Adapt? Isaiah Thomas Tweet To Chris Rock

Isaiah Washington's Tweet To Chris Rock

Unlike some others, I don't think what Isaiah Washington tweeted to Chris Rock qualifies as "respectability politics."
I think what Isaiah Washington's call to "adapt" is plain old caving in.




Black people shouldn't  have to "adjust" into expecting white supremacy to be norm, especially when they have the material goods associated with extreme success  Black people shouldn't have to and they shouldn't do because white policemen should collectively be trained to believe that they are not entitled to harass any black person they see.


But maybe Chris Rock could make an adjustment in response and decide to seek justice. He's been stopped 3 times.  I think a little less forgiving it; a little less taking a selfie each time and making a tiny point about racial profiling; and a little more making the police pay for their mistakes is in order.



Isaiah Thomas doesn't have the same money Chris Roch does through his own foolishness (Grey's Anatomy fiasco) But Chris Rock has enough money to buy himself some justice.



Unless the police have been giving him tickets for some sort of real violation like doing 60 in a 35 mile an hour zone, then he should sue them and have a lawyer ask them 'What's up with that?' and 'What is it about me that makes you pull me over for nothing?'



He can afford to sue the police department, sue them again, and sue them a third time. He can afford to sue every time he's stopped for nothing. He can afford to go on a fishing expedition and ask them to crack open their records and see what percentage black people are getting tickets for dumb stuff like 40 in a 35. He can afford  to spend a few million dollars training the mostly white run police department to behave better.



We don't have to wait for things to get as bad as they did in Ferguson and then have the Department of Justice go in and investigate racial bias in a police department.



The rich among us can chip away at some of the "little things" Because if this is happening to Chris Rock, you know doggone well the same thing is happening to the middle class black person. And if this is happening to rich and middle class black people, then worse things are happening to poor black people.



But Chris Rock and other rich only going to be able to do something like this when they decide to make a donation to the black community. It's quite possible that someone like Rock would have to give up his career, as far as it depends on a white audience and white power structure in Hollywood.

I would think that he, Denzel Washington, and up-there-in-age Music Mogul x already have more money than they can spend in 20 lifetimes. Why not set aside x millions for self and family then invest the rest in straightening out just one little, wide spread thing out for the black community?

Marissa Alexander's Not So Peculiar Link To Michelle, Gina, Amanda, Jada, Janay, & Steubenville

In 2013 Marissa Alexander was serving “mandatory twenty year sentence,” for shooting a warning shot into the air after her abusive husband, Rico Gray, threatened to kill her.” And article author Charles S Mombo at Chocolate City asked,” Where is the community outrage?”


Well, there is always a notorious lack of outrage whenever a woman is battered. And it doesn’t much matter which community you’re talking about.


What sometimes follows and parallels that lack of outrage is a backlash against a woman that finally shoots an abusive husband. Women used to (still do?) get long sentences if they shot an abusive husband in self-defense. Therefore, it's not at all shocking to me that this woman fired a shot into the air and got put in jail. It is only surprising that Marissa Alexander's original sentence was 20 years instead of something like 10 years but out in 5.



Sexism and gender bias are as codified into our laws as racism is, if not more so.


Do you remember Ariel Castro? His time in mainstream media spotlight was brief but horrific. I know you remember. He snatched a teenage girl off the street, kidnapped her, then held her prisoner, chained up, in his house. He did this to a total of 3 young women, girls really.  Michelle Knight, Gina DeJesus, and Amanda Berry were all women by the time they escaped 10 years later.

Ariel Castro's story came to an end when he committed suicide shortly after being imprisoned. Coward.


I couldn't find too many details when all this was happening, but holding those girls hostage wasn't Ariel Castro's first time out. He'd had practice holding a woman hostage and torturing her before he ever caught those three girls. Years before, Castro also beat and chained-up his common law wife ...before she escaped.

Yes, Grimelda Figueroa left her ex running. She ran out into the street screaming, much like Amanda Berry did, according to one news outlet. This would tend to mean that rat bast**d Ariel Castro should have been under a jail for beating his common law wife, Grimelda, long before he had a chance to snatch, imprison and torture those three girls.

Understand: Ariel Castro held those three women hostage for ten years...because the police, lawyers, judges, and the rest of us, didn't take seriously multiple accusations of domestic abuse from Grimelda Figueroa


 Grimelda's treatment isn't shock worthy. The law doesn't care about wife beating too much. It never has. And, that's probably because we-the-people don't care much either. But we'll get to that later


While Michael Vick was being sent to jail for abusing animals, some his ball playing co-workers were being given a good talking-to by their coaches / team-owners for physically abusing their trophy wives (=not supposed to talk or think for yourself, or else).  And for most of those ball players? A good talking-to was as far as it went.

The-good-talking-to-punishment? This was seen as enough until Ray Rice was caught on video dragging then dropping on her face, the finance he'd just knocked out. He was suspended for two whole games.

Then, the director's cut of the same video came out.

It was at this point that people could no longer pretend that they didn't already know that Rice had  punched his fiance in the face hard enough to knock her out. So the collective outrage rose a bit. Before seeing fist connect to face, twice? I dunno. I guess some people thought she just fainted or something.

Many people in the black community dismissed the 1st and 2nd editions of the Rice knockout video as quick or quicker as the Eric Garner video was dismissed by some white people The excuses were even the same: 

"Well...we weren't there, so we don't know what really happened."

"Let's not jump to conclusions"

"The court said he was innocent!!!"


I wonder if police or other law enforcement officials took Grimelda's statement about being held hostage and beaten said the very same things to her face?  Just kidding. I know they didn't. But I wonder if they thought these same things, to her face, as they dismissed her.


It seems to me that laws are weak in regards to wife-beating because there are so many men and approximately half as many women wailing about possible "false accusations” of wife-beating and/or rape every single time a man is accused.

The people willing to bend over backward

in order to believe

that false-accusations-of-beating

(despite photos and video)

is as big a problem

as wife-beating itself

are at least as numerous

as the number of white people

worried about "false accusations of racism"

every single time

a black or brown person

files an EEO complaint

or dies

at the hands of police

unarmed.

Remember Steubenville? Remember those teenage, pre-college football players in Ohio that raped that unconscious, drunk, white girl and virtually walked?  In the middle of that mess, there was video of mostly white men (silent or stoic) and loud white women protesting in the streets trying to protect their sons' football scholarships etc.  When video and photographs of the rape victim came out, men and women alike essentially started calling the raped girl a tramp who shouldn't have gotten drunk.

"What was she doing there?" 

"Why was she drinking so much?"

"It's not rape because she didn't say, 'No'"

"We weren't there, so we don't know what happened."


 Steubenville brought the words "rape" and "culture" together for me, in a real way, when I saw grown women yelling that nonsense.  But the thing that made "rape culture" 3D for me was that one teenaged white boy who was not actually involved in the Steubenville assault. He was just the cheering section.

Appearing mostly sober to me, he laughed hysterically into what I assume was a cell phone camera, "She is sooo raped right now."

I swear, it seems like it was that video comment alone which undermined the defense's argument that 1) the girl gave drunk consent and 2) nobody believed that it was "rape" to have sex with some girl that was, not just drunk but dead-drunk, and unconscious. 

I've always wondered if that argument would have seen the light of day if it had been one of the dead-drunk, heterosexual males that had been penetrated at that party. I'm just kidding. I don't wonder. There's not a chance in...


It didn't feel like more than a few months had passed before I saw the #IamJada  hashtag, created by a teenaged black girl in Texas who was also raped after she drank too much at a party. Classmates(?) had started taking selfies posing as Jada passed out being raped, just before or after she was raped, and sent them round the web as a joke. These photos tagged  "jadapose" went viral. And this young girl fought back publicly with #IamJada.

I know a lot of grown women who couldn't have done that. I'm pretty sure I'm one of them.

Think about this. Teeny tiny sentence in Steubenville for rape, half the country debating about whether it was rape at all even after hearing that the girl was being carried around limp and unconscious prior to being raped. Of course, the Jada rapists in Texas weren't afraid to sexually assault her.  A sizable portion of this country appeared to think the Steubenville rapists were railroaded. 

The stories of rape that I've heard usually begin with, "I didn't tell anybody for years because I was so ashamed of _________"  Fill in the blank with self-blame and fear of being blamed for drinking anything at all, "bad" clothing, being alone in the dark, etc. And even though I haven't had anybody tell me the group rape story, I know that is a secret buried deep inside a lot more women than we've seen on the evening news.

And the fear of hearing well we want to believe you but...

RACIAL APOLOGY #100,816,030 NOT ACCEPTED Dame Magazine's Stacy Patton

This reflexive, near-obsessive push for insta-forgiveness just perpetuates the problems of deeply entrenched racism. The rush to appease “White fragility,” to protect the zone of White comfort, denies the transformative possibilities that might result in actual racial reconciliation and justice. By not letting the perpetrator fully experience the consequences of their attack, we deny them the opportunity to take full responsibility for their actions. By rushing the victim to respond, we deny them the full, true range of their emotions and psychological response to such to evil acts.

This reflexive, near-obsessive push for insta-forgiveness just perpetuates the problems of deeply entrenched racism. The rush to appease “White fragility,” to protect the zone of White comfort, denies the transformative possibilities that might result in actual racial reconciliation and justice. By not letting the perpetrator fully experience the consequences of their attack, we deny them the opportunity to take full responsibility for their actions. By rushing the victim to respond, we deny them the full, true range of their emotions and psychological response to such to evil acts.

And by fast-forwarding the whole situation back to the comfort zone of the status quo, where racism is the unacknowledged norm, we deny everyone the opportunity to evolve and do better. Nobody acknowledges the real, ongoing damage. And we keep going back to square one where everyone is playing a role designed to prevent progress because it’s too uncomfortable and frightening to even consider disrupting the pattern, no matter how harmful and backwards it proves to be....


Sometimes I think that Black people should be more like Jewish people, who don’t even pretend to turn the other cheek, and who, when attacked publicly, never talk about forgiveness or absolution of anti-Semites. They have schooled us all to be crystal clear: When they say “never again,” they mean it...





- See more at: http://www.damemagazine.com/2015/03/29/dear-white-racists-apology-not-accepted#sthash.juVFueT5.dpuf

Calling All Women!!! --Ruby Dee

Ruby Dee   Ruby Dee     Ruby Dee and Ossie Davis

Ruby Dee reading her own poem,

"Calling All Women"

‘The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill’ Archived in Library of Congress

At the 41st Annual Grammy Awards in 1999, Lauryn Hill made history as the first female artist to win five of the golden trophies in one night. Hill, rocking her gorgeous locs, was nominated ten times for her ’98 album, The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill, and took home major awards, like Album of the Year and Best New Artist. The musician and actress had proven her talent to be undeniable and a rare specialty while singing and spitting in hip-hop group the Fugees, but still, no one could have predicted the magnitude of sheer magic she would bring via her solo album.
READ MORE: BLACK ENTERPRISE http://www.blackenterprise.com/lifestyle/miseducationlauryn-hill-library-congress/

White Racial Apology #100,816,024 Deadline's "Unfortunate" Headline -

"Pilots 2015:The Year of  Ethnic Castings -
   About Time or Too Much of Good Thing?"

Cutesy but Serious Format - Bart & Fleming, the apologizers,  must have these little discussions online much like Siskel and Ebert used to quasi-competitively review movies on television.

This would be Mistake Number 1
Two thumbs down

The Apology is just one thing in a list of things to discuss

Here we have Mistake Number 2
"nothing special happening here" conveyed instantly

The apology consisted of apologizing for specific word  choices and word arrangement while never, Ever, EVER EVAH discussing what those words ("Pilots 2015: The Year of Ethnic Castings About Time or Too Much of Good Thing?") meant collectively... ala the Levi Petty Pettit apology (#100,816,019). As long as they cyber-droned on, they only discussed how things sounded
 

This isn't just mistake number 3, 
this is mistakes numbers 1 through 100,816,021

How is it everybody above the age of 12 understands that beliefs are connected to thoughts are connected to the words that come out of your mouth...until race is the subject.   When race enters the picture, white fragility, being what it is, white folk and Bobby Jindal seem to suffer this pinpoint amnesia and forget there is a link between belief, thought, and words (and sometimes actions too). Yes, sometimes you say "math" when you meant to say "bath."  But really cannot explain away an entire sentence or paragraph this way.

But this isn't about that. 

This is about how most of us understand that putting individual words together give them a separate meaning that's more than the sum of their...parts(?)  And a lot of the time we mean those meanings, regardless of what we want to believe about the purity of our own motivations.

The words that form the question, "Pilots 2015: The Year of Ethnic Castings About Time or Too Much of Good Thing?" have a meaning collectively.

And most people of color who heard these words, understood their meaning, collectively. That's why, "HELL NO" was the answer cyber-shouted by Shonda Rhimes and a host of entertainment news reading others.  
 
We, the "ethnic," were not confused. We were especially not-confused about the "too much of a good thing" part

And it's very rare we all get confused and lean in the same direction, all at the same time, for the record. I'm not even sure this kind of unified confusion is possible when a thing as complicated as the social construction of race is at the center. 

  But the thing that really killed me about the 100,816,024th white racial "apology"was this:   Bart and Fleming? These two chuckle-heads discussed the true and offensive meaning of the headline without even noticing that they had done so.

Before they started riffing on forever about the offensive uses of the word "ethnic"(???) which led to a discussion of the how boring the word "diversity"(???) is, they actually give us an interpretation of   "Pilots 2015: The Year of Ethnic Castings About Time or Too Much of Good Thing?" 

FLEMING:

....My co-editor-in-chief Nellie Andreeva’s goal was to convey that there was such an uptick of TV pilot casting of people of color
that it pinched white actors who’ve historically gotten most of the jobs,

Yeah, we know that's what you meant. We KNOOOW.  And we knew when we first read that "unfortunate headline" that "too much of a good thing" was expressing worry over "it pinched white actors"

THE HEART OF THE APOLOGY

FLEMING: I agree with all this, but after our turn in the barrel, I wanted to say a few things to our core readers who felt betrayed.  That original headline does not reflect the collective sensibility here at Deadline. The only appropriate way to view racial diversity in casting is to see it as a wonderful thing, and to hope that Hollywood continues to make room for people of color."


But problem is that  THIS

"Pilots 2015: The Year of Ethnic Castings About Time or Too Much of Good Thing?"
DOESN'T GET CLOSE TO MEANING

"The only appropriate way to view racial diversity in casting is to see it as a wonderful thing, and to hope that Hollywood continues to make room for people of color."   BUT IT DOES MEAN
  ...My co-editor-in-chief Nellie Andreeva’s goal was to convey that there was such an uptick
of TV pilot casting of people of color
that it pinched white actors
who’ve historically gotten most of the jobs,   ESPECIALLY WHEN FOLLOWED BY     and to question if this could last  if it was being treated as a fad.     which could mean in this particular collection of words
that this is uptick for "ethnics"
is temporary anyway
so why worry about it?    


Nellie may not have intended to convey the same ole, same ole  'What about US? Why isn't there a WHITE HISTORY MONTH!  I'm complaining because 95% of grade school, junior high school, and high school history class being about white wasn't enough.' 

Honestly, she may not have meant to express "What about us?" Again. But the headline, the explanation, and the apology  aren't slips of the tongue. This isn't like saying "math" for "bath." Hard core, card-carrying, overt racists express the very same things in harsher language. How many "bad word choice"  coincidences in a row are we "ethnics" supposed to swallow?

PURVI PATEL - FIRST WOMAN IN THE U.S. CONVICTED OF FETICIDE

The fetus was 24 or 25 months old when she miscarried(?) Then Purvi Patel, 33 years old, threw it in a dumpster. I don't like this AT ALL. But this is hardly the first time I've heard a woman (usually a teenager) doing such a thing. So how is it the first woman CONVICTED represents a group 4% of the population?

And the only other one charged was Asian American too? Could that be correct?

However, at 25 months this was a 6 month old baby.

Was this the oldest child ever to be disposed of in this way?

Could it have survived outside the womb with proper care?

I have more questions than answers.

PURVI PATEL CONVICTED IN INDIANA.

]
She was sentenced to 20 years in jail

"Iyer says that the fact that the only two women charged with infanticide are Asian American is important to note because women of color often lack access to basic health care, counseling, and other reproductive health resources.

"Immigrant women of color, such as Bei Bei and Purvi, remain vulnerable to the exploitation of laws like these in a myriad of ways, as we have seen in how they have been treated by the state of Indiana," said Iyer. "The cultural issues that the prosecution decided to drag into this case reflect stereotypes about Asian-American women and reproductive health which may not necessarily be true in this case." "

Click here for more at NBC NEWS

Choosing Rape over Race

But as I vomited in the backseat of the taxi that Cosby ushered me into after he assaulted me one night in the late 1980s, that Dr. Huxtable image no longer made sense. I felt both physically violated and emotionally bamboozled.

Still, I didn’t want the image of Dr. Huxtable reduced to that of a criminal. For so many of the African-American men I knew, William H. Cosby, Ed.D. provided a much-needed wholesome image of success, and the character he made famous was their model for self-worth and manhood. I knew that, in my reluctance to add my assault to the allegations facing Cosby, I was allowing race to trump rape...”


As I debated whether to come forward, I struggled with where my allegiances should lie – with the women who were sexually victimized or with black America, which had been systemically victimized. I called several friends for advice. While some encouraged me to speak out, others were cautious – even angry.

One friend, an African American man, insisted I should stay quiet: “You will be eaten alive, and for what? The black community is not going to support you.” It wasn’t what I wanted to hear, but I think it was his way of protecting me.


When I finally told my story in the New York Daily News in November, it was hard for me to look other African American people in the eye. On some level, I felt that I had betrayed black America. And some of my African American friends seemed too hurt by the damage to Cosby’s image to offer me any support. The friend who had dismissed the stories of Cosby’s white accusers, for instance, didn’t offer me any words of comfort.


READ MORE AT THE WASHINGTON POST http://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2015/03/06/bill-cosby-sexually-assaulted-me-i-didnt-tell-because-i-didnt-want-to-let-black-america-down/

Your Silence Won't Save You - Audre Lorde

I was going to die, sooner or later, whether or not I had even spoken myself. My silences had not protected me...Your silences will not protect you...

I began to ask each time: "

What's the worst 
that could happen to me 
if I tell this truth?"

Unlike women in other countries, our breaking silence is unlikely to have us jailed, "disappeared" or run off the road at night.

Our speaking out will irritate some people, get us called bitchy or hypersensitive and disrupt some dinner parties. And then our speaking out will permit other women to speak, until laws are changed and lives are saved and the world is altered forever.

Next time, ask: What's the worst that will happen? Then push yourself a little further than you dare. Once you start to speak, people will yell at you. They will interrupt you, put you down and suggest it's personal. And the world won't end.

And the speaking will get easier and easier. And you will find you have fallen in love with your own vision, which you may never have realized you had. And you will lose some friends and lovers, and realize you don't miss them. And new ones will find you and cherish you. And you will still flirt and paint your nails, dress up and party, because, as I think Emma Goldman said, "If I can't dance, I don't want to be part of your revolution."

And at last you'll know with surpassing certainty that only one thing is MORE frightening than speaking your truth. And that is NOT speaking.”

~ Audre Lorde

Michelle Obama Video: BLACK GIRLS ROCK!!!

Look, I am so excited to be here

AT BLACK GIRLS ROCK

OOH




To all the young women here tonight and all across the country,let me say those words again

Black Girls Rock!

We Rock!

WE ROCK!








No matter who you are
No matter where you come from
You ARE beautiful
You are powerful
You are brilliant
You are FUNNY!


Let me tell you I am so proud of you. My husband, your president, is so proud of you. (Cheers) And we have such big hopes and dreams for every single one of you

Now I know that's not always the message you get from the world. I know there are voices that tell you,

that you're not good enough,
that have to look a certain way,
act a certain way. 

that if you speak up
    you're too loud


that if you step up to lead,
you're being bossy...


************************


You can't tell me she didn't look fierce!