By Guest Contributor Rob Fields, cross-posted from Bold As Love

There’s still things black people don’t talk about in 2011 and, to our collective detriment, mental illness is one of them.  I mean, for a people who have survived colonialism, the Middle Passage, slavery, Jim Crow and institutional racism, it would be surprising if we perfectly fine mentally and emotionally after all of that.  And many of us are alright.  But there are just as many who aren’t.

I’ll say upfront that I don’t know Bassey Ipki (above) personally.  What I know about her is that she’s a respected poet, writer, performer (multiple Def Poetry Jam appearances, to say the least) and a fierce mental health advocate who’s been bracingly honest about her own struggles with depression. We’ve had a few short Twitter conversations, and that’s about it.  Just knowing this about her, I thought the launch of this effort made perfect sense.  But I found out the impetus was something beyond her.  It was the suicide of a friend’s 15-year-old daughter.  Here’s what Bassey wrote about it:

Over the summer, I wrote about Siwe Monsanto, the amazing, beautiful, talented 15-year old daughter of my friend, Dionne. I wrote about what a wonderful human being she was. I wrote about how funny she was. I wrote about what a wonderful mother Dionne was. I wrote about how sad Siwe was at times. I wrote about how she took her own life. Since Siwe’s death, I’ve been struggling with ways I could do more as a human being and someone who loved her. I’ve thought about ways that I could use what few talents I had to do something more to honor Siwe’s memory and to prevent deaths like hers. In August, just 2 months shy of Siwe’s death, I came up with the idea of The Siwe Project, a global non-profit whose aim was to spread mental wealth awareness and education in the global black community. I wasn’t sure how I was going to do it. I’m only a writer. I have no admin experience but I knew it needed to be done so I began talking to some people.

The project had a kickoff event this past Wednesday in DC. Bassey goes on to say this:

This is just a soft launch, we will be sharing our mission and plans for the future. We will announce our slogan and photo campaign. We are starting small in order to stay focused and on task but we hope to do big things. We need to erase the stigma of mental illness from our communities. We must learn to love and cherish our mental health as much as our physical health. We must encourage and support those with mental illness so that they may manage and seek treatment without fear or shame. These are imperatives. Too many of us our dying or the walking dead. This isn’t about pushing medication or specific forms of treatment on anyone. What works for me, may not work for you. But find something that works. Face it. Treat it. Then live.

The promo video is a version of her poem “Choices,” which chronicles her struggles with mental illness. It was directed by the very talented Pierre Bennu:

A great closing thought from Bassey: “Mental illness is not who you are. It’s what you have.”

By Guest Contributor Minh-ha T. Pham, cross-posted from Threadbared

Alondra Nelson, author of the much-anticipated book Body and Soul: The Black Panther Party and the Fight Against Medical Discrimination (University of Minnesota Press 2011) talks to me about The Black Panther Party’s Free Clothing Program, one of the organization’s many community programs. Nelson’s book, which Henry Louis Gates calls “a revelation” and Evelynn Hammonds describes as “indispensable” for understanding “how healthcare and citizenship have become so intertwined,” deftly recovers a lesser-known aspect of the BPP: its broader struggles for social justice through health activism.

On a more personal note, I’m utterly thrilled to be introducing Threadbared readers to Alondra Nelson! She’s an intellectual powerhouse of the first order whose research stands as far and away some of the most exciting and relevant stuff I’ve encountered in critical race and gender studies in some time. In addition to her intellectual capaciousness (follow her on Twitter to see what I mean!), she is unsparingly generous in her willingness to share knowledge, support, and tips for the best mascara a drugstore budget can buy. And she’s agreed to sign copies of her book which 3 (three!) lucky readers will win – keep reading to find out how!

MP: Alondra, as you know I’ve been dying to talk to you about  this photo of the Black Panther Party’s Free Clothing Program by Stephen Shames. It’s one of my favorite fashion photos because it captures so well what I can only describe as a state of sartorial joy – that happy feeling I get sometimes when I’m wearing a favorite outfit or trying on new clothes (even if only new to me). I mean, this kid is seriously feeling his look and himself – and I absolutely love it! What are your reactions to this photo?

Black Panther Party Free Clothing Program. A boy tries on a coat at a party office in Toledo, Ohio, 1971. Credit: Stephen Shames.

AN: This Shames photograph is striking and wonderful. There is definitely “sartorial joy” there. And, pure unadulterated happiness, too! The boy in the photo—his smile, his pose, his evident pride—conveys the thrill I think we’ve all felt during some especially successful shopping venture at a sample sale, thrift shop or department store. We unfortunately learn to dim our delight as we get older. This image is a welcome reminder to savor life’s little pleasures.

The photo also prompts a less cheery reading. The boy is wearing many layers of clothes and here he is adding yet another layer. He’s stocking up. Maybe he is in great need of clothing. Perhaps his enthusiasm is not the thrill of consumption, but the satisfaction of having this very basic need met.

The Black Panther Party’s 1966 founding manifesto stated “We want land, bread, housing, education, clothing, justice and peace.” Helping disadvantaged communities to meet these needs was one of the activists’ main goals. To do this, the Party established a wide array of community service or “survival” initiatives, including the People’s Free Clothing Program depicted here.

Then there are the images within the picture; the images on the wall. There is the iconic poster of Huey Newton seated in a wicker chair brandishing both a sword and a rifle. There are several pieces of art that appear to be the work of Emory Douglas, the Party’s Minister of Culture. There’s also a familiar portrait of Eldridge Cleaver floating just above the boy’s head. This “gallery” links the boy’s sartorial joy and practical needs to the Black Panthers’ style and their politics.

MP: I love that. It really articulates my sense of the significance of the Black Panther Party’s health-based programs, which I think go beyond physical survival. That Eldridge Cleaver’s iconic image is part of this scene of sartorial joy really suggests to me that the BPP understood the political and psychic significance of clothing, that “health activism” for the BPP had much broader implications than physical health. Can you elaborate on this?

AN: Yes, that’s absolutely right. The Party appreciated that clothing could be both a basic need and a form of self-expression.

Also, the Black Panthers’ had a broad and politicized understanding of well-being that I describe as “social health.” Social health was their vision of the good society. The Party drew a connection between the physical health of individuals and social conditions in the U.S. They believed that achieving healthy bodies and communities required a just and equitable society.

The Black Panthers took a similarly holistic approach with their health activities. They provided basic health care services at their People’s Free Medical Clinics, for example. At these clinics one could also get free groceries or clothing, or advice on how to deal with a difficult landlord or help finding a job. For the Panthers, all of these issues were interconnected.

MP: Do you think it’d be fair to say that in the popular imaginary, it isn’t the group’s community programs for which they’re best remembered but their distinctive look? I’m thinking about the circulation and consumption of the BPP’s fashion practices and styles (e.g., Afros, berets, and military jackets) today in fashion magazines (under the sign of “radical chic”) and in the Internet (one blogger offers advice on how to “recreate the Panther look”). How important was the distinctive look of the BPP to its political mission and legacy then and now?

AN: The Black Panther Party emerged during a golden age of mass media: at a time when artists like John Lennon and Yoko Ono were pioneering some of the earliest music videos, when Marshall McLuhan was proclaiming the “medium” as “the message,” and when racially stereotypical television shows such as “Amos ‘n’ Andy” (which ran in syndication until the late 1960s) were giving way to integrated dramas like “The Mod Squad” and “Star Trek” (the latter of which was the setting for American TV’s first interracial kiss). Media mattered; image mattered.

Given this context, the fact that the Black Panthers were not only bold, but also beautiful, definitely contributed to their association with style in the popular imagination up to today. And, what the Shames photo of the boy captures so well is the fact that the Party’s image and its mission could overlap.

At the same time, we shouldn’t let our collective memory of the Party be so preoccupied with its imagery that we lose site of the activists’ urgent critique of racial and economic inequality and their efforts to imagine a better society. As Angela Davis stressed in her stirring 1994 article “Afro Images: Politics, Fashion, and Nostalgia” (a MUST read!), we shouldn’t reduce a “politics of liberation to a politics of fashion.”

MP: Stephen Shames, the photographer responsible for the above photo, is also responsible for many of the photographs that serve as visual references for “radical chic”. Can you talk about his relationship to and role in the BPP?

AN: Because of his evocative photographs, Shames has been one of the most important historians of the BPP. Many familiar, iconic images of the Party reflect Shames’ unique vision and talents. He also photographed aspects of the BPP’s work and organizational culture that are less well-known, whether it was decpicting hundreds of bags of groceries spread out like a lawn in an Oakland park or capturing blood being drawn from a child’s finger during at one of the Panthers’ sickle cell anemia screening programs. I am honored that he allowed me to use one of his photographs for the cover of Body and Soul.

MP: Thanks, Alondra! I can’t wait to read the book!

Body and Soul will be available for purchase on November 1 but you can claim your FREE copy before then! Visit the original post at Threadbared and talk about your favorite book/film/image of the Black Panther Party to win one of the three autographed copies of Body and Soul: The Black Panther Party and the Fight Against Medical Discrimination. The drawing will take place one week from today on Monday, October 24.

When I was about 5 or so, I used to go to my grandmother’s house during the day while my Mother went to work. I remember catching the bus and sleeping across my Mom’s lap until we got there, and then her hugging me and heading off to do whatever it was she did all day. (I was five. Clearly, I had no idea.)

Grandma was cool, but there was always a bajillion people at her house. She lived in the projects*, and spent a big portion of her day being “Mama”to everyone even though she was well into her 50s.

I remember, as a kid, how the big thing was for us to run across the street to the convenient store and get a Big Red pop and a bag of chips. All for $0.50. I mean, it was how we spent every afternoon. Because Grandma’s house was full of people, it was never hard for me to get a hold of two quarters – ahhh, two shiny, glorious quarters – so that I could be like the rest of the kids and sit in the middle of the grass and eat my funyuns or my munchos and my Big Red pop.

(I’m from the Midwest. We say pop, thank you very much.)

It wasn’t that I was Grandma’s favorite, but…. well, I was Grandma’s favorite. She invested a lot of time and effort into me. She taught me to read – she’d hand me the newspaper and make me read every page out loud – and she taught me how to be a little lady. She taught me how to love, as a young girl, because outside of that typical adoration that a young girl has for her mother, you learn that that thing that binds you to Grandma emotionally and you understand it even more so once she’s gone. That made her valuable.

However, I must admit. If there’s one thing I don’t remember, it’s going to a grocery store with Grandma. We just.. we never went together. At least, we didn’t go to a grocery store as I know a grocery store to be today. The only store I ever saw her go to was the convenient store across the street.

And now that I think about it, there’s a lot of things I don’t remember about that time with Grandma.

I don’t remember a lot of cooking going on. I don’t even know that I remember any fresh vegetables there. I mean, I remember my Great Grandma – my Grandma’s mother – having that gorgeous garden in her fenced-off backyard, but Grandma didn’t have that kind of backyard. The soil didn’t even have grass on it. It was just hard dirt. I know. I fell on it and scraped myself up a few times.

I guess that’s to be expected. It’s not like it was quality, “prime” real estate or anything. It’s not even like anyone cares to maintain the area. I guess.

I remember running to one particular house in the building in the back of the projects where the free lunch was given out. Bologna, milk, cheese, bread, and little mustard packets to dress the makeshift sandwiches. All the kids used to make a mad dash back there because they were always limited in how much they had and how many kids would be able to sit in there, and if you were last, you went hungry.

As a different woman today, I can acknowledge that that housing project community was a food desert. That even though Grandma was doing all she could to make sure I never went hungry, there was rarely a vegetable on the plate. Even though she meant very well and did the best that she could, I know I picked up a lot of bad habits from that time in my life.

In fact, it sounds a lot like this paragraph from the NYTimes blog:

Poor urban neighborhoods in America are often food deserts — places where it is difficult to find fresh food.   There are few grocery stores; people may do all their shopping at bodegas, where the only available produce and meat are canned peaches and Spam.  If they want fruits and vegetables and chicken and fish, they have to take a bus to a grocery store.   The lack of fresh food creates a vicious cycle; children grow up never seeing it or acquiring a taste for it.  It is one reason that the poor are likelier to be obese than the rich. [source]

When I hear people complain about the cost of fresh food and use this as an excuse to not eat it, it makes me think about those projects where so many people who were, actually, given money by the government to eat couldn’t even access the healthy food. My Grandma, while she might’ve been able to catch a bus to hit the grocery store, might’ve had difficulty doing this since she was the family babysitter. Her, four kids (one of them facing a mental disability), and countless bags with enough food to feed the numerous people that’d be in and out of her house to eat? On the bus? You’re joking, right?

Back to the point. All that food stamp money in the projects, and no fresh food in the area to spend it on.

Whenever we talk about problems with our food system, we often talk about access… and yeah, we might toss around the phrase “food desert,” but is that ever quantified? Are the ramifications of growing up in a food desert ever discussed? Do places like the Morris Brown projects ever come up for discussion? Or are they never mentioned because it’s assumed they don’t matter?

A while back, I wrote the following:

I can specifically remember a time when I lived in a food desert, and the only food store nearby was a gas station. My daughter was on formula at the time, and I used to purchase that in bulk and have that shipped. For myself, though, it was whatever I could get at the store. A bag of chips for breakfast, a bag of chips for lunch, a bowl of ice cream for dinner. If I wanted to go to the grocery, I had to either beg one of my girls to take me or call a taxi. I eventually called the taxi and cut back on groceries so that I could afford the ride, but… it was a lonnng time before I came to that realization.

It made perfect sense, though, that the grocery stores would be on the other side of town from me. The area where I lived was wholly college students living on that good ol’ beer and pizza diet… as evidenced by the abundance of pizza joints, sub shops and drive-thru liquor stores. The stores that a young Mom like me needed… were at least two miles away. With no car, that was quite the struggle.

But if you think about it, isn’t that how Capitalism works? When there is a demand, the promise of profit guarantees that there will always be someone willing and able to jump in and fulfill that need, right? In my neighborhood, there was a high demand for pizza joints and liquor stores. That’s what the college kids wanted. I was the random weird outlier with an infant in a college apartment complex.

Excerpted from The Myth of The Food Desert: Where The Root Went Wrong | A Black Girl’s Guide To Weight Loss

The reason that food deserts exist is because it is assumed that the people in those geographic locations cannot afford the products that a fresh food-selling store would provide. This is also an automatic assumption of the projects, because the implication is “if these people had any money, they wouldn’t be living in the projects after all.”

That’s just how Capitalism works. Big C. Supply goes where the demand is located. If there’s no money, then clearly there’s no demand off which the investor can profit.

My question, really, is what do we gain from denying the realities of food deserts? How do we benefit from silencing the voices of the un-privileged? If we can identify that fresh food is expensive, why wouldn’t we want to hear from the people most affected by that? If we deny the fact that food deserts exist, you silence the input of those of us who have been affected by this problem the most. Those of us who have been on government assistance and live in still-impoverished areas offer up the critique of the system that says that the government is giving away money to be spent on the very things making us ill and preventing us from healing ourselves.

We also shoot ourselves in our collective feet when we decide to downplay food deserts because it prevents us from ever finding a solution to the problem. What about offering incentives to investors – franchise, corporate and otherwise – who build in food deserts? Why can’t we do that? Why not offer incentives up the chain – tax incentives for security measures (since a lot of these places fear theft and property damage), incentives for the space of the store dedicated solely to fresh produce? We can’t do that because we’re too busy debating their existence. Y’all know I have a problem with that.

So, it saddens me to know that the big politicians that I vote for to get the big checks are not offering up the answers that we need to solve this problem in particular, especially since they’re never walking through (or helicoptering through, even) the projects (or a trailer park, or a low-income community in general) to see what struggles people like this face. Realistically speaking, they’re facing the same struggles that “middle-class” Americans are facing. Middle-class America , for the most part, just knows how to hide it better. If anything would’ve taught us that, it would be the up-spring of foreclosure signs in our very nice, quaint neighborhoods.

Photo/Image Credits: Caitlin Quade, Tulane University; Slow Food USA

“African-American women tend to have more chronic illness and disease. So in terms of having just basic health maintenance and well-woman care, when women get a general health assessment and exam, many things get discovered, like undiagnosed hypertension and diabetes and all of those basic primary health care needs. Usually, Planned Parenthood helps get that patient to someone who manages chronic illness. So 15 percent of our patients are African-American women. Many are often uninsured, and programs like Medicaid and Title X allow those women to have access to basic health screenings.

“If they didn’t have Planned Parenthood, where they could come to be seen on a sliding scale, or where we might be the only agency in their region that takes Medicaid, or where many African-American women have their medical home, you are destabilizing the safety net that many people of color rely on. A hit on Planned Parenthood really becomes a hit for African-American women.”

~~Dr Willie Parker, Medical Director of Metropolitan Washington DC’s Planned Parenthood.  Read the rest of the interview here.

Image credit: essence.com

Black AIDS Institute’s chief executive and president, Phill Wilson, wasn’t exaggerating when he said that “AIDS is the fire that is ravaging the black community.”

So what exactly is fueling the flames?

There is no one answer. It’s a combination of many factors: Poverty and economic instability. Institutionalized racism. Lack of quality health care, poor access to health care in general and mistrust in the medical system. Gender inequality and domestic violence. Homophobia. Intravenous drug use and the lack of needle-exchange programs. Poor health literacy. High rates of incarceration. Untreated sexually transmitted diseases, such as herpes and gonorrhea, which make people more vulnerable to contracting HIV. And people having unprotected sex while unaware that they are positive, and who thus go untreated while they’re highly infectious.

The slow response by the federal government has played a role as well, as has a lack of funding. Thirty years into the epidemic, and it was only just last year that the U.S. government finally released a national HIV/AIDS strategy.

But most importantly, the black community’s own slow response to the epidemic has had a profound impact. Minus a few exceptions, most black media publications, churches and community leaders set the tone early by turning a blind eye to HIV, believing that this epidemic was not their problem and that HIV was a moral issue as opposed to a public health crisis. In the end, we have all paid a price for their unwillingness to address the disease early on.

Don’t get me wrong: Over the years, we have seen some progress in having public conversations about HIV, and the importance of getting tested and practicing safer sex. But we still have a long way to go. Unfortunately, too many current conversations about HIV — especially in the black media — are either met with resistance, treaded lightly or saturated with inaccuracies (think: everything about the down low).

~~Kellee Terrell, “HIV/AIDS in Black America: The Uphill Battle“

In the late 1990s, right about when taxpayer-developed lifesaving drugs hit the market and America declared victory over HIV, the epidemic split: Black diagnoses continued climbing as a share of overall diagnoses, while white diagnoses plummeted. In other words, in the part of America where people had access to care, the epidemic changed dramatically; elsewhere, it didn’t.

There are many, complex factors driving the black AIDS epidemic, from the much discussed stigma to the much less discussed basic access to meaningful health care. We’ll be parsing these throughout the year. But in the end, as the graph above suggests, today’s epidemic is also shaped dramatically by one factor: whether our government takes it seriously enough to end it, in all parts of our society.

~~Kai Wright, “One Question on Black AIDS Day: Do We Care Enough to End It?”

Image credit: CBS Minnesota

“But in the terms of the power discussion, what if, in fact, you are power? What if in fact you are powerful, in that you feel like you make the decisions about the man that you’re going to sleep with, and whether you’re going to use a condom with him or not? What if you’ve got the power in deciding? But we know this is not the case for so many of our young women, and yet we’ve grown up with prevention that presumes and assumes, and that incorporates the idea of giving women power. We’re asking — we’re needing — power over primarily an organ that we don’t even have attached to our body.

“The other piece of the discussion, of course, that’s always been missing, long been missing, is: AIDS, Inc., does not know what to do with heterosexually identified men….AIDS, Inc., does not know what to do with sexually active men who are not exclusively gay — let me put it like that. Unless you are exclusively gay, out, or even a little bit kind of halfway what society labels as “down low,” AIDS, Inc. doesn’t know what to do with black men’s sexuality. It just doesn’t. We don’t have the right studies for it. We don’t have the right access for it. We don’t have any idea, except prison — which is my whole other issue — of where you can have an opportunity to engage men around health literacy, right? Sexuality addiction that plays into factors; sex that happens with men that does not mean, or does not reflect, an orientation. We don’t have the places to have those discussions. The good thing about what we’re doing with the girls is that we’re able to have those venues to have that discussion.

“But as long as we’re able to access health care, mostly around our reproductive organs, and men don’t have a similar place where they even ever have to come into care, unless they’re coming into care for prostate cancer — and that’s a sure sign that they’ve come too late — we’ve been doing one-hand clapping for a long time. So it’s not even about what works, or what doesn’t work; we’re still trying to figure it out.”

~~Tracie Gardner, Founder and Coordinator of the Women’s Initiative to Stop HIV/AIDS NY at the Legal Action Center

Read the rest of the interview here.

Image Credit: News One

By Guest Contributor Konju Oruwari, cross-posted from Vegans Of Color

What follows is the last letter traded in an exchange between a couple of 26 year-old black dudes regarding my last post on “Liberation Veganism.” My comrade is not vegan, and is concerned about “the problem with the displacement of bread and butter struggle with raw foodisms,” etc, due to my attempt to mix veganism with human liberation, or in our case black liberation.

It is an important concern for all of us, whether or not thinking about or bringing up veganism in a context like African liberation discourse is appropriate. Or the problem with making something like going vegan or trumpeting ecological awareness THE issue or THE revolution, rather than just an aspect of it. And the problem of having advocacy of those causes which are “on the periphery for me, masking as if it is at the core,” as my friend challenged. He stated that to bring up veganism at a hypothetical “cop watch” meeting and try to make the meeting about veganism would be problematic, from which I gathered that something like “cop watch” to him was a “bread and butter” ‘hood issue (as opposed to, given the tenor of our exchanges, dietary, environmental, lifestyle, quality of life, sanitation, etc. issues, which to him are more associated with white liberal green/ vegan activists for whom those things are THE issue).

Lastly we had a disagreement on this point, and I quote my brotha: “one day you said to me the first responsibility of a revolutionary is to be healthy. That was the crucial difference for me, i thought you were wrong. Our health is not the priority, the people are, when the struggle becomes for our own person health (or morality) we are distant from the people.” In subsequent retorts from myself (because I believe the exact opposite of what he asserts) I struggled with this contradiction until he later stated, “a revolutionaries health is not an end to me, it is a means to the end which is revolution.” I play with this idea as well down below.

Without further ado, then, here’s my letter to my good brother comrade in struggle, on the “bread and butter” issues of liberation struggle as pertain to defining health, priorities of concern, “revolution” and so on.

Bro,

In between running ’round town, meeting folks, preparing food, listening to the radio and other daily bizness, I wondered about how we might define “health” anyway. And that how we define health may determine our relationship with whatever that commodity is. And if there are elements in contemplating health that we may not exactly see eye to eye on, it may be because we haven’t gotten around to building a consensus – a definition to begin with – of what that concept means.

But I also came upon the thought that revolution, which is another notion we may have to define more concretely, nonetheless is fundamentally about health. No? I mean, it seems people like us would only come to acquire and espouse our deep discord, alienation and criticism of the world because there’s an element of it that is so odiously sick and unhealthy, to us and people who look like us. If economic systems are preventing our people from excelling, those economic systems are killing them, ruining their economic and by extension personal health, ruining their sense of self-worth and thus compromising their mental health. If occupational labor standards where they work are consistently dangerous but that danger goes un-remedied by profit-hungry bosses, i.e. undocumented Mexican migrant farm laborers in California or Michigan constantly exposed directly to heavy overflight pesticide spraying with no protective gear, or conditions in meat-packing plants in Chicago where lots of poor black folks once worked and now many more Latinos, etc – then those capitalist labor conditions are ruining their health.

If our schools indoctrinate ignorance and fear and division, and our mass media propagate the same, and our youth imbibe a bitter hopelessness and “act out” against one another, our whole social system is preventing us from being healthy. Same for exposure to high concentrations of lead and other toxic fine particulates, leading to higher asthma rates, in parts of the Bronx and Harlem where MTA’s bus depots are, and where the sanitation transfer stations are, such that the straight filth of our infrastructure kills us.

If one’s housing conditions promote insecurity and pest infestation while being exorbitantly priced so as to suck up half a person’s income, that person has that much bigger a hurdle towards being healthy, including psychological anxieties and stress which increase stress hormones like cortisol and norepinephrine levels which compromise metabolism and immunity to disease.

If Daewoo and other Korean and wealthy Persian Gulf corporations can sign 99-year leases for land in places like Madagascar or Ethiopia to grow food explicitly for their own populations and not the indigenous African populations who live where the food is grown, that type of neo-colonialism is going to decrease food security for people at home, thus ensuring more malnutrition, infant mortality, maternal mortality, and other stark miseries which prevent effective and productive living of a life, or just health said succinctly. Even indigenous regimes of patriarchy, machismo, etc. compromise women’s health, and by extension that of the children, elderly, and whole families.

I mean, that’s one way I tend to see it. I don’t like seeing the misery and desperation out there – it’s disgusting and unhealthy. My innate disgust with this crap is why I’m like this, even why I’m vegan. I don’t like cruelty. I think human beings are capable of far more than what we’ve got here. That’s why I keep striving.

So in terms of this other undefined concept – “bread and butter” issues, no one of us will see exactly eye to eye as to what’s number one or whatever. As for me, and this is a fluctuating, ever changing bunch of things that most frequently preoccupy a person like me, but education of the youth, health, quality of life, labor and cooperative economics/ black business (business doesn’t have to mean capitalist acquisitive stuff, just organizing our own economics internally), domestic violence and black on black crime, the environment, access to land/ housing/ ownership of where we live and even grow food, food security – these might be just some of my top five concerns, and I think I named more than five things here.

What’s interesting (and not I hope a point of conflict but just worth contemplating for the both of us) is that something like “cop watch” is not on my top five, and just might barely make my top ten, of “bread and butter” issues. This is because, as I hinted at in the last message, there is a hell of a lot more domestic violence and black on black crime than there is police on black crime. Said another way, which effects how I prioritize either concern in my thoughts – someone living in an oppressed and crime-ridden community is far more likely to suffer physical strife from someone who looks like them and lives near them than by the police – in for instance Newark, NJ. So a lot more of my attention is grabbed by “stop the violence” and anti-rape, anti-domestic violence “take back the night”-type work than anti-police brutality work. Just because rape and horizontal violence are a much greater existential threat to everyday people than police violence.

And this point may be controversial, even between you and me, but it is something I take issue with at times and with some groups and individuals, who decry every instance of police brutality, but are a little more muted regarding when we do brutality to each other, senselessly, even as children. This is not a “blame the victim” statement. This is not a statement decrying some innate tendency for irrational violence towards one another in our community. It just acknowledges a statistic, whose generation is due to the lack of resources by which to survive which promotes dangerous and destructive attitudes, lifestyles and practices, which leaves us only with some warped sense of dignity over which we might kill because someone disses us. That’s horizontal violence 101, ala Frantz Fanon or Omali Yeshitela. And I tend to have a lot more affinity with that problem than with vertical violence/ state violence, at least as pertains to those of us in North America for the moment.

And I could be wrong, all wrong in my priorities.

So we should think about what “bread and butter” means very carefully and self-critically before we attempt to declare what ought and what ought not be put on the table. Also, regarding the table, and the fear of things like vegan issues crowding out the more “salient” points of discussion and work: to me that fear is unnecessary and almost irrational. I said it before and I’ll say it again: there’s a time and place for every discussion.

And to the extent that to me health is an upfront “bread and butter” issue, when many black folk think about why there’s so much obesity and diabetes in the community, they look at the food system and the food culture we have to deal with. There are many among those who then look at what’s in the kitchen, and analyze the hormone and antibiotics-infused meats, the empty calorie fattening soda and junk food, and so on, and how they eat corporate-controlled food-like substances mostly, and not really nourishing whole foods. And among folks with that analysis, many, many of them might bring up the ‘v’ word, or the vegetarian/ vegan question. By that line of thought and action, veganism of all things could come straight to the table, the “bread and butter” table.

And it would be very dismissive and paranoid to act like all those voices with those questions and thoughts on their minds are bringing up a parochial, peripheral issue. It is not peripheral to them. It becomes a hood issue to them, a “bread and butter” (or maybe “bananas and avocados”) issue. Their voice is just as valid and ought to be just as welcome to the table as your voice, which might never bring up such a question. If you were the master of the table, when they start to think about health, and then diet, and then nutrition, and then maybe veganism, would you just say “shut up?” I don’t think so.

Please don’t leave this conversation still thinking that of all things “veganism,” and I really mean diet and lifestyle and consumer and quality of life questions and concerns which may inevitably and likely lead to things like veganism being brought up, should be hushed away from conversation, due to fear that to converse or contemplate that takes away from, well, “bananas and avocados” issues. Vegans are less than 1 percent of black folk, but that still makes for a vast multitude. Let them be heard.

If the table of discourse is managed well and with discipline, discussions of veganism won’t manage to drown out other and broader concerns and objectives. Don’t fear and hate any aspect of the discourse, however it may seem like minutia to you.

Anyway, back to thinking about health. If depression is now an epidemic in the US including our communities, if obesity, if heart attack, if premature death or disability are now so monumentally epidemic in the US including our communities, it would behoove us to very aggressively question all that.

Another reason that, if I reverse roll-play your critique of me onto you, I think something like “cop watch” isn’t necessarily as priority “bread and butter” as health, is that more than cops, even more than violent strangers or spouses, what we are eating and where we are living are negatively affecting our outcome as a people.

Let’s break it down to be really clear: years of eating unhealthy food, sedentary living, exposure to toxic materials in the home and workplace, and the stresses of making ends meet in an unstable community – these things very very much are killing us far faster and more unforgivingly than any police.

Yet I think some folks think so much about police-brutality because of how visible that is. All the dietary, environmental and other aspects of our lives which are committing literal genocide on our people – that stuff tends to be more invisible and, to use a little medical terminology, of insidious onset. It’s what’s part of the ambiance, what’s mundane, what’s habitual, that is filling more graves with black bodies in America than anything else. This includes young people like us.

So, study food. Study environment. Study capitalism. Study industries. Study geography. Study sociology. Study it all. It’s all on the table. It’s all bread and butter. Even when subsets of those studies lead to considerations, in any given space or time, of such a rarified topic as veganism.

Everything on the table. “Bread and butter” can be “bananas and avocados” to some, and it’s still valid, still worth respecting of the ideas they may share. Don’t fear ideas.

Lastly, regarding the quote “a revolutionaries health is not an end to me, it is a means to the end which is revolution.” I said that I basically agree with this before. But to make things a little more interesting, I will declare that I do think, as a human being (I know we are not revolutionaries either of us, but even if we were, we’d have to be human beings before being revolutionaries), it is perfectly acceptable to take health as an end. Full stop. Take health as a fundamental goal. We all have but limited time here, and none of us are getting out of this gig alive, and moreover, we may not see the broader changes we want to see in our community happen in our lifetimes.

Might as well at least try to be healthy. Taking one’s health as an end means simply striving to have healthy relationships, live and eat healthily, and have outlets for what interests us, including the act of pursuing revolution or a revolutionary ethos. In other words, one might be able to say “revolution is a means to a revolutionary’s health” because by practicing revolution we get psychological, emotional, mental, physical, social etc. fulfillment and well-being.

So, I’ve problematized that one for ya. Remember, bro, it all depends on how we define “health”! And how we define “revolution”! The two could be one and the same for some of us!

Revolutions,

Konju

I could barely contain my rage when I saw this item:

In Seattle, Wash., a white male teacher had an 8-year-old African American girl removed from the classroom. In most cases, children are removed for behavioral and disciplinary issues, which is clearly understandable and acceptable; however, this wasn’t the case here.

The teacher removed the girl, claiming her Afro was making him sick. Naturally, the father of the child, Charles Mudede, was extremely concerned after the incident, and, as a result, the girl, who was the only black child in the advanced-placement class, has missed two weeks of school.

The incident, which occurred at Thurgood Marshall Elementary School, was featured on KIRO-TV. The segment showed the hair product the girl used, Organic Root Stimulator’s Olive Oil Moisturizing Hair Lotion, as well as interviews with her mother and lawyer.

Checking out Afrobella’s Facebook page, I found the link to the original story filed by reporter Tonya Mosley, in which she interviewed the student’s mother, the lawyer taking the case, and others:

Bellen Drake still can’t believe she’s here, at a news conference with the NAACP, fighting to get her 8-year-old daughter back into honors classes - all because of hair moisturizer.

“I couldn’t comprehend it. I was trying to make sense of it and it took awhile,” said Bellen.

Bellen says late last month, the teacher pulled her daughter out of class at Thurgood Marshall Elementary and into the hallway.

“My daughter reports that she kept saying she’s afraid and it’s your hair and that she could go to another class for the rest of the day.”

Bellen says the school never contacted her about it, but instead removed the girl from her honors class and into a regular classroom.

“This is about the conduct of an adult and the ramification of that conduct by the principal,” says Vonda Sargent, the family’s attorney.

Someone who reblogged the quote from my Tumblr blog responded that the student’s father, Charles Mudede, has been writing about the situation.  Come to find out the white teacher in question was a white woman, not a man as first reported:

[Just] last week, my daughter—who is 8 and happens to be the only brown person in her Accelerated Progress Program class at Thurgood Marshall Elementary—was ordered out of the classroom because her teacher did not like the smell of her hair. The teacher complained that my racially different daughter’s hair (or something—a product—in the hair) was making her sick, and then the teacher made her leave the classroom. My daughter was aware of the racial nature of this expulsion not only because she was made to sit in a classroom that had more black students in it (the implication being that this is where she really belongs, in the lower class with the other black students), but because her teacher, she informed me, owns a dog. Meaning, a dog’s hair gives the teacher less problems than my daughter’s human but curly hair. Most white people do not have to deal with shit like this. Shit that if not checked and confronted will have permanent consequences for the child.

Over the weekend, KIRO-TV ran a story on its evening newscast about the situation. The news segment showed the hair product that my daughter used, Olive Oil Moisturizing Hair Lotion, and brief interviews with her mother and lawyer. The lawyer smelled the hair product and claimed it was harmless; her mother expressed distress about the whole situation. The story wrapped up with a reporter standing outside of my daughter’s school in the Central District, explaining that he could not get a response from the teacher or the school’s principal because the school was closed for the long weekend. That was all you learned from the KIRO story.

What was significantly missing from this report is that my daughter is black American (the only black student in that teacher’s class) and the teacher who forced her out of the classroom is white American. The reason why this racial dimension was not exposed or addressed in the KIRO report is understandable: My daughter and her teacher were not interviewed. But my wife was interviewed—and she is white. So it follows that viewers would assume that her daughter is also white. But if the public had seen that the little girl has brown skin and curly hair, and her teacher has white skin and straight hair, then it would have been impossible to exclude race from this story.

If a white teacher—a person who is supposed to have a certain amount of education and knowledge of American history, and who teaches at a school named after the man who successfully argued before the court in Brown v. Board of Education for equal opportunities for racial minorities in public schools and went on to become the first African-American Supreme Court justice—removes a black student from a predominantly white class because of her hair, it is almost impossible not read the action as either racist or expressive of racial insensitivity, which amounts to the same thing for someone in that teacher’s position.

When we, her parents, were later informed of this incident, we also learned that once my daughter was removed from the class, the teacher felt much better. We were also told that the teacher had experienced something like a fainting spell because of our daughter’s hair. Feeling the seriousness of this situation, we decided not to send our daughter to school until the teacher had medical proof that our daughter’s hair or something in her hair was to blame for the nausea. (The last thing you want to happen to your daughter is for a teacher to faint or vomit at the mere sight of her.)

Representatives from the school district responded (original emphasis):

“The district agrees that it is not acceptable for a teacher in our district to ask a student to leave a classroom for the reasons that this child was asked to leave,” says Kevin O’Neill, senior assistant general counsel for Seattle Public Schools, the attorney who is handling the case of Mudede’s daughter.

The district’s position, in a nutshell, is that the teacher erred by kicking out the student, but race wasn’t a factor and an investigation is underway. However, O’Neill also says he doesn’t know what exactly happened or “the reasons that this child was asked to leave.” Until the investigation is complete, he says, it’s unclear what was offensive about the hair product that reportedly made the teacher sick, why the district hadn’t done anything for three days, whether an incident like this had ever occurred before, whether anyone had spoken to the teacher about the incident, whether school district rules prohibit any cosmetics, or what current or future steps are required for the investigation.

But he insists race was not a factor. Any allegations of racial insensitivity or negligence are “wholly untrue,” O’Neill says, “because, well, because the district would not tolerate employment of a teacher that has racial animosity towards a student.”

How can O’Neill—who doesn’t even know if anyone has talked to the teacher or what is occurring in the investigation—be so certain about this one aspect? “Based on preliminary information I have, it is clear that the removal of the student, as inappropriate as it was, had to do with a health issue and not a racial issue,” he says. “To the extent of the health issues, what was said to the child, the circumstances, that is a matter that is still under investigation. Based on our preliminary investigation, it isn’t a result of racial animosity, as far as I understand.”

But of course not.

Even if we give the teacher the benefit of the doubt—that her intention wasn’t to hurt the pupil with her racially insensitive comment in attempting to stave off her own allergic reactions—the fact remains is the teacher just may have done exactly that.  I won’t address what others have so ably stated, namely alternatives to the teacher’s handling (such as calling the parents in for a private sit-down with her and the principal, providing medical proof that she has allergies to the product at the parents’ request, etc.)  The teacher employed, according to what Mudede’s and Drake’s daughter said, a very gendered racial rhetoric, namely the Delicate White Woman Frightened by the Negress’ Physical Being.  In stating to the daughter that “she’s afraid and it’s [her] hair” evokes the stereotypes that:

1) Black people (including mixed-race people who self-identity as Black—though, in this case, it’s the father who states his child is Black.  No reports so far say how the child identifies herself) are a constant physical threat to whites—like all we think about is how to inflict maximum bodily damage to them.

2) that Black people (as well as other people of color and white ethnic people) smell bad, especially because they use “cultural products” that white USians aren’t used to.

3) Black people’s hair is in a dormant or active state of “fright wig,” which dovetails into the idea that Black natural hair is inherently ugly and the people possessing it as inherently unattractive, especially if the possessor is female.

and

4) the teacher implicated herself in an insidious stereotype about white women, namely that of a frail femininity that must be protected from any “offending coloredness”–in this case, a Black girl with some hair-care products for her naturally curly head attending an accelerated class at a school named for a staunch legal defender of civil rights.

Mudede says toward the end of his post

Getting entangled in a racial dilemma is something most black parents do not want for their children. It’s just not worth the trouble. Then again, like I said, if not checked and confronted, the incident will have permanent consequences for my child.

The NAACP agreed: they are planning to file a complaint with the US Department of Education, though I can easily seeing them argue that this may be a possible result of the Supreme Court ruling that Seattle’s attempt to integrate were illegal.

Mudede’s final thoughts:  “The whole thing is a mess.”

Indeed…and an avoidable one, at that.

Thanks to Dr. Torrence Stephens for the original link, Afrobella for the great leads, and Sarah for the legal decisions!

As much as we complain about hip-hop and rap staying mostly “unconscious” about reproductive-justice issues (the only cut to this day discussing pro-choice options is Digable Planets’ “Femme Fetale”—and that came out 15 years ago), artists have spat about prophylactic use, specifically Trojan Magnums.

All that free advertising—or “unsolicited lift,” as the New York Times calls it —generates some brand loyalty among black people, Trojan reports: “Internal research [sic] indicates they account for 22 percent of all condom purchases but 40 percent of Magnum purchases.” Trojan also claims 75 percent of the condom market.

Now, Ludacris is doing his part to spread more of the large latex love by teaming up with the company for its very first ad campaign, a contest where people can create their own paeans to the brand. The winner gets $5,000 and a trip to the hip-hop festival Birthday Bash, to be held in Atlanta in June, and personal congrats from the rapper/actor himself.

The campaign is an great idea, considering the epidemic-level stats on HIV and Black cis and trans women and, as my friend sexologist Bianca Laureano said, “especially in the hip-hop community where ‘I like it raw’ is still prominent.”

I am wondering, though, about the racialized sexual stereotypes undergirding and getting perpetuating by this, namely that mainstay of black sex-negative imagery, the Big Black Penis.

Of course, the marketers deny that’s not what the contest is about, yet acknowledge that’s exactly what Ludacris and his fellow rappers do [emphasis mine]:

“While rappers usually evoke the large condoms to imply a physical attribute, Mr. Long said that was not the point of the contest. “We’re looking for songs that encompass the Magnum lifestyle and what it means to live large — not just the size of the condom or what it’s put on but what it means to live large across the board,” Mr. Long said.

“The Magnum brand is viewed as a positive lifestyle badge and positive symbol,” Mr. Daniels said. “And people are proud to show they have a Magnum condom — the large size really connotes a sense of ‘above-average prowess,’ let’s call it.”

And let’s call that “physical attribute” and “above-average prowess”—say it with me—“the mythical Mandingo Dick” that black cis men are supposed to have and know how to use magically since birth. (To some black cis men, this is what we call at Racialicious a “positive stereotype”—but, like all stereotypes, it really isn’t positive after all.) It is against this penile yardstick that all other cis penises are judged and, according to the myth, has other races of cis men wanting. Anecdote: I had an ex-friend, a non-black man of color who considers himself rather progressive, tell me that when he was a younger man in the late 80s and 90s, the “fit” of condoms didn’t make practicing safer sex fun because they were “all made by Asian companies,” but he and some of his male contemporaries gritted their teeth and used them because they were more afraid of dying from AIDS. Now, he said, condoms “are made better” and with “more variety” from “different companies.” Decode at will…

I mentioned to Laureano that I heard Trojans weren’t the best for penetrative sex but for sex toys due to the thickness, compared to Kimono, which also sells a larger size but is thinner and would lend itself to feeling a partner’s pussy/ass/mouth better—in turn, getting some guys (and their partners) off. But Kimono condoms have “that Asian connection,” Laureano answered, and people think that instantly equates to “smaller penis.” Even though Kimono sells the larger size, she continued, “people think large for an Asian dude is ‘norm’ for US dudes. Wackness.”

These attempts to measure up to (or live down) these racist sexual stereotypes may have some serious ramifications: campuses reporting “lost condoms” in some cis female students; some people not seeking out condoms that will meet their size needs (a recent study said that people fail to use condoms because of poor fit and “will remove them before sex ends”; quite a few cis men refuse to buy small- or medium-sized ones); the safer-sex needs of trans men–as many discussions about infection prevention/reduction go—are rendered invisible.

This is a brilliant stroke for Ludacris by using capitalism to get out a safer-sex message…I’m just not quite down with lifting sexual clichés along with it.

A post at the Pursuit of Harpyness alerted us to a new book on race and bioethics: Rebecca Skloot’s The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks.  The following is from Skloot’s website:

Her name was Henrietta Lacks, but scientists know her as HeLa. She was a poor Southern tobacco farmer who worked the same land as her slave ancestors, yet her cells—taken without her knowledge—became one of the most important tools in medicine. The first “immortal” human cells grown in culture, they are still alive today, though she has been dead for more than sixty years. If you could pile all HeLa cells ever grown onto a scale, they’d weigh more than 50 million metric tons—as much as a hundred Empire State Buildings. HeLa cells were vital for developing the polio vaccine; uncovered secrets of cancer, viruses, and the effects of the atom bomb; helped lead to important advances like in vitro fertilization, cloning, and gene mapping; and have been bought and sold by the billions.

Yet Henrietta Lacks remains virtually unknown, buried in an unmarked grave…

Henrietta’s family did not learn of her “immortality” until more than twenty years after her death, when scientists investigating HeLa began using her husband and children in research without informed consent. And though the cells had launched a multimillion-dollar industry that sells human biological materials, her family never saw any of the profits. As Rebecca Skloot so brilliantly shows, the story of the Lacks family—past and present—is inextricably connected to the dark history of experimentation on African Americans, the birth of bioethics, and the legal battles over whether we control the stuff we are made of.

Over the decade it took to uncover this story, Rebecca became enmeshed in the lives of the Lacks family—especially Henrietta’s daughter Deborah, who was devastated to learn about her mother’s cells. She was consumed with questions: Had scientists cloned her mother? Did it hurt her when researchers infected her cells with viruses and shot them into space? What happened to her sister, Elsie, who died in a mental institution at the age of fifteen? And if her mother was so important to medicine, why couldn’t her children afford health insurance?

The Pursuit of Harpyness elaborates on this last point, saying:

But what struck me most was the fact that in a country with a more functional social safety net – universal health care, social assistance, half-decent public schools – the disparities between the Lackses’s situation, and the incredible wealth generated by the medical knowledge it occasioned, wouldn’t be so stark. They would have actively benefited from this research just like everyone else.

Learn more about the book at Skloot’s website.

For Canada’s First Nations communities, being denied our basic and fundamental human rights is, sadly, not at all a surprise. So after last week’s report that the Canadian government had postponed the delivery of much-needed alcohol-based hand sanitisers to reserve communities with massive outbreaks of the swine flu virus out of apparent “fear” of theft driven by alcoholism in the community, I stopped to think about it for a second. “Same old stupid government perpetuating the colonisation of our people,” I thought. But there’s more going on here that needs to be addressed.

Let’s review the facts. In the two and a half weeks that the government deliberated over whether to send hand sanitiser to reserve communities, this is what happened:

• More swine flu cases developed

• Chiefs, community leaders, nurses and community health representatives scrambled to deal with the escalating outbreak without help from a non-responsive government

• Families, children, elders and community members in these areas had no choice but to wait and see if they were going to get any type of diagnosis or care as conditions worsened

• The wider Canadian population heard occasional reports of the virus developing more in First Nations communities but not enough to warrant a national outpouring of support.

Access to necessary healthcare services is an ongoing problem for many indigenous people around the world, and Canada is no exception. But universal healthcare and non-insured health benefits (which First Nations and Inuit individuals receive in Canada) don’t mean anything if you live somewhere you still cannot get household plumbing, let alone a visit to the doctor.

The statistics are everywhere: this month, a report from a Senate subcommittee on population health highlighted the inadequacies and inequities of First Nation health systems and services that contribute to “third-world health conditions”. This is what the report says:

Canada is generally perceived as one of the greatest countries in the world in which to live. It has a vast and diverse geography rich in natural resources, clean air and a vast territory. When it comes to health, however, we unfortunately have serious disparities. Some Canadians live their lives in excellent health with one of the highest life expectancies in the world; paradoxically others spend their life in poor health, with a life expectancy similar to some third world countries. The unfortunate Canadians who suffer poor health throughout their lifetime are frequently less productive, adding to the burden on the healthcare delivery system and social safety net. We cannot correct this inequity through the healthcare delivery system itself, regardless of the expenditure we devote to it.

This is not even to mention that First Nations nurses get paid about 20% less than nurses who work for Health Canada. But I want people to start talking about why and how the Canadian government oppresses First Nations communities.

Canada is still a colonial state. The country operates under colonial-type laws that undermine the self-determination of First Nations people – and means we have to see if it’s okay with the government to get services to people who need them. There is promising legislature in British Columbia: a tripartite agreement between governments and First Nations healthcare services, and similar legislation under way in Saskatchewan and other provinces. But we nonetheless have to tiptoe around policymakers while our people perish mentally, physically and spiritually every day in both big cities and remote northern territories.

It doesn’t matter that the government thought it had “legitimate” reasons for withholding alcohol-based hand sanitisers from communities desperately seeking help – the truth remains that even if chiefs were saying they didn’t want them, it didn’t have non-alcoholic sanitisers ready anyway. During this entire waiting period it let people suffer, panic and scream in frustration – alone. But I guess it’s something they’re used to doing.