random

so maybe this is due to my sudden, dramatic infusion into the world of whiteness in Europe, but i really feel like i need a tan. something about that whole previous sentence seems like it could be ironic.

anywho. it’s not so much any dissatisfaction with my appearance, i just feel like i done been exposed to way too much damn sun in the past month to not have gotten any darker. i am definitely still my version of winter pale. which i don’t get at all, because supposedly people with more melanin tan more easily, and all my white friends got all nice and rosy, and i’m still the same old wane winter brown as opposed to sun bronzed.

enough of that triviality though.

i’m in atlanta! i feel like a sheep welcomed back into the fold. the weather was amazing today. i sat in the sun reading for almost an hour (did not get perceptibly darker)…t

perhaps i’ve just become a picky eater (maybe i’m just more at home with my liberal boogie-ness). one of the main reasons i was excited to come home was the food. however, upon arrival i’ve found that nothing has really piqued my appetite. except those jalepeno cheetos, because they are the shit.

and by “the shit” i mean addictive and delicious. so much so, that i’m advertising.

go buy these.

i knew that some white person would have taken the time and effort to photograph than upload a picture of these onto the internet. i feel like that’s just a white people thing to do. i’m not being judgmental, because having lived in land of white people, i am greatly influenced by them and do lots of white people stuff.
none of the things i’ve said above are insulting or racist, though they are class biased. anyway that was all just a crappy segue into this site:

stuff white people like!

i really love this site, and all the commentary. it’s great. someone commented that this effort to quantify white culture was connected to black history month, and that the site wouldn’t continue past march.
it seemed like that might not quite be it, since the blog started in january. but the normally daily blog hasn’t been updated in 2 days. so maybe that commenter was right, and the bloggers forgot that there were 29 days of black history month this year. i really hope the site isn’t dead, because i feel like the clever observer could do daily humorous bits of white people BUT even if all is said and done for this blog, there are still 78 great posts for your reading pleasure, with lots of interesting comments. so check that out!

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i really think i am a graphophile, or whatever word there is that means people who are addicted to writing. except that even when i am writing useless babble, i do still generally tend to write about some type of topic in a readable format. so i guess i am a functioning grafophile.

see, like that whole paragraph was worthless, but you read it, because it was in a readable format.

my present to myself for passing the CELTA is that i am going to get my nose pierced. for the 4th time. when i got my nose pierced the 3rd time i said to myself third time’s a charm! this one’s gonna last! but it didn’t. so now i’m just telling myself that the 4th time is just the time before the 5th. there are worse addictions than having one’s nose pierced. like…

i discovered the above magazine at a newstand in Casablanca, en francais. i think i love it. wait, i know i do. just finished an interview with the former CIA operative, now living (in exile?) France, who details the machinations the U.S. went through to kill Patrice Lumumba and justify his death.

being back in Atlanta has had a dream-like quality.  when i changed my money from Euros to greenbacks, I felt excited to hold american dollars (real money!) in my hand, and began cheesing unabashedly, which the man at the bank thought was a bit odd. And I was very excited to see so many men I found to be attractive. i still can’t believe i’m here. i took an immensely long shower, as if i had 60 days of dirt to clean off.

a lot of soldiers came home today in the airport in their fatigues (or whatever you call them)…with buzzcuts grown out at various lengths, most of them unsmiling and looking a bit dazed. my heart went out to them–not pitying but just like damn, i respect that you have probably just experienced some deep shit.

simple, quasi-philosophical ruminations

1) i realize that the U.S. could learn a lot from the unitarian universalists. UU’s are an interesting collective of people, who come from a variety of older faiths. the more liberal churches incorporate readings from buddhist, jewish, christian, muslim, taoist, baha’i, humanist, hindu, socialist, (and just about any other text that talks about how life should be lived) texts into sermons.
they are united not on the basis of their beliefs, but on the basis of how they treat one another. it’s a very basic concept. all living beings, but especially humans, must be treated with equal respect. this is really the principle around which i am trying to organize my life. though of course, i’m not perfect.

i feel like so many of us who are idealists, or want social justice, or dream of a different yet possible reality…focus on winning converts. we may not like to view our efforts as such, but essentially we believe that we’ve found some element of truth, and that if we could get others to see it, then the world would be better & people would be happier.

but, ironically, i am doing the same thing now so…hey…what do i know?
basically, i think respect is real important and i’m trying to show respect for others on an egalitarian level.

i’m still trying to figure out how to make social justice my life in a real, and meaningful way.

next.
if you haven’t read this article, please do so now! or very soon! here, i will even post a picture so perhaps you will be more enticed to read.

why should you read it? well 1: it focuses on an aspect of the great migration/illegal immigration phenomena that a lot of people are ignorant of and 2: i personally feel like this is today’s version of the underground railroad which i think is really important.

lastly:
Did you know that 95 percent of Africans brought to the Western Hemisphere during the slave trade were unloaded in Latin America or the Caribbean? Only 5 percent were brought to the United States. The majority of Black America has always been south of the border.

Today, millions of people in the U.S. self-identify as both Latino and Black. And it is estimated that one-third of the population of Latin America and the Caribbean—approximately 150 million people—is of African descent.

these are the opening paragraphs of an e-mail i got to plug vidaAfrolatino.com
Lots of people don’t know about Afrolatinos, or that they are in the U.S., or that there aspects of various Latino cultures have immediately recognizable links to sub-Saharan Africa, or that there are Latinos who look phenotypically Black.
Now this last point gets a bit hazy, because the main afro-latina in the public eye that i can immediately think of

zoe saldana, is basically a slightly browner version of all the things (hackneyed cliches?) that come to mind when you hear the phrase “latina”.

however, she was cast as the female lead in both drumline , in which she is a member of a black sorority at a historically black college,

and guess who , where the premise (which i found to be lacking in humor, social commentary, or interest) is that her relationship with ashton kutcher is like so deep because she is black, in the african-american sense, yet middle-class, while he is white and on the come-up from childhood poverty and a broken home.

so basically, in America to be black means to be african-american. and no matter what your origins, you are black if you look black. unless of course you’re actually black and don’t look black, in which case white people will be confused and black people will wonder if you’re slumming although african-americans’ powers of negro perception are exponentially more sensitive than people of any other ethnicity. ever-so-slight kink or poofiness to the hair, hint of brown in your undertone…we can tell you about the africa in you that you never knew was hiding in your otherwise aryan features.
i guess it’s like ‘gaydar’ but way more intense.

so anyway, now a part of me wonders if zoe saldana feels some sort of extra sense of gratefulness to “the african-american community”, that is the reason for her success as an actress?
because if she’s not, she’s so off my beautiful people list.

and that is all.

peace.

redefinition [an unmeditated, free post]

i was on socibus headed north from seville to madrid, amazed by how immediately and drastically the landscape changed, realizing that i just don’t know who i am anymore.

although i do know that i am no longer afraid of the cliche. including being a natural-haired, “educated” black person trying to find herself abroad.

i mean hey, it’s my reality.

so i’m black, right. i have been my whole life. i can never remember a time when i didn’t know i was black, or when i didn’t discern black from ‘other’. i was raised this way.

along with my egyptian name came a more extensive knowledge than most about egyptian mythology, a general fascination with all things african and/or black, and an unspoken ingrained sense of pan-african-ness and black ‘nationalism’ for lack of a better word.

example:

when watching the olympics or world cup, if the u.s. was competing against jamaica and kenya, i would feel torn about whether to root for jamaica or kenya, and not be concerned about the u.s. at all. unless of course it was basketball or track and the u.s. competitor was black, in which case i felt a slight preference for america…

remember surya bonaly?

the French chick that used to backflip on skates? that was my girl…and i loved watching her do something that no one else in the world was doing, and i especially loved that she was black, doing it.

yes, there’s a point to this rumination. so stage 1 in my formation of blackness…

there was black, and there was other. and black was black, no matter the country of origin.

stage 2…

i was a different kind of black. not by choice.

but there was my curly hair, and my american origin (juxtaposed with people from africa or even the caribbean who were darker, nappier haired, more phenotypically ‘black’?), and then all this cultural stuff about speaking properly and going to a liberal arts college.

so in stage 2 black people came in categories. we were still all black, but we had our own special little boxes of blackness. and ‘pure’ blackness basically had something to do with how close to sub-saharan africa you were (with the exception of sudan and ethiopia because somehow they were in an even more distinct category of blackness)

phenotype mattered. i was constantly being reminded that i wasn’t 100% Black because of a combination of physical features, and informed

in South Africa you would be colored, in the rest of “Black Africa” perhaps a half-caste (except in Ethiopia), in Jamaica you would be a brownin, in Haiti you would be brune ak curly hair, in Trinidad and Guyana people would think you were coolie or at least half, etc.

In other words, in the countries that are really Black, you wouldn’t really be Black. You’re only Black in countries where all the Black people have been watered down.

I had to accept this, because clearly I was no authority on blackness, but I was unhappy accepting this. And I can’t really see how not looking “100% Black” has been beneficial to me in any way, as I am quite brown-skinned, except that Dominicans often think I am one of their own. But in the eyes of many, Dominicans are Black. They share an island with Haiti, which is one of the Blackest countries in the world. so…

moving along.

I was left with this sense that, according to the Black people authorities, in a global context I was only Black by choice. And definitely had no real legitimate claim to put “African” in any part of my identity, because I was visibly not African.

So it was quite a {pleasant?} surprise to me, when I went to Morocco–which is in Africa, but not the “Black” part–that it was generally assumed that I was from Africa. And by Africa, I mean sub-Saharan, Black Africa. Just nice to experience the flip side of the coin.

Now just to clarify, I identify as African-American. I feel like it’s the most accurate term to describe someone of my heritage–descendant of slaves, mostly from West Africa, in the U.S. I have not picked any particular country in Africa and decided that it is my ancestral home (although I do want to take that DNA test to see if my genealogy can be traced to a specific area in Africa). I don’t practice any African based religion, or any religion at all. The closest I speak to any African language is Haitian Kreyol. I have never even taken an African dance class (unless you count Salsa)…

Besides knowing a little history, liking zouk, afrobeat, and “nollywood” (Nigerian) films, and having friends from different countries in Africa…I can’t say I have a personal connection to Africa. yet.

But how ludicrous is it to suggest that I’m not African?

I don’t cling to blackness out of desperation or by default because I can’t fit into any other category in America…like I said, I was always Black, ever since I can remember. And it’s a struggle sometimes…but it’s beautiful…and I love it.