I
was on my way to work listening to the Tom Joyner Morning Show when I heard
them announce that Maya Angelou had passed away. When I got to work I
immediately logged onto my computer to confirm that one of our icons had indeed
fallen.
Though
I knew that she was 86 and had truly lived an exceptional life, it just didn’t
feel like she should be gone. I found myself in a place that I thought I had
left—a surreal existence of trying to deal with something that I didn’t want to
be real. I looked up at my bulletin board in the hall entitled Phenomenal Woman and I was reminded of
the work my students had done creating poems on great women in history, and the
fact that we’d used Dr. Angelou’s poem to kick off our lesson.
Born
in to poverty and segregation, Maya Angelou born Marguerite Johnson, epitomized
the American dream. She faced many struggles in her life, but she never let
anything stop her. She was the true definition of a Renaissance Woman. She
acted. She directed. She sang. She danced. And she wrote. Not only was she an
artist, she was also an activist. Maya Angelou was an African-American woman in
a country that did not treat those who of her race or gender well. And even
though she spoke out against injustices, she was not bitter. She looked for the
lesson in every experience.
Maya Angelou was many things to many people, and as I read
the various reflections on the life she led, the words of Oprah Winfrey
resonated with me the most. Not only did her words eloquently capture the
essence of their relationship, it flooded me with memories of my friend who recently
passed away. Like Maya, Carmen faced many struggles that she didn’t let stop
her. When life handed her lemons, she didn’t complain. She made lemonade. Ten
years my senior, our friendship spanned more than two decades. Just like Maya was to Oprah, Carmen “was there
for me always guiding me through some of the most important years of my life.”
Carmen was not a celebrity in the sense of the word as we
know it, but she was well known in the circles that she traveled in and she
affected everyone around her. Oprah said what stood out to her the most was not
what Maya Angelou had done or written or spoken, but how she lived her life.
How she lived her life. Those words jumped out at me because like Maya Angelou,
Carmen lived life on her own terms. She never compromised who she was, and she
was one of the most selfless people I’d ever met. It was one of many things
that I admired about her.
I never had the opportunity to meet Maya Angelou in person,
but I read her work; I watched her in interviews and I learned from her as she
was an exceptional teacher. Carmen and I were colleagues, friends, and
confidantes to each other. I learned from her as well even when I was a
reluctant student. She died in March and I miss her every day. She may not have
had the far reaching influence of a Maya Angelou, but she touched a lot of
lives. Today the world is a darker place because their lights no longer shine.
Like Maya is to Oprah, Carmen will always be to me—“the rainbow in my clouds.”
To borrow a line from pop singer Lilly Allen, “It’s Hard Out
Here” . . . for a Black Woman or Girl. Just when we thought we were on the mend
from the injuries inflicted after Miley Cyrus threw us under the bus in her
attempt to “blacken her sound” with her American Music Awards attempted twerking
performance, here we are under the bus scrambling for safety-- again. As Black
women, our bodies and our sexuality have never been ours to own. And thanks to
Cyrus and others, Black women’s psyche and sexuality is constantly being
crushed under the flashy expensive rims of the various “isms” rolling through
the world we live in.
The tire tracks on our backs were just starting to fade,
when I saw this bus coming at us full speed just as we were about to step off
the curb at we-can-move-past-this-episode avenue. The driver, Lilly Allen, a
British pop singer that I didn’t know existed until I was trolling on the
internet and ran across her controversial “Hard
Out Here” video and the responses—positive and negative--to it. What is
supposed to be “a light-hearted satirical video that deals with objectification
of women within modern culture”—according to Allen in response to the Black
feminists who took offense at the video—turns out to be another vehicle for
calling out sexism and misogyny without understanding how race is intricately
woven into the fabricate of discrimination against women of color—especially
Black women.
While the lyrics sound as if the song can be a feminist
manifesto, the video paints an entirely different picture. Lilly asks, “Don’t
you want to have somebody who objectifies you?” and proceeds to do just that
under the weakly executed guise of satire.She sings that if we don’t get the sarcasm, then we’ve misunderstood,
but it’s Allen who misunderstands. Her stinging indictment of patriarchy in the
music industry subjugates Black women to the roles that she rallies against. Though
she uses diverse dancers (African-American, White and Asian) the only ones twerking,
making sexual gestures and getting slapped on the ass are the Black dancers. Allen
is right when she sings, “Inequality promises that it’s here to stay. Always
trust the injustice because it’s not going away.” Allen’s video continues to
sexualize the bodies of Black women. She is simply a stand-in for the very men
she calls herself calling out.
As I lay in the gutter, trying to collect myself, I could
hear the rumbling of another bus coming. I didn’t have time to roll out of the
way; it was too late. Kansas City Fashion Designer Peggy Noland was driving a
bus painted with her infamous naked Oprah Dresses. Noland, who has worked with
Miley Cyrus and Rihanna, has created a line of T-shirt like dresses that
feature Oprah’s face photo shopped on to various Black women’s nude bodies.
There’s a skinny Oprah, a fat Oprah, an Oprah with a KISS rock star face and an
OMG! full frontal naked Oprah!
When asked about her inspiration for the dress, Noland said
the idea came about as a result of society’s fascination with what designer,
celebrities are wearing during red carpet events. So instead of Who are you wearing? as in designer,
one can say that he/she is wearing Oprah. Why Oprah? Noland claims that “One of
Oprah’s most effective qualities is that she’s a placeholder, she’s a stand-in
for you with her foibles and her failures—especially with her public issues.”
Never mind that Oprah has carefully crafted the Oprah brand that has made her
one of the world’s most powerful women. Noland explained that she tried to mimic
what artist David Nelson did in the 80s when he created a painting of the then
recently deceased Mayor of Chicago, Harold Washington. The painting was of a nude Washington dressed
in women’s lingerie. Washington, Chicago’s first African-American mayor was a
well-respected and much-loved public figure, especially in the Black community.
And the painting created such an uproar that some Alderman ceased from the Art
Institute where it hung. The incident ignited a wave of racial tension in the
already segregated city.
In an interview about the dress, Noland said, “We feel very
protective of our public figures; we don’t want them to be exposed that way. .
.” But it’s interesting that in her misguided attempt to show us the human side
of public figures, she chose to model her concept after Nelson’s work of a
beloved Black figure to create an unflattering image of another iconic figure
in the Black community. I don’t understand why she didn’t use someone else who
has struggled with weight or another powerful figure to make a statement—why
not Kirstie Alley, Hilary Clinton, or even Jackie Kennedy? Why this trend of
White women rising up against patriarchal norms while throwing Black women
under the bus to make their point?
When I saw the broken discarded bodies of my sisters
scattered across these American streets, I thought it couldn’t get any worse.
Our bodies had been crushed under the White feminist banner, only to be hit by
another bus barreling toward. This bus was driven by none other than, R&B
Crooner R. Kelly promoting the release of his latest album, “Black Panties”. The bus was filled with R. Kelly supporters who prefer
public amnesia to acknowledgement of Kelly’s reckless past with under aged
girls. The arguments are the same: the girls were “fast” and wanted it, the
parents were to blame, and he was found not guilty. Never mind that the release
of the album coincided with a lengthy detailed interview with Jim DeRogatis, the
pop music critic who first broke the pornography case against Kelly when DeRogatis
was mailed a copy of the infamous R. Kelly sex tape.
This is not here-say as the staunchest supporters would have
us believe. In a recent interview with the Village
Voice, DeRogatis gives a detailed description of what it was like to work
on the case against Kelly. DeRogatis points out the obvious: the pornography
charges, the annulled marriage to his 15 year-old, protégé, Aaliyah, and the cases
settled out of court. DeRogatis also talks about how the court documents are
filled with lurid stories of Kelly’s escapades with underage girls, and how he
was able to get away with it for so long. The girls testified that that they
recruited girls for Kelly and he forced them to have sex with each other.
Not guilty doesn’t automatically mean innocent. Kelly has
consistently denied all of the allegations against him, but he instead of
moving away from the controversy, he goes full throttle with some of the most
vulgar and sexually explicit music that makes you wonder who served as his muse
especially given the album covers for Black
Panties.The cover features Kelly
carrying what looks to be a very young woman clad in black panties. He’s
holding a violin bow as if he’s about to play her. Then on the deluxe album,
Kelly is surrounded by young Black women wearing only black panties. The songs
and the images are disturbing. It’s as if Kelly knows that he got away with a
crime and he’s rubbing our faces in it.
Race issues are about Black men and gender issues are about
White women, so where does that leave Black women and girls? It’s 2014. Do we
need hologram of Sojourner Truth delivering her “Ain’t I Woman? Speech in 1851 at the Women’s Convention in Akron,
Ohio? In defense of her video, Allen
said “it has nothing to do with race, at all.” But Lilly Allen, it does. When
it comes to Black women in America—it has everything
to do with race. Allen is absolutely correct when she sings “It’s is hard
out here for a Bitch especially a Black one looking for a bone of respect in a
country that continues to deny her humanity.
The irony of it all is that, DeRogatis a White man, who
benefits from patriarchy and White privilege in America understands better than
Allen, Noland and Kelly what it’s like on these streets for Black women and
girls. DeRogatis believes Kelly was able to give do what he did because of the
marginalization of Black women in our society. “The saddest fact I’ve learned
is: nobody matters less to our society than young Black women.”
Beep, beep! Get of the way. You know what they say about
buses, if you miss one, there’s another one coming—and it’s headed our way.
