Deeply Deep: Good Hair Alison Samuels Class and the World

So I saw Good Hair."

Now there is something about Sydette that when I said I was going to see Good Hair that let every person who had ever seen it go

" Ooh I want to know what you think?
the entity/ies on my head.

Yep , I got hair

Or as the wonderful stylist from Philly who did it for graduation noted

"THIS! THIS IS HAIR"



I don't actually think it's that great of a movie. I think it reinforces some nasty stereotypes,was kind of short, but I was moved good and bad by more than a few moments in the film . I liked it because it brought to bear my issues with Blackness. I tend to have three main issues with blackness and black media.

Class. Globalization/inter nationality .

and Race.

Yep I manage to have Race issues with my blackness and a lot of it is in my damn hair. And speaking of hair beauty too! But first the movie.

It was a Chris Rock movie, There were cheap shots and passing comments at women of the hood and their vanities. his trip to india involved a crack about scary black women that kind of made me want to punt him. HARD. While it led to a striking moment the trying to sell black hair seemed mean and forced. The hair show bits often seemed designed for laugh at not laugh with and he found all of one natural sister to speak.

Rock talked a lot about the blackness of the black hair care industry.His "gag" at confusing Chinese people and Koreans was bit cheap but the moments of the Black Hair Care workers
describing the production hierarchies and the scene of the Asian AND Black hair store worker/owner describing the dislike of African hair were visceral in their common placeness.
His time at the Dudley Center , and his interviews ( really short) with the women in them . Talk about something that is a very real part of this exchange. While many prefer to talk about the sheer money that black folk spend as evidence of avarice .

But Rock talked to the Dudley's, and the hair care owners and while I damn sure didn't like the talk ( MY three year old in a perm chair over my nappy headed corpse) but he talked to them. He didn't smash em into a collective and demand they transcended. I was really enamored of watching Chris Rock listen he didn't pretend to be unbiased but he did listen. He made sure to note that black people , maybe not where they used to be or at the heads of these things survive and thrive on it.

This post is inspired by four highschool girls , beautiful young women were asked about how they feel about natural hair , which one of them had. And it was an interesting scene, because we had to listen as this beautiful girl was told by her beautiful peers about how unserious , unprofessional she would seem. and then...

the camera cut away and she never got to answer.

SHE NEVER GOT TO ANSWER!!! She was in the room she was the funnel and vehicle by which they were discussing their own prejudices and fears , there framing of their sophistication and prejudice and she is admirably calm and quiet and serene and she never GOT TO ANSWER?!?!?

That for me was an almost perfect encapsulation of how I feel about so much of my experience as a black woman in my own skin.

and hair.

Very recently Allison Samuels published an article in Newsweek ( and a rebuttal) about the hair of Zahara Pit Jolie.

that was very widely discussed and refuted that led to a really interesting commentary.

And I felt left out of all of it.

Because while it is all well and good for people to say Allison Samuels is wrong headed ( cause she is) but I do have a deep problem with the pretense tahts he is not coming from a very reasonable place.

The fact I disagree with her doesn't make her wrong to be apprehensive about the welfare of ZPJ, meddling perhaps but not wrong.

Heck the website that Latoya Peterson has her rebuttal on has deep coverage on it.

We can sit and talk about how she is breeding a conformity , and how it's stifling to little girls and what not but on the very basic level when Black people lose jobs first in economic downturns despite education, when the rape ,torture,disappearance and death of black women as secondary subjects is a very real and continuous phenomenon, and Don Imus makes shots about nappy headed hoes.

I detest what she says but I will damned if I am going to act like it's unbased and the source of the trouble. We can say that it is problematic but while Samuels does not say it a loud couching it in an African American "dialogue" it's real, and how does that response look if we admit and I mean without the moral superiority that she's not incorrect to be worried.

I wear my hair natural,three pictures are included, me right out of bed, me washed and "curly" styled and my " OH CRAP NOTHING WORKS" style. In that order.I wanted to make sure you saw it because let me be really clear on this ,

I wear my hair natural because I have enough cultural currency, privilege and resources to do so. I love it I love the feel of my hair I love the look of it , I love the stuff i get to use in it ( I do not NOT like the rate at which the stuff I use in it and the subsequent issues with pricing, No seriously I smell like,Vanilla ,Olive Oil, Sugar cookies most of the day.), I love having my hair played with( if I know you! and approve), and leaned on , love it love it love it.

And I am going to say right now , it is a difficult thing to do and I my self esteem gets knocked around on a regular basis. People regularly compliment me on my strength ( aka YOU ARE WILLING TO GO OUT IN PUBLIC LIKE THAT?!?!) while talking about loving good hair on a woman. I understand where the fear comes from and to categorize it as arbitrary policing is hard to read. Not because it is mean but because it minimizes the very real ish it comes with. Of course some of the meanest people to black people are OTHER black people.

They are often the only ones NEAR us and for better and worse our destinies our fiercely locked. This isn't jsut oh my god how backward and holding us back . This is real connective tissue that hurts on all sides. They are not ESPECIALLY mean , they are in special circumstances, and I am sick of the well I got teased memes being played to justifying the policing charge. We are ALL going through and need to be real with that, just because I dislike what you say doesn't make teh system and prejudices I talk about disappear for you.

Writers, bloggers, stylists, and other members of culturally elite spaces seem very quick to forget that those positions and occupations aren't " average person" jobs . They are not AS bound ( for me to say they aren't at all would be folly) to the norms that other professions and to answer Samuels without acknowledging the deep reality that it still matters isn't transcendental or pushing forward new blackness , its insulting to people who really and truly have to make real considerations on this.

And speaking as a multilingual multi racial ( this is getting long so I will leave my harangue about race and blackness for later) I also boggle at the postulate that being a " Third Culture Kid" means that Samuels is applying an incorrect framework. Samuels IS African American and she is narrowing her focus but TCK's more so than anybody else have a very deep and long connection to conditions of white supremacy and hegemony . Point blank it's why they are where they are. If you are a military brat, very rich, or the child of someone very educated, or a missionaries child. You are there BECAUSE there is a very deep acceptance to you and your parents being able treat the world as an experience . Colonialism,militarianism or just plain wealth advocate for your ability to mix and match cultures in ways that are not available to people who are FROM the culture itself or even from the two cultures you are intermingling. The ability to look right or acceptable with in it is a HUGE HUGE part of MY Afro/Indo/asian BLACKNESS and yes it is not the African American experience, but it IS very much influenced by white hegemony and heteronormativity and a whole bunch of other thins that while do not apply to Samuels do not make her observations NECESSARILY flawed. While the AA isn't the only one there really isn't a fault in framing the RECEPTION of ZPJ hair with it, it's just not the only one.


( full disclosure I have interacted on this topic about such a thing with Racialicious before)

Also Peterson is not a TCK ( as I have read it and I apologize if I am wrong) so using a definition that does not apply to her herself to critique another women's reading is aggravating. As a Caribbean/South American/American 1G the progressive need for Americans to analyze race by using their privilege and ability to travel to my home country and countries like mine ( Brazil , DR,PR, Cuba) to speak on race is grating, especially it is there not BEING from the country that allows them the access they have.

My "hair story" centers around my mothers fear for my ability to love myself, take care of myself . It relates to her ( and my dad ) having their entire family abandoned in some ways for being to black, for having beaten for being to "red".

When and this is a very VERY rare when my hair is straight my mother gushes over how " coolie" I look. How now you can see the Indian in me , how finally you can see the red she gave me. She fought me to my hairdresser before I started college for that reason, she thought it was a gift I needed .

and now she checks my from everyday she sees me and is using what little internet knowledge she has to find me product ( she stops people on the street my mom is a cutie)

Being "strong" with my hair is fun and I like it and it's grand but in LIVING IT , in having to write about seeing a woman called a terrorist for having it!?!? I am gonna need more than positive thinking and theoreticals when discussing it.

Because when Nia Long gets a look of utter vulnerability about how taking a shower with someone is more intimate than having sex,because they may see her real hair.When ( and yes it is misogynistic and reductivist ) men talk about feeling a real distance from their partners, but also jsut as quickly make sure to say the understand WHY, because they can't run their fingers through their hairs or touch it all.

Samuels is wrong dead wrong, but this is NOT the open and shut, lets make a better world or flick this off wrong that it's being presented as something that is not, has is not and will not continue to be

REALLY DAMN HARD and really damn real.

And reading people get offended as if she is a bad person ,as if she ahs no basis for this , even though I AGREED WITH THEM was rough.

Samuels and Rock both take on hair , and it is a deeply deep ( yep I said it) , fraught, twisted , tense intimate interaction for black people, which they are. And the work they produced shows it.

While ultimately Samuels tries to couch her own struggle and issues in a concerned voice while not doing as well to hide her preconception and bias towards natural hair, dismissing her out of hand with pats on the back ,ain't actually gonna lead to the the future where hair doesn't matter. Nor should it . Having been through the fire, the pressing comb and the burn , my hair matters to me.

It is as Dr Angelou says in Good Hair my glory,a growing, changing, money INHALING testament to my history,senses,preferences, thoughts that I share with the world.

I don't want that to not matter, i just don't want people to SUFFER for making a different choice and I really would like to be expected to suffer for mine.

At the end what both me and my friend Jaz liked most about this was at the end of the day whether or not I loved it a lot . Good Hair was movie made for me, Not about me for the consumption of others, not mostly for profit, not for explaining me to someone else. He searched and talked and interacted with people I felt as part of my community as if he expected them to be able to see and hear his product, and that he thought WELL of me for doing so. He used what HE had and was eal about where he was coming from.

and the deeply deep reality is even with that even liking that the natural girl, didn't get to speak.

So I am now.
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Dangerous Idea 3- it's the little things

Some dangerous ideas aren't long deep explanations there things that clonk you on the head and make you go OH!

no good movement has a bad soundtrack.

good art makes you empathize through sympathy

There is a difference between building and amassing. One creates the other hoardes.

Why is it that after days/weeks/months/years of contacting cajoling and sometimes actively organizing, that when WOC finally go F*&K YOU ! I quit this! we are accused of "complaining and not DOING anything?

Also if the only people who are consistently rotating OUT of your organization are the groups who you seem to be committed to helping. You probably aren't helping.

I am not the movement. You are not the movement. Your blog is not the movement. Your play is not the movement. A movement involves lots and LOTS of people moving together creating change. If you think you are you're probably failing.

It is getting harder and harder to have conversations about people about their lives and loves that doesn't turn into a list of consumptive activities, and cool. There are now scads of verbose and adroit ways of saying absolutely NOTHING.

Love moves so much it truly is at the core of every truly great lasting thing .

Fear is the result of what we love threatened.

People think of love far too softly to be practical .

Love can cause pain but it shouldn't hurt.

Meryl Streep said that the most important thing she was ever lead to believe was that she was capable. Not special, not entitled not privileged but capable. Capable

Class is a HUGE component of racism that goes unmentioned.

The problem is not that people have prices is that no one names it while waving it in your face.

I sat in the bank today and listened to two sets of people complain about overdraft fees. One was white and in a business suit, one was hood. The suits entire argument was he hsouldn't be faulted because the online web portal was down and he couldn't know that he shouldn't have spent that money. The guy that was hood admitted he was wrong ( a little loudly and cussingly) wondered why they let him constantly overdraft but wanted a payment plan. The suit said he wouldn't pay. One of them got nearly 600 dollars in fees remitted.

Having black people does not mean you are diverse.

Black( and often Latino) people having organizational methods and good communication models is not the same as structural power and far too often the critique of those methods is colored by a belief that " those people" should know when to stop speaking for their betters"

A movement is not a place for you to get over being unpopular in high school or college.

The fact I dislike you should never mean I wish to curb your rights. That is always oppression.

marginalized people should bear better grudges.

the only acceptable reason to avoid eye contact is sexual tension

me me me should only be heard in theaters during warm ups. there is something about its use versus the "I" that signals bad.

laugh once a day if something isn't funny you ain't paying attention
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Dangerous Idea 2- The Problem Isn't That You're Not Perfect It's That You Feel You Have To Be

Also known as a love letter of sorts to Barbara Ehrenreich.She has a new book out which in and of it self makes me really really happy.

My last post has more than a few links which made me think really hard aout why I was restarting ro even undertaking a series on Dangerous Ideas.

One is that I am unafraid to admit I am a know it all of amazing cosmic proportions and given the chance to think out loud on something I feel passionate about with an audience is always a plus. The other is that I am greatly disturbed but hey if you read this blog you know that hasn't changed in three/four years.

But part of my rambling online is a bout having a vision or a goal for what I wanted the world to be. I am not special in that, any activist/artist/writer who doesn't have this handy streak of megalomania is a liar , a fraud, or a charaltan usually all three. You don't have to like it , you can fight it with every fiber of your being but they have it.

And I never wrote it down, I seriously never have I think in all the time I have been blogging wrote down the tenets of my values and the two pieces I linked lastpost made me go

Well That DEFINITELY ISN'T IT !

But what pray tell is it , why haven't I written it down, why don't you have a plan BIG MOUTH?!?

and the only excuse I could come up with is that it wasn't perfect and bullet pointed so I had o wait.

but if i waited for perfect I'd never write anything, and sure enough in the comment's of Trouble's dreamwidth journal spot willow made a really good point of what BIG SWEEPING CHANGES means to others and my mind went of and around on goals.

What does it mean to be perfect and whose perfect is the perfect and and and how is this discussion treated?

A friend linked this article in NewGeography and I believed that more than informed my thinking. Including the comments .

The White City.

There is a shitload of things to unpack but the idea of the " unintended consequences of the pursuit of perfection"

We define perfection according to our values, our values define our allegiance. And in bad a= b , b=c, therefore b=c.

Our view of perfection defines our allegiances, and our allegiances define our perfection.

The thing that perfection does is not only define our end goal but also our start point. The way one defines perfect or best will tell you how one protects and operates through life. When we say that " nobody's perfect" we tell each other what we believe we WOULD be aiming for if we were trying to be perfect.

But not everyone is trying to be perfect and we often put perfect into a category of

" Shit we will never attain no way no how"

AkA : If i define it as part of the "perfect" it's another way of saying pleasantly don't get your hopes up"

it also describes the process of mental triage . If we are forced to we do what we can control for what is

MOST IMPORTANT. It is our definition of the BIG PICTURE.

and it more insidiously tells us what to ignore.

Looking through my links Reconcile had the most succinct and dagger sharp way of putting it but it took my breath away:

"

Progressive blogs attract readers who feel safe at that blog. Trolls and hate-mailers aside, you have the commenters you have because you regularly challenge privilege they wish to see challenged, and you do not challenge privilege they do not wish to see challenged. Their bigotry is a reflection of your own.

"

It applies not just to blogs but replace that with cities , movements, spaces,media.

For things we want we set up systems of dealing with and handling their pursuit. I will never be PERFECTLY clean but I wash everyday. The fact that I am not perfectly sterile doesn't stop the need for SUSTAINING the basic conditions of life.

So why is it excusable to not try and attain comfortable lives for ALL citizens, why isn't diversity part of why we think of admirable cities, why aren't we going well won't be perfect but we can be better every day?

and BA if you could tell us why you like Barbara Ehrenreich before we all die of boredom.

So this article on women's happiness made me really happy. One because unlike a corresponding time article she notes realy quickly that the women are white. Something Time failed miserably at.

But it also pointed out that the idea of perfect/best/strongest is

USED TO SELL US SOMETHING.

Perfection is a fail safe for telling us what we need to do and also for realeasing whoever is telling us this from any responsibility.

Perfection ( and it's pursuit) should result in taking stock of where we are and moving forward. Instead it often results in measuring yourself against some arbitrary ( usually defined by privilege or proximity to the golden desires of the seller ) metric and receiving benefits ( or not) accordingly.

If you receive ( or are preloaded) with those benefits , you have successfully completed it and whether you recieved it through actually adhering to those steps ehh well.

Those benefits justify your superiority and also eliminate

any need for you

TO WORK!

Cities don't have to check to see if something is viable , or if it matches it's own constituents. It has a rubrick of perfect.

People don't have to examine themselves, they just have to be happy , or " fulfilled"

Doing what you " love" is the goal ( yet why does no one talk about church ladies, or underpaid teachers why are they always business ventures )

Doing what produces happiness in Holland is alright, because if they are happy it's alright.

It's perfect.

In humans it has a two fold effect

It's protestant predestination all over again. Where in if you are happy and fulfilled ( even if that means you simply drew the culture appropriate lot in birth) you deserve it.

You are validated in having no other goal than ensuring your permanent gratification

or the feeling of it.

And if you haven't you literally CAN'T critique it, because you're dislike of it and your failure to attain it is your OWN FAULT. We don't worry about you.

Perfection assures it's state

and destroying anything but the most vigilant adherents to it's implausibility.

It prevents us from being in the now , from being connected because we can't stand still in it

If we measure ourselves against " perfection" we often shut down our ability to survey because anything that isn't oriented that way is vile.

It's PATENTLY unsustainable

and it justifies treating anything that might damage even it's pursuit as cancerous.

Including other people, ideals or hey REALITY.

Marketing one's self for or as a path towards perfection is designed to leave people in the dust. It creates a solitary identity that both for these cities and HRC campaign and feminism and black politics .

Because if we can not make it we will try to cut as much as we can to seem as if we're
thisclose.

And who better to cut than people we treat as not there.

And if we ARE the people who aren't there it's gotta be our fault.

----------------------------------------------------------------
This is just an awesome piece and I think necessary reading for every " professional" identity. Would you do it if the only reward was teh advancement of the good?
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Dangerous Ideas Part 1_ See us as people not tools.

An idea that is not dangerous is unworthy of being called an idea at all. Oscar Wilde.

What is change?
What is growth?

As Part of the Dangerous IDeas series I am asking myself that.
Why because part of change ,REAL change is admitting that we need to change ourselves. And none of these movements ( and I promise you I am on a god awful amount of list seves )

but one of the basic hallmarks that seems to be addressed LESS and LESS about movements for so called social change is that .

While bogged in theory and very vocal about fighting "systems" the first thing to go under the bus are humans usually for a form of social capital that sadly is marked and measured by financial capital within the same systems they claim to fighting.

aka When push comes to shove they measure their success not by the people they claim to be concerned with but the response of kyriarchial structures or the ability to exploit those structures.

further aka . The people aren't more important than the structure.

That's what I used to think , until time and time again having read interactions and been part of interactions and finally reading Afro-dyte piece is that very simply

it's not that they think that people aren't more important than structures it's that to often they don't think whatever there talking about is people at all.

And unfortunately I have seen two HORRENDOUS examples of this recently online but would also like to point some trends of it generally and then

Next post is flufffy bunny happy things.

I was reading through my links page and read Daisy's piece which made me giggle uncontrollably. The semantics of white feminists acting ridiculously stupid put aside. Lets focus on Celie's experience there.

Outside of politics, outside of anything but basic HUMAN INTERACTION.

She was spoken around, ignored, became part of a collective that gave preferential treatment to anybody that wasn't her.

That's not the way you treat a human being of whom you have any regard. If you have ANY value of their exisitance , there is basic consideration that is accorded another human. She was questioned not for her skills but in many ways for her obedience.

The mind blowingly racist shit aside, the problem is that when confronted with the mistreatment of

SOMEONE IN THEIR COLLECTIVE.

The primary response was not to address the injury to the HUMAN BEING in their collective but the nebulous concept of their racism. Which of course for a " radical feminist publication" involved a run to the male dominated system of cops.

At this point you HAVE to laugh you HAVE to , or you will cry in utter despair.

The next one bothers me something powerful

1. BEcause a very specific part of me is just pissed . Because as I was discussing with another friend. When this happened to me and others ( who included Women of Color w/disabilities) the response was that well they'll learn. Which is often code for well you are not close enough to ur idea of acceptable human so really they'll watch it this time
2. It involves writers who forget whatever the hell else you've heard. Know better . ESPECIALLY writers that claim to be for women.
   
3. The community this was comitted against DEFINITELY not JUST in monetary terms can not be giving this kind of consideration away.

So really

WHAT THE F&^$%&??!?

That's just deplorable , especially for a free lancer and MORE so from a teacher . In essence after asking a community of people who risked health and ability and multiple "spoons" ( that is a beautiful and succinct analogy) to talk to your ass about something you navel gazing chronicle as part of dealing with your " privilege".

The semantics are not mine to truly unpack but I would like to point to the things that truly irked me.

Scheduling takes time, organizing a curriculum ( which essentially this was it was a "teaching moment that required an obscene amount of prep work .

And what was requested in terms of a bookslist was essentially a curriculum.

You get paid for that and Miriam and Courtney KNOW THAT. At least one of them makes a living off of that.

That the very least a PUBLIC apology isn't issued isn't just semantic , it's a slap in the face to the GRACE that is extended.

More so the textbook well sure but what we do is. Is disgusting and more so because really when you have wronged another human being. someone you care about

This is not a time to retell why your brand is okay , especially using a person whose not even on the discussion. Coopting the work of another to dismiss someone else's concerns in an effort to make them focus on your pain?

That's not the way you treat humans that's the way you treat tools. It's not a discussion it's a chess match of seeing these people as things to be moved around for your own use. And if it happened to you in ANY situation there would be hell to pay.

Except that wasn't the point .

It was damage control. It was hey lets have a conversation about why covering these other TOPIC not peopel not living breathing humans and their life and death concerns .

Which in and of itself isn't bad , it's good media strategy but frankly an entire discussion about hwo you've harmed people becomes a treatiseon YOUR NEEDS and your development and how YOU can't be held responsible for the ish you do.

Regardless of teh whole BINGO fail card.

This is a really bad example of the way you humor someone you don't think is deserving of questioning you.

And yes I know Miriam is a POC but the " Do you think we control" is patronizing beyond belief . and quoting stats at someone doesn't fix anything but merely states why YOU are too important to do simple human kindness.

The issue isn't that anyone thinks that the people who gathered to make this action are wrong or right, it's that there was no consideration at all . It was phrased as a here is why your points are wroong because we are too big to be responsible .

Because THEY felt they could not see it , the conversation was focused on making sure everyone else knows knew why it's just not right to pressure thim.


And putting in the full name of any woman is just fucking disgusting and yes I am cussing. Because it's bush league shit that as a woman online I know can compromise safety . Also the first name last name tone shit , is straight up telling someone to know there place. I only have to watch my tone with people who pay me, raised me, or fuck me . To ask that of anyone else is to basicallya sk for subserviance and is both deplorable and insulting. You don't want to talk to someone as equals without immediately falling onto your white girl bullshit don't show the fuck up.


I will leave the rest of the TEACH ME but we're too big to make any concessions ( and the subsequent half assed ooh look they have a link as if a pat on the head fixes that shit) but it is especially galling because the work that was put in, is literally consulting. Market research , resource collection, agenda setting.

Our ( speaking specifically as a black/immigrant backgroundWOC but also observing the same across phenomena across identities) generates funds, speaking times and liberal acceptance for others. The ability to vbe seen as with or NOT with us on a base level ( never by us but other post)

IS NOT WORTHLESS.

and the work Ceilie AND these women did in ANY OTHER SETTING is worth money. LOTS of it.

Done to them by a man this would be COMPLETELY JUSTIFIED all out war, but somehow it's understandable.


Oddly enough I am going to steal from a feminist quote.

" Feminism is the radical notion that women are people"

When Civil Rights workers marched on of the most prominent signs was this :



Social change and equality movements are not about in my opinion who deserves what and who doesn't, but that no matter what your ability, race color and creed that you were human.

The radical movements followed were about being a SELF DETERMINING people who had the at least the basic presumption of human dignity. Not to have to have continued conversations where in the premise is how many different ways there are to not be granted the respect or common courtesy of being engaged with as humans.

Focusing on media ESPECIALLY progressive media ( supposedly) highlights this gap. OOB did a WOC once every 10-15 years but put with an actual HUMAN of color in their midst, seemed to hit every trope of dehumanization they could.

Being of color being of varied ability does not mitigate humanity.

So rather than ask soome large theofhetical trope or idea . Lets focus on this?

How would you respond if the person you were talking to was someone you believed was human?

Would you ask them to do mountains of work and then tell them they need to watch how they spoke to you?

Would you say you were speaking to other ___ people? Implying that truly what was important was not their humanity but the identity and frankly you could get that from any "one of those"

or would you listen , try to fix the hurt and find a way to stop it.

That's what you do for humans , now do it for everyone

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The Burning House

The Burning House

“ I feel like I am asking my people to assimilate into a burning house”- MLK

Dear Madmaba,

so sorry about the delay but I needed to take time to think about what I am actually trying to say because , while now more than ever I truly to want to connect and communicate with those interested in making change and forging bonds, I am less interested in talking to people whose only goal is to shore up their illusions of progressiveness. I believe the first about you , others are questionable. In a world were desperation for change is rampant, there SHOULD be a deep examination of what we have done,are doing, and how we should move forward. This call for discussions from middle class well off white people, and " interest" from ensconced academics not only rings false, it seems more and more tawdry and woefully inadequate.

Let’s talk is something a high school guidance counselor says to a sulky youth or concerned superior says to underling. You have to say “ let’s talk” because bluntly it is accepted that your interactions don’t occur in the same place. Inside that same thread was a comment from A REAL LIVE WOMAN OF COLOR TALKING ABOUT WHY SHE FELT DIVIDED FORM THE CONFERENCE.

Not just ANY woman of color but a prominent blogger, a member of the HISTORY OF WOMEN’S INTERNET and an award winning writer . A scholarship winner, someone they wanted there so bad they paid for her to be there.

And she blatantly IGNORES IT.

AS WELL as another women of color who speaks about her concerns with feminism.

She IGNORES IT.

So she can tell a story.

If she doesn't want it to be white women's vision of feminist thought. Why doesn't she link to what seems like the WOMAN WHO MADE THE CRITIQUE ( or a similar one) or a woman of color who wrote about HER experience at NN09?

This gaffe isn't uncommon ( i am leaving out the women who equated progress with who you got to drink with at a bar), just terrifyingly bad strategy for a changing world. Especially a progressive media.

In a time when folks make logical decisions between food or healthcare, when magazines are folding left and right from folks unable to waste time. Media AND progressive movements are desperate to appear relative and sustainable . Targeting a demographic of POC and Queer and Disabled and poor and and and and people who they have LONG LONG ignored if not inherently devalued. Except to prove the erudition of the writer(s)The intimation that this a favor or a thing that hasn't been covered is no longer acceptable as a caveat but for progressives an illustration of gross negligance.

I half participated in discussion about whether it was a good strategy to encourage kids to become part of institutions that would not support them. One of the salient points that was brought up was that , it is only by being inside these institutions could we force salient change?

My question is do we really want to save these institutions. Do we really want to save these movement/media/companies/schools/groups?

When the FEMINIST MAJORITY says it's too late to prosecute the rape of a young girl ( and oddly enough the campaign mounted is towards Whoopi Goldberg and not Tilda Swinton , Natalie Portman, or any of the other people who in saying drop his case said the EXACT SAME THING) , what is there to save?

And please understand this not from the moral high ground. I don't want it. I keep reading this over and over and over about what power would convey and truly I don't ever actively want that. Having the moral high ground only means I'm not in the fray.

And at the end of this I have to live with people , sometimes in close quarters, sometimes ina global sense, but I can not and find it hard to imagine continuing to do work from the perspective that I am "better" than someone else , because that hierarchically kyriarchial thought process does not challenge what I think most of us are fighting.

The idea that some one is inherently better than ourselves.

Before I am patted on my unrealistic head, I don't believe this extends to having skills , or talents, or gifts.

But that somehow before any of those are mentioned someone inherently IS better . There existence IS better.

THAT better , that leads, to there words being developed instead of smothered, them getting two paragraphs rather than two words, the better that means that no matter what they will always be the reference point , rather than a parallel. The better that means no one ever questions, whether they should eat, walk the streets in peace , tell their stories without violence.

and if we are honest if we are real , that is NOT the truth of our country, of our movement, of our lives.

That seam that someone else's lived existence is conversational , that someone else's personal mindset and well being is bargain-able is the problem. It can be based on race, gender,ability,. It comes from history personal prejuidice and fear but the fundamental belief that we are weighable and measurable will ALWAYS lead to someone being found wanting.

My response to that conversation about institutions was

No.

We do not.

We do not send ourselves blind into places that do not support us. Sadly there isn't a way for many of us not on the heavy side of the measurement to avoid that . Because to beat the metaphor into death

When asked to be part of the burning building we are being always asked to save it.

Some may go in, and for those we must provide support and protection and preparedness . Which means we must be truthful in how bad the fire actually is. Not advertising it in hopes of what will msot make them come out.

and more importantly we must build strong places and skills and water and people for those they bring out. Because teh question that is forefronting my mind is not teh state of teh building

but teh lives inside.

Conversations build up teh need to save the building, teh caucaus, the secrecy, because it justifies the protection of continually using resources but what saves teh lives ?

That is what I need to knwo, what will make THIS conversation different?

What will make it so that when a WOC speaks she is believed ?

What will make it thata disabeled woman doesn't have to wait on a timetable for someone to behave decently?

What will make the news cycle less important than justice and equity?

Where is the dangerous idea?

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