Black Boys need a hand… not necessarily yours.

Black Boys Need a hand… not necessarily yours.

Recently a fire captain in Miami Dade, Florida was demoted for his response to the
death of a child. The child who inspired the construction of this archive. According to
Brian Beckmann the teen’s killing was actually the result of poor parenting (his language
was much more colorful). While this is profoundly disrespectful to the Martin family let’s
bracket that and consider this: What research did Mr. Beckmann use to formulate his
opinion of black family life? What sources can he cite in support of these assertions
which negatively impact the Florida community (and communities across the country)
which looks to him and people like him for honorable social service. If I were to search,
would I find a published literature review authored by Beckmann profiling the
contemporary black family? No? Hmmm.

As an academic I am held to a standard which, I think, should be the norm. I don’t get to make assertions about a group (*including my own), a community, a people, based upon how I feel about them. Thus, my freedom of speech ( the doctrine most cited when people like Mr. Beckmann publish vile commentary) is checked by my commitment to academic integrity. Irony.

So let’s talk about that. Let’s talk about how Black Boys have loving families and active parents. Let’s talk about how Black Boys need a hand… but not necessarily yours.  To put it plainly, perhaps we should all focus on our own familial health and resist the urge to make uneducated claims about others.

Noah is the kind of child who generates mirth.  The amusement I experience during our lives together is rich and organic.  “Do you need help Noah?”  “Nope… wait, I need a hand.”  That sounds about right.  Caleb, of course, is hysterical without intent.  “It’s as big as me right?…  That’s because it is me.”  Har har har…  We can’t take our eyes off them.  We, my husband and I, hang on their every word.  Everyday.

In the midst of popular rhetoric which assures me black americans are incapable of planning their families and loving their children I can only, unscientifically, use my experience ( a sample size of one) as a parent to counterbalance that rhetoric.  I figure my experience is at least as valid as Beckmann’s in support of my… opinions.  This was a good day.  The snow had fallen for hours leaving a thick blanket in the backyard.  The perfect conditions for world building.  Yes, you correctly identified the toys as something you would see during the summer in a sandbox but… why wait?  Beach toys work just as well in the snow.  While the entire backyard was ultimately transformed into a Matoran (Lego characters) village, I won’t say we spent hours on the task.  World building in the snow is an activity which must be done quickly.  Little hands get cold and small wet fingers begin to ache.  No matter how much I fuss at the children to wear their gloves ultimately they’re pulled off to do the finer work of building castles in the snow.  So.  As mother and father we keep track.  We pay attention to how long little fingers have been exposed.  We laugh and direct and guide the activity all the while with clocks ticking in our heads (how long have those little hands been exposed) and plans of cocoa and goldfish for a snack.  Playing in the snow is spontaneous, but, then again it’s not, because parenting is active.  It takes foresight.  Parents do a great deal of planning.  Everyday.  Black parents do, in fact, parent Black Boys.

*The black community is not a monolith.

Black Boys have Super Powers!

Black Boys have Super Powers!

If you were a super hero, what kind of super hero would you be? At six years old Caleb wanted to freeze time, have the power of a volcano, and have the ability to morph into any living thing. As I stood listening to the kids, my mind called upon the shared experiences engaging with media that must have informed these choices.  This is the summer Shark Boy and Lava Girl was available at BlockBuster.  There was one located three blocks from our home.  I would routinely walk down the street, heavily scented with the blossoming trees of Lincoln Park, and drop in to pick a family flick.  I staunchly avoided anything explicitly produced by Disney.  I felt, then and now, compelled to protect my children from narratives and imagery which degrade any group with respect to race, class, or gender.  More importantly, we sought to eschew any media which, in many ways, ignores the meaningful existence of our children. There is much at stake when it comes to children and their imaginations.

http://vimeo.com/41377080

Now.  Of course Noah’s response is much more complex, as usual. What’s the story behind “the popsicle thing?”  During the summer we allow the boys a couple of hours of television which we watch with them.  This particular summer shows like Shaolin Showdown were airing which was great for us as we search for diverse representations.  While watching Shaolin Showdown on Cartoon Network we would frequently see a strange Popsicle commercial where a Superman-like hero flew through the air frightening monsters and handing out Popsicle’s to awestruck children.  That’s as clear as I can be.  The rest of Noah’s powers are all related to Lego Bionicles which he’s had an obsession with since he was three (to this day).  Black Boys like Legos.

There is much at stake when it comes to children believing they are visible to the world around them.  Popular culture is failing at telling stories which enrich children of color and so is failing at enriching all children.  Recently a friend posted a comment by Native Elders:

‎”Today we are fighting a great battle against the popular culture that surrounds our kids. It’s a battle for their hearts and minds. We need to work to inspire them to embrace their own history and culture. Without them, we Indians have no future.” Floyd Red Crow Westerman, Sisseton-Wahpeton Dakota

This problem of invisibility and indignity is not specific to Black boys. I can’t say for certain if Black boys suffer the most beneath this current cultural regime but I can say I worry a great deal.  This archive is transferable.  The questions and discussions here can and should be applied to all children of color as we think about experience, maturity, and the active formation of the self.

Black Boys in the Everyday – 2

Black Boys have favorite colors… sort of.

I won’t take you back to when they were babies.  We see little black babies.  Whether we speak of them fondly as gifts or intimate they are the verminous offspring of a shiftless race, we do in fact, see black babies.  I’m interested in starting at the point where black children become invisible.  Not literally but culturally and collectively they are left out of the American story of childhood. They are absent in stories of innocence and exploration.  Curious little minds stumbling toward brilliance making every effort to define their world and find their place within it don’t come in black skin.  This is not an oversight.  This can only be a willful omission.

The experiences of black boys (and girls) are flattened and constricted as a result of the entrenched racism which permeates our institutions.  Black boys are left out of books, movies, televisions shows, etc.  Our cultural artifacts rarely depict black boyhood.  This invisibility is a large part of why black boys are at greater risk in our country.  We learn to see and value the humanity of others. These lessons are taught through countless daily interactions (with people and cultural artifacts) which define the world to our growing minds.  We are not born disdainful of others, just as we are not born with a favorite color.

Caleb and Noah were six and four years old this day.  I ask them (as you can hear) what their favorite colors are thinking it would be a simple question.  What else do you ask four and six year olds during an “interview”?  It turns out their answers were meaningful, relative, and much more honest than I expected.  In retrospect, what a silly question to ask a child.  In that moment they revealed to me how social construction shows up in every day moments.  What does it mean to have a favorite color?  Does cultivating an affinity for one color mean eschewing a fondness for all others?  Does it mean valuing one color above all others, and if so, what does it mean to like them all?

Now just in case you think this discussion of rainbows and favorite colors is a thinly veiled metaphor for race and ethnicity it’s not. Not for me.  You are welcome to go there if you like.  On this day, and even today as I write this, I am struck by their limitlessness.  These little boys saw no reason to limit themselves to one color. They were not even bound by traditional considerations of what we call colors.  Who chooses metallics as a favorite color?  Caleb and Noah.  These little black boys were open and fascinated and appreciative of all the colors of the rainbow… and then some.  I sat back and thought, perhaps we’ve done a good job.  Our children see beauty everywhere.  Everything is their favorite.  What a lush and meaningful life one could live if everything, at any moment, could be elevated to favorite.  These are our black boys.

Black Boys in the Everyday – Introducing

The seed for this project was planted a few weeks ago.  I observed something, a phenomenon peripheral to the thrust of the Trayvon Martin case, and I found myself needing a period of self reflection. I was doing pretty well with my blog but suddenly I found myself unable to write anything.  That day and many days since, there have been complaints that the “liberal” media is attempting to “show” him as “a cute 12 year old kid.”  It’s a lot of quotation marks, but I want to bring particular attention to these words in an effort to place the complaints in a particular context.  The folks complaining about how Trayvon is “shown,” are troubled, truly, like still water suffering a thrown stone, by the images of a happy, healthy, kid.  This representation (through images) is, for them, somehow inappropriate and inauthentic.  It’s not the “real” Trayvon. The cruelty in this peripheral commentary is noteworthy.  It speaks to how completely the lives of black boys have been rendered valueless and how vociferously members of our population are willing to make that declaration.  Black boys, for the complainants, can’t be happy, healthy people.  They can’t be multifaceted, fully formed, loved.  They can’t be innocent.  The complaints are a plea for the rest of us to wake up and realize Trayvon Martin is a black boy.  These images are meant to trick us.  It should go without saying his death is no loss and we must all focus on supporting the “survivor” of this ordeal.  How stunningly inhuman.  How stunningly uncivilized.  How stunningly un-American.

So my response is this.  I will introduce you to American black boys in the everyday.  Everyday encounters, interactions, experiences.  Those things that make us who we are; and we are many things.  Our lives are built structures.  Day by day.  Minute by minute.  Moment by moment, we build and are built.  My goal is not to show you how cute my kids are. I could clean up the footage; dazzle you with editing and effects.  I won’t do that. These are accumulated moments.  What did they sound like?  What did they look like?  How did we feel?  My goal is to show you life lived.

I’m starting with a fairly recent encounter, but in future posts I’ll go back in time and work  my way forward to the present day.  The footage won’t be edited (unless truly necessary).  The photographs will not be posed.  I’m inviting you to engage with moments in our lives and take from them what you will.  In the coming days listen to my voice.  I laugh and chatter a lot.  It’s the way I make my children comfortable.  Listen to my husband. He is my perfect compliment.  Listen to the boys. They are growing and curious and unsure. They are our constant companions in a life adventure.

On this day the four of us (there are five now… but we’ll get there) met Petey.  Petey has one blue eye and one brown eye.  We loved him (and feared him) immediately.  The boys patiently listened as they were trained on proper technique then bravely stood by as the dogs realized the sled was going out.  The barking and yowling are in anticipation of being allowed to run.  My husband and I are standing to the side. The sideline isn’t my normal position on an adventure but I’m expecting our third child so I’m not allowed to engage in winter sports.  This is actually why I’ve taken the boys dogsledding.  I wanted to do something with them even if I couldn’t participate. To watch them grow through an experience is worth the cold.

Luckily I’m past the first trimester. It stinks. The dogs have pooped in the snow and there’s some sort of raw meat for them to snack on.  I’m proud of our youngest who is bravely holding the line on two of the dogs he’s never met before today.  I know he’s nervous, but he doesn’t complain.  Four of the dogs are from the same litter. They are brothers and sisters and respond to Max and Wanda like small children hovering around their parent’s legs.   Petey and his sister are older. We’re taking all of this in and then… it happens.

You can hear the van starting in the background.  Max has to drive to get Petey because he’s run so far so fast.  The rest of the dogs realize they won’t be leaving until their brother comes back so they hush.  The boys sit quietly.  Once Petey is re-harnessed the excitement and yowling begin again.  Afterward, we imitated his yowling for many days and wondered what he might be saying. We were certain Max and Wanda understood him completely.  Once the dogs started to run they were silent.  When you see dogsledding in movies there’s always a soundtrack of yapping accompanying the images.  It’s not accurate.  They don’t make noise when they run.

As the sled comes around the final bend Max jumps off the back.  My husband and I share a moment of horror, but the boys are fine.  Max is a pro.  The boys bring it in and we all congratulate them.  All the grown folks laugh and pat them on the back and cheer them on because positive reinforcement is welcome. It’s  part of childhood. This is a day in the life of black boys.  It’s not even really a day.  The training and ride took just 45 minutes.  We spent the rest of the day laughing and eating and listening to them tell us what it was like to be on the sled and feel the wind in their faces.  They told us about stopping and switching positions and the rough patch they hit on the big hill.  They were elated and unafraid and enriched.  Every moment they live they endear themselves to us. I would like to introduce to you, our black boys.

Salty Wounds- When sympathetic whiteness goes wrong

There is a discussion flowing through the digi-sphere.  A sad one.  A boy was killed.  He was shot in the chest at close range.  His body.  His small body was ruined by the bullet.  See it in your mind for what it was.  See it for what it is; brutal and tragic and bloody and painful and terrifying.  He was terrified as he died at the feet of his killer who looked upon him with disdain. Should a child die, let it be in the presence of those that feel love for them.  There was no love for this child in his final moment. I am wounded and perhaps you are as well.  The black experience is not a monolithic one but there are quiet moments which force us to breathe in and share a hurt. The killing of Trayvon Martin is a terrible wound.  Then.  You added salt.

It wasn’t the articles which suggested his dark skin and hoodie rendered the senseless sensible.  Of course he was mistaken for a… what?  What could a kid walking home in the rain be mistaken for?  It wasn’t even the officer’s assertion that the neighborhood watchman was an honorable man and they respected his background.  I don’t understand the relevance.  You rubbed salt into the wound when you decided to interject your voice into the chorus of wails.  You rubbed salt when you told me “Hush, hush now, we’re all the same.  It hurts me too.”  Stop now.  Stop.  What does it mean to be culturally sensitive?  What does it mean to walk in peace and mutual respect?  Are there moments when one must keep silent if they are not part of the injured group?  Yes.  Such moments exist and this is one of them. When you chime in to “support” me, your words work to divert me.  When you sing your desire to comfort me, you succeed in making me uncomfortable and when you scream that we are “all the same,” you effectively silence me, rendering my pain, my unique, specific, culturally contextual pain, small and inconsequential.  A little thing for me to “get over.”  You make the perpetrator of this crime a rogue anomaly instead of the very real product of a racist, patriarchal society in which you occupy a place of privilege. So I’m calling for a moment of silence.  Be silent, if for just a moment.  Be still and silent and respectful.  Be wounded but be silent.  Let me feel and think and wail and curse and recover.  Let me.  This is what it means to be sensitive.  This is what it means to be respectful.  Don’t lecture me on our commonalities.  It is our difference that the neighborhood watchman relies on to justify the killing of this child.

Power, Rape, and Invisibility- Twisting Virilio’s Museum of Accidents

Bad things happen. Bad things happen that I don’t see. It’s not because they’re hidden but because hegemony tells me so. Hegemony tells me these things don’t exist and I move along, forgetting to consider… forgetting. I learned something today. It was an accidental stumbling upon. A simple convergence of time and space and familiarity that rocked my soul. I am disturbed and disrupted by this learning and deeply changed by the knowing.

One of the fundamental lessons from Virilio’s work The Museum of Accidents is the notion that whenever we invent something new, the locomotive, the airplane, we also invent an accident. With the invention of nuclear power plants we invented the meltdown. These are not opposites, they are possibilities. There are other possibilities we don’t consider because they’ve never happened. It doesn’t mean they won’t, it just means they haven’t yet. Their remoteness renders them invisible and they stay that way.

Today I was confronted by the seemingly remote but very real occurrence of male rape. He told her “no” and she didn’t listen. He’d had a lot to drink. She pushed into his room. She later apologizes. It’s okay. He forgives. Someone saw her. Word gets around. She files a complaint. It was his fault. He is victimized again. Nobody thought to ask him. When he spoke up we didn’t believe him so he hushed, bowed his head and went away. The very idea of a young woman raping a male peer is anathema. We can’t conceive of it. Every red blooded, American male would relish the opportunity to allow a hopped up hottie to force him… or maybe we should say… take the lead. Wouldn’t they? What kind of guy doesn’t like this? What kind of real man doesn’t want this?

Rape exists. Sexual assault happens. There is something we’ve forgotten to consider and in forgetting we’ve rendered a whole group of victims invisible. He isn’t the first young man I’ve come across who was raped (and I use this word in hopes of communicating all the force it carries with it) by a young woman. The first opened up about it in class, only in that moment realizing what had happened to him. He remembered passing out. He remembered waking up with her on top of him. He didn’t know what to call it. It was only during class that he realized it fit the definition. I asked him how it could be that he didn’t know. His response was “I’m a guy. I mean. I didn’t really know her and I just wanted her to be finished but I didn’t understand that she was raping me… I didn’t… want her.” He never sought support and the reality is there wasn’t much for him.

This writing for me is catharsis. It assists me. It does nothing for them. The value of the Museum is to show us what can occur. It’s goal is to force us to consider all possibilities and act to prevent them before they ruin us. The young man from today is still wounded, unsupported, and responsible for the acts committed against him. You wouldn’t know it if you met him. He is a quiet survivor who asks nothing from us. He expects nothing from us. What a shame. There is something we’ve forgotten to consider because American masculinity tells us it can’t exist. But. It does. I am ashamed at the oversight. I didn’t see. I wasn’t listening. I hear you now.

Thinking through the constructs with Sade as my guide and Skin as my lens

Consider me tainted by my sociological imagination.  Recently as I let the soulful crooning on Sade’s newest album wash over me my mind linked love to power, and because power is held by a group, not the individual, I jumped over the singular and fell into thoughts of the collective.  I know there are a couple of leaps here, but it made sense to my strange mind.  Stay with me.

Skin is the song that did it.  Her declaration of “peeling away” suggests we can be coated by our lovers.  The coating, be it heavy or light, membranous or diaphanous, the metaphor works.  I thought of not a passive coating, but an active layering which is dynamic and shifting, at times comforting and others chafing, and maybe, in a way, addictive and infecting.  I moved past lover and settled upon the constructs of race and gender and heard her say “I’m gonna peel you away, Cos you’re not right within,” in a different context.

My first leap took me through race.  One of my current documentary projects opens up a dialogue about black kids and teens and narrow televisual representation.  I thought about how children are layered with popular definitions of blackness through TV.  They are coated with mediated race.   We can see this coating as not always negative, because the constructs aren’t always negative.  Not by a long shot.  It’s comforting to drape ourselves in a collective identity, but what are the dangers of having someone else design the coat for you?  Someone who doesn’t know you but thinks they do.  I was intrigued by the idea of peeling away constructed notions of race, because they’re “not right within.”  They are troubled and the wearer is troubled by them. But like leaving a lover, the pulling away is hard.  There is difficulty in abandoning a construct even when it’s good for you.  Recognition of this difficulty is missing in the larger discourse of race and identity.

My second leap was gendered.  The ongoing Chris Brown/Rihanna drama isn’t usually on my radar but Sade will certainly take you to a place oriented toward examining abusive (mentally and physically) relationships.  My gaze didn’t land on Rihanna as most’s have, but instead I wonder about Chris.  Is his behaviour his?  Yes and… not completely.  Chris Brown has a private problem which speaks to a public issue.  American masculinity is a violent species of masculinity and it is socially constructed.  Young American men between the ages of 18-23 are the most violent group in the industrialized world, regardless of race, class, or region.  Because there are so many variations of masculinity we know that our version is socially/culturally constructed, being taught and re-taught generation after generation.  Chris (if Rihanna gets one name, so does this kid) is coated in hegemonic masculinity further complicated by race and notions of black masculinity.  “Sometimes love has to let go…”  In this story “letting go” isn’t Rihanna letting him go or vice versa, but him letting go of his warped sense of what it means to “be a man.”

Ultimately the song sounds hopeful.  “Now as I begin.  To wash you off my skin.  I’m gonna peel you away…”  The final lines make me think of rays of sun breaking through clouds which float and dissipate allowing for greater clarity.  Clear sky.  Clear mind.  Say Goodbye.

Skin (Sade)

When I found out this love’s undone
I was like a gun
Sure as it was over
Felt like nothing good could come
Sure as it’s gonna play and play
Like michael back in the day
I’m gonna peel you away
Now as I begin
To wash you off my skin
I’m gonna peel you away
Cos you’re not right within
I love you so
Sometimes love has to let go
So this time don’t think it’s a lie
I say goodbye
Now as I begin
To wash you off my skin
I’m gonna peel you away
Cos you’re not right within
Now it’s time
To wash you off my skin
Now as I begin
It couldn’t be right cos you’re not right within
I say goodbye

In support of the “black imagination”- A new focus for 2012

With 2012 underway my teaching, reading, and working interests have been focused on the imagination.  More specifically, ways in which the imagination is raced, classed, and gendered.  One of my films this year  seeks to illuminate and challenge the consistently narrow televisual representations of black kids and teens as well as assess the social ramifications of such narrow representation. A revisit of Kenneth and Mamie Clark’s doll test in 2010 rendered eerily similar results to the original research irrespective of the 70 year gap. This begs the question; if the classroom has been successfully integrated how can the test results be the same? I assert the bodies within the classroom have become more diverse but the mediated messages have been much slower to change. Our lack of media literacy as educators and parents has rendered us complicit in a failure to push for greater diversity in the consumption and production of mediated stories. The film will function as a step toward the formation of a critical pedagogy. One that, as Giroux states “…would establish the conditions to refigure a variety of human experiences within a discourse where diverse political views, sexual orientations, races, ethnicities, and cultural differences can mutually coexist… critical pedagogy is inseparable from cultural democracy.”

And what are we if not creatures steeped in culture. We learn through story. Television and movies are simply, stories of us. It is by seeing fear that we learn to be brave. It is by seeing hate that we learn what love looks like and by seeing love we learn of the rewards that come with empathy. If movies and television can impact the way a child ultimately defines love; can they not also teach that child what it means to be black? While the film seeks to call attention to what’s missing from the media landscape,  subsequent lectures seek to discuss the impact of what is there. Hill and Wilson discuss “Identity politics” as “… the “top down” processes whereby various political, economic, and other social entities attempt to mold collective identities, based on ethnicity, race, language and place, into relatively fixed and “naturalized” frames…” The discussion of identity politics is two-fold seeking to explore how the narrow representations of black youth function to define what children see as an “authentic” black identity and acknowledge that children of color consume television and movies with white protagonists and predominantly white casts, and in so doing are exposed to visions of adventure, heroism, and exploration which seem wholly unrelated to the identity which has been televisually defined for them. The dual themes of “authentic blackness” and “white heroism” become critical in discussing how black children engage in the learning process.

The documentary will profile real children engaged in cultural pursuits and juxtapose their lived experience with televisual black peers. With a few experts sprinkled in, I’m hoping the conversation will illuminate the impact of television and movies on the classroom, the students, as well as the teachers and administrators. There is much at stake. Narrow televisual representations don’t just impact children, but the adults in their lives as well.  Just recently one of my sons was  “warned” by a white parent outside his school to “don’t go getting into any trouble.”   Our son is 11 years old.  He was coming out of the school he’s attended since kindergarten with other Chicago kids who are performing two years ahead of normal Illinois curriculum. He and his friends were walking quietly to meet their waiting parents, while just behind them a group of  white students was leaving the building speaking animatedly, boisterously, with hoods pulled up.  The parent didn’t think they needed to be warned. My son understood.  It didn’t fly over his head. It’s time to discuss “Identity politics” and the ways in which the classroom and overall educational system are complicit in reifying notions of “black authenticity” which function to wound black children; a hurt which manifests in the results we see in the contemporary re-working of the Kenneth and Mamie Clark test.  I’ll let you know if I come across that parent.  I foresee a teaching moment.

Documentary Trailer

“Good Hair” and other Dubious Distinctions

Taking a look back at 2011

2011 was a tremendous year for film, TV and novels.  While the good ole boys did their thing in the theaters we were also treated to the new film Avante Garde by way of independent productions and the proliferation of web series.  I myself released the first of what I hope will be many more documentaries.  In the coming weeks I’ll offer an analysis of the treasures and trash of 2011 and what it means through the lens of race, class, gender and citizenship.