Impact of “Love is Blind”: “You Need to Elevate and Find”

Popular meme brilliantly critiqued by Deborah Cooper as a tactic used to control and entitlement to black women's bodies.

Popular meme brilliantly critiqued by Deborrah Cooper: even “good men” use this language when thinking they are entitled to black women’s bodies.

True to her promise, Deborrah Cooper promised to bring the rain even harder on her website after black men kept dismissing her comments about male sexist behavior.  For those who don’t know, Cooper’s videos, books, and blog are dedicated to black women and relationships with the kind of vibe where I feel like I am talking to that auntie, mother, cousin, grandmother, or godmother with the special knack to insert well-placed cusswords in an unrelenting reading of black men, misogyny, and relationships. If you know the kinds of women I am taking about, even when you don’t agree with Cooper, you will feel like you are on the frontporch on a hot summer day listening to womenfolk as they shake their heads at all of the foolishness they see. Recently, Cooper shared the story of one of her followers who was walking home from a grocery store in Brooklyn.  Cooper’s fan reports that she saw a black man arguing with a black woman and their two daughters with the daughters, little girls, fighting the dad off.  The man grew angrier and more violent so the sista watching called the police.  As she called the police, the black men on the block just stood there, watched, and laughed, with one pair of young men enjoying the show so much that they sat and ate a candy bar, fully engrossed.  Suddenly, about 15+ black girls, maybe in high shool, came along, saw what was happening, and poised themselves to give this man an old-fashioned beatdown.  If the police hadn’t come when they had, he would have gotten it even worse.  I find this image of black men looking on and laughing at a black woman being physically, publicly abused, along with her small daughters, deeply haunting and depressing.  A brother and comrade told me recently that he sees strong correlations between the rise of black male diatribes (i.e., all over youtube), the increase in violence against black women, and the onset of new numbers of white supremacist/KKK-offshoot groups since 2008 (before Obama became president, there were a little more than a 100 white hate groups and yet, after 2008, there were more than 1000.)  In an era of newfound white supremacy, violence against black women will inevitably steepen and increase, that’s the kind of history and world we live in.  And if bourgeois/capitalist culture incorporates black men, even if as coons (think Lil Wayne or Flava Flav’s television show), then it is inevitable that violence against black women will be the price of the ticket for that.  All women are objects under capitalism and black women will fare worst in those equations. This image of the 15 young black women ready for revolution is very striking and haunting, but perhaps, it was always a reality already in the making.

What I am suggesting here is that when I hear so many young black women in my classes still gravitate to and know the context, history, and lyrics of Eve’s 1999 “Love is Blind,” their discourse and memories are about more than just one song.  This is why I include “Love is Blind” in what I am calling the Political-Intellectual Canon of Young Black Women.  These lyrics feel like they are triggering a kind of lineage of blackwomenspeak and blackwomenthink about violence in our communities that students are building on:

This song, “Love is Blind,” is always voluntarily discussed by a black woman in my class whenever Hip Hop gets mentioned… without fail.  Every time. Interestingly though, I have not had students who particularly talk about Eve as a Femcee, only this song.  It’s all about the lyrics here:

Hey, yo I don’t even know you and I hate you
See all I know is that my girlfriend used to date you
How would you feel if she held you down and raped you?
Tried and tried, but she never could escape you
She was in love and I’d ask her how? I mean why?
What kind of love from a nigga would black your eye?
What kind of love from a nigga every night make you cry?
What kind of love from a nigga make you wish he would die?
I mean shit he bought you things and gave you diamond rings
But them things wasn’t worth none of the pain that he brings
And you stayed, what made you fall for him?
That nigga had the power to make you crawl for him
I thought you was a doctor be on call for him
Smacked you down cause he said you was too tall for him, huh?
That wasn’t love, babygirl you was dreamin’
I could have killed you when you said your seed was growin from his semen

Love is blind, and it will take over your mind
What you think is love, is truly not
You need to elevate and find…

I don’t even know you and I’d kill you myself
You played with her like a doll and put her back on the shelf
Wouldn’t let her go to school and better herself
She had a baby by your ass and you ain’t giving no help
Uh-huh big time hustler, snake motherfucker
One’s born everyday and everyday she was your sucker
How could you beat the mother of your kids?
How could you tell her that you love her?
Don’t give a fuck if she lives
She told me she would leave you, I admit it she did
But came back, made up a lie about you missing your kids
Sweet kisses, baby ain’t even know she was your mistress
Had to deal with fist fights and phone calls from your bitches
Floss like you possess her, tellin’ me to mind my business
Said that it was her life and stay the fuck out of it
I tried and said just for him I’ll keep a ready clip…

I don’t even know you and I want you dead
Don’t know the facts but I saw the blood pour from her head
See I laid down beside her in the hospital bed
And about two hours later, doctors said she was dead
Had the nerve to show up at her mother’s house the next day
To come and pay your respects and help the family pray
Even knelt down on one knee and let a tear drop
And before you had a chance to get up
You heard my gun cock
Prayin to me now, I ain’t God but I’ll pretend
I ain’t start your life but nigga I’mma bring it to an end
And I did, clear shots and no regrets, never
Cops comin’ lock me under the jail
Nigga whatever my bitch, fuck it my sister
You could never figure out even if I let you live
What our love was all about
I considered her my blood and it don’t come no thicker

1-soundwave-remix-finalI suspect the weight of this song rather than Eve’s person will become even more pronounced in the future since Eve has eclipsed any awareness of racism now that she is a celebrity …AND pregnant by her white millionaire British boyfriend— the race car driver, Maximillion Cooper.  See Denene Millner at My Brown Baby for a brilliant critique of Eve’s newfound colorblindness as the racial politics for raising her biracial child.  I am pretty confident that Eve’s song will continue to circulate in the annals of young black women’s memory and consciousness though Eve’s own politics and life story may not.

When I hear my students talk about “Love is Blind”– and when I think of the story from Cooper’s follower, the young women fighting back an abusive man on a Brooklyn street, and Cooper’s re-telling of violence against black women on her blog— I see a community of black women speaking into and against violence against them.  In a criminal (in)justice system where the men who rape and beat black women are treated SIGNIFICANTLY less harshly than when raping or abusing any and every other racial or ethnic group of women, it will be up to black women to (re)define justice and safety for their own bodies.  Certainly, no one else can or will do that for us.  When young black women know and discuss Eve’s song in my classes at no prodding of my own, this is the larger epistemological system that I know they are speaking into.

Young Black Women Define Rhetoric: “Being Around a Black Woman, It’s Contagious”

Thank you to Cydni Joubert who created this video-interview below for our English 3475 class, African American Women’s Rhetoric, to let us hear how dance, black women’s lives, and rhetoric all intersect.

 

And, thank you to Crystal Valentine who visited class yesterday and blessed us with this performance below.

 

For more on Crystal Valentine, please see Cydni’s slideshow below.

“Age Ain’t a Factor”

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.

“Cut This Black Woman’s Chains”: Students Take the Cake!

I’ve never been very good with closure.  Classtime runs out, we can be in the middle of a discussion, folk need to go to their next class, and I’ll just blurt out, all uncouth, well, yall, it’s time to go.  And that will be the end of it.  No synthesis, no last words of encouragement, no group hug.  I can’t synthesize when I am still processing; and I’m not Jerry Springer with a final public service announcement. After 20 years of teaching, you’d think I would have found some solutions but I have not been able to succeed at any attempt.  Maybe I just don’t think serious issues are easily resolved with dialogue alone or I am resisting the simple, Western rush to solutions and conclusions to complex issues.  I no longer look for closure at the end of a class.  I do put a lot of thought into the first days and weeks of my classes, but I’m not good at going out with a bang on the last day.

IMG176When I was teaching at a small college in Brooklyn, I learned the importance of the last day though.  Students in an African American children’s literature class inspired me.  My plan was simple: let’s eat together on the last day and share what we have done for final projects.  That’s it.  Nice and simple. Well, they turnt it up and out.  They brought in trays, and I mean TRAYYYYS of food.  Their kids came too and told us what they liked about the literature (this was a Friday evening class of 39 women and 2 men, all of whom were thirty years old and above.)  And my favorite part, of course, was the special corner, far away from the kids, that was for grown-ups only: a maxi-bar that featured a bottle of rum from what seemed like every country in the Caribbean.  I made many trips to that special corner.  That’s a class that I remember fondly, I can still see each face in my mind’s eyes.  It’s the same for the students who did the assembly/performance with their families attending or the students with their curriculum showcases when I was a teacher educator.  You can’t really predict this though. Sometimes students are as dull and dry as wheat thins; other times, they are PURE FIRE. My point is that the last class should do something, you should feel the weight of the time that you spent together, you should feel like you have been somewhere together.  I no longer assume I can achieve that; students have to do that for and with one another.

Caroline CropToday, however, I thought I would be compelling and close the semester with my favorite thank you speech.  I would use black women’s audacity when even saying thank you to thank my class, as if it were me talking to them.  I am talking about En Vogue. Instead of walking up to the stage at the 1990 Billboard Awards, all fake-surprised and theatrically-shocked that they won for their single, “Hold On,” these sistas knew they had this award and so they performed an acceptance speech that blew away the crowd– in the very style of the song that was being awarded.  I don’t mean to suggest that I deserve the award En Vogue received, but I do feel like the semester was my own sort of award. I must admit that I was little impressed with myself.  I had finally found a good-bye lesson plan… but then my little stuff got showed up real fast.

IMG172Today, anthologies were due.  Anthologies are, well, just that.  Students create mini-curricula for their colleagues using black women’s primary texts that exemplify some rhetorical practice or process.  Instead of writing the traditional Western essay for this, they create an artifact that does the analysis. Last year, Fedaling made photocopies of texts written by black women, dipped them in tea, burned the edges, and then put them all in a well-worn, beat up piece of luggage.  This luggage was supposed to represent the way the family kept its identity papers, papers that had been passed down to her from generations of black grandmothers about their history and lives.  An opening letter explained the significance of each text and asked the viewer to add their own writing. Aysha used the same technique and put all of these papers in a decorated shoebox, to look like something she found under her mother’s bed. Celeste created a graphic novel of black supersheroes, “TEAM ABLE” [who consist of (A) Angela Davis, (B) Bessie Smith, (L) Lucy Wilmot Smith, and (E) Ella Baker]. These women do not fight traditional, individual villains.  Instead, they fight silence, inaction, and unconsciousness!  You get the picture here.  I am what we call a visual learner so I have always leaned on multi-media projects in class. Sometimes you just have to mix up the writing assignments because that gets boring real fast for me.  Plus, I can deduce my students’ understanding of black women’s history, black women’s rhetoric, and the connections they are making just as easily, if not more easily, with such 3D/multimedia artifacts as with any written exam or essay.  This year was a first though— it was a project I had never seen.

IMG174Today, Caroline gave us a process.  First, there was a collection of black women’s poems where black women discuss sexuality, their bodies; their right to love, live, and own themselves (the first image on this page).   It is called “For Colored Girls!”  There was an accompanying poster, now gifted to me, soon to be framed in my office (the second image on this page).  The process continued with a red velvet cake with chocolate on the outside (the third image on this page).  The cake was in the shape of a black woman’s torso, fully naked, demonized dark nipples in full tow, wrapped in chains (signifying too on the Swedish cake performance). Caroline cut the chains from the cake in front of all of us so that we could break this black woman free.   She then offered us the inside and outside of this new black woman, ourselves.

It was the perfect closure with a group of students I will not likely forget!  Like I said, the students themselves will do the work.  I’m glad that I was able to listen to that first group of 39 women and 2 men who taught me this lesson many years ago.