"you love black people, huh? here, smoke a whole pack of black people!"
dick wolf, lemme make law and order: twitter unit
shout out cicely tyson, even though my golden girls reboot is now canned, mad love for you ✊🏾
shout out naj and ethel’s club 🌱
no shout out to **** *** making me wait dummy long for my mf desk 😑
shout out to jah and getting their project off the ground (after much caucasian deliberation) 🙏🏾
shout out leah, out here doing the damn thing and getting stem assistance to communities who need them the most 🔬
shout out abby govindan for convincing the whole world that she is capable of getting an award for making mid tv ✨
shout out stephen colbert, you know why my g 👀
shout out the weeknd and michaela coel. fuck awards. ✊🏾
shout out black teachers fighting the yearly battle against administration that won’t make space for black history in the curriculum, we see you 👊🏾
no shout out to ‘emily in paris’ 🥐
*big ass inhale*
here's the thing about emily in paris: i simply do not give a f*** about emily or what she's doing in paris. i do not give a single fuck about it, i can’t. pure mid, a dirty tupperware of reggie tv. i have seen more white women find love in my life than i know what to do with. should they find love? yeah, whatever, i want all folks to be happy and find a connection but emily...i’m sorry, je ne give a fuck pas au sujet de ta vie d’amour and it’s not all on you. back to your croissants.
tv and film have been a cheap ticket into many different worlds, imaginative, escapist, interrogatory, revelatory, etc especially during a global pandemic where our wanderlust ended at the front door.
everything has its place and all art is subjective but a universal truth in art is that white art often gets to be the center of all of our conversations because the people creating the art, financing the art, promoting the art, consuming the art (hatefully or happily), reviewing the art are white. as someone who has had opportunities to pitch black stories to a bunch of white people, a lot of people consider bipoc storytelling “necessary” and “important” however not necessary or important enough to challenge your typical white viewer's fragile makeshift reality. i don't want any smoke with anyone who worked in any capacity on emily in paris however i know how this industry works. we all know how this industry works. money coming in, money coming out. and there's always money for white escapism but there's never money for bipoc, queer, or anti-capitalist movies, all stories that this country and the world desperately need to hear after years of being on the sidelines at an away game that they didn't even sign up for.
i do not need to see emily in sri lanka. i do not need to see emily in bahrain. i do not need to see emily in mozambique. however, there is a very real possibility that those stories would get told because emily in paris, through some miracle, got plenty of eyes and then got award nominations over very real and challenging art like i may destroy you and da 5 bloods, art created by black creators who have fought every single day of their lives to get their stories out whereas i reverse lifetime movie like emily in paris, where a lily white woman goes a little bit outside of her comfort zone to meet someone who is different than her in language and heteronormative gender expression with the same as her in race, isn't paradigm-shifting, isn't groundbreaking, isn't a story that is thought-provoking. the same fight has been fought in many different categories at many different award shows over the last forever and it is clear now more than ever that award shows are contingent on you playing a money game and if you're a person of color playing a respectable role in that game.
everyone has their escapism and i'm not here to deny that it might have provided a necessary escape during a time where none of us can leave our houses (at least that's what people are saying), but what i took from this globes announcement, snubbing black storytellers for the trillionth time was that white mediocrity and middle of the road art will always win out over black innovation in the eyes of the decision-makers and the money movers and that hasn't deterred me on helping my friends and family tell their stories and in telling mine. after a year where everyone learned what racism is for the 34th time in the last 3 years, this globes season is a reminder that the fight doesn't stop to get necessary stories in front of people's eyes, ears, and hearts.
there is plenty of white art that i simply adore however it's because it was thought-provoking and emotionally deep or truly fuckin hilarious and in the face of all of the diversity initiatives and inclusion mandates, i'm upset that i may destroy you did not get any noms in any categories. but i'm more upset that i expected it to be different given everything.
biggest takeaway: keep writing, beloved. keep making that art, shitty or not. awards are nice but the stories we tell and the hearts that we touch are more important.
on the next loosies…i'm going to talk to one of the good homies, dj sweatybynature aka ashley hefnawy about navigating our own queerness within our religion, islam, and our own views on sex and sexuality.
before that, let me break off a piece of her work to share here with you in the style of her newsletter big habibi energy:
“The theme of this week is catching up to my feelings. Perhaps you can relate. Here’s an example of how it goes (for me):
You’re in a situation where you feel small. Maybe you’re working in a space where someone refuses to acknowledge your boundaries. Or maybe you’re talking to someone who has really intense masculine energy, who triggers you and reminds you of someone who used to hurt you physically and emotionally. Either way, you are forced in that moment to survive. Your instincts kick in, and tell you now is not the time to be dramatic. Be cool, remember you’re supposed to be chill, you’re a cool girl now. This is adulthood. So you smile, laugh your way through the microaggression/racist act/misogyny. You become a clown. Nothing can hurt a clown. This is what you tell yourself.
You get through the conversation, and go home. You’re walking on a street, immersed in your phone despite your better judgment, and a construction worker spits at your feet. It might not have been so direct—they might not have had the intention to spit at you, it was just kind of serendipitous. You were walking, they were smoking their cigarette, and now there’s an echo of spit on your boot. You look up, furious, and without missing a beat or making eye contact, you spit back at the construction worker’s feet. You keep walking and decide to put your phone away. The construction worker could have retaliated, but they didn’t even realize what you’d done (luckily for you).
See at this point, you’re not only angry about feeling small, about losing your voice—you’re also angry at yourself. The mind chatter takes off, and you start addressing yourself as if you’re a child. What did you think you were doing? Why couldn’t you just speak up for yourself? Why’d you let that man near you without wearing a mask? The dialogue is one sided and whoever your mind is addressing, is silent (again).
Okay now let’s unpack that.
When you grow up in a body that regularly experiences violence, whether that’s physical, emotional, or just something you witness, it becomes part of you. Your senses are attuned to violence, so much that you almost feel like it follows you everywhere. You can be a person who is the victim of violence, or you can be a witness. You can also be a calm, not so angry spirit, despite all of these things. (One of the greatest lessons I’ve learned as an adult is that multiple conflicting things can be true about a human being at the same time.) But just because your spirit isn’t angry, doesn’t mean your mind isn’t programmed to behave in angry ways. When you first learn this as an 18 year old, you don’t have the emotional awareness to understand why you keep screaming at bank tellers who tell you that you’ve overdrawn your account (again), smashing your fist on cars that try to run you over at crosswalks, or yelling at grocery store workers. You kinda just thought this was how people behaved.
But then time passes, and you almost get into a fist fight with a man driving one of those cars that tries to hit you. He chases you down the street, screaming curse words at you. You didn’t ask for this! You were just trying to show him that your life is worthwhile, that you’re entitled to walk and feel safe in this body as a woman like any other man on this planet can walk and feel safe.
That wakes you up. You realize that your anger has controlled you for some time now. So things start to change—no more fights with strangers, no more letting your family get the best of your emotions. You’re grown up now, things are different, okay? You’ve lived in the same city for a good chunk of your life, and at this point, someone will definitely see you getting angry on the street. Can’t have that.
But what comes next is maybe even worse, because all that anger, all that rage that you’ve internalized, that’s become part of your genetic makeup (but not your spiritual makeup, and that’s why people call you calm, cool, collected, this is why people think you’re “chill”)—guess where it chooses to channel its energy? At you. Your mind and body, specifically. So whenever you feel off or sick, whenever you perform less than 100% on a pop quiz called “life happens” you attack. Stupid bitch, how could you be so naive. Why did you think you could get away with something like that. How did you ever think you’d get that fellowship/residency/publication? What do you think you are, special? Or better yet, white? Those opportunities are not for people like you. Oooooh and it’s mean, way meaner than you’ve ever been able to be to a grocery store worker or a stranger on the street. It’s mean and violent in a way that actually shocks you sometimes, with unplanned outbursts. It’s a little bit satisfying because it feels like, fuck, finally, we can be honest with ourselves. We can give in to the anger. But it’s mostly scary.
So here’s the thing about directing anger at your gut that is in pain because you sought the comfort of a little too much sugar while trapped in your house in the middle of a snowstorm (and 11 months into a far less social life thanks to pandemic). You might not know at first that the way you’ve been feeling all day is even anger. You might just think it’s just one of your depressed days, where you feel really stormy inside and it’s hard to pinpoint any one emotion. When your loved ones text to check on you, you ignore your phone because any attempt to articulate anything you’re feeling is fake. But then something clicks—your gut has always been the first thing to respond when you do some wild fuck shit. They’re always there, holding you accountable, whether or not you wanna hear it. Why’d you have to go and do that, you know we don’t eat entire raw jalapeños with cheese anymore as a midnight snack...Oh we’re drinking alcohol again? Even though you know how I get? Cool, I’m gonna need at least 3 days to recover, and you’re gonna have to suffer through it. They’re actually the most honest entity in your bodily life, because they never sugar coat shit. And today, that storm of feelings you’re feeling because your gut’s been in pain all day, and they’re tryna tell you that they’re angry. And you don’t wanna listen, because listening means acknowledging that something in your body is angry, and we can’t have that anymore remember, because anger means outbursts and being a danger to society.
But if you were to listen, for just a little, you’d hear a gut that was less angry than it used it be. After all, it’s hurting for one day and you’re still able to get your work done (sorta) and you’re still kinda functioning, not like the old days where you had to call in sick from work because you really didn’t know how to listen to their needs.
You’d hear that below the anger, is sadness. And below that, is your gut’s desire to hold you accountable for your behavior. To acknowledge what you did, and talk honestly.
It gets confusing here because this is some really convoluted shit, but here’s the takeaway:
I’ve known that abused people abuse, it was the first thing I learned in therapy. I’ve always thought that because I was in therapy, and self-aware for most of my life (to a degree), I could never be an abuser. But the wild reality is that anyone who has been abused in any kind of way, doesn’t have to just be violent, who has internalized that dynamic just to survive, is capable of abusing someone or something else. And for me, behaving abusively to others seem so obviously wrong, that I’ve found small ways to channel that behavior towards myself. And I don’t wanna be too hard on myself, because truthfully, I’ve done alright. I’ve managed to live 30 years on this planet without causing any major catastrophes (alhamdullileh!!!!) But that inner dialogue, the inability to listen and instead communicate with unexplained rage directed towards myself… that shit is abusive. To me.
And that matters just as much as how I treat others.”
🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥
more next week 🙏🏾
whose story is this? - rebecca solnit
this was a wonderful book that re-centered chimamanda ngozi adichie’s speech about the single story and how dangerous it is when we let only one part of the equation (the most powerful side of the equation normally) tell the story. solnit makes a bunch of points about how whitewashing, male rehabilitation, and structural racism and sexism often occupy our minds after people get called-out but never get to have their day in telling the full story, nor the weight. her analysis of women's work, women’s storytelling, and the problem with an undecided upon truth were not new to me, however it was a new framing that i suggest everyone take some time to read.
a standout chapter: “the fall of men has been greatly exaggerated” about how when a man is called out for anything people are quick to victim blame and defend men's actions at all costs.
a relevant chapter: on women's work and the myth of the art monster. with the recent conversation surrounding the behaviors of and allegations against marilyn manson, i think that this is a topic that we all must begin to reckon with if we haven't already” “what do we do with the art of monstrous men?” ( which is also the title of a paris review piece by claire dederer.
my only critique of this book is the minimum attempts to be racially inclusive; while a very good text, bipoc stories are minimal and the book often centers white women who absolutely are the victims of being secondary to (old) white male stories. however, in centering them, it made people of color tertiary if not unnamed characters in our worlds narrative. the book is anti-men in all the right ways but glancingly anti-racist which then erases a hushed truth that white women have often held the single story over countless people of color.
black lives matter at school - an uprising for educational justice
as a former educator, albeit a short stint, the educational system is broken beyond repair. not to get all mechanic on you but you're going to have to get a new system and one that allows black kids to know that they have existed all throughout history and aren't just footnotes in white excellence or white genocide. one of my biggest regrets, while i was a teacher, was not going harder on re-centering curriculum around blackness. this was difficult because i was a science teacher and science was not as valued as english or math (now look at us, one pandemmi later), but upon leaving i made it my goal to continue to use what skills i had as an educator to identify gaps and fill them, re-centering black kids who often have to become black adults earlier than any white kid has to become an adult. then i read this book. and all of you, educators or not, should read this book.
it starts by talking about black lives matter as a movement then navigating the difficult journey of teachers trying to add afrocentric learning materials to curriculums in places like los angeles and chicago ( and if it was hard there imagine these small towns in the middle of the country). from there it leaps into educators’ and students’ perspectives on black lives matter at school.
standout chapter: “chapter 20: the black lives matter at school pedagogy”
an excellent analysis of why radical reform doesn't work because of the “reform” part of it. what seems radical to one, seems less radical to another, seems too radical to yet another. denisha jones talks about neoliberal reform strategies that do not work in education (this neoliberal ideology that doesn't work should absolutely be extrapolated to a lot more other systems in our country). black kids often get taught black history from the white gaze which often erases the horrors and put the culpability of racism and slavery on historical white people not tracing the effects to today which goes to a question i posted in a previous newsletter “ how do we learn from history that we are never taught?” who is doing the teaching is just as important if not more than who is doing the learning in my opinion and in a lot of educators’ opinions that i have the privilege of talking to.
takeaway: more black teachers. more black superintendents. more afrocentric curriculum. let black kids exist, past, present, and future.
beyond berets: the black panthers as health activists
a reminder that fred hampton and the black panthers main goals were to divest from the greater capitalist machine to create health infrastructure for vulnerable black and poor communities. often times we get told that something is bad without questioning all the angles on it, what motivations might be behind them being labeled as bad, or even basically who is the one telling us that these people are bad. for decades the black panthers have been labeled a terrorist organization, on par with the kkk, at war with the police but at their core they fought for the very things that are desperately needed in the world today: better education, better healthcare infrastructure, the freedom for all political prisoners, and the need for an international proletariat uprising. trickle-down justice works just as well as trickle down economics: poorly. do ya googles.
wandavision
listen, this show isn't even done yet and it is already in my top 20. as someone who's currently working on his own truman show-esque project, your boy is over here geeking out over how marvel is showing wanda working through her trauma by creating a whole other world to live in, something that i resonate with and i'm sure plenty of people do. me and maria have been glued to the tv set every friday. the acting is fantastic, the story is strong, the attention to detail in the stylized decade hopping format has the tv nerd in me super excited to see every single episode of this show. kevin feige, hit me when you're ready sempai, i want to make cool shit too. i have no doubt that this show is going to land and blow our minds and i really hope the other marvel tv shows can match up.
judas and the black messiah - shaka king + the lucas bros
this is going to be one of the hardest one for me mostly because i love this movie more than words can really explain but i'm going to do my best and i'm going to try and parse through some of the deeper, more personal thoughts that came to my mind after watching it. if you don't like reading, i had the privilege and pleasure of hanging out with old homies jerah milligan, jon braylock, and james iii on there truly wonderful podcast black men can't jump (in hollywood) where we reviewed this movie and talked about the important things that came out of it there too.
the story of fred hampton isn't one that has been truly examined because the american government never wanted it to. long story short, j edgar hoover had fred hampton assassinated because he was organizing black people, poor people, and neo-confederate poor white people under the same flag in an anti-capitalist, socialist, pro-black movement. the fbi murdered him in cold blood and they used an informant to climb the ranks of the black panthers, william o’neal (aka mr. it be ya own niggas) to drug him and let a planned raid on fred hampton’s house execute him. i finished this movie with maria and we had a very long conversation and out of that conversation a lot of thoughts floated to the top but that’s a story for next time but here’s some topic areas: fred hampton and global inclusivity, activism isn’t a brand, it’s survival, i felt performative in my truth but still performative on social media, gatekeeping the revolution, dying for this shit, and keep your race analysis if it doesn’t have a class analysis.
I’ll drop the letter next week when the bmcj boys drop the pod ✊🏾
happy black history month to my blacks, happy dr. king and a few others month to my whites
where da stimmy doe
shoutout reddit for showing how easy it is to destabilize the insular wall street infrastructure when you can pry yourself away from beating your meat the amount of time it takes to buy a few shares of gamestop
i still worry about the left’s capacity for revolution; the right just wants to hold power, i don’t think the majority of the left knows what it means to take that power, what may be sacrificed, how to equitably redistribute it, etc.
you can’t get inclusivity through exclusivity
that’s me vexed
dame judi dash
why did someone say “yo make that green m&m fuckable” and then someone said, “you’re the boss, let’s make that chocolate candy sexualized”
shout out desus and mero’s team for an naacp award nom and a few wga award noms! bodega hive, we eatin
shout out lil uzi vert for being cast as vision in tyler perry’s wandavision remake
abolish hyperbole
the only things scarier than black teenagers is white kids who think they’re black teenagers
am i a revolutionary?
started black history month by doing the pop smoke dance to big girls don't cry by fergie so no, nothing is going right