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ExistencialTranscedentalRealis
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read my profile
sign my guestbook
Name: Nena
Birthday: 9/25/1900
Gender: Female
Interests: all those things you wonder about.
Expertise: tricking you into believing i'm an expert; spying on you.
Occupation: Unemployed/Between Jobs
Industry: Construction
Message: message me
Website: visit my website
Member Since:
10/15/2003
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| Woman is the nigger of the world
Yes she is...think about it
Woman is the nigger of the world
Think about it...do something about it
We make her paint her face and dance
If she won’t be slave, we say that she don’t love us
If she’s real, we say she’s trying to be a man
While putting her down we pretend that she is above us
Woman is the nigger of the world...yes she is
If you don’t belive me take a look to the one you’re with
Woman is the slaves of the slaves
Ah yeah...better screem about it
We make her bear and raise our children
And then we leave her flat for being a fat old mother then
We tell her home is the only place she would be
Then we complain that she’s too unworldly to be our friend
Woman is the nigger of the world...yes she is
If you don’t belive me take a look to the one you’re with
Woman is the slaves of the slaves
Yeah (think about it)
We insult her everyday on TV
And wonder why she has no guts or confidence
When she’s young we kill her will to be free
While telling her not to be so smart we put her down for being so dumb
Woman is the nigger of the world...yes she is
If you don’t belive me take a look to the one you’re with
Woman is the slaves of the slaves
Yes she is...if you belive me, you better screem about it.
We make her paint her face and dance
We make her paint her face and dance
We make her paint her face and dance | | |
| Woman is the nigger of the world
Yes she is...think about it
Woman is the nigger of the world
Think about it...do something about it
We make her paint her face and dance
If she won’t be slave, we say that she don’t love us
If she’s real, we say she’s trying to be a man
While putting her down we pretend that she is above us
Woman is the nigger of the world...yes she is
If you don’t belive me take a look to the one you’re with
Woman is the slaves of the slaves
Ah yeah...better screem about it
We make her bear and raise our children
And then we leave her flat for being a fat old mother then
We tell her home is the only place she would be
Then we complain that she’s too unworldly to be our friend
Woman is the nigger of the world...yes she is
If you don’t belive me take a look to the one you’re with
Woman is the slaves of the slaves
Yeah (think about it)
We insult her everyday on TV
And wonder why she has no guts or confidence
When she’s young we kill her will to be free
While telling her not to be so smart we put her down for being so dumb
Woman is the nigger of the world...yes she is
If you don’t belive me take a look to the one you’re with
Woman is the slaves of the slaves
Yes she is...if you belive me, you better screem about it.
We make her paint her face and dance
We make her paint her face and dance
We make her paint her face and dance | | |
| The following is a co-authored book review of Debra J. Dickerson's The End of Blackness. Written for Prof. Griffin's "Critical Blackness" class at Occidental College by Emme Geissal, Nena Malhotra, and Alexina Shaber.
In her incendiary book The End of Blackness, Debra J. Dickerson poses an Ayn Rand-esque, at times appealing argument for the empowerment of black people through self-examination and problem solving from within the community. To the capitalistic American palate, this strain of thought is appetizing; indeed it affirms the power of the individual to reshape society. Her overarching thesis that blacks should be “allowed to simply be…sovereign human[s]” is problematized, however, by loaded contentions that push for the end of blackness, rather than a new critical blackness in which a true community of difference is allowed. Her thesis does not, in fact, advocate for real social change. (pp. 3) She expects blacks to rise up in society by assimilating into “white” culture. Her lack of knowledge of contemporary critical race theory leads to schizophrenic, enigmatic solutions.
Among the most glaring issues with Dickerson’s arguments is her inability to retain a consistent argument. A few enlightened sentences glow through the general murk that is her writing, but they are not enough to salvage her misguided literary endeavors since the contradictions are so arrant and often appear within a single sentence. She freely writes about the internalized presence of racism in the current governmental structure, but then places the responsibility to change it solely in the hands of black people.
Scholastic achievement, crime, family breakdown, welfare reliance – all are now as bad as or worse than they were during Jim Crow. Why? These complicated realities certainly implicate racism and structural inequality, but the problems remain regardless and can only be addressed by blacks, not whites. (pp. 12)
If she can agree that the problems lie within government programs, then she should readily contend that the people who control the structure must work to remedy them. Dickerson herself agrees that those in control are not “black” people, but “white” people. (cite) Her point that black people must take control of themselves and work to improve their communities is a solid one, but it is overshadowed by her allegation that “the past is as rectified as it will ever be.” (pp. 26) The problem is not even that she overlooks the injustices within the system, but that she acknowledges them, argues that they will always be there, and then charges only blacks with fixing their economic, social, and political status in the United States. How can a person, realizing the horrendous inequalities woven into a government, disregard their condition as unchangeable, or worse, acceptable?
A similar contradiction occurs when she discusses the plight of the archetypically sub-middle-class “black bus driver” twice in the introduction, and directly addresses the threat such a person will encounter by virtue of being black:
That bus driver knows just how likely he is to be body-slammed against a police cruiser without cause, his patriotism notwithstanding; he knows exactly how obsequious he must seem if he is to reach his home without having had his body cavities publicly probed. He knows. Small comfort though it is, he can soothe himself with the knowledge that the police at least have to lie about what they did to him. Where in the world, outside the West, would that be true? (pp. 9)
That Dickerson can extract “comfort” from such scenario is baffling. She seems to know too well the problems black Americans continue to face, but she refuses blacks the right to upset emotions that naturally ensue such a recognition. Instead she turns her anger inward, toward the black community, in direct incongruity with powerful preceding statements regarding discrimination in the U.S. After her example of the bus driver, Dickerson writes that the “reality is that no one can stop the American, black or blind, who is determined to succeed.” (pp. 9) Does that statement apply to her bus driver whom she admits is constantly at risk for racially based, structurally supported violence?
At first mention of this emblematic character, she writes about his hypothetical children’s opportunities in the U.S., saying that “it is the place where [they] can realistically aspire to the Ivy League, Wall Street, or Capitol Hill. Yes they will be outnumbered and disadvantaged at every step of the way, but they can nonetheless arrive there if they don’t give up and aren’t unduly unlucky.” (pp. 7) Here she once again highlights the tremendous problem of structural racism, only to gloss over it with a rephrasing of the illusory, sedating “American Dream.” It is absolutely true that people need to work hard to achieve anything at all, but it is aside from the point; if the very foundation functions in direct opposition to a particular community, it is both ignorant and reactionary to advocate its maintenance. Pitifully, she confuses self-ablation and internally-directed hatred – an ideological move tied to the struggle to whiteness and the fear of change – with progressive radicalism.
Furthermore, Dickerson peppers her book the distressing locution of “black surrender,” a strain of rhetoric that explicitly calls for the termination of blacks’ fight for social, economic, and political equality. These ideas cannot be said to stem from lack of information, as throughout the book she displays a detailed understanding of the systems of racism deeply embedded in American society. In the chapter “Kente Cloth Politics,” she provides a circumstantial outline of both intra-racial discrimination and external racism from whites, and yet she still concludes that overturning the live-and-kicking system of racial discrimination is unnecessary, or futile. “Once you’ve gotten the office to observe Black History Month,” she asks, “what’s next? Nothing but SEC filings and more depositions between you and next February.” (pp. 234)
In fact, there is much to be done, namely addressing the micro-aggressions and economic disparity that minorities experience as a daily struggle, but her opinion holds that blacks find their sole purpose and identity in their anger toward whites, as there is a degree of “romance” attached to the “agenda” of disrupting power structures. (pp. 234) The huge concession is mystifyingly gratuitous, as she continually acknowledges the clear disadvantages of being black in this society. She should perhaps recognize that it is difficult for marginalized communities to trust America after their histories of oppression. Yet she so adamantly insists they must trust and “surrender” to America. “Why not?” she inquires, quickly justifying that “[black American] ancestors did it.” Black ancestry is inextricably linked to slavery; as such there is an implicit stripping of subjectivity associated with it and thus there is simply no space for the option of “surrender” or battle.
The argument is confused at best, and judging by her (perhaps specious) mastery of black history as it relates to racism, it is unendingly condescending to say of those grappling with the ability to trust white America that “it is hard to know what it will take to satisfy the ‘woe is me’ race men that they are citizens; perhaps a giant Hallmark card signed by every Caucasian in America.” (pp. 10) Judging from the vein of contemporary critical race theory that is being published, “apologies,” as such, are futile in that they affirm the status quo by merely appeasing, rather than examining and reworking the structures – political, economic, educational, and social – that immortalize racism. How she reached the inference that blacks childishly want an “I’m sorry” letter is an enigma.
Still, she reserves the term “civic terrorism,” an ill-defined, vague label, to denote those unhappy, or “actively at war with America.” (pp. 11) In addition to her lack of exposition, the tag is alienating and particularly egregious in a post-9/11 world in which the word “terrorist” inspires the most impassioned hatred in American’s hearts. In her use of this nomenclature, she actively divorces herself of any association with those blacks upset with continued oppression, whom she sees as self-pitying in their insistence of their condition as outsiders; as if this anger is symptomatic of being essentially dysfunctional. These are dangerous waters upon which she treads, as anyone not wanting to be akin to so-called “terrorists” can easily slip into her fallacy.
While it is important to re-imagine a new blackness, Dickerson calls for the end of blackness – a moot view in that it requires blacks to relinquish their blackness and the anger that comes with the oppression of a dispossessed people. It is clear that she lacks contemporary scholarship under her belt; she simply doesn't understand that blackness has been constructed as denoting the status of the non-citizen, and as such it is neither possible nor useful to imagine that blacks can suddenly become fully “American.” As the book progresses, her arguments begin to take similar shape to those of Chris Rock, whose stand-up routine she holds under examination for distinguishing between “black people” and “niggers.” “And,” as Rock adjudicates, “Niggers have got to go.” | | |
| (tell me what you think...i can take the brutality)
My wish was never to entrap you
Flylike
In my notebook.
What inspires words is not you.
You are not poetry, and i give you:
Little to No subjectivity.
It's not the object;
It isn't you.
I am inspired. Never by you -- be cognizant.
(Seize and be attentive to detail.) I feel;
I exist only insofar that... ;
You act;
We interact --
And poetry?
The work of an inexperienced chemist.
It is the occurance of me,
Taking words that taste ill
-- of you --
Making unimpressive brickwork
Of the acerbity. I structure the following:
(Not you!)
But my experience of
time, space, and the intersections of flavor.
In fact, you are forgotten,
But never your aftertaste,
And the imposing mark,
The stench,
Your feeling,
Left squashed in the liminality
Between two pages,
Two lines,
And no meter. Because the wasteland of dry, bitten tongues
Leaves no trace of you,
I will remember only the sensation invested
In the pocket that is this poem,
And you will have slipped away
From the jaws of an unspeaking mouth. This poem is not about you,
And my inspiration bears little resemblance
To the you that exists somewhere outside
The vastness of this page:
Where you live as the crispy husk
Of an infinite sentiment. | | |
| The Origin of Love When the earth was still flat,
And the clouds made of fire,
And mountains stretched up to the sky,
Sometimes higher,
Folks roamed the earth
Like big rolling kegs.
They had two sets of arms.
They had two sets of legs.
They had two faces peering
Out of one giant head
So they could watch all around them
As they talked; while they read.
And they never knew nothing of love.
It was before the origin of love.
The origin of love
And there were three sexes then,
One that looked like two men
Glued up back to back,
Called the children of the sun.
And similar in shape and girth
Were the children of the earth.
They looked like two girls
Rolled up in one.
And the children of the moon
Were like a fork shoved on a spoon.
They were part sun, part earth
Part daughter, part son.
The origin of love
Now the gods grew quite scared
Of our strength and defiance
And Thor said,
"I'm gonna kill them all
With my hammer,
Like I killed the giants."
And Zeus said, "No,
You better let me
Use my lightening, like scissors,
Like I cut the legs off the whales
And dinosaurs into lizards."
Then he grabbed up some bolts
And he let out a laugh,
Said, "I'll split them right down the middle.
Gonna cut them right up in half."
And then storm clouds gathered above
Into great balls of fire
And then fire shot down
From the sky in bolts
Like shining blades
Of a knife.
And it ripped
Right through the flesh
Of the children of the sun
And the moon
And the earth.
And some Indian god
Sewed the wound up into a hole,
Pulled it round to our belly
To remind us of the price we pay.
And Osiris and the gods of the Nile
Gathered up a big storm
To blow a hurricane,
To scatter us away,
In a flood of wind and rain,
And a sea of tidal waves,
To wash us all away,
And if we don't behave
They'll cut us down again
And we'll be hopping round on one foot
And looking through one eye.
Last time I saw you
We had just split in two.
You were looking at me.
I was looking at you.
You had a way so familiar,
But I could not recognize,
Cause you had blood on your face;
I had blood in my eyes.
But I could swear by your expression
That the pain down in your soul
Was the same as the one down in mine.
That's the pain,
Cuts a straight line
Down through the heart;
We called it love.
So we wrapped our arms around each other,
Trying to shove ourselves back together.
We were making love,
Making love.
It was a cold dark evening,
Such a long time ago,
When by the mighty hand of Jove,
It was the sad story
How we became
Lonely two-legged creatures,
It's the story of
The origin of love.
That's the origin of love.
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