'Black Women It Sucks To Be You!'

The ladies over at What About Our Daughters slay me. And more importantly, they do it while shedding light on an underreported subject: African American women and girls. You know how Nancy Grace loves to devote hours of airtime to missing (white) girls and children? Did you know she does it while completely ignoring women of color who have gone missing? Well, WAOD blows the trumpet on injustice regularly. And they still manage to maintain their humor. They pretty much hit the nail on the head as to why I wouldn't watch CNN's 'Black in America' special even if I had cable:

Will Black women be misrepresented yet again? Will CNN try to pull an ESSENCE and depress the heck out of us all or try to prey on our paranoia? Will they scratch beneath the surface and go further than the epidermis or will we just hear the same pablum regurgitated in the tradition of NBC New's African American Women Where they Stand also known as "Black women it sucks to be you!" Or are Black people inherently difficult to please and all other networks should avoid trying to tell Black folks who they are? Man I miss Ed Bradley. Now HE would have put together a heck of a series on Black people and not just rehashed and reheated the panels from Tavis Smiley's State of the Black Folk's Union presented by Exxon Mobil, McDonald's and Rudy Ray's Rib Shack and Waffles.

Seriously (also, Rudy Ray's Rib Shack and Waffles? *dead*). Because CNN ruins everything, it was inevitable that they'd do their best to ruin blackness. And as I've said time and time again, as there are no blacks who are also women, it's sure to have lots of hand-wringing about the endangered species: black men. If you catch it, let me know how awful it is. I refuse to subject myself to it (no matter how many chain e-mail messages I get from black people reminding me to WATCH CNN'S BLACK IN AMERICA SPECIAL TONIGHT). I don't care how cool Soledad O'Brien is, either. Bah.

HIMYM - the Hot/Crazy Scale

I've been really race-heavy today. (I've also been really post-heavy today, lol.) I mentioned How I Met Your Mother in the last post, and despite my minor gripes with it — while it's not a sexist show, it's a show that's clearly written by men — I still love it. Actually, though the show's not sexist, Barney is. Enjoy this clip about the Hot/Crazy Scale.

Centennial Boule + Centennial Barbie

I'm heading to DC on Saturday for Alpha Kappa Alpha's Centennial Boule. First off, Boule is always a huge event (it only happens every other year) and on top of that, this is our hundredth year, so... you get the picture. And since the Centennial Boule will be my very first one, I'm super-excited. Also, I haven't been back to DC since October for Howard Homecoming. In other words, I've been bouncing all week. Numbers vary, but there are something like 20,000 members of the org who are registered for the conference, plus innumerable unregistered members... and that number doesn't include our fans. Many greek men I know who live on the Eastern seaboard will be making their way to DC for as my Sigma co-worker put it: "AKA heaven!" And, um, we have a Barbie doll. It was announced earlier this year, but the pics have just surfaced. I love her features, though I wish she were a little darker (so she could be representative of more women in the sorority, while avoiding the brown paper bag stereotype), but eh... it's one of those things where you're damned if you do, damned if you don't. Isn't she purty? [Photo courtesy the Chicago Sun-Times] The other thing I love: her dress is actually in our colors, SALMON pink and APPLE green (not magenta and forest green, not hot pink and kelly green).

Five Reasons Black Women Are Angry

Fox News pundit Cal Thomas made a point in a recent conversation about Michelle Obama that there are no non-angry black women portrayed in the media.

THOMAS: I want to pick up on something that Jane said about the angry black woman. Look at the image of angry black women on television. Politically you have Maxine Waters of California, liberal Democrat. She's always angry every time she gets on television. Cynthia McKinney, another angry black woman. And who are the black women you see on the local news at night in cities all over the country. They're usually angry about something. They've had a son who has been shot in a drive-by shooting. They are angry at Bush. So you don't really have a profile of non-angry black women.

(CROSSTALK)

PINKERTON: Oprah Winfrey.

THOMAS: Oprah Winfrey. Yes, there you go, Oprah Winfrey.

[H/T WAOD] Some people aren't pleased with the comments. Taken out of context, as these things almost always are, they are inflammatory, but Thomas is right (though his examples suck, as not all black women are angry because their kid got shot in a drive-by, I mean, come ON). Over at Daily Kos, there's an interesting post which strikes me as a teensy bit reactionary. But really, we know that images of black women in the media and pop culture tend to be angry ones. The unhappy bloggers out there seem to think that there's something wrong with black women being angry. I don't think there is. All black women aren't angry, but many (if not most) are, and I say, why shouldn't they be? Here are five reasons why black women have every right to be pissed.

1. Sisters have to do it for themselves. Something like 70% of black children are born out of wedlock. Some of those kids are supported by single fathers, but most are being raised by mothers, grandmothers, and aunties.
2. Mammy, Jezebel, and Sapphire. Black women in the media tend to fall into one of three categories. Either she's an asexual, maternal Mammy (Oprah), an acceptably lustful Jezebel (Halle Berry), or a bitchy, angry Sapphire (Omarosa). Not only are these dangerous stereotypes, but they also are terribly misogynistic, which contrasts nicely with the fact that...
3. "All the Women are White, All the Blacks are Men, but Some of Us are Brave." White women are the baseline for womanhood, and at no time has that been more clear than during this primary season. The myriad articles about women choosing Hillary, while blacks choose Obama (save one Times piece back in October) make little-to-no mention of the fact that black women are — you guessed it — both black and women. I used to think I chose my blackness first, but in the last few months, it's become clear that it was chosen for me. The fights between white and black feminists have been very telling, as well.
4. Professional black women are all at sea when it comes to dating. While I don't buy into the notion that there are no good black men out there for educated, well-off black women, it's clear that pickings are slim. There's encouragement to date outside the race, but like most women, black women are seeking to find a man who's like their daddy, or other important male figure, who is usually black.
5. There's not freedom to be oneself. Granted, this is something that every non-white-male group experiences in some way — anger isn't exclusive to black women, obviously — but black women are beyond the pale of the mainstream, different, in a way that isn't exotic or acceptably fetishizable, like Asian or Hispanic women are. Black women work so hard to fit in — hair relaxers, adjusting speech/code switching, wearing fashions which weren't designed for women with curves, the list goes on. Maintaining the veneer of acceptability is tiring, and when you think about it, utterly enraging.

So there you have it. Five reasons I think black women are angry. I'm a black woman, so I have a little bit of authority on this. Black women readers! What makes you angry? Not-black-women readers! What makes you angry? Let's talk.

Virginity is for lovers

"Human Nature" is one of my favorite parts of Slate (beaten only by "Dear Prudence" and sometimes, "Explainer"). In it, William Saletan tackles some truly touchy issues with patience and logic. In the essays, he does an excellent job of explaining why some things we consider to be "natural" are quite the opposite, and vice versa. What those of us who've descended from a judeo-christian tradition take as irrefutable human truths are often just constructs which were developed out of biblical misogyny — and seriously, the misogyny in the Bible is quite breathtaking in both scope and influence. Saletan has written essays on homosexuality and incest, oral sex, and most notably — and controversially — the effect of genetics on intelligence. He took a lot of heat for this last one, and later even wrote an apology of sorts. More recently, Saletan brought up the issue of "virginity restoration." A piece in the Times discussed the growing popularity of hymenoplasty among young Muslim women. The interest is spurred by a court case in France in which a marriage was annulled by a Muslim man who discovered that his wife wasn't a virgin (and he announced this to the still-partying guests before taking the woman back to her parents' home). The uproar is over the fact that French court allowed a marriage to be annulled based on something that's so clearly misogynistic. However, I'm not going to argue that the marriage shouldn't have been annulled. While the man's behavior was despicable, it wasn't totally unexpected. The emphasis placed on virginity in Islam (and even Christianity) is strong, and women more often than not know what they're getting into. But they shouldn't be punished for having sex outside of marriage, and if the structure they reside in won't allow for pre-marital sex, then I think hymenoplasty is a reasonable answer. Saletan:

You and I can sit here all day rehearsing these complaints. And some day, God willing, the twisted culture of virginity hypocrisy will wither away. But until it does, hypocrisy is its own best remedy. Help these women deceive their husbands and parents. If they want artificial hymen restoration, let them have it.