Category Archives: The Ideologies of Black Working Class Consciousness

Thank You to Vaughn!

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When it comes to classrooms, it feels like I have seen it all in these past 20 years.  I did student teaching in a third grade classroom in South Central Los Angeles, moved to a junior high school in the Bronx, then high school, then college teaching.  I have been to more funerals than I care to count, prayed with and for ex-convicts to find a way out, watched over small children while single mothers took care of business, worked with public safety to protect female students from physically abusive male partners (who have been known to come to campus to look for their ex-girlfriends/wives), helped students fight racist teachers, helped gay students fight homophobic campuses, helped parolees check(-in with) parole officers, fed/transported students who had no way there.  You name it, I have seen it.  It’s the nature of what it means to commit to working class/working poor communities in one of the central racist institutions that holds them hostage: SCHOOL.  The college classrooms that I have taught in are not that much different than that first junior high school where I taught in the poorest congressional school district in the country.

The statistics tell us that 1 in every 4 or 5 female students in college  (depending on which stats you look at) have been raped.  I don’t need them stats though: I can attest to that number via the conversations I have had with female students in every college classroom I have taught in.  The only thing that really connects all of these experiences and classrooms is the TOTAL incongruence between who these students are and how they get depicted— whether that be so-called “educational research” or scholarship or media depictions.  In media, they are savages who cannot control themselves.  In scholarship, they are hopeless remedial readers and writers in need of a paternalistic white savior (or, the distant cousin— the pied-piper of color) who has studied all of the right strategies (we might want to START wondering how any graduate program/college can prepare you to teach the communities that they are NOT enrolling or really employing as faculty).  For those who are privileged, these students are just authorized to be self-hating, anti-Ebonics, and anti-black since those things get anointed as post-racial or non-essentialist.  In everyday parlance, we imagine these students to be so hopelessly bamboozled by mass culture (often called “popular culture” by post-modernists) that they do  not know they are being robbed of time, money, spirit, and sanity.

The one thing I can count on is that I can’t count on media or academia to speak to, for, or about the people who I have had the opportunity to call my students.  It’s an important reminder that can shake me loose when my mind gets stuck on stupid.  Thank you to Vaughn Ephraim who shook me loose in this moment. Vaughn sent me the following video, “NA-TU-RAL” by  Qu’ality that he thought I might enjoy.

Qu'ality

Qu’ality

He was right.  Vaughn’s message when he sent me the video was equally deep for me.  Here is part of that message about why he knows, values, and listens to Qu’ality:

The song is called “Na-tu-ral” and it features shots of young ladies with all different kinds of natural hair styles. It is put together very well and I think it’s important to acknowledge black men who promote and acknowledge and love the beauty in black women. He is in within my age group, which is another important factor as it shows our generation is not fully tainted or corrupted with the vile and chauvinistic conditioning of white male western dominance which is simply below sub-par.

I agree with Vaughn.  Vaughn’s sentiments as well as what we see and hear in Qu’ality’s video are not what we often see and hear about young black men and women today.  Thank you, Vaughn!  Keep on pushin!  I am learning from you.

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Sleeping… Never Too Much!

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The McGhee Sextuplets (born 2010)

The McGhee Sextuplets (born 2010)

As a college teacher who gets summers “off,” I can assure you that summer has rarely felt like a vacation on my trek to tenure.  I am usually so wiped out by the time Memorial Day weekend rolls around, all I want to do is sleep and then sleep some more.

For the most part, my summers are spent writing, reading, researching, and preparing new courses.  I am too exhausted from the schoolyear to jump right into that and too working-class-ethical to just sit around, do nothing, and nap all day.  So to kick-off my days of refusing to think but desperately needing to feel productive, I wash the front of my house, all the windows and the sidewalks… with a superduper powerwasher which provides some of the most fun water-sport activities imaginable.  I also fertilize my flowerbeds/container garden and I spray like a fiend for mosquitos (yes, it is an awful practice but I cannot tolerate them sucking up my blood the way that they do.) I must confess: I am not a very good powerwasher but I see no reason for that to stop me.  I warn my neighbors beforehand because, as NYC rowhouse dwellers, I end up washing their houses too, though not by design.  Like I said, I am not a very good powerwasher.  As my neighborhood, along with all neighborhoods in Brooklyn, have become more and more gentrified, I have noticed many more expensive cars on my block.  I have also noticed that these folk tend to move their cars away as soon as I come out with my 100 feet of hose (we park on the street in my neighborhood; there are no garages).  I don’t intentionally wash the expensive cars on the street because, hey, that would just be rude, but, wellllll, they do get a little wet and I do not feel bad about that.  It is public space and I am very public with the powerwasher.  I put on my big, rubber, rain boots that come to my knees and just get to it.   If my mother is being particularly challenging with too many directives and advice about my process since she lives with me now and so gets all of her windows washed too, I will put on a big, bright rain parka with a hood (and goggles if I have some).  I look so ridiculous that my mother refuses to be seen standing next to me with all the car traffic that passes by.  My peace and quiet are then quickly restored. By the time I am done with all that powerwashing and then putting all of the tools and costume away again, I am tired as hell.  This physical labor allows me to justify the one thing that kicks off my summer: sleeping like a baby.  I have always loved the photo above of the McGhee sextuplets— Rozonno Jr., Isaac, Josiah, Elijah, Madison and Olivia— who are so deep asleep that it is nothing short of inspiring (thank you to the Ohio couple and proud Mom and Dad, Mia and Rozonno McGhee, for truly loving and showing us these glorious babies.)  The baby sleeping on the father’s head most closely approximates what my summer sleep looks like right now.

After my powerwashing, I wake up the next day and, of course, need a new justification to tire myself out again so that I can go back to sleep…. it will be THE BACKYARD!!  There will come a time when I can no longer escape the work that I need to do this summer.  But in the interim, I am avoiding it… with the cleanest, superwashed house imaginable! I wish deep rest and relaxation to every teacher who can relate to what I am saying here.

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Happy Mother’s Day to the Women Who Have Kept Me

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Many of you already know that my mother lives with me now.  After she lost her job in the recession crunch, I had to do some financial wizardry and move her from Ohio to Brooklyn and become a new head-of-household of sorts (I have always been able to make a dollah outta 15cents but this took a little EXtra creativity).  As I get older, I realize that most of us daughters will be facing similar circumstances in caring for aging parents. My mother, however, does not consider herself aging so we go to a Jazz Brunch/Bar in Manhattan every Mother’s Day and by Jazz, I mean a real quartet that does covers like “All Blues” from Miles Davis’s Kind of Blue, NOT that Kenny-G-Twinkle-Twinkle foolishness.  It has only been in the last few years that I have even been in the same city as my mother on Mother’s Day so I figure we may as well go all out (which, for my mother, also means eating my dessert.)

"Fruit of Generosity" by Leslie Ansley (exhibited at the August Wilson Center for African American Culture in 2012)

“Fruit of Generosity” by Leslie Ansley (exhibited at the August Wilson Center for African American Culture in 2012)

I know Mother’s Day is mostly a Hallmark invention but I must admit that I like a day to put it all on pause for mothers. For me, that means all the women in my family who have raised me… which is a lot.  I have strong memories of being a little girl and various adults, especially my family and close neighbors, asking me: “who keep you when your momma work?”  OR “who keepin you right now?” (the second question was for when I was on a part of the block where I wasn’t supposed to be or at the corner store without permission). Who keep you?  That’s always been a favorite expression of mine.  No one in my family or immediate kin network ever asked “who babysits you?”   I was never babysat, I was always KEPT.  These are two completely different meanings that African American Language so brilliantly captures.  It is hardly coincidence that in a world that will bomb 4 little girls going to Sunday School, reference nine-year old actresses with curse words, and shoot a teenager dead for wearing a hoodie that black communities would use language to create a different world for black children. In my case, one of my female first-cousins kept me (most often, a cousin who I call Lat or Janet) or one of my seven Aunties kept me (most often an auntie who I call Aunt MamaLee.)  I also kept my little cousins and so did my mother– who is still called Auntie by these ex-in-laws even though my parents divorced when I was a small child.  There is a philosophy of mothering that elevates the role of childcare done by women that goes far beyond any biological definition.  And there is also a philosophy for how black children need to be raised and looked after: keeping black children is simply a different kind of love. It is more than merely sitting with them, teaching them, or taking care of them; it is a kind of valuing that only black communities have been willing to provide for black children.  You keep the things that are most valuable; you do not discard them even in a world that encourages you to do so.  If we weren’t so self-hating by regarding Black Language and Vernacular Culture as “improper”/street/slang, we would see a worldview contained in it that could sustain us.

This notion of KEEPING also makes me think of my sister-friends today.  Most of us do not live near our extended families, not like the way we grew up.  I see my sister-friends go to great lengths to choose black daycare centers for their children and black caretakers who identify with black culture and black womanhood.  To me, they are looking for people who will keep their children, not babysit them or even teach them to read and write.  After all, as researcher/academic/professional, I would not need any school to teach any child around me to read or write.  I can do that much better.  What I would need is a community that will provide something much more than skills-building and childcare services: a community that will keep its children in a world that discards them at every turn.

As a grown woman now, everyone in my family still knows who kept me when I was little, which children I kept, and which children my mother kept so I thank every woman who ever kept me… my mother, my aunties, my cousins, my mentors, the older girls down the block, and all of my sister-friends now.  Happy Mother’s Day to all of you!

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“Age Ain’t a Factor”

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So I will confess here that this post is a bit of, shall I say, a DETOUR.  Before I get into anything that even comes close to a discussion of education, liberation, and black radical traditions, I just gotta be honest about where I am coming from.

jaheimHere it is: I love me some Jaheim.  I usually think very critically about the images I place on this website but let me tell you that today is just NOT that kind of day.  These images are simply photos of Jaheim that I like to look at.  A whole other aesthetic principal going on today!

I always have, always will adore Jaheim (please, please don’t let him act a complete, triflin fool like most black male musicians). I’m really not into younger men. I like grownass men, my own age, but not much older (I already have a father and don’t need a replacement).  But for Jaheim (8 years younger than me), I make an exception to my rule.  Even when he seems to forget that you canNOT be black, a man, drivin way past the speed limit, smokin weed in your car, and NOT draw the heat of the POlice, I forgive him.  Young! See why I like them grown?  You don’t have to convince a grown black man of these things.  Nonetheless, this brotha is just too fine, even post-cornrows.  I loved his video with Regina King, who is also too fly, for no other reason than they aesthetically looked so good together in that audiovisual medium.

“Finding My Way Back” is perhaps a good motto for Jaheim right now since he lost his voice after being tased on his neck during his own bout with police brutality after his last album dropped.  I am rooting for his comeback.

It should come as no surprise that I bought his new single, Age Ain’t a Factor, and plan to buy the album as soon as it drops. I am very clear here that Jaheim had every intention of getting my attention and any black woman past 35.  And it worked. The fact of the matter is that we are the demographic with arguably the most flexible income, more inclination to use that money whenever we get some leisure time, and an undying sense of black solidarity.  We are a demographic that few seem to get. I like Jaheim targeting us as a market, if you will, with songs like this rather than with incessant, patriarchal relationship books, an issue I have already discussed here.  Maybe, Jaheim can start a new trend and turn the tide on black men’s mainstream, patriarchal discourse that keeps telling us we are unwanted. Here’s how he opens his song after crooning about his woman/baby:

jaheim2You’re like a wine, you get better with time,
Got your Nia Long on, it’s your song, you’re so fine
From everything that you wear, your kind of beauty is rare
And I swear you get better looking with every year
Got your sexual peak, your full figure physique,
Young girl can’t compete…

And since we’re in the kitchen, girl, let me get that muffin
You look better the older you get, Benjamin Button.

Straight nasty right there!  Trust me when I tell you that brothas do not ever offer up any compliment like this to me or most women my age.  This one is a rare gem.

I will get a little bit more serious here though. I am not trying to sound like some little 14-year old girl pasting pictures of Jaheim in her locker with some fantasy that he will be my knight in shining armor some day.   I don’t do that kind of star-gazing. I have no secret desire to be on stage with or ever be with a celebrity like many academics seem to have (they couch all this in sophisticated language and wanna-be postmodern analysis but if they could die and come back in the likes of Beyonce, Kerri Washington, or any emcee, they would.)  I’m good just as I am with no delusions or fantasies.

Jaheim Final Artwork_0I also don’t usually discuss men in this way on this site simply because I find it too heteronormative, a heterosexist practice I don’t endorse that makes men the center of women’s attention (they are not).  On the other hand, there is nothing radical or sustaining about avoiding discussions of black sexuality either.  That kind of avoidance only co-sanctions the fiction of  a white Puritan ethos (which has never existed in the first place).  So today I confess.  Give me a brother who looks/talks/sings like Jaheim, a brother unafraid to look and BE black, a brother who will forego acting like a teenager way past the expiration date on that, and a brother always connected to black working class consciousness/ language/ aesthetics and black women, and well, let me tellll you, we could make some whole new black radical traditions together!  This was a detour today, but the desired destination remains the same.

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