aSf (asegi)¹, tl? Dcc` (taliquo didandan`)² , aSd ucT (asegi udanto)³, asf=sd` ucT(asgayusd` udanti)⁴, af=sd` ucT (ageyusd` udanti)⁵. These are all words and phrases that that the Cherokee two-spirits use to identify themselves. The concept of two-spirits is present in every North American tribes’ culture. After European colonization most indigenous cultures were Christianized and lost their two-spirit identities. It is up to today’s two-spirit generation to stand up and define what it means to be two-spirit.

Two-spirit is a term used to describe the wide variety of gender and sexuality in native cultures. It comes from the idea that there are two spirits in a person’s body, a male spirit and a female spirit. Two-spirits come in all genders and sexualities. The Cherokee people have a dance, the Stomp Dance, that is said to restore balance to the world. In this dance women shake shells and dance while the men sing. The male bodied two-spirits shake shells with women. In hir’s⁶ essay “Shaking our Shells: Cherokee Two-spirits Rebalancing the World” Qwo-Li Driskill calls for all Cherokee two-spirits to come together and claim their place in the tribe’s circle. “We are being called to take our place within our communities, to “shell shake” our traditions in order to restore duyuktv⁷.  The responsibilities we have as male-embodied Two-Spirit Cherokees—to sustain our lifeways and cultures—is like shell shaking.  We have the responsibility to restore and maintain duyuktv through practicing Cherokee lifeways and ending gender oppressions” (Driskill). Being two-spirited is about more than being gay or lesbian or transgender or intersex. It is about rebalancing the world by taking back the traditional two-spirit roles. It is about shaking shells and weaving baskets for male bodied Cherokee two-spirits. In most tribes the medicine person was a two-spirit. Two-spirits were looked towards for advice because it was thought that they could see both sides of situation easily.

Part of reclaiming the two-spirit identity is reclaiming a culture that was lost with colonization. The Cherokee in particular converted to Christianity early on in colonization. By the time of Andrew Jackson’s presidency, the Cherokee people were very westernized. The current generation of elders struggles with the idea of two-spirits. It is a part of their culture that they have forgotten in lieu of the religious principles of Christianity. This is one of the biggest challenges when it comes to reclaiming the two-spirit identity because Christianity, as it was brought to the Americas, has rigid gender roles and rules about sexuality that do not fit in to the roles of native people in indigenous cultures.

I have struggled with this essay because it has not been a reformation of ideas or concepts that I already knew and understood. It has been a long and tedious journey for me because before this essay I did not know where I stood. I did not know if I was two-spirit or if I could even claim the title. Now I know. I am a Cherokee two-spirit. It is my duty to reclaim my place in the circle, to define what it means to be two-spirit in a modern world. I am aSf(asegi).

__________________________________________________________________

Bubbie, a whale of a mother!

I wondered if everyone knew what Bubbie was.  I recognized her right away while watching The Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack on Cartoon Network quite a few months ago.  I’m a fan of anything cartoon or animated, watching anything from Shrek to anime.  So I was shocked when I saw a relic from the past in the Flapjack cartoon.  It was the same female form that plagued an innocent enough Tom and Jerry and permeated classic Hollywood.

The cartoon features a young white boy named Flapjack who lives with a shipwrecked, blue pirate named K’nuckles and his adoptive mother Bubbie, who is a talking whale.  Their “misadventures” begin on whims from K’nuckles, who thinks of himself as a captain, with naive little Flapjack following close behind.  The two of them live inside Bubbie’s mouth equipped with plumbing, tongue for bedding and teeth functioning as front doors.  Their cloudy world is gross, with dirt and grime flicked across the harbor town where they reside.  Flapjack and K’nuckles live for glorious Candy Island, which drives them through a series of journeys toward candy riches.  Bubbie is home base and voice of reason in their fantasy world.  But all this can’t hide what she really is: a modern day mammy personification.

It was in her voice first, a deep husky voice that could only belong to an overweight black woman.  And that’s cool.  But then Bubbie started to show herself over time.  For one, she’s literally a whale, who’s also asexual, nurturing, serviant, and fiercely loyal and protective of Flapjack.  Bubbie is good natured with a tendency to be harsh when needed.  She’s cautious, filled with old wives tales and fear of the unknown.  Her speech is littered with black girl words and inflections.  And what kind of name is Bubbie?  It rings of that old nanny spirit, easy enough for a baby to say.  And does anyone else notice that K’nuckles is the only blue person?

You’ve seen Bubbie before.  She was in Gone with the Wind, on pancake syrup bottles as Aunt Jemima, and in many minstrel shows before our time.  Always a mass of fat, good cheer and sass, the mammy was used to entertain and comfort white audiences with the black female form.  She is a mythical creature in her own right that was fabricated to sell the idea of the self-sacrificing, safe, happy slave.  And she won’t die.

Maybe the creator of Flapjack was reaching into his subconsious and brought out what he thought resembled all things maternal.  Maybe he remembered certain associations with the matronly, authoritative, or protective and inadvertently resurrected the most popular caricature in black history.  That’s what lead him to pointedly hire a black woman with a blaring voice for Bubbie and made the cartoon whale so conspicuously flawed.  What if Bubbie was an accident?  It’s funny how easy it is to relay messages through cartoon that would be appalling in live action.

Perhaps I’m being too hasty.  Mammy may be one other thing in pop culture I’ll just have to accept, like myths of giant black penises and watermelon jokes.  But I want Bubbie to be free.  Go get her groove back.  I want her to go and find her big whale family.  I want her to leave Flapjack to his fate with the humanoids at the harbor town and feed her own little blue whale babies.  I want Bubbie to be sexy and attractive to her whale mate.  I want her to be true to her whale nature and stop sacrificing herself for Flapjack’s amusement and well being.  I want her to warn other whales of the dangers of mischievous little white boys and mind her own business next time.  Most of all, I want her to take the proverbial mammy rag from her head and disappear for good.

Who’s My True Ancestor?

When I was young they told me
How my paternal great granddad was an ecky-becky (poor Whity)
On my mother’s side I had an Indian great grand
She married a half breed Chinese man
My name was taken from an American Lord
Yankee man who travelled by ship with slaves aboard
They said he was originally from Scotland and crossed
Regularly from coast to coast selling men at minimal cost
Under the many gene pools that tainted my blood
East to West, all kinds of manhood
Am I to contend that from my dark colored skin
None of these races have any part within
Can it be that I am chiefly a Black
Ethnically linked to a more African track
Should I refuse the many other tributaries
That converge to form this present man from the West Indies
Or can we not be so devoted to race but rather to blood
Race divides us, humanity unites us, so which do you think I should?

by Khaidji of Bajan Poetry Society

No offense intended by any Bajan terms used above.

Unless you’ve been on another planet for the past few weeks, you’ve probably heard something about ‘District 9′ – a science fiction movie shot in Johannesburg, South Africa – where stranded alien visitors become the victims of a new apartheid.

Nope, I haven’t seen it, and yes I’d love to… but some reviewers have been taking the position that District 9 isn’t just about racism – it is racist itself in its stereotypical portrayal of blacks and Nigerians in particular.

How is the movie racist?

Well, to discuss that subject one has to decide to ignore the following reality…

WARNING: Plot Spoilers Ahead!

So there. Don’t say we didn’t warn you…

Okay, to start things off here are a few quotes from blogger D.C. Girl At the Movies…

The filmmaker, Neill Blomkamp’s heart was in the right place, but he didn’t quite grasp his own topic. Because of that, DISTRICT 9’s take on issues of xenophobia and race has a perspective and frame that is itself laden with those very issues.

Basically, it’s a ‘RACE MOVIE’ with the same clichés I spoke about in this post on both the alien and human front.

(snip)

..And the real-live black people in the movie?? You know, the ones Blomkamp is basing his alien population on?

Ooga-booga negroes who think *eating* the aliens will somehow give them their ~*magic*~, gun-toting gangstas, hos, and yes, we even have a barely-there sidekick who is repeatedly called ‘boy’.

He might have been trying to be ~*edgy*~ironic when he did this, which seems to be all the rage these days, but I’m not feeling that when those attempting it, don’t grasp the subject themselves. You can’t say anything to the populace about race and still be in remedial classes yourself.

Nothing like a good African Cannibal & Inter-Species Prostitution Movie!

Carrying the observations about Hollywood racial stereotypes a little bit further is our friend Nicole Stamp at her Pageslap blog. The following excerpt is taken from Nicole’s article District 9 is racist…

If you look at the film as an apartheid allegory, it has problems right off the bat. The aliens are loathsome, trash-eating vermin who fight endlessly, destroy property for no reason, and piss on their own homes, which isn’t a truthful or flattering allegorical comparison for actual black South Africans under apartheid. Apartheid is terrible because humans were denied rights. The “apartheid” of these aliens isn’t that terrible- it’s kind of justifiable, because they’re actually dangerous, violent and destructive.

(snip)

The Nigerians have a wailing “witch doctor”. Who instructs them to eat the aliens. And they do it. Bloody, wriggling, and raw, of course.

We’re told that the black prostitutes “service” the aliens sexually. ARE YOU EFFING KIDDING ME??!

And when Wikus’ arm grows a claw, the Nigerian gang boss starts licking his chops, eager to commit cannibalism.

Yup, that’s Hollywood’s Africa, isn’t it. Black Africans shown as degenerate savages who’ll have sex with non-humans and are pretty damn eager to eat people.

Disgusting.

The thing that really upsets me is that most people who see this movie won’t question, or even notice, this incredibly racist portrayal. It wasn’t even necessary for the plot, and in fact the racist elements actually created some plot holes.

What Do You Think?

Google “District 9 racist” and you’ll see how this discussion about the movie is taking off, with good people finding themselves on opposite sides of the arguments.

It will be interesting to see how this movie does in theatres in the Caribbean and, I guess, in South Africa. Is ‘District 9′ fatally flawed by racism in the making of the movie? Will black audiences notice or care? Is the criticism justified?  Do the critics realize that some of the nasty values and behaviors portrayed in the movie (cannibalism, rape, rape to cure aids) aren’t exactly unknown today on the continent?

Is the criticism justified? Once again, I haven’t seen District 9, but I have that impression. Nonetheless I’m wanting to see ‘District 9′ anyway for two reasons…

1/ The discussion of race, culture, history and the media always interests me.

2/ I love a good shoot-em-up!

Cliverton

Further Reading

Beliefnet: District 9 (Review)

Beliefnet: District 9 – About Racism or Racist?

Racialicious: Shrimpin’ Ain’t Easy – A Look At District 9

Sony Pictures: District 9 Official Website

Wikipedia: District 9

UPDATED: Bizzy Williams’ letter added at the bottom…

Dear Barbados Free Press,

This letter is in response to Mr. Bizzy Williams’ letter to be found on page 13 of the Weekend Nation (May 29, 2009).

Dear Mr. Williams:

Let me say for starters I have not read such a xenophobic piece in a long time. I am a born and bread Bajan who is capable of accurately tracing my roots for over six generations. I am deeply embarrassed that someone with your prominence in our society can pen such utterances.

My wife of over 30 years and three children are not born and bread Bajan, however, they became naturalized citizens of my beautiful country because of my heritage; yet you want to deprive them of a right that they have earned..

If you were to get your way none of my children or my wife would be able to vote in their adopted home country Barbados. This is in spite of the fact that they all pay their taxes on time – inclusive of PAYE, VAT and NIS.

Your intolerance for “foreigners” reminds is no less repugnant than the US’ most notorious media bigots, namely Rush Limbaugh, Bill O-Reilly, Lou Dobbs and Sean Hannity.

Editor's Note: Any man of Bizzy's age who can party until 8am has our respect!

By the way Mr. Williams, what do you mean by “a culture unlike ours”? May I remind you that culture is a set of patterns and traits exhibited by humans from the time of our existence and such characteristics are often used to define any given period, community, country, ethnic group or class within a respective society. As you can or should appreciate, culture is by no means static and actually it is a very dynamic process which will continue to undergo metamorphosis over time.

Here in Barbados we do not have a homogeneous culture, For the weekly paid construction worker with four children to support will never be able to sip Chivas Regal too regularly much less own a multimillion dollar yacht, however, both you and I are aware of those Bajans in our midst where this is an everyday part of life. There are some of us Bajans who prefer dancing to the dance hall star Buju Banton at Reggae Longue while there are others who prefer a night out taking in the classical violinist Patmore Lewis at Holder’s Plantation House. We are still Bajan in spite of the fact of our differences culturally.

Both you and I know that political parties here in Barbados seldom dance to the tune of the electorate as a matter of fact they are more likely to cow tow to major political financiers. Case in point both parties routinely break election promises following every election.

Mr. Williams I have always credited you with some intelligence, however, you went onto compromise my opinion when you state, “.. everyone (who was born in Barbados) and allowed to vote would at least have grown up in Barbados…”. Do you see the stupidity of such a conclusion? My Brother’s two kids were born in Barbados but migrated from Barbados when they were 3 and 5 respectively and have lived and are still living overseas for the last 20 years. However, if we were to follow your decree my Bajan born but overseas living nephews should be allowed to vote while my non-Barbados born but Bajan by descent kids should never be allowed to vote in the country they have called home for over 25 years. How utterly stupid!!!

Do you realise that if you were given your way most of out Prime Ministers wives (including PM Thompson) would never have been able to vote for their husband’s political party. Mr. Williams it looks as though that your brain was not in gear when you penned your harangue.  .

Mr. Williams how come we never heard a disparaging word from you regarding “foreigners” when Port St. Charles was being conceptualized and built or for that matter Apes Hill and the plethora of other similar projects. Was the conspicuous silence because these foreigners imported a culture that was similar to yours?

May be we are all foreigners for when our ancestors originally “discovered” Barbados some 550 years ago there were unsuspecting indigenous inhabitants that roamed Barbados for centuries who were a lot more welcoming to our fore parents than you are being to our neighbouring CARICOM brothers and sisters.

I consider myself much more culturally compatible to the foreigners you doth vehemently protest about. However, unlike you I am tolerant of the foreigners from both near and far for I see both these groups of people as having the potential to contribute in a positive manner to my beautiful island country called Barbados even it is no more than to diversify our stagnant gene pool.

A Bajan Forever

Letter written by Bizzy Williams…

Reserve vote for born and bred Bajans

5/30/2009

As I see it, the biggest danger to Barbados in allowing foreigners into this island to work and possibly settle is the possibility of a foreign culture being able to determine how we are governed.

There has been non-stop debate about the new Barbados immigration policy announced by our Government in the press and on the call-in programmes, but I have not heard anyone articulate this possibility.

Barbados has traditionally been governed by the BLP or the DLP. The support for these two parties is pretty even and in most cases, seats in an election are won or lost by a small percentage of votes cast. If therefore we allow in and grant residency to foreigners whose culture is unlike our own, we could easily end up with a small percentage of our population that embraces a culture unlike ours determining the outcome of our national elections.

This to my mind is an extremely dangerous possibility because knowing this, our political parties would tend to be very accommodating to the interests of these new residents at the expense of the interests of the wider Barbadian-born population.

The solution to this potential problem is simple. We should only allow people who were born in Barbados to vote in our elections. This would ensure that the shift to the control of the island by a foreign culture would be much slower and everyone who is allowed to vote would at least have grown up in Barbados and had the opportunity to embrace our culture.

I hope this suggestion will be implemented and that its implementation will put to rest the fears of born and bred Bajans who are concerned over losing our homeland to foreigners.

BIZZY WILLIAMS

I have spoken briefly about race on the blog with the basic statement that as it relates to skin tone for blacks in the United States it’s a losing and a very conflicting game.  The issue of skin tone came hurling to the front of my thoughts this Sunday night while exploring Black Planet’s website.    They had done an article on P Diddy and his casting call request which read as follows:

The management company for Diddy’s Ciroc-Imperative Talent Management-sent out a casting call and they were very clear about their requirements:

Race: White, Hispanic or Light skinned African American

From: info@imperativemgt.com
Subject: Promo girls needed!!!
To:
Date: Tuesday, March 24, 2009, 9:49 PM

Ciroc Promotion

Ciroc promo is this Friday, March 27, 2009
Time: 3:00pm – 7:00pm and 12:00am – 3:00am

Requirements:

Race: White, hispanic or light skinned african american
Height: At least 5?6 or taller
Size 7 or smaller.

This is a cash @ wrap job and the booking will be thru our partner. Please submit asap. Talent will only be contacted if the client is interested in booking you!!!

Compensation: $35.00 per hour

Imperative Talent Management
3500 Lenox Road, Suite 1500
Atlanta, GA 30326
info@imperativemgt.com
www.imperativemgt.com
404-419-2565 Office
404-419-2564 Office

After seeing this ad two things occurred to me, Brown and Black girls are not allowed and after meeting all of these requests of height, skin tone and color, and size these girls would only get $35.00 and hour.  Looking at this I recalled my conversation with a retired black prostitute formerly married to a retired dead SF police officer.  Wow these girls will give sex away for anything she said, they’ll give out sex for a ten dollar crack rock.  I used to go to Vegas and make thousands in a weekend, she said, I don’t understand.   Diddy’s call and his pay was an insult to dark toned black women as well as an attempt to play all women short in terms of pay and what the going rate for a model is which I hope is more than $35 an hour. The cost of Ciroc Vodka is $30.oo a bottle.  8 bottles of ciroc is $240.00.  I would hope these women would regognize that they are worth a great deal more than 8 bottles of Vodka.

In any event this post is not about model pay.  It’s about race in the black community.

My first experience with race came at an Air Force Base Fair when my mischievous father challenged our next door neighbor to go to the kissing booth and kiss the “white” women at the kissing booth.  Our next door neighbor who was a quiet man who I had hardly ever heard talk was pretty doubtful of the idea but my father egged him and taunted him on so eventually he gave in.  They walked over and kissed the woman on the lips and that was it.

The Fallout

I don’t know how it got back to our neighbors wife but I still can remember her coming to our house discussing the issue with my mom.  I can hear her loud shrill voice saying the following: As light as I am, and she was very light she was about ten shades lighter than a paper bag and could go easily for Jewish,  anyway I remember her saying as light as I am he’s going to have the nerve to go and kiss a white woman.  I’m leaving him.  I then listened to her talk about his very dark family even his momma.  I’m getting a divorce she said and she left him after many years of marriage.

She immediately moved off base and filed for divorce, all because of an innocent kiss with a white woman. “this was an extreme racial reaction probably in response to their private conversations where this man blacker than the silkiest of black cats probably told her in Diddy fashion, baby I love your skin etc. etc. etc.  What probably went through her mind was he wants to go even lighter to whiter and she left.  Diddy’s casting call is essentially what went through this very light skin women’s mind am I black enough, if he wants me this light he may eventually go over to another race.  The very innocent kiss was like a bell in her head.  He wants something else.  Hypothetically but not realistically she could have been right as one commenter on Black Planet stated Diddy has gone from very dark skin women all the way up to white women and so has 50 cent.

The Reaction

I suppose anyone reading this may wonder how could someone else’s divorce traumatize me.  I suppose being a witness to everything that occurred could have traumatized a little girl seeing the kiss, hearing the reaction, and watching the woman move out could have alerted me to the strange  nature of race.   However this was not all, this was not all.   The quiet man who hardly ever spoke was so upset about losing his wife and family that he went to his wifes job, the Pentagon, met her in the parking lot and stabbed her fourteen times with gigantic scissors one more stab and she would have been dead.  This was my first real experience with the peculiar nature of race in the United States and it’s consequences.

My first real insight into men like Diddy came with the reading of  ablack woman’s autobiography.  I thought it was Anne Moody but it’s been so long ago since I read the book I forgot the title of the book but I did not forget the contents.  The writer of the book went into detail about what it was like to be black but almost white in the United States.  She said she met a man married him and fell in love with him but there was a caveat he did not know she was black.  She said she discovered that he thought she was white after they were married when he and his friends started having white women black men parties only.  She said she was shocked at the things that she heard black men saying about black women and then when she went with the white women alone she said she was surprised with what they said about the black men.  She states they said terrible things.  The author of the book finally states that she got fed up with the dinner parties and started screaming my momma is black you better stop talking about black women.  I’m black.  The reaction was her husband beat her up and threw her down the stairs and kicked her out the house.

On the other hand as a brown woman I have been the victim of being not light enough and not black enough. Personally the men who love dark skin women are the creepiest.  They make their discrimination ceremonial.  If you are with a group they will have the darker women at the center of attention, and will drip on her every word.  A perfect example is in one of  John Legend’s live Videos he went out of his way to put a darker skin women on this video.  He grinded all over her publicly he treated her like he was really into her and this was the type of woman he liked.  Actually at the time his girlfriend was not even black.

While Diddy may be irritating he said what he wanted and we know where he’s coming from, the really irritating ones are the pretenders, pretend you like very dark skin women and then you’re caught in the corner with someone totally different.  This is so disappointing.

]]> http://blacksuperwomen.com/2009/03/30/president-obama-appoints-first-african-american-to-head-the-epa/ Tue, 31 Mar 2009 03:57:37 +0000 Noli http://blacksuperwomen.com/2009/03/30/president-obama-appoints-first-african-american-to-head-the-epa/

Lisa P. Jackson is the first African American to be appointed as the Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency.  She started working for the EPA in 1986, and eventually joined the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection, where she was named Commissioner.  After being appointed by President Obama as the Administrator of the EPA, she was confirmed unanimously in the Senate.  She will be the fourth woman and second person from New Jersey to serve as Administrator.  Sisters are DOING IT! [wikipedia]

So, last week Imperative Talent Management sent out a casting call for women to appear in a new Ciroc advertisement with Diddy…and they said they only wanted to women of the following races:  ”White, Hispanic, or Light Skinned African American.”  Diddy supposedly organized this casting call.  Ciroc released a statement saying that they were not aware of the “inappropriate and offensive casting call” and they in no way condone such practices.  Essentially, they are trying to stay far away from this discriminatory BS cuz they know it’s not cool with a Black woman in the White House.  For real, Diddy, your mama Janice is brown, your baby mama is brown, and you SURELY are brown…so what’s the problem?!  [hello beautiful]