blacksnextdoor

So, Barack and Michelle are sweeping through Europe like the black John Steed and Emma Peel. Can’t you see Michelle next in a spandex cat suit with those dangerously arched eyebrows, brandishing a swishy sword?

Watching the rage filled crowds with cries of ‘eat the rich’ on the streets of the UK, I was — as always worried at how routinely life goes on stateside even as we lose our homes, jobs, savings.  If American democracy has a pulse, guess it’s reflected in those poll numbers always flatlining our TVs.

Good thing we have a leader that can passionately emote. Barack’s press conference at the ExCel Center following the G20 summit was unbelievable.

I almost didn’t pay it any mind because I had a million things to do, but Barack drew me in. Made me listen. 

I am slightly ashamed to admit this but it’s official: I adore our President the way some women adore certain Hollywood actors and sports stars.

I love Barack and Thursday just took my enfatuation with him to new heights because it felt so much like an intimate chat between the two of us that had nothing to do with my eyes or lips or any of that nonsense former significant others have narrowed me down to to distract me from the missing bigger picture. 

He discussed the plans he was making with heads of state around the world to protect my financial stability from any future funny stuff.  He spoke in behalf of me as a woman with her own distinctive interests that he was appointed and ready to defend – oh with such deep throated sincerity by the way — but whose range of opportunities he was expanding on globally in as much as the rest of the world was ready to meet us halfway.

The opposite of inspiring, that morning I had ridden the subway in a car with just a few people doing a reverse commute away from Manhattan, two of them a younger but not quite young black man and woman. The woman was pregnant, just showing, her hand unsurely on her rounded belly the whole ride.  

The man had this ultra diesel sitting posture, legs and elbows spread wide, meticulous corn rows spilling down his shoulders that some woman, perhaps the one sitting beside him had toiled over for who knows how long.

Everything about him spoke of this sense of entitlement that trumped the worried looking woman next to him as well as their unborn child. At one point when the woman who apparently was not his wife mentioned that she didn’t want her child to have a different last name than she did, he slung his big, strong arm around her small, frail shoulder and gave her a lecture on ‘not caring what other people think’ the whole time he asserted ownership over her emotionally and physically, masterfully disowning her socially and economically.

You didn’t need a crystal ball to know that this woman’s future as a mom was going to heavily rely on state help, state enforced child support payments and maybe even a phone call or two to 911.

When the two of them stepped off the train, an elderly woman next to me rolled her eyes in the air at what we had both witnessed, not because we had never seen such a thing before but because we had both seen so much of it, see so much of it every day.

I understand that Mr. Wonderful may have not grown up in a home with a father who was kind to his own mother or had had no father around at all, but what I don’t understand is a masculinity so trifling it’s at odds with its own legacy which is what that woman and child under the right conditions offered him.

Anyway, see Beyonce’s new film Obsession with a white female homewrecker as the fave scapegoat for the stressed out sexual politik of black men and women — or grab the one you’re with to waltz in the romantic  glow of this long overdue first couple of ours, Barack, who also grew up fatherless yet models a manliness that’s as graceful as it is strong, and Michelle, a jazzy dynamo confidently exemplifying the virtues of being a black wife and mom for all the whole world to behold!

I don’t know about you, but when I find myself suddenly staring at the ceiling in the wee of hours of the morning, I reach for the remote and watch Oprah. I have no idea when exactly she’s on EST time, but there she was beside Tyra Banks Friday morning sometime before dawn using Chris Brown and Rihanna’s troubling relationship as a case study of sorts.

Wow, I never cease to revere how she’s taken a tacky forum like the talk show and transformed it into something between a temple and a town hall that not just Americans but people all over the world – she’s huge in Saudi Arabia – depend on for moral direction and advice on how to live whole, fulfilling lives.

As for Tyra, post modeling, she has bloomed into even more of a femme fatale — as unbelievable as it is that she could have become more of a tigress than she already was but I think there are all these dimensions to her that modeling didn’t let her explore that she’s leveraging.  

I mean she’s basically cleaned up the down and dirty Rickie Lake time slot and audience in a way I didn’t imagine possible, is actually guiding a demographic  of younger women that Oprah doesn’t reach, into a more stylish, informed femininity that does however — positive aspects  aside — seem to be embedded in too many accessories!

Anyway, I know not a single song by Chris Brown, have very little familiarity with what he does. I have observed him once or twice on a TV in my teenage nephew’s bedroom that always seems to be tuned to BET and my impression of him right off the cuff was that it’s unnatural for a young man that age to smile so sweetly, so it comes as no great surprise to me that he has a hellish flipside.

As for Rihanna, I know her music a little better, though I would like to mention as a disclaimer that I feel like an ancient Greek discussing a fight between Zeus and Hera somewhere up on Mount Olympus when I attempt to wrap my head around a celebrity couple’s argument in a Lamborghini en route to the Grammys .

Oprah and Tyra did their best to take Rihanna’s bite marks and bruises and turn them into a ‘teaching moment’ for the young girls nationwide who have seen this whole awful drama unfold and may have needed help processing it, especially in light of the fact that Chris Brown and Rihanna are apparently still dating.

The problem I had with the whole discussion was the way young men were discussed or —  weren’t. They never got past being ‘they’ and ‘them,’ and hovered over the whole discourse in a way that could only be felt as problematic.  At one point when a girl in the audience brought up the possibility that Rihanna may have gotten physical with Chris Brown first and that Rihanna’s reconciliation with him may have been evidence of her complicity in the violent nature of their relationship, the point that a boyfriend can only restrain a violent girlfriend was made without addressing the issue of violent girlfriends.

Something’s missing.

For starters, there’s no male version of Tyra to help young men work through this discussion.

As for the the absence of nurturing role models for young black men on the home front and in our neighborhoods, that’s best illustrated by Tied To Greatness, an idea of Alex Ellis, a black designer, amongst other things, who visits schools in cities like Philadelphia and Chicago to teach young black men how to groom themselves for success.

To date, Mr. Ellis has given out around 2500 ties to young black men who have never undergone such a basic male rite of passage as being taught how to knot a tie.

Hello!

Aren’t our sons one of our community’s greatest resources? 

Up and running again right on schedule.  Start of a new year, start of a new me.  Received so many lovely greetings by email and phone, the most poetic coming from my friend Pierre Eddy Constant in Montreal who wished me a ‘pluie de benediction.’

The transition from an old year to a new one gives us a license to express ourselves with such romantic flamboyance.  Anyway, I’m greatly appreciative of this new door that’s opening and intend to avail myself of all it offers.

Still, it has been difficult to ignore the Israeli attack on Gaza. I know the Israeli intent is to attack Hamas, not the entire population of Gaza but this is war and war is war. I know the correct word to use here is ‘incursion’  or perhaps ‘siege’ because that kind of terminology makes these orgies of violence seem more akin to laser surgery, but for the sake of all those who will lose their family members and homes, I’ll avoid minimizing how horrific this all is.

What’s shocking to me is how this endless nightmare continues to be responded to with talk of ceasefire or more mortar, more missiles.  How many times have both sides been here before – and failed? What a frustrating cycle.

Was in full agreement with Mona Eltahwy’s  2 January Post-Global blog editorial, Israel Opium of the People. http://www.newsweek.washingtonpost.com/postglobal. 

I’ve been following Mona’s writing for many years, used to really enjoy her postings on the Muslim Wakeup site when it was first launched and know her to be someone with a fearless perspective on Arab and Muslim life. I think her fearlessness is driven by a deep concern for the future of Arabs and Muslims and was disappointed but not surprised by some of the comments her editorial received.

It may seem strange to some, but reading Mona’s piece I was reminded of The Shopping For Justice march down Fifth Avenue in Manhattan on December 16, 2006 in behalf of Sean Bell, the young man brutally murdered in Queens by rogue police.

I’m not someone who does marches usually.  Large gatherings of angry people once made politicians nervous. I don’t believe they still do. But I marched for lack of a better way to pay my respects to the father and mother.

Thousands of people marching together against police brutality in black neighborhoods… so promising, I thought – but where’s the march against black men using epidemic aggression against other black men?

If the case is being made for black life not being cheap, why don’t we really make it? So I waited days and months after the march to see if our black leadership in New York would tap into the exhilaration and passions stirred during the march to take on the larger issue of black male quality of life. So many guns and knives in our communities used on a daily basis against each other.  But it probably wouldn’t have been politically expedient to do this.  A young black man was only worthy of this level of involvement if his life was taken by the police. Not enough.

Anyway, we’re entering into a new phase time wise and thus presented with a chance to handle our lives and life itself with more creativity, sensitivity, and intelligence.  I didn’t do the resolution thing, but have created a weekly personal action plan.  Can you believe that it started with me bringing my own totes to the supermarket? Sounds trivial, but I’m noticing other people not packing their groceries into plastic bags.

Stay tuned for more coverage on my poorly conceived attempt to save the planet…bisous