White American Intolerance Month

As I hope you all well know, this month is observed as Black History Month. While we Negro folk use the occassion to educate people all races of our very rich and meaningful history in this country and abroad, some people (non blacks) find it to be an exclusionary exercise in reverse racism. To my chagrin there is much ado about the lack of a month designated to spotlight the white contributions to history from our caucasian brethren come February (even though the reason why there are specific historical appreciation months dedicated to the contributions of numerous minority groups is because they have marginalized by the over-saturation of white patriarchal ideals as it pertains to the narrative of American life). I am especially dismayed at the number of bigoted YOUNG white folk who have expressed their intolerance for ANYTHING that would take whiteness from the forefront of American culture even if only for a month or worse shed light on the ill-doings of their ancestors. God forbid that whiteness should EVER have to stand in the umber of Negro antiquities. Honestly I'm shocked to find that there would even be so many vehemently racist and culturally retarded white kids in this country with their love of all things Weezy. Has this rap music radio takeover given these young whites the notion that a thing such as Black History Month no longer has merit or cause based on our dominance in the entertainment sphere? Could it be that they are getting the wrong ideas about the value we place on blackness with our Fuck-all-these-niggas-cause-I'm-gettin-money bravado? Or perhaps is it our half-Negro President-elect that has given them the notion that we live in a post-racial society with no justifiable need for such an arcane tradition as Black History Month? Hell no. The problem is that they're being taught the same fucked up values that have been passed down through generations of racist assholes who are so preoccupied with minorities remaining underfoot that the simple truth of human oneness completely eludes them after 400 years in a country filled almost completely with IMMIGRANTS. Yes, you white people are the descendants of immigrants--just like Keisha, Pablo, Kim Soo and Amir. No matter how many generations removed, all of us (barring the N A T I V E S) are imports to this United States of America.

Since after ALL this time of alien occupation in this country the white man STILL refuses to teach his children racial tolerance, how about we go ahead and give them that appreciation month they've had to endure every year without once and for all? I hereby declare that the month of March should be recognized as "White American Intolerance Month". During these 31 days America will celebrate A L L the reasons why Black, Latino, Native American, Women's history weeks/months exist by highlighting every racist, sexist, imperialist, elitist, discriminatory act committed by "our" forefathers to showcase THEIR very rewarding contributions to American societal development. During White American Intolerance Month we will go over everything from the near extinction of the Natives to slavery to homophobia to sexism to the unlawful occupation of other nations to cheap outsourced labor--

No? Those aren't the contributions you were talking about? I find it odd that there would be any objection since my recollection of my historical education is riddled with the glories of white American bravery and sticktoitivness. Sure we grazed over the less honorable white American moments like slavery, the Teapot Dome Scandal, and the Klan but I don't remember much about the Black Power movement, the Harlem Renaissance, the Watts and Chicago riots, Black Wall Street, the Back to Africa Movement, or the Louisiana slave revolt but as an America Negro I'm probably what Bill O'Reilly calls "biased".

As an objective and fair woman I am willing to take that charge AND compromise so how about this? We KEEP these culturally specific appreciation months as they ARE and white folks should try to educate themselves for the duration. We black people don't want to keep BHM just for our own nubian edification. No, we NEED Black History Month to remind everyone in this country of the fact that we are here and our story matters every bit as much as any other. Do we seek to demonize white folk and bludgeon them with past transgressions for the entire month of February as a bitter revenge for all our people have been made to suffer at the hands of their predecessors? No but I'd be lying if I said I was in any way opposed to that as a side effect. If it was up to me we probably wouldn't have a BHM. If it was up to me I'd rewrite every American History book to include everything black that ever happened since the day we got here but I ain't in charge of that shit. I believe the ONLY reason BHM still exists is because our children, our offspring, our generations are still being whitewashed by these unfathomably limited education systems we have to rely on to craft their young minds. Our kids STILL go to school everyday wondering where exactly they fit into the ethnic patchwork of Americana. Thanks to BHM you white folk have to work something of ours into your lesson plans... Even if only for a month. It's called "due diligence" bitch. Handle it with some mutha fuckin decorum... And quietly if you can manage to do so.

Send in the Clowns

In the undertow of an ever-swelling tide of haphazard multiple murders, I can't help but wonder if the great American patriarchy is finally ready to admit that it is not people of color who present the most virulent threat to their "conflict-free" way of life. I don't know about them but it has been made quite apparent to me that it's their own damn kids who want them dead. Black and Latino Americans are far too busy trying to keep up with the Joneses or keep a damn job to kick up dust with the white man these days and people of color in foreign lands are helplessly preoccupied with their own wavrs to focus any effort on dismantling the foundations of "American freedom." Yet... with little to worry about outside of where their next electronic device is coming from, white people between the ages of 18 and 34 have nothing but time to terrorize their country in every possible venue. As white folk of all classes sit in front of their televisions, wringing their hands in dread of what black and brown folk may do to cause their quiet lives unrest, their misunderstood offspring are in the next room quietly plotting their demise. Of course when it goes down there's plenty of shock and outcry. Nobody ever sees it coming then somehow very suddenly everybody should have. First the young executioners are vilified for their unwarranted heinous acts, then mourned as poor unfortunate souls who didn't get a fair shake in this apathetic society of ours that ignored their woeful cries for help. Regardless of all the assertions, at the end of the day the main question on my mind is: what the hell were the parents doing or NOT doing to make their worst nightmares our collective reality? Have they left all the dirty work of parenting to white privilege thinking that this alone would steer the little ones in the right directions or are they reluctant to allow their kids any real independence for fear that they may step TOO far out of line? Are white children appeased and sheltered to the point that they are driven mad by the banality of their lives or it the problem that these kids are enduring too much in silence while being made to put on the facade that everything is "just fine" to spare the family's public image? I mean, what's really good with America's ideal suburban nuclear family? While having virtually every resource at hand, y'all are damn near 100% slipping on the parenting tip and quite frankly the shit makes no sense.

Now I don't wanna say white folk aren't fit to parent BUT (pretty big "but" there) to make an honest observation, I think when black women made the career move from domestic labor to the public and private sectors, it left white families at a loss as far as what to do with their bad ass kids. We don't want those mutha fuckas back though so don't start getting any ideas. We have our own bad ass kids to deal with now. Black kids may be annoying as hell. They may be materialistic. They may even be pretentiously avant-garde social lemmings but at least they're not in the mall all willy-nilly popping caps. (If we don't reel them in soon though, they may not be far behind their Caucasian cohorts.) If there's anything this rash of matricide/patricide to mass homicide to suicide has made sense of, it's Hollywood's ardor for Tyler Perry and his "Madea" character. It gives white people relief to see an aged yet spirited black woman beating unruly kids with whatever she can get her hands on and brandishing firearms at them. Madea is a surrogate for the discipline white parents feel is too violent or socially unacceptable for them to perform on their own children. (Of course we Negroes are more than familiar with brutality, so naturally such castigation would do us very little psychological damage.) Even though I have already advised against it, I don't think it will be long before we see sassy black women being heavily recruited for top dollar as the must-have, nouveau, connotation-free Mammy who lays down the law with a firm hand, wisdom, unconditional love and a Beretta. Of course I'm 100% against it but who could argue with cold hard evidence? When black women used to raise white people's kids they became doctors, lawyers, statesmen and socialites. But white folks try to raise their own kids and they grow up to be spiteful, self-loathing, tuna-helper-eating sociopaths. I don't know about y'all but I'd rather not have to find out the hard way that the woman sitting next to me at work has a kid with a wacked out Oedipal complex and a chopper in his closet. If "Madea" is the solution, fuck it, yo...

Send in the clowns.

Cuffing Season

As seen in Cognition Magazine

http://issuu.com/cognition_mag/docs/nov_2012_magazine?mode=window&backgroundColor=%23222222

Well kids, it’s that time of year again. All the trees are shedding their green duds for golds, oranges and reds. There’s a light chill in the air and Starbucks is geeked up on pumpkin spice. Yes sir—it’s officially Cuffing Season and boo thangs all over are getting scooped up like so many fallen leaves. After a fleeting yet competitive Choosing Season, cut buddies are transitioning from temp to hire with the threat of colder nights and +1 parties from now until January but what I want y’all to be for real about this month is whether you’ve cuffed as wisely as you chose. I’d hate to see any of you embarrassed at Zulu Ball because you spent the whole summer bed-hopping with the fast, free and unfamiliar only to be forced to make a cold snap decision in October that you lived to lament in February. Personally, I’ve never had to deal with that regret first-hand because I don’t cuff ‘em. I catch ‘em, drain ‘em and release them back into the unforgiving wild. This of course doesn’t mean that I haven’t born witness to a slew of figurative yet painful social deaths brought on by (you guessed it) the poorly chosen cuff. Now, I’m not saying that some of you don’t genuinely adore that hood rat who behaves in public as though she’s never experienced the wonders of indoor plumbing or that whoadie who’s mind is absolutely blown by wine that’s corked in lieu of being accessed via a twist cap, but for those of you who feel like being for real, you KNOW you don’t wanna show up to your company Christmas party with THAT mutha fucka on your arm. I don’t care how good the lovin’ is, not much will help you recover from being the laughing stock of the Accounting Department. (And if THOSE cats can laugh at you, you know you down BAD, baby.) Naturally being the non-judgmental person that I am, I won’t sit here and pretend to know all of your individual mating proclivities or romantic needs, but I will help you ask yourself the right questions about who you cuffed and why.

First of all—how did you spend your Choosing Season? Were you outchea in these streets head first while taking no inventory of whose DNA you engaged or did you make eye contact with a couple people long enough to assess their character? Did you perhaps try going on an actual vertical, fully-clothed, honest-to-God DATE with ANY of these people? Ah yes—a  date. Some of you may not remember what that is but a date is when two people who kinda dig each other decide to get to know each other by having conversation in the midst of a joint activity (not sex) that allows them to interact on a mature, intellectual level. Meeting up at a bar with a gang of people does not count as a date. Light conversation between orgasms does not count as a date. All that fun stuff your moms and pops used to do before they got married like going to movies, shows and the park? Those were dates. Also, that shit you do with your best friend WOULD be a date if you both were romantically inclined toward one another but of course we know you’re not. (That one was somewhat judgmental, I admit, but in my defense, I meant for it to come off that way. Step into the light children.) One thing I’ve noticed about people these days is that actual dating has fallen by the wayside. I’m not chastising anyone because I am more than guilty of it too. All I’m saying is a date would help us better assess who we might be getting involved with so the sudden and inconvenient realization of “This dude/chick is a damn fool” doesn’t have to slap us clean across the face in a public setting.

Furthermore, if you decided to forego the dating process altogether, did you ever introduce the would-be cuff to your friends? (I don’t mean your favorite bartenders either.) One thing that may help the non-discerning gage the quality of their chosen boo is the by observing the reactions of their closet and most valued homies. True we can’t allow our friends to pick our significant others, but if they meet your potential mate and he/she is received with a chorus of “What the hells,” you may want to take a second look at that thang. Just a thought…

More important than your courtship “process”, when you chose your cuff what were your motivations? Were you scorned in the last boo draft have been determined to have your comeuppance ever since? Have your most clutch of patnahs acquired full-time bed mates to keep them busy ALL NIGHT LONG, leaving you to prowl the streets for some strange all by your lonesome? Have your siblings been telling your folks all about “The One” who the family is finally going to meet this Christmas and you simply refuse to be run through a gauntlet of degrading and invasive queries such as: “Where yours at?” “How come you never bring anybody home?” “Are you gay or just too fucked up in the head to keep some damn body?” I’ve been through all the same scenarios but none of them are good reasons to make a hasty decision in a moment of desperation that could easily last you a lifetime. (Y’all know unplanned pregnancies are a mainstay of Cuffing Season, right? Yeah… right.) Your cuff shouldn’t be picked based on some yearning to be in step with your peers or to live up to the stringent expectations of your family members. The easiest way to find yourself in a bad situation that you can’t find your way out of in one sound piece is to enter the situation with your own true desires on the back-burner. So don’t be pressed if you look up and it appears that everybody you know is cuffed this year. If your friends didn’t read this column they may find themselves lonely once again come Choosing Season 2013, you'll be back at it like you kids were never apart. And who cares if the little bro/cousin/successful overachieving sister caught ‘em one? Moms, Pops and G-Moms will have to do their very best to go on living WITHOUT all the melodrama circulating around your relationship status. They’ll get over that dumb shit. I promise. If they find themselves unable to chill on the subject of your love life, bring the hood rat/whoadie to dinner at the house and see if they ever bother you about getting married again. CASE CLOSED.

Most importantly, if you happen to be one of the lost souls who have recently been run through the emotional ringer, I beseech you to not lean on the next most willing participant as a crutch to get you through this, your Cuffing Season of discontent. Loneliness can and will find you even within the confines of a committed relationship, shug, so it would most certainly NOT behoove you to settle just because you’re using the oldest and most ineffective trick in the book to soothe an aching heart. I know you’ve probably heard this before, but let me reiterate that time spent alone doesn’t have to be filled with woe and lament. Whether we be serial monogamists or have just experienced a flash-in-the-pan heartbreak, time with oneself can be truly rewarding. There’s no better way to figure out exactly what it is that you need out of this life than to learn it from YOURSELF. They say life is the best teacher but as sometimes co-dependent creatures, we want someone else to do the learning work for us. More oft than not that surrogate takes the form of a significant love interest. When Cuffing Season rolls around, it’s difficult to resist the allure of companionship even with a broken, battered sense of self and a fucked up perception of love, but please keep that ish to yourself. Nobody deserves the lack of trust, sincerity, attention that you’re able to provide in this delicate state and you don’t deserve to torture yourself by making the hollow attempt. Sometimes, we’re just not ready for what we want and in the lean times we must prepare for the harvest although the yield doesn’t bode abundance. If there be any lovesick sports fans out there you should know that an offseason is every bit as important to an athlete as playing the game itself. The offseason is primetime for conditioning and strategy. If you can manage to stay fit in the offseason, you may be in just the right shape to take home that ring when it’s all said and done.

So if this Cuffing Season you find yourself seemingly out in the cold, don’t even trip off that, love. You’ll just have more time to get this whole self-identity ish right and put yourself in the best position to cuff the right one. And if you really don’t care to heed these many suggestions I’ve made and simply MUST have a warm body to bring to that Halloween/Thanksgiving/Christmas/Mardi Gras/Valentine’s Day event, I’m sure you have a solid regular that you can call upon at the last minute (who’s more than willing to settle for being a mere ornament). Standing cut buddy = Cuffing Season Late Draft Pick. Ain’t no shame in it, love… warranted that you can at the very least be for real.