Nicki Minaj and Ferguson

Most writers on this site have a few social networking sites they call home, though the amount of time and energy they dedicate to each one varies from person to person, according to their interests.  Like most people in my generation, I have a Facebook account, but Facebook is not a social networking site I'd call "home," because I can't really be myself there.

The people on my Facebook, while they are friends or people I otherwise want to keep in contact with, they are not like me in many significant ways, even though we might share interests.  What I care about, and what matters to me is not the same as what they care about, and what is important to them.  In general, this is fine, and I leave them alone, but I am not really content or myself there.

This would be less important if I had an offline social network to rely on when trying times happened, one I could realistically expect to bolster and support me, to grab me by the metaphorical arm to point out something terrible, or something unexpected and fantastic.  Being an introvert with anxiety, and a poor one at that, I don't really have that.  So I rely heavily on the internet.

My "home" networking site is Tumblr, because on Tumblr, I've been able to craft a safe space for myself and my numerous identities.  I've been able to create an environment where it is always assumed that the issues I care most for are important, and then it moves from there, rather than the discussions on Facebook of "Is this issue even important at all?"

It was absolutely devastating to me when, a year ago, I got locked out of my account by a hacker, and was, for some reason, unable to receive password reset emails.  I tried everything I could to restore my social network, even making a new account, and none of it worked.  I simply could not get my account back.  I couldn't even create a new one.  The only thing that really saved me, at the time, was the fact that I was working full time, so even though the social interaction I was getting wasn't enough, it was adequate to sustain me.

Two weeks ago, I made another attempt to get into Tumblr, get my password reset, because I didn't want to go to another site and try to recreate my entire social network, with everything I wanted and needed in it.  I was almost brought to tears when I was able to reopen my account.  I had my social support network back, as well as my source of news and information.

I got a lot about Ferguson, as I'd filled my circles with people who would care about Ferguson.  Because I'd been working on making my Facebook account a bearable place to be, I'd heard about many of the things that I saw, but there was plenty I hadn't, and I sucked that information in like the sponge I am, basked in people who were just as fed up about tone policing and derailing CNN videos as I was.

But, to my shame, I am forced to admit that the thing that I saw, upon my return to Tumblr, that made me angriest was not the very important things happening in Ferguson.  To be honest, this article was originally going to be about a disrespectful interview of Nicki Minaj conducted by James Franco, that interview's connection to "pranks in the hood" type videos where white men insult black ones and then yell that it's a prank when those black men get angry, and I will write about that later in this article, but I realized, as I wrote, that I had things to say about Ferguson, and my experiences of it.

There is a revolution happening there that I can only be peripherally a part of, which frustrates me more than I know how to express.

Ferguson will go down in my generation's history along with Occupy Wall Street and  9/11, and it will go down in black history along with Martin Luther King, The March on Washington, the Black Panthers, Jim Crow, and many other events I haven't bothered to mention, or have simply never heard of.

As I mentioned, I'm poor right now, so I can't go down to Ferguson to help those people, to be part of the civil unrest and revolution that makes America look like Greece did some time ago.  I can't donate money, because I have none, though I can contribute my time, learn what's happening, and pass that information on.

Due to the shaming of internet activism, I feel like I'm not doing enough with my work, writing articles and reblogging the newest information about what's happening, and more than that, I am ashamed for being grateful that I don't have to go through what the protesters in Ferguson are going through.  Noone is macing me in the face or menacing my friends, brothers, or cousins.  I am safe in the northern United States, far from the Missouri police, far from where school has been disrupted and lives ruined and people arrested, over and over again.

I want to feel ashamed of myself, because a very rich and successful rapper whom I look up to being disrespected affects me more deeply than unarmed people being shot and tear gassed by police officers, but I know myself and racism well enough to understand that they are connected parts of the same problem, that the events of Ferguson, and this trend I'm noticing of white men insulting and disrespecting black people as a "joke," are symptoms of the same illness that will not, can not be cured until our society is ripped up from the roots and properly replanted.

I also know that there is nothing wrong with how I feel about Ferguson, versus how I feel about Nicki Minaj and "pranks in the hood."  There are no words I know to describe how I feel about Ferguson, because even though it matters to me, it is, in some ways, distant, both geographically and event-wise, as I've been fortunate enough that my brother is white-passing, most of the time, and has never been attacked by the police, as far as I know.

I want Ferguson to spark a national revolution, but I feel an attendant sick certainty that, like Occupy Wall Street and 9/11, the fervor will die out, the government, through the media, will find a way to divert our attention, keep progress from being made, and things will get worse, rather than going back to what they were, so I honestly don't want to emotionally overinvest in this, because our inevitable defeat will deal an even more crushing blow to my already-trampled spirit.

I know that such hopelessness contributes to where we are now, but the events of Ferguson are simply not close enough to me to work up the angered fervor that I would need to find out what more I could do, besides what I already am, unlike Nicki Minaj and "pranks in the hood."

I look up to Nicki because she's a well-known black woman performing, and she does femininity the way I do, with brightly-colored hair, beautiful dresses, even wearing one outfit I dreamed of having made for myself in some hypothetical future where I could afford to have outfits made for me.  I mean no disrespect to Beyonce, who came up the way she knew how to make it work, or Oprah, Janelle Monae, Lauryn Hill, those women are all incredible bastions of themselves, black womanhood, idols to be looked up to and admired for their own work.

But Nicki Minaj is black and aggressively feminine in the middle of a bunch of rappers.  I have no problem with strong black women in the media, Beyonce and Oprah being fierce, Janelle Monae with her androgynous deconstruction of what a black female singer can look like, Lauryn Hill with her eclectic underground look, those are important.  But so are feminine black female performers, because they simply don't exist in our media.

There is a struggle, as a black woman, a dicing up of priorities that tries to force us to be black people, who happen to be women, or women, who happen to be black, completely ignoring the fact that there is an experience in this country unique to being black AND a woman that is completely separate from being black OR a woman.

Nicki Minaj is a conscious rejection of that dichotomy, a successful black woman who is, for lack of a better word, girly.  She wears cutely-curled, brightly-colored wigs while informing listeners that she is their leader and anyone who isn't a believer can suck a dick.  She raps for Willow Smith's Fireball in a dress made of stuffed animals, and she leads pink-haired troops to battle in her own video.

So to watch James Franco ask her if her ass is natural, to watch him hound her about her ass in a mockery of an interview for a prank that was meant to somehow be a movie tie-in?  It's unbearable for me, and closer to my heart, because the only girly black woman visible in the media, one who really did work her way up from the bottom on skill and determination, deserves better than to be treated like that, especially keeping in mind the fact that it's not just a white man on TV doing this to her, it's white men all over doing this to black people throughout this country.

The logic that lets someone think that mocking a person for a prank is not only fine, but a great thing to do, is the same kind of dehumanizing logic that lets someone think a black man deserved to be shot and killed by a cop, left to rot in the street for hours to be mocked by his murderers while his family watched, all because he stole $50 worth of cigars, and that sort of logic must be eradicated from our society before we can productively move forward.

White Allies

I had the racism argument a few weeks back. You know what I'm talking about. The one that happens when black folks think they can hang out with groups of white people. It always seems to start with some white person, usually one who's younger than me, saying something that I know is racist. Every now and again, it's the other black person in the room.

Sometimes it's the second or third time they've said something like this since I've met them, usually it's the second or third time that day, or they're the second or third person I've heard say something like it that day, and I'm just tired of hearing it in that space.

Frequently, I already don't like them, so I know in advance that I won't care if they never speak to me again, but just as often, it's just so blatant to me, even though it might not be to the other white folks in the group, that risking the friendship is worth not having that said in my hearing. I can't control what people say when they're not around me, but I do my best to not care, as long as it's not said around me, just because even if they don't think about it anywhere else, they're thinking about it with me.

Either way, I have take a deep breath because ok, it's time to say something. I never want to, because I always know how the argument's going to go, and it's never anywhere good, but I can't let it slide, because it will stick in my craw and ruin my time in this group. And that's assuming the argument doesn't go badly enough that I find myself completely sick of these people and feel that I have to leave what is suddenly an unsafe space for me to be in.

Then, I usually take half a second to look around the room, see who else is around, and usually, there is only one other black person in the room, and I can generally be guaranteed they won't be helpful to me in the coming argument. Even though it's incredibly frustrating, I understand why they behave the way they do.

I begin this argument knowing that I can lose friends, or even entire groups of people for speaking up, and not everyone is comfortable doing that. More than that, I begin this argument challenging everything I, and the other black people in the room, have been taught by the news, billboards, commercials, television shows and saying that we deserve to be noticed and appreciated.

By challenging what's being said, I am saying that I have a right to not only contest the premise of the conversation, but the person saying it. I am saying that I have a right to exist and take up space in the group I am in. I am saying that I will demand more than the “honor” of existing in a tiny corner of white spaces, that I will demand equal space for myself and, by the law of racism that refuses to take me as an individual and forces me to be part of a unit, for blackness as well.

And that's difficult to deal with, especially for black people who understand that my actions will reflect on them, while simultaneously hoping that by setting me away from them, by either intense argument or half-hearted protest, they can keep exactly that from happening. It's difficult for them to see me drawing attention to myself and my differences, when all they can do is hope they will go unnoticed long enough to reap the better crumbs of overflow, when they get the constant message beaten into them that they will be given more for protesting less.

I can't really fault them for it, even though I might want to, especially after spending half an hour arguing someone down over semantics only to realize that I've not only forgotten where I was before I got interrupted, but that the person I was originally arguing with has quietly excused themselves from the space, and didn't hear the last five things I said.

I think I could honestly deal with having the same arguments with white people, over and over again, repeatedly ostracizing myself and losing friends, if I knew I had someone in my corner, or, at the very least, if I didn't have to worry about how other black people would make the argument more difficult for me.

But to be honest, this isn't about black people upholding their own oppression, it's about the fact that I had the racism argument a few weeks back, and not like I've ever had it before. It's about how different it was, how refreshing and relieving it was to have the departure from the usual argument.

For background, I am part of a Homestuck group chat, on Skype and on a Homestuck-specific site called MSPARP. I'm unemployed, so I don't really have anything better to do with my time right now. I've voice- and video-chatted with these folks before, so I knew I was in a room full of white folks, with one other black gal. This was where I had the argument.

Before the argument, I was having a Homestuck-specific argument with this one white guy. For the Homestucks reading this, the point of contention was "Did Vriska help Tavros?" He fell on the side of "Vriska wasn't trying to help Tavros, but Tavros needed to learn the things he did to survive Sburb," I fell on the side of "Just because Tavros learned from Vriska's abuse, it doesn't mean she helped him, as helping implies that she was not abusing him." He eventually stopped arguing against my points, so I'm chalking that one as a win for me, but that conversation is one for another day.

So we're coming out of that argument, both of us shaky from getting so emotional, and I was talking him down, because I think he'd rarely ever been so emotionally invested in an online conversation that it got his adrenaline going, whereas I've done this before, on multiple occasions. Somebody said something that registered to me as something I couldn't let pass, though I can't remember what it was now. It might have been about Ferguson, but I am honestly not certain at this point.

What I am sure of was that I had to say something, and I didn't like this person, so I was ok with the thought of them not talking to me anymore. I typed up my response, and threw it out into the conversation, receiving one of the stock answers I'm accustomed to getting from every white person, but from another person joining the argument, at which point, I wearily typed up a counter, mentally preparing myself to leave this group if other people joined in against me, as it was already two against one. Then I realized I wasn't the only one who'd said what I'd said. And then I realized who said it.

The white guy said almost the exact same thing as me, at the exact same time.

I'm sure you can imagine how shocked I was, that this white guy I'd just been arguing with was saying the same things as me. And he was a teenager! I'm 25, and he was a teenager! I was suitably stunned, because white male teenagers tend to be worse about handling racism than white male adults. He kept going in the same vein, and I was so relieved, I truly don't even have words for it. I felt like a weight had been lifted from my shoulders, like I didn't have to risk losing my place in this group by saying "That is problematic, and I don't want it around me."

I know vanishingly few white people who I can trust to listen to me when I say "This is problematic, and here is why." He is the first and only white person I have ever met who I felt could help me carry the conversation, who I felt knew what the problem was, why it was a problem, and how to talk about the problem without minimizing my voice and my presence.

And when I was finishing up the conversation by griping to a white girl in the group about how no one listens to black people, especially black women, arguing our own case, because we must be trying to bring race into it, or something along those lines, but white men get lauded for it, he went "Ohshit, I'm sorry, did I make it seem like I was trying to win awards for fighting with you?"

He hadn't, amazingly. I let him know he hadn't, and that I was just making a point. But just the fact that he heard a criticism that could have been directed at him, and checked in, asked if he had done it or not? Just the fact that he didn't brag that he hadn't done such a thing or cry out that it wasn't his fault, that things just went that way? It was so novel, and such a relief. It made me trust him more than I have ever trusted another man, before especially a white one.

I've gotten to the point that I ask white people what they know about critical race theory before I even have a discussion about race with them, so I know if they even understand the basic premises I am working from. Very few know about it, and even fewer are willing to hear me when I say it is actually true. So the support was an incredibly unexpected, amazing relief. It felt so good to feel like I wasn't shouting into the white supremacy alone, that I had help, at least for that conversation, in that group.

My original intent was to direct this to black people, to say "This can happen, and it's awesome," but unsurprisingly, I realize that my audience must be white people. Any black person who's experienced this already knows what it feels like, and any black person who has never experienced it can never understand until they do.

So to white allies speaking up about racism: Educate yourself, and speak up when you've learned how to speak on topics that come up, especially in spaces with very few people of color in them. That goes double for when another white person is arguing with a person of color in a space that is mostly white, because that person of color has already fought an uphill battle to open their mouth. Even though it's nice to have another person of color speaking with us, the tragic but true fact is that we all know white people will listen better and longer to another white person saying the same things we are.

Also posted on Feminspire.