To Be Real or That's Not Funny!

ok. this piece is about my reluctance to participate in racial humor, where that comes from, why this is different, and how i can use radical laughter and the enlightenment that this discussion has brought me.

I generally have a really hard time dealing with satire, because I think that satirical pieces often fail at expressing their point (at all or effectively to the audience); satire can be overused or used as a crutch which can breed some really not self-aware/reflective/complex analysis; and it can often backfire, reinforcing what it claims to be resisting. But White Boy Shuffle was a very different experience for me. About one-third into the book I commented to one of roommates, "Generally I'm no good with satire. I just struggle with how it is received by its audience so much. But this book is different. Somehow I trust it and I trust where it's coming from and its analysis and I think I might get it." When H-A pressed me as to how, I couldn't articulate why. But reading Prof/Lex's comment that making the charicatures tight and complex as a strategy is helping me understand. I think, in a really simplistic way, I can use the stereotype/alternative litmus test to help me navigate. That is to say, when viewing racial humor/racial critique I can ask myself, "Can I get the stereotype without the alternative here? Are they inseparable? Is the alternative portrayed? If not, why not?"

I generally shy away from mainstream (and sometimes otherwise) race-based humor because I have a really hard time dealing with, listening to, and critiquing it. I am purposely choosing the words "race-based" here because I don't believe that it all constitutes race critique. I think that I am really uncomfortable with this type of humor because for the most part I do not trust that it is doing anything productive and i do not trust that (white) people are laughing for the right reasons or understand why they are laughing at all. I am speaking here primarily about mainstream comedians, sitcoms, etc. who use racial humor and seem to get away with it under the premise that it is somehow a sophisticated analysis or otherwise appropriate to say and that even though it often recreates racial stereotypes or charicatures it is some how not racist. (in the ways that media decide what is racist and what isnt. i.e barriers to accessing healthcare is not framed as racist, but the don imus comment is). In the past I have generally avoided this type of humor for several reasons 1) plainly, I often feel like racist jokes are racist and im not ok with that 2) I dont feel like I have the tools to accurately figure out when other types of racial humor are radical and when they are just dressed up racist jokes and 3) i have a really hard time trusting people's analysis and intentions with racial humor.

here again, this class discussion is helping me differentiate. its helping me move from a semi-comfortable cut & dry analysis to a more complex and REAL one (which is clearly much harder to navigate and articulate). we're being real, after all, right?

I' d like to speak specifically to radical laughter. I found Kameelah's quote really enlightening. She states, "My mom always says that 'sometimes we need to laugh to keep from crying’ which in a lot of ways speaks to this politics of radical laughter–the laughter that unconsciously moves us closer to the realities and pains we try to distance ourselves from. Radical laughter can bring us back to life. If we are speaking on the politics of life and death–we can think about radical laughter as a form of metaphorical resurrection whereby we have taken the opportunity to collectively self-reflect to the point where we can laugh at ourselves as the first step towards meaningful action." I really related to this idea, but from a different perspective. It made me confront the ways that I consistently and continually try to distance myself from reality and pain (my own and that of others) and it also gave me a way to deal with my pain and guilt--laugh. not in an uncritical or unaware way. but RECOGNIZE and NAME what is happening and then work to change it--in my own behavior as an oppressor, an ally, and as oppressed and in others. this helps me understand more tangibly why guilt isn't productive (which can be easy to know but hard to grasp or deal with) and what some ways to go beyond it are. That might not seem like a big revelation, but I've been stuck in a bad place for a while and this is helping me move forward.

Prof/Lex and Kameelah (consistently) leave me at a moment of "damn."

postscript: I cannot believe how many times in the last two weeks I have referenced this book, this discussion, these thoughts. I have been having many conversations about dyke humor and what it does to communities, how it affects me and what it means. I recently received a clip from youtube about lesbian phone sex where the operator turns the client on by talking about organizing protests and having potlucks. my dyke-identified friend who sent it thought it was hilarious. i didnt. dont get me wrong here--i think protests & potlucks are hot. but i also think that two not-totally-femme women can have really hot sex together. i also think that lesbian bed death stereotypes are really hurtful to me and can be to lesbian communities in general. and seeing this clip on youtube made me react really negatively. i felt like it was perpetuating the bed death stereotype to a general audience without demonstrating the alternative. here is how i initially responded:

i just watched the video and i didnt like it. i mean feel free to call me oversensitive here, but i really hate how representations of lesbian sex are always either 1) hot for straight men (or reduce lesbians to only sex) or 2) about bed death

i think there's an important place for self-mockery but i have a really hard time figuring out the line and trusting the politics of the source and the analysis of the audience (ie do they know why they are laughing?). i actually just wrote a response for my online class about similar ideas (when do racial charicatures radicalize and when do they reinforce/let-off-the-hook racial stereotypes?)

anyways, i think bed death stereotypes are really hurtful to lesbian communities. (check out this paper:

http://www.pinklemonz.com/articles/bed_death.htm skip to page 2).

i realize that this wasn't specifically about bed death, but do you see how its connecting for me? i think im also sensitive about it cuz i feel like i am simultaneously some of those stereotypes (and i like those parts of myself) and also not others (which i also like about myself). im sick of lesbians making fun of me because i like ani difranco, for instance. im also sick of people assuming that id rather go to a protest than have sex or that because ive been dating the same woman for 3 years and we are able to communicate the we must not have really hot sex all the time. and making that distinction isn't important to me an assimilative way. not in the "see lesbians are just like normal people--we have sex all the time" way. in the way that "why the fuck do you either oversexualize us or undersexualize us depending on your needs or depending on how femme we are?" way.

it all gets back to developing more complex and REAL analyses.

organizing in the south

so people used to always tell me, "yeah, but you're not gonna leave the south, right? you can't leave the south. there's nothing like organizing down here."

and i smiled my broad smile and giggled my nervous giggle and responded, "i love north carolina."

and then i moved to new york city.
and now i understand.

To be Black? or Queer Diabetics exist?

wow. the Cohen chapters really resonated with me this week. i keep finding more and more examples in my community work and interactions that i want to bring up in this response, so i think i will focus there.

I want to touch on something that Cohen discusses regarding when health issues become legitimate. On page 5 she writes that one church pastor describes that the church response to AIDS was either non-existent or negative because the disease was seen as a "disease of homosexuals" and goes on to say, "However, after women, children, and hemophiliacs--those who have no control over this disease--were found to be infected, church leaders began to realize that a more compassionate response was called for." This idea of fault/blame/guilt/immorality/legitimacy seems to be everywhere when dealing with disease. I run an online group for queer diabetics that came out of my identity as, ahem, a queer diabetic. The idea of the group is to make connections between multiple types of oppression in real terms (ie lesbophobia and ableism) and also to bring basic visibility to this double identity. Many people don't understand why its necessary to make space for queer diabetics or don't see the two pieces as connected. Yet, NONE of the mainstream diabetes advocacy groups have any information geared to queer folks about the healthcare disparities and dealing with a chronic illness. I believe that this does not just come from the ignorance of dominant groups to whom it "never occurs" that these are issues (a form of homophobia in itself--presumed heterosexuality and/or lack of knowledge about issues affecting queer communities). I think that these mainstream providers/advocates do not want to risk delegitimating their issue by talking about diabetes as a "queer issue." Particularly type 1 (sometimes called juvenile on-set) groups frame their subjects as innocent children that didn't do anything wrong, victims to whom this disease happened. since they are seen as wholesome and innocent, people feel bad when they get sick and they give money. Many of the events that these orgs put on have a large "family" focus, meaning cis-man + cis-women married with a couple (straight& cis) kids. They want to preserve this image. They do not want queers hanging around and threatening their funding (or poor people of color, or undocumented folks, etc. for that matter). Diabetes is seen as a worthy cause because white middle class kids get it; HIV contraction finally deserved compassion when "innocent" hemophiliacs & children were infected. Similar to what Cohen is explaining about membership in black communities and owning of issues, the dominant members within the diabetes community get to decide what the issues are for that community, where the research money goes, who will receive support and services and who is allowed in. Even though queer diabetics face greater health disparities than hetero diabetics, they are less likely to be able to access diabetes-specific services due to homophobia and to a lesser extent, LGBT-specific services due to ableism & disease-stigma.

Examples of dominant groups within marginalized communities deciding that group's agenda & focus issues abound in my life this week. Three others that I am dealing with today include: substance abuse prevention groups ignoring/avoiding LGBT inclusion in surveys, mainstream nyc LGBT groups focusing on gay men's health almost exclusively, and trans/queer mobilization of support against police brutality without community accountability for sexual assault.

I would like to finish with a comment about the discussion happening here around centering deviance. I firmly believe that the folks on the margins absolutely need to be the center of and leaders of movements. Yet we consistently witness the selling out of deviants once they become popular or in the center. I think that this often happens because the frameworks of these movements have not actually shifted in the ways they needed to. I have often thought that business women really aren't that liberated, they are just (sometimes) allowed to be a part of discussions/negotiations/decision-making if they are willing to take on the characteristics of the dominant group. If we were actually able to put deviant-created, deviant-led frameworks in place maybe it would be possible to make change. That's what I'm hoping for at least.

****
other notes:
-issue of "black community really exist?" reminds me of conversations about ageism and what is "culturally appropriate" programming for seniors being prescriptive instead of wide-ranging and self-determined

"consist mostly of people with economic and educational privilege is MORE concerned with presenting a “respectable” face to the dominant culture and reaping the rewards of proximity with white folks than with being accountable for the lived experience of the majority of black folks."

To be Game or 41 questions

(in reading & thinking & feeling & responding to ida b wells' "mob rule in new orleans" and audre lorde's "need")

i can't pretend to understand what it means to be black.
i can't pretend to comprehend the depths of my white privilege.

i am not making excuses
i am searching

i.
was it for hate?
was it for lust?
was it for revenge?
was it for envy?
was it for entertainment?

did it slice off your fear?
did it burn off your accent?
did it cut out your pain?
did it secure your family's position?
did it tie down your job?
did it set fire to your inadequacies?
did it stake down your belonging?
did it beat back your vulnerability?
did it display your power?
did cooking tongues silence?

will you realize what you've done?
will you turn yourself in?
will you confess your horrors?

would you plead not-guilty?
would you do it again?

ii.
was it for love?
was it for need?
was it for survival?
was it for liberation?
was it for destruction?
was it for redemption?

did it help?
did it burn off your oppression?
did it beat back your vulnerability?
did it cut out your pain?
did it kick off your fear?
did it awaken your anger?
did it move like manhood?
did it feel like need?
did it die out?
did slitting tongues silence?

will you realize what you've done?
will you remember?
will you listen?

would you name the enemy?
would you dismantle the enemy?

To Be Poetic or White People Take Everything

deep breath.

i had to read the Sylvia Wynter article, "Ethno or Socio Poetics" more than twice to begin to understand. i had a hard time with the language and the vocabulary, but that made it all the more exhilarating when the same words began to transform from letters in a row to thoughts that made me franticly scribble barely-legible notes in the margins. reviewing my notes now, it seems that they are mostly just paraphrases of the author's ideas in more accessible words for myself. still, i'd like to spend some space reflecting on definitions as relations or "a relation between We and an Other."

part 1.
i was really able to follow the author's explanations of how identities are/have become/were forced to become relationships. but i do not fully follow her point that jazz allowed blacks to reinvent "themselves as a WE that needed no OTHER to constitute their Being." In some ways, I understand how art allows creation that is not confined to opposites. I find Wynter's point confusing though because it seems to me like there is still a white other. She states in the same paragraph that the popular oral culture created by the black was in response to white negation of black humaness. that makes me think that there is still a that helps define what black popular culture is. maybe i am not fully understanding the idea of definitions as relations. but maybe, despite the fact that there is no tangible other that serves to define jazz music, still the existence of jazz and how it is defined as a musical genre is somehow deeply related to being different than white culture. right? is that possible?

but, then again, it seems possible that something could be created in response to something else, but need not be dependent on that first thing to define its being...

i think that Wynter's use of music as the example of how this is possible is particularly poignant. trying to name and define music and music genres reminds me of an ethnomusicology class that i once took. on the first day of class, the professor played a song and then asked us to describe what it sounded like. it was nearly impossible. each person who tried, ended up saying things like "its was like a beep bop bo bop." part of the point of the exercise was to show that music was a not just another way to express oneself, it was not just a different adjective that could be simply substituted in a sentence, it was an alternate means for expressing experiences and feelings that we do not have the language to relate, to describe. so then, does using music as the example of a "concretely universal ethnos" work because music itself is so hard to describe and define? is that exactly the point? i mean, is that why Wynter suggests that art/poetics/creative processes the way to cease relying on exclusion? oh. did i just write myself into an insight?

part 2.
I want to stay in this same part of the article and continue to talk about definitions as relations and share a thought that i had while reading that isn't part of the posed questions. i first started really understanding and connecting with the piece during my first read-through when i got to the part on page 84 that talks about the "NORMATIVE MODEL OF MAN." Wynter describes European culture being "posited as a gold standard of value, its possession acting as a definition of...humanity" and then explains how written tradition, not oral tradition came to be identified with culture and humanity. She continues with, "The myth of the cultural void of the non-West--The Other--was to be central to the ideology which the West would use in its rise to world domination." When I first read this I stopped at the end of that sentence, looked up at my fellow subway riders, and began thinking about how the meaning of the word "culture" has changed and what is often implied now when folks speak about "having culture." i wondering who my co-rideers would identify as culturally void today.
(so, being white and having studied anthropology in undergrad, i spent a lot of time in the early years thinking about other people's cultures, mourning my "lack of culture," and wishing for "more culture" before even recognizing what it meant about white privilege, white supremacy, and white ethnocentricity to think in these ways).

still ruminating from this twist, i continued reading until i reached the NORMATIVE MODEL OF MAN phrase screaming at me in all caps. it clicked in my head then how european/white culture could easily transform/abstract from defining itself as the pinnacle of CULTURE to becoming the dominant, standard of culture and therefore the norm, or normal, plain, unexotic, un-noticeable culture (to the dominators). yet, becoming the normative model has created a sense of "lack of culture" for many white people. this can often lead to white people "going in search of real culture" i.e. cultures of the Others and then appropriating it for themselves. this cultural appropriation can then lead to fucked-up "white ally" behavior, increased stereotyping of the non-white cultures, and increased alienation in us/other definitions of self.

thinking through this chain of actions got me thinking more intensely about cultural appropriation and why its so bad. i immediately re-read the section about black popular culture constituting a universal ethnos and it struck me profoundly: cultural appropriation of the very art that black folks created to reinvent themselves as fully human (necessitated by white dehumanization of blacks) means white people taking everything. i immediately wrote in huge caps over the top of my print out

WE TAKE EVERYTHING

fuck. and then in this moment of revelation, i still can hear my own words in a conversation many years ago before i even knew what cultural appropriation was: "but if i want to have dreads, why shouldn't i be able to?"

and my friend's simple reply: "because they are not yours to have."

part 3.
i am going to have to leave off without finishing my last part, but i want to include my notes here so that i can return to it as i think about it more. i want to respond to prof gumbs question about whether its effective to define through exclusion. in my work at an LGBT center in Queens I have often struggled with questions of safe space and inclusion/exclusion particularly as it relates to perceived identities, infinite self-identities, and rubrical institutionalized identifiers. more on this soon...

*******
notes:
d) effective to define through exclusion? (think of LGBT and struggles to create safe, inclusive, but still (blank) spaces and the trouble with language/term/identity that ensues

boycott interesting

let's put a ban on the word "interesting."
i have been thinking lately how that word is such overused bland, inexpressive filler. today begins my new challenge to build a stronger, more compelling vocabulary. who's in?