The House I Live In.

I put this trailer up on my twitter page a couple of weeks ago, but I thought I would also share it here. Check it out:



I think the saddest part for me was then the little boy was crying for his mother. I know this is cliche, but it is true that once you have children, things like that affect you in a way that they did not when you didn't have kids.

Also, I think it's weird that in Nancy Reagan's Just Say No campaign the main color was green. But green is typically associated with the word Yes, not the word No. It's like a Jedi mind trick.

Now, I know that it is easy to see trailers or movies like this and leave feeling like the problem is too big and there is nothing that I can do about it. But there are things that we as individual citizens can do try to change things.

There are a number of ballot initiatives in states across the country this year that have to do with decriminalizing/regulating certain drugs. Regardless of your own views about drug use, I think it is reasonable to say that the criminal justice system is not the best avenue for dealing with the problem of drug abuse. The more that individual states can relax their laws regarding illegal drugs, the more compelling the argument becomes that a new federal strategy is needed. So if you live in a state with a drug decriminalization issue on the ballot this year, I urge you to become more informed about the measure, and to look at it from the wider lens of The War on Drugs.

If you would like to see when The House I Live In is playing at a theater near you, visit thehouseilivein.org.

Questions? Comments? Leave them for me below.

Who owns the fisheries?

Hi y'all.

It's been a minute. I haven't been posting, and unlike most times when I haven't been posting, I also haven't been reading other blogs. So if I'm a regular commenter on your blog, don't worry. Your content didn't suddenly get super boring.

Today, I wanted to talk about an example from popular culture that I think is a good example of structural racism. Structural classism could probably apply too.

Like this previous post, the idea for today's post came to me as I was watching an episode of CBS Sunday Morning . Seriously, why I haven't I been watching that show my whole life? I really like it.

The segment in question was a profile on The Gregory Brothers. Even if that name doesn't sound familiar, it is likely that you have seen some of their work. This family takes news clips and then autotunes them and turns them into songs. They're really big on youtube. I was gonna put up one of their videos right now, but I think it would be better to first put up a news clip, so you can see the raw materials that they're working with:



Okay and now here's the song that they made:



Now here is the point in the post where someone is thinking, "Oh, I know what is going to happen next. Myblackfriend is going to tell us all about the evil white people and how bad they are for exploiting the black man from the projects."

WRONG.

Now, I'll admit I did think that was the direction we were going when I first started watching the segment on Sunday Morning. But then I heard the brothers say that they split the proceeds of all their song downloads with the person featured. I think that is honorable. Especially because there is probably a way that the siblings could have used some legal maneuvering to get out of paying the subjects of the videos anything. And it appears to be something that they really want viewers to know, because did you see how they made it very clear in the second video above?

So, I have to say I don't have a problem with them making money off the colorful characters from news broadcasts, primarily because they are splitting the profits 50/50.

However...

remember in this post when I said that black people own 1% of the wealth in the United States, which is the exact same percentage they owned at the end of The Civil War, 140 someodd years ago? The Gregory Brothers and Antoine Dodson are an illustration of one of the reasons that that is the case.

You see, The Gregory Brothers don't have this one song download that they're making money off of, they have hundreds of millions of views of their videos on youtube. They have an app for your phone that will autotune whatever you say. They also tour, and sell Gregory Siblings merchandise. They are working on a pilot for a show on Comedy Central. Something tells me they are not splitting the profits from all of these other revenue streams with anyone but people whose last name is Gregory.

So Antoine gets a nice chunk of change for being funny on the news, and the siblings get even nicer, even larger chunks of change for coming up with the whole idea.

Which leads me to my next point--how did they come up with this idea anyway? Realize the next paragraph is pure speculation. But if I can't speculate and put out potentially incorrect information on the internet--where else am I supposed to do it?

So my theory is that the brothers have been interested in computers and audio stuff for awhile, let's say starting in middle school. They had parents that had the means and/or went to schools that had the facilities to allow them to cultivate their talents. And since public schools are financed primarily by property taxes, people who live in housing owned by the government (like Antoine,) probably don't have schools with nice A/V departments. So people like Antoine aren't thinking "Hey, I'm gonna mess around with this soundboard, and 15 years from now I am going to think of something that's going to make me and my brothers a lot of money!"

I just want to be clear that I am not hating on The Gregory Brothers. They had an idea, and since they live in this great country that is the United States, they were
able to turn that idea into money.

What I am saying is that there were structures in place that made it much more likely that they would be the ones making the video and Antoine would be the one in the video, instead of the other way around.

Which leads me to the title of this post. You know that saying about give a man a fish vs. teach a man to fish? What happened in this situation?

I personally think it's somewhere in the middle. They didn't give Antoine a fish, because he did do something. But I don't think they taught him how to fish either, because the brothers are in the process of building an empire that Antoine is not a part of. I mean, Antoine wasn't the one being interviewed on CBS Sunday Morning.

I hope that Antoine is able to take the fame and money that he receives from the song and parlay it into financial security and for him and his family. And I also hope that we as a society can take a closer look at situations like this one, and figure out a way that generations from now we won't have a really good idea of who's playing what role based on the color of their skin.

There are a lot of other questions that can be discussed (this whole thing started because of an attempted rape--what's funny about that? Does Antoine make black people look bad because he's keepin' it real? The newsclip has way more views than the song--who's making money off of that?) But I am going to end it here.

As always, I would love to hear your thoughts. So don't be shy; leave me a comment.

Five things every freedom fighter should know.

Yesterday, I started a post about the whole Chick-Fil-A sitchination. However, I quickly realized that I had so many thoughts in my head, that even my beloved bullet points wouldn't help me get them organized.

Then, the idea for this post came to me. Immediately, it was already appearing to flow better while it was still in my brain. So, I'm gonna go with the brain flow.

Let me first talk about the term freedom fighter. I like the alliteration, but I don't necessarily like the imagery. Freedom fighter brings to mind bandanas around the bottom half of the face and molotov cocktails. I'm not really a fan of either of those things for myself. The term freedom seeker would work, but then we lose the fuh fuh. So we'll just stick with the original.

Now the question becomes, freedom from/to what?

Well, when I think of freedom, I think primarily of freedom from the shackles in our minds that are holding us back. All the messages that we get about what we are, what we aren't, what we can be, and what we can't be. As Oprah would say, the things that are keeping us from being our best selves.

It's like, the more I read about and think about, and do things related to issues of race and inequality, the more I realize that it really does all start in our minds. So these tips are for anyone who is also interested in moving beyond racism and all the other -isms, and creating positive change in the world.

#1) be honest with yourself and others.

I will be the first to admit that I struggle with and perpetuate racism, sexism, homophobia, ableism, heightism, lookism, sizeism, classism, speciesism, ageism, xenophobia, transphobia, and any other -ism or -phobia that I forgot about, or have yet to hear about. If the premise is that I make snap judgments about people (and animals) and treat them better or worse as a result--then the answer is Yep, that's true.

The reason that it is important for me to admit this is because the less time that I waste trying to claim that I don't hold these biased attitudes, the more time I can spend examining said attitudes, and doing things to help lessen the frequency of the thoughts that come from the attitudes, which will eventually lead to decreased frequency of biased actions.

myblackfriend, did you just say you were a homophobe? I thought you liked gay people!

I do like gay people (at least most of the ones I've met so far.) And, you'll notice I didn't say I was a homophobe, I said I perpetuate homophobia through my thoughts and behaviors. When we apply labels like homophobe or racist, it's like we are trying to sum up a person's entire identity in one very hate-charged word. No one can be defined so completely so succinctly.

And because those words (and all the other words in the list above,) are things that very few people want associated with them, people will spend a lot of time defending themselves against such labels, instead of just being open to learning how to do things differently. But if we make a much more specific statement, we can accept it as true and move on. I am not completely defined by those thoughts and behaviors, they are just one aspect of my personality. This leads nicely to point my next point...

#2) No one is perfect, including you. And that's ok.

There used to be a thing going around on Facebook: 25 random things about me. Remember that? Boy that was fun. If any of my facebook friends wants to start that up again, that'd be cool; I really liked learning new things about you.

Anyhoo, one of the random facts I wrote when I did it was,

I believe there are two kinds of people in this world: good people, and good people who are covered up with varying layers of bad.

I believed that at the time, but now I would change it to this:

I believe there is one kind of people in this world: good people covered up by varying layers of bad.

No one is perfect. There was one Guy that was supposedly perfect, and his name was Jesus. But a lot of people don't even believe in Him. And even if you do, he wasn't just a Guy, he was the son of God. You're not a Guy, you're just a guy (or gal.) So remember that the next time you screw up and say something racist, or have a snarky thought about an overweight person. It happens. Why? Because you're not Jesus.

The decision then becomes: What are you gonna do about it? You can hold yourself up to some unrealistic expectation that you clearly haven't met and then waste time rationalizing and minimizing to hold onto a false view of yourself, or you can say, "I screwed up and next time, I will do better. Because it is important to me to do better." Then keep it movin'.

#3) Help the biases that you have about other people help you to understand the biases that other people have about you.

Since you've already accepted your biases (see #1,) you can now start to really examine them, which is kind of exciting.

Where did these biases come from?
When did they start?
What's going on with me right before I think/do something that perpetuates an -ism? How do I feel as I'm doing it? Afterwards?

I'll answer the first question to help illustrate my point.

This is the first instance that I can remember of being exposed to gay people in a movie:

Biloxi Blues. It's a movie about some guys in the military. There is a scene where the the main character goes into the latrine and comes across two guys doing something--it all happens very fast, so the viewer is not sure what exactly. But they are discovered, and one of the guys starts to leave quickly through the bathroom window. I was a young kid when this movie came out, so I asked an adult that was with me what happened. The adult told me that the two guys were gay, and that was the end of the conversation. So the connection in my mind was made that gay= do secret things in the bathroom and run away through the window when someone else comes in. And get kicked out of the military. To my young military brat mind, I knew that you only got kicked out of the military for doing very bad things.

Now for the first time I was exposed to transgendered/cross-dressing character: Silence of the Lambs.

Spoiler Alert: Don't read the rest of this paragraph if you don't want the whole plot of the movie given away. In Silence of the Lambs, the killer is a transgendered person or a cross dresser (I don't believe they clarify which,) who is killing women so he can make a suit out of their skin. So in my mind transgendered = serial killer.


So in my young mind transgendered = good person covered up by lots and lots and lots and lots of layers of bad.


This is at least part of the explanation of where my bias against people who don't fit neatly into the heterosexual box comes from. If I hadn't made the choice to see movies like Transamerica, or Brokeback Mountain, or Pariah--the two examples above would hold a much bigger space in my brain.

Making the conscious decision to see the movies with the more positive messages contribute to me to seeing movies like The Hangover as an adult and say, "Hey that gay slur was not cool, and didn't add much to the plot. What was the point of putting it in there?" It is also worth noting that the blockbuster hit of the Summer of 2009 will give some kid 20 years from now the opportunity to write on his blog, "My first exposure to homophobia on the big screen was when I saw The Hangover..."

So a lot of my bias came when I was a young impressionable child, consuming extremely popular media put out by extremely reputable corporations. So when I see someone who has racist behavior, it is not unreasonable to assume that perhaps that at least part of where their bias towards me comes from similar sources.

Since I am not an evil, vile person, he/she is probably not an evil/vile person either. This is what helps me to have reasonable conversations with people (on this blog and in person,) instead of yelling at them, calling them names, and pulling their hair. This does not lead me well into thing #4.

#4) Stop fighting with other people who are in the struggle.

Please stop comparing your struggle to other struggles, trying to prove why yours is just as/more valid than another one. When I hear "________ is the last socially acceptable prejudice." I have to make the conscious decision not to roll my eyes. (forgive me, but it is true.)

The reality is that they are all still socially acceptable prejudices; that is why they all still exist. It doesn't matter if you were born that way, or choose to be that way, it doesn't matter how you were dressed, it doesn't matter whose ancestors had it worse. Time spent trying to one-up each other or negate certain groups--that is time that could be spent on actually doing the work of making things better.

you can read more on my thoughts on #4 here and here. That leads to a pretty good segue to #5


#5) We are all in the struggle.

Some of us don't even know it, and are actually doing things that make the struggle worse. But as my white friend 5280 tech so eloquently said on this post,

I think a lot of white people have these moments where they wish they were black (I know I have,) so they could not always be seen as the over dog and the cause for other peoples' problems. It seems nice to think about being part of a struggle and taking down the system. If I am being honest with myself I could probably boil these thoughts of struggle down to "I wish I had an excuse for all this shit going on in my life.

I know from secondhand experience that being a straight, white, male (rich or otherwise,) is not easy.

Just because someone else appears to have it worse than me, that doesn't mean that I don't have the right to feel my own pain. At the same time, it doesn't mean that I can't hold myself or others accountable, and it doesn't give the the right to try to inflict pain on others in a misguided and ineffective attempt to try and feel better about myself.


But it does give me the right to say, "This sucks. And it doesn't just suck because of me. Sure, I've screwed up (see #2,) but there are other factors at play also."

We all need to get in touch with our own pain. We need to look at those "other factors" that we didn't control but that have hurt us. Examining our own struggle will help us to move through it. It will help us to see the struggle in others. It will help us to have compassion.It will help us to see the difference between people who know they are in the struggle and those who don't. It will help guide us to what to do next, and figure out what numbers 6 through infinity are on this list.

But most importantly it will help us to Get Free.

As always, I am interested to hear what you think. Do you have #6 (or 7 and 8) to add? If you do, or if you have anything else to share, leave me a comment.

A little known -ism.

I was going to call this post, An -ism you've probably never heard of, but I have mentioned it here.

It is also true that you look at and read other things besides this blog, and so it is possible that you learned about it somewhere else. It's helpful for me to remember that my readers aren't as fascinated with my blog as I am. You're not sitting in front of your computers frantically hitting refresh yelling, "WHEN IS MYBLACKFRIENDSAYS.COM GOING TO PUT UP ANOTHER POST??!!?!"

Well, maybe you are--but you shouldn't be.

Ok, on to the video. It is pretty self-explanatory, so just go ahead and watch it below. And resist the temptation to skip over it and keep reading, because it is a really good video that you should watch. And you know I wouldn't say that if it weren't true.



I originally saw this video on this blog. The first time I saw it, I almost started to cry. I share that with you not to influence your perception of my level of commitment to the cause, but in the hopes that since I shared my reaction, you might be more willing to share yours.


Just a couple more things. One, I think about the fact that if these tweeters were talking about almost any other group of people, there would be outrage. That is not to say that someone couldn't put together a video of a bunch of derogatory tweets about black people or gay people or intellectually disabled people or overweight people. But I think even if you did find a bunch of tweets like that, such a large portion of the tweets would not be related to said targeted group killing themselves or ceasing to exist.

On a related (and probably more important) note, if the average person was following a tweeter who said something racist or homophobic etc. they might be more taken aback/likely to say something than if you saw a tweet talking about how the tweeter doesn't like short guys. It's like, heightism is way more ingrained in our culture. I mean, I have a degree in this stuff and I had never even heard the word heightism before a couple of months ago. When I type it, my computer gives me the red squiggly line under it that tells me it is a word that it doesn't recognize. It doesn't do that when I type racism. Or homophobia.

Which leads me to my final point. The only reason that my computer recognizes the words racism and homophobia is because some people a long time ago that had to deal with racism and homophobia were like, "You know what? This is a bunch of bullmess. I'm tired of this and even more tired of being told that any problems I have to deal with because of this are my problems. These are your problems too, you racist/homophobic dumbass."

[I'm sorry for the salty language, but my people from a long time ago were really mad.]

Similarly, the only reason I heard this word and saw this video is because the guy who runs that blog decided to start a blog to tell people more about heightism. Once again , it all comes back to people taking action to try and help create the world they want to see. It really is that simple (and that hard.)

So, what was your reaction to the video? What do you think about heightism? How have you perpetuated it? Have you ever experienced it yourself? I'd love to hear your answers to these questions or anything else you might like to share in the comments section.

Made in America.

Here's a commercial that I've wanted to post about for awhile. It's promoting the website ancestry.com. The sound quality is not the greatest, because for some reason ancestry.com doesn't have this commerical on their official youtube channel. So this is just a video of someone recording the commerical off of their tv.




If you couldn't hear it, the man is saying how he was "afraid" of what he might find on the website, yet turned out to be pleasantly surprised that his relative, "was born a slave, but died a businessman."

Now, I have written before about how I feel about the word "but".

What if this guy's great-grandfather had been born a slave and died a slave? He makes it seem like the fact that his ancestor became a businessman is some sort of saving grace. Which begs the question: is there supposed to be some shame associated with being the descendant of slaves?

On a semi-tangent, one of my favorite quotes as a teenager was, It is better to die on your feet, than to live on your knees. I first heard it in a Star Trek movie. I'm not sure why I liked the quote, probably because it was all about being courageous and standing up for yourself, both things I like to try to do my own life. However, I think on some level that even at that young age, I was equating it with the black struggle for freedom.

Then I read this really thought provoking book called Sellout: The Politics of Racial Betrayal. In it, Randall Kennedy makes a really worthwhile argument about the idea of rebellion and why some blacks might have chosen not to participate, or even to inform white slave owners about plans for uprisings.

Kennedy points out that those people, (that many would call sellouts,) could have been motivated by the fact that slave uprisings were rarely successful, and often resulted in many other slaves that weren't actively participating in the uprising being severely punished. So the informant would tell in an attempt to serve what he/she saw as the greater good.

I am not saying whether that is the right or wrong way to look at the situation, just that I can understand that point of view. I suppose I am also saying that in this instance, there isn't necessarily a right or wrong side of the issue--just a lot of murky, unpleasant shades of grey.

So if we go back to my quote, we should remember that black people weren't freed from slavery because of some uprising. They were set free because of the proclamation of a white vampire hunter.

Addtitonally, if one of my ancestors had decided to die on his/her feet instead of live as a slave, I wouldn't be sitting here on the world's most comfortable couch writing this blog post--because I wouldn't exist.

As I wrote that last sentence, I started to get emotional thinking about my ancestors, whoever they might have been. I just want them to know that I appreciate what they went through, whether they died as slaves, or businessmen, or maids, or warriors, or nurses, or alcoholics, or whatever. They were all people trying to make the best out of their lives, with the resources they had available to them. And there is honor in that.

And now it's question time, dear readers...

What do you know (or not know) about your own family history? Where did you learn this information?
How do you think you would feel if you knew you descended from slaves?
How do you think you would feel if you knew you had descended from slave owners?
What (if anything,) do we learn about ourselves when we learn about our distant relatives?

Feel free to answer these questions, or tell me anything else you'd like to share by leaving me a comment.