Don’t tell me to boycott something; invite me to the alternative. Boycotting is only effective if critical mass is reached in a critical period of time. This is why it was effective during the Civil Rights’ era of the United States of America. Critical mass.

In this sound bitten age of social media, critical mass is not as easy come by. At least, critical mass about things that YOU care about. And even if you do reach critical mass (however you define that), you’re not guaranteed that the product or service you’re boycotting will change anything related to the status quo. Especially if that product or service is a movie.

That’s already been filmed.

And promoted.

And distributed.

Especially if that movie that has already been filmed, promoted and distributed was created by entities that are rather large. Peace to M. Night Shyamalan and Tyler Perry (who always gets a bad rep from my Conscious Black People circles).

The alternative is not easy. We can’t just go stand in front of movie theatre, join a Facebook group or five or throw clever dozens at the problem on twitter. (Even though y’all live tweets of BET Awards are HI-larious).

You have to create the solution. We have to create the alternative.  It’s a simple trick any parent knows. I don’t want my child to eat candy, but I want to her to enjoy a treat now and then. Before I’ve told her no candy, I already have an alternative ready. Warm peach cobbler. Vanilla ice cream.

What does the alternative look like? Different. Remixed and probably a little less polished than the shiny distraction. But you create it. You promote it. You learn the tricks to the trade and use it to transform the status quo. It’s not easy. But it sure will taste better.

This is a screen capture of my earlier tweets.  At Ann’s urgings, I decided to blog about it instead of just tweeting my thoughts on the matter.

I don’t typically blog about pop culture.  Pop culture is not my forte.  I am not comfortable commenting on anything pop-culture-related.  I am breaking my rule for this, though.

I just read about Slim Thug’s comments on Twitter.  It was trending, but I ignore trending topics, so I didn’t read about it until someone retweeted the link to Clutch Magazine’s response.

In all honesty, my first response was apathy.  I made a crack: “LMBO I didn’t even know who Slim Thug was, but having seen his pic, I can attest that his name is an utter lie.”  But I re-read the title of the Clutch Magazine article entitled “Slim Thug Launches Verbal Attack on Black Women.”  That gave me pause.  I gave the article a quick glance, and reached the conclusion that it was an emotional tirade and not a reasoned argument that would be worth my time, so I closed that tab. No one can make you angry without your consent. I do not invalidate Geneva S. Thomas’ anger by saying this.

One person on Twitter even went so far as to say that Slim Thug’s comments were worse than John Mayer’s. This piqued my interest.  For years now, I’ve rejected the notion that Black men have the right to define Black women’s identities and potential.  Yes, African-American women overwhelmingly date intra-racially, but this does not mean that we can expect blanket acceptance and affirmation from all Black men.  Black women are not a monolith.  Black men are not a monolith.

I recognize that John Mayer’s comments reverberate differently- as a white man he occupies a very privileged place in this racist, sexist society.  His comments reflect his presumed “right” to comment on the desirability of Black women’s bodies as though sexual conquest was his “right” regardless of consent or reciprocity.  In the same line of thought, Slim Thug’s comments on the desirability of Black women (he excludes biracial or multi-racial Black women, it seems).  He brings into question the perceived femininity of Black women when he states:

“My girl is Black and White. I guess the half White in her is where she still cooks and do all the shit I say, so we make it. She just takes care of me and I like that.” He continues to half humiliate and half praise his half White girl. “She don’t be begging and I don’t gotta buy her all this crazy ass shit. And she’s a smart girl too. She graduated from Columbia and I like that about her so its cool.” [Vibe]

He’s talking about a very narrow conception of femininity that is predicated on the notion of women as “subordinate” to man.  The ideal woman he refers to fits the mold of the 1950s- middle-class, educated, yet subservient- and white.  She cooks and does whatever he says!  I’m sure you’ve heard the myth of “pliable” white women who bend over backwards to please their man.  I’ve heard it from my mother over the years- especially when a high-profile Black man married a white woman.  See, I never understood that, as most of the white women I knew were just like my mother- independent-minded, intelligent, and a whole host of traits that are not necessarily coded “female.”  Of course, I don’t mean to say that “Black women are just like white women.”  It would be wrong to say that Black women and white women have nothing in common.  There are common experiences that accompany being a woman, even if those experiences are stratified by race, class, disability and sexual orientation.

Anyhow,  I thought it was strange that Slim Thug referred to his (unnamed?) girlfriend’s Black and White halves as separate entities.  His Manichean logic in regards to race and identity strikes me as deeply ignorant. But really, I might be expecting too much from Stayve Jerome Thomas.

As for the outrage I saw on Twitter, I had 3 objections to it:

1) The presumed collective anger implies acceptance of Black women as a monolith.

The title of the Clutch Magazine article, “Slim Thug launches Verbal Attack on Black Women” told me everything I needed to know.  See, even before I read the article or Slim Thug’s comments, I knew that he was speaking about me, because he was talking about Black women in generalized terms.   I am NOT the “monolithic Black woman.”  Black women come from all sorts of backgrounds and experiences.  Black women span the entire African diaspora- not just the United States.  Black women are not only working-class, but we are also middle-class, upper-middle class and even wealthy.  Black women come in all shapes, sizes and shades, and we are all beautiful.  This same “monolithic Black woman” is the woman news outlets and politicos love to attack with charges of perpetual singleness, unwed motherhood and welfare queendom.  They are talking primarily about working-class Black women in monoracially segregated areas where the War on Drugs has played a role in incarcerating a rather sizeable percentage of Black men.  The presumption is that “good” Black men are scarce [as if employing economic concepts on dynamic individuals is acceptable], and Black women are a devalued commodity due to their abundant supply.

So, of course, as a college-educated, middle-class, disabled Black woman who is one generation removed from poverty in both East St. Louis and Southwest Mississippi, I cannot say I fit this mold.

2) The outrage is predicated on the acceptance of the voice of the likes of Slim Thug as a voice of authority

I had never heard of Slim Thug until today.  I don’t lend him any credence.  I do not care what he has to say about Black women.  What matters to me is that Black women and girls know their own worth outside of Black social constructs- which brings me to my third point:

3) This shows me the limitations of Black women’s affirmation and self-definition within a patriarchal society.

Slim Thug’s comments polarize the dual racial identities of his girlfriend as though they are opposing or mutually exclusive.  He conflates white womanhood with servility and agreeability, while casting Black women as belligerent, too-independent, demanding and self-centered.

If Black women define themselves by what Black men think of them, they limit their potential.  It’s no wonder that the first step to liberation for colonized nations was self-definition.  Self-definition requires individual agency.  Individual agency requires the recognition of others’ individuality as well as your own.  It requires the affirmation of that individuality as well.  If your body does not fit conventional aesthetic standards, don’t fight to fit them- redefine beauty.  God made you the way you are- not man.  Man ought not have the power to define who you normatively SHOULD be.  That power is ascribed tacitly by ignorance and complacency [I say this very carefully, mind you].  A patriarchal society does not require the dynamic permission of those living within it.  I didn’t ask to be labeled “Black” “female” or “disabled.”  I certainly did not label myself as such.  I guess what I’m trying to say is- don’t depend on others- men, women, Black, white, Asian, Hispanic, whatever- for affirmation and identification.  You are who you are.

I am irreducibly human.
I am more than the hands that produce, more than the body that functions.
I am more than the systemic constructions of my sex and race.
I am more than the atomized individual that society makes me out to be.
I am more than the voice denied, the body objectified, the soul belittled.
I am not a nameless, faceless entity who can be stripped of my personhood and agency.
I am God’s beloved creation. [originally posted here]

I wrote this poem in July 2009, and I think it is apt today.

By now, the fourth wave of Facebook’s privacy issues has surely come to your attention. It should come as no surprise to those who have been following Facebook closely since the very beginning.  Facebook has never been one to care about privacy, not because it’s Facebook, but because it exists on a platform that doesn’t have privacy as its concern. The internet was created by the US  government and has tracking devices built into its architecture.  In short, everything we do on the internet can be traced back to us. That’s just the nature of this beast.

So if you decide to quit Facebook in a fit of pure principal on May 31st, know that it’s beyond your world. Quitting Facebook won’t stop other social networking or internet utility sites from springing up and finding new ways to expose and share your information without your express permission.  Quitting Facebook aligns you with an elite class of technophiles who can afford to quit and shows you are not the demographic Facebook is appealing to anyway.

I could go on into a history of Facebook’s disregard of our imagined privacy, but I think this conversation needs to happen on a larger level.  It needs to include the entire scope of the internet’s architecture from ISPs to web browsers to mobile devices and back.  It’s a conversation that needs to include education as access to the net increases and saturates our way of life.

Once more and more people are better educated on how the internet works at a very basic level, they can then begin to demand things of services like social media and ISPs.  That’s the crux of the matter: people just don’t know and it benefits large companies to keep folks in the dark.

Shutting down your Facebook account not help because there is still a LARGE number of folks using their service. Creating wiser internet users is better.

Every so often, in any industry that is dominated by men, someone, usually a man, will raise a pertinent question:

Where are all the women in this industry?

There are two variables in that sentence: “the women” and “this industry”. Replace them appropriately and you get a number of similar questions, usually asked by the dominant voice of the community.

• Where are all the black people in technology?
• Where are all the women in engineering?
• Where are all the Hispanic women in web design?
• Where are all the women in hip hop?

I could go on and, in fact, I ask you to submit your own in the comments below.

The point of this isn’t to repeat what these questions are asking. I’d like to answer them all in one fell swoop:

They are here.

They are! We’re just not looking in the right place. Within any community, there are sub communities, also known as cliques, tribes, clubs, circles and so on. These sub communities exist to offer something missing or overlooked by the community at large. While a member of a club may participate in the community as a whole, it’s not the case that anyone in the community is part of every club. Often, whenever this type question is asked, it’s almost as if an ostrich stuck its head out from the ground and realized something or someone was missing.

Chances are, if you know one minority in your community, he or she knows others like him or herself: knows where they are, where they eat lunch, what they do on the weekends and how they feel about the community at large. This isn’t to say that every minorty has these connections. In fact, I confess, I would ask these questions often when I first entered web design in 2003. As a young, black, nerdy woman, I needed a community of similar people to share my journey with. I was following who I considered to be the greats in web design and development. People like Molly H, David Shea, Greg Storey, Dan Cederholm, Derek Powazek were stacked in my blogroll on every iteration of my personal webspace. In reality, the community I looked for were doing their own thing and building their own networks. There were talents in every race, creed and class who created their own communities that flew beyond my radar. But I said, I was young and, might I add, narrow minded.

Thankfully, the Internet has grown in leaps and bounds and more and more people like me have access to community-creating tools. I can see that asking these types of questions may not necessarily pull minority groups into the community at large. What do they have to gain from that if their networks are already thriving the way they are?

The answer to this question, then, is still “They are here.” We’ve just got to widen our radars a bit to include them in the conversations we have about them.

As long as we’re not too distracted, it shouldn’t matter. In fact, I learned a few things watching the events of this month unfold.

As superficial as it may seem, the crazy overlap of entertainment and politics is the stuff of American culture.

It’s as if we need to be entertained in order to be engaged, which is fine because at least we’re engaged, right? People can get really serious about the ramifications of Joe Wilson’s outburst, the way race played out at the VMAs, the lack of our overpundits to balance the outrageous (Colbert, SNL, where WERE y’all?). But it comes down to what entertains us, which brings me to the next thing I learned.

If I’m entertained, I’m engaged. Once I’m engaged, I can be educated.

My level of engagement will determine how far I’ll go in being educated by someone else or by myself. Education doesn’t have to take on the student teacher roles. I like the Wikipedia definition of education for this:

Education in its broadest sense is any act or experience that has a formative effect on the mind, character or physical ability of an individual. In its technical sense education is the process by which society deliberately transmits its accumulated knowledge, skills and values from one generation to another.

No wonder Twitter is hot and has been hot for a minute, too. People are being educated like never before. Social media is like the one-two punch. It’s highly entertaining and instantly engaging. Education is a natural consequence.

Serious Issues – health care reform, immigration, education reform et al – could stand a good dose of entertainment.

Please don’t get me twisted; we can’t be all entertainment all the time. Balance is crucial in executing the right effect. But, if we want the American public to get informed, we’ve got to make it engaging. And if we want to make it engaging, we’ve got to make it – say it with me now – entertaining!

I don’t mean entertaining workshops or townhalls; I mean the Entertainment Industry. America is still based on capitalism, and if I’m paying for something you can be sure I’ve assigned it some sort of personal value. I’m invested in it even if I didn’t pay with dollars. Make me invest in something entertaining. Make my peers invest in it too. Create a critical mass and then boom. I’m engaged. I’m letting you educate me and most importantly, I’m educating myself.

Easier said, etc.

According to Meyers-Briggs, I’m a solutions kinda woman. So there are probably a lot of details in here somewhere I missed. And there are probably a lot of logical errors. And someone probably already wrote about this. But I have already seen the entertainment – engagement – education pathway happen with the adoption of T-mobile’s Sidekicks and other mobile devices in the young people population.

By nature, we tend to the path of least resistance. The easier the medium to navigation, the more accessible it becomes, even if it’s not that accurate. For example, we make a range of purchasing choices based on what people we know say. Sure, we could do thorough product research before we buy a pack of gum, a new sweater or that new used car, but our peers have a strong impact on that decision.

All to say what people bemoan as the ADD of this generation is actually not. Media have become ridiculously accessible means by which we receive our education. I like being educated by social networks on and offline.

So here’s looking at you, health care reform. America wants to be entertained. Entertain us.