying to convey.
  So today, one of those artists that I feel continues to be true to Hip Hop is Lupe Fiasco... Lupe doesn't make music to appease the Industry. His music is enlightened, is challenging, teaches you to think, pushes the limits and doesn't fit in the form that many would think rap should. He continues to have a strong base of supporters and in my opinion for Lupe he's in the game not because of the music but because of the message.

 So recently he released a new song and video called "Bitch Bad." I had seen some rumblings of the video in my social media outlets but I hadn't actually seen the video for myself until today. I was blown away and in a GREAT way...
  "Bitch Bad" certainly is controversial. He basically is creating satire of what is known as "hip hop" music today. With the rappers and their money, and grills, showing off their jewelry and cars. It highlights the video women, dancing around in skimpy clothes and the misguided power that young girls think they can have. Images that make many question the sexism and misogyny of hip hop. The video is bananas (in a phenomenal way)  and the part that is so interesting is that not only is he making it a satire on what is mainstream rap, he has the "rapper" and the "video vixen" in his music video in Blackface. As a way to equate mainstream rap as a minstrel, playing into the hands of what the, then "white man" wanted and today an image that some claim as not our own. (Please note, our as I am a African descent woman and am speaking from the community to which I identify most with).
   I must comment here, that my fascination with this music video is also due to the fact that I love music, as I mentioned before and for me, music videos should closely relate to the story in the song. This video does just that, "Bitch Bad" is a play on the ideas that we have about what the word "bitch" means. For some "Bitch Bad" could mean "bad ass," "hot," "down," etc. For others the fight around the word "bitch" is that it is degrading. Women call each other "bitch" sometimes as a term of endearment so they claim, but most often as a way to cast them down.. not with the same meaning as the N-word , but it does have the same power.
  Lupe's wordplay throughout the song  is AMAZING!!  He starts the song "Bitch bad, woman good, lady better," as a reminder of what we should call our female population. Bitch is bad, woman is alright, but calling her a lady, better.
  And then you get to this verse:
  Disclaimer: this rhymer, Lupe, is not usin' "bitch" as a lesson
But as a psychological weapon
To set in your mind and really mess with your conceptions
Discretions, reflections, it's clever misdirection

I think this is what makes Lupe a GENIUS!! Lupe flips the image quick, to let you know that if you thought he was glorifying Bitch, that you had it twisted. 

He continues:

 He caught in a reality, she caught in an illusion

Bad mean good to her, she really nice and smart
But bad mean bad to him, bitch don't play a part
But bitch still bad to her if you say it the wrong way
But she think she a bitch, what a double entendre

This is the reality of the word in our diction today. Many people think bitch is a "good" thing. As I said, it's a term of endearment when your girls call you bitch, it's a negative when your man or another dude or another female that you are having issues with calls you a bitch. We ( as in women, the gender I identify as) use that word as if it is love one minute and a dagger then next. 

So with the lyrics and coupled with the video it is an all around "mind-f%&*." That has left me thinking about the way we use words. It also reminds me of those moments where I am torn between a good beat and a horrible misguided image that continues to taint the fabric of a community. Furthermore, it makes me thankful for the power of music as art, as a movement  and as an opportunity to speak a message and have value. 

But don't take my word for it.. Take Lupe's "Bitch Bad"