Category Archives: Culture

The ‘ville

2021 Intro:

I had two wonderful conversations with old and new Charlottesville buds yesterday, four years after terrorists openly invaded the city and UVA grounds. So of course this piece I wrote came up in my “Face Book Memories” this morning. It is striking to see a mutation of the white supremacist movement as it continues its historic reign of terror and mendacity with the anti 1619 Project/Critical Race Theory push at local and state levels. It’s particularly striking to me that the vitriolic response to a more accurate and complete rendering of US history is interpreted as being “unpatriotic”, and in doing so, proving that this is indeed a nation rooted in an ideology of white supremacy.

A. Mebane-Cruz 8/13/21

The reason I had no words for what happened in Charlottesville is because this is completely tragic, but not at all surprising. If you remember from lit, the flaw/seeds are always inherent in the character leading to the ultimate manifestation of the tragedy. People thought a host of folks I knew were “just being negative” or “too angry” when they spoke out against racism in Charlottesville. Some people actually said to me that they didn’t understand my rage, that I should be “used to it” and “ignore it” thus showing me that they only wished to diminish my humanity, to try to make me carry the burden of other people’s evil. Uh uh: my father might have called me “pixilated” but my mother never raised a complete fool! I know when I’m being discriminated against, singlely or intersectionally. So:
People who act shocked and wonder why we don’t share our personal reality when you make it abundantly clear after centuries of the same old same that you are not listening? People who blast and blacklist a guy for respectfully refusing to honor the symbols and songs of national racism? People who blame victims of police brutality for their own deaths? People who label children of colour as “thugs” but bestow innocence on shady, corrupt middle aged white men and refer to them as “kids/children”? Who damned thousands of black/Latino/Native folk to incarceration but now pity and protect white addicts? Who disrespect our bodies, psyches, traditions & histories every single day? I have no patience with you or with those who normalize you.

Whiteness is a political choice, not merely a decrease in melanin. Choosing not to see or change injustices, choosing destructive forms of tribalism/jingoism/ to ignore or negate the realities imposed upon people outside of your group, etc. are choices. Someone is now thinking/saying/writing: “but Black/Native/Latino people do some of those things!” And indeed, some do. But here’s the difference and here’s why we say that racism is a white problem: WE do not have power over your lives. I can’t keep you out of my neighborhood or from voting. I don’t determine your value or standing in society. This country and its multinational corporations are run by white people. Our Constitution, systems- including Race-were constructed by and for white people, most particularly land owning white males. So while not every white person is in that club, aspires to, or can join, whiteness still gives you a leg up over others. In constructing disadvantage for PGM, our racial hierarchy creates advantages for others. Not rocket science, yet millions of advantaged, “I’m not racist/I’m not rich/I never owned slaves” white people  adamantly refuse to connect the dots. Or they do so from their own fear-based frames of reference and assume that we want to destroy them in revenge, so they spout or buy into Nazi, KKK, alt-right beliefs, rhetoric, and actions. Like yesterday in a town where I spent 16 years, with people I still love.

So stop saying “This isn’t America.” Please! This IS the US, always has been, and your selfish adherence to a mythical origin and denial of the genocide, exploitation, and oppression of millions for your own comfort upholds these injustices and perpetuates oppression. It’s the blue pill of a very dangerous, self negating illusion. Unless and until white people -every single one of you- demand that it be otherwise and take hold of their rabid relatives, it will continue, under the radar or in attention getting flames. If people really want 45 out, they wouldn’t be wringing their hands and waiting for 2020. There are legal, Constitutional means for ousting him and his cohort. The electoral college can be dismantled or amended. It doesn’t change because that IS the will of the spineless, willfully ignorant, greedy, stupid, superficial people who support this regime, actively or passively. IMHO if you are not antiracist, antifascist, anti-misogynist, anti-discrimination against LGBT+ then yes, you are complicit. It’s not enough just to be a “nice” person.

And while I’m at it, let me just say that to my knowledge, Black Lives Matter has never dragged anybody behind a car or otherwise killed or maimed anyone. They haven’t burned down houses, shot at people, or terrorized them in any other way. There are no reports of burning Black Power fists on anyone’s lawns, so stop comparing them to the KKK/Alt Right/Nazis or other actually violent terrorist groups. If you have the ability to think you might ask   yourself why you see people demanding justice in the face of violence against their people to be a threat to you. Why do you fear ordinary, unarmed PGM who simply aren’t servile? What are you projecting and how might you get help for this problem? What I’m talking about are Systems of injustice, and unless and until they are dismantled, they will continue to oppress people you say you care about: relatives, neighbors, friends, innocent strangers that your moral codes & ethics tell you to protect and support. Unless you work against injustice and oppression, yes, you are guilty of complicity. Charlottesville is your call to humanity: choose.

Anjana M-Cimg_2788

American African Spirituality in 2017

Mixed feelings after reading the  announcement of a panel for the upcoming Afro-Latino Fest (http://remezcla.com/music/afro-latino-festival-symposium-preview/)

This is just one in a series of recent panels and articles about Diasporic African religions that have been highlighted since media and a more general public have “discovered” symbolic meanings in Beyoncé’s iconic Lemonade video.

I’m glad to see more pan-Africans being educated about the religions, but I’m also seeing very Westernized, capitalist versions being codified in various ways, including the aesthetic representations. It reminds me of what has happened to Native American spiritual traditions entering the mainstream and being co-opted to varying extents.

We survived the horrors and upheavals of the Diaspora and all that it wrought through a painful, necessary secretiveness, and by the creative genius that allowed our Ancestors to preserve and adapt. Yet I can’t help but wonder if the ostensible “freedom” we’re witnessing and experiencing  will destroy essential ways of knowing and being in the world. In a society where the Federal Court recently legalized discrimination against hiring folks with locs (https://www.google.com/amp/www.nbcnews.com/news/nbcblk/amp/u-s-court-rules-dreadlock-ban-during-hiring-process-legal-n652211) and where black folks are incarcerated and killed with impunity by authorities, and where every creative work is colonized and exploited for the benefit of the dominant culture, I find myself questioning the type and quality of Africanisms and resistance that is tolerated or “allowed” to flourish. In my experience, our cultures are tolerated just long enough to turn them to profit in some way, or to be used as evidence against us.

Make no mistake: I don’t question the aims of the sisters and brothers seeking solidarity, community, and a spirituality rooted in our ancestral cultures and it makes my heart sing to hear the names of the Orishas spoken without the long needed camouflage of Christian saints. And yet I’m wary…Our long history here leaves me feeling that our beautiful, brave, and uncloaked young ones are standing in the crosshairs of racist capitalism in a new, albeit familiar way. Are they, in a manner of speaking, the new Ghost Shirt dancers, empowered and empowering, just moments before their deaths? My pessimism has nought to do with those true souls and everything to do with too many decades/centuries of observing The Others (#ThoseWhoDoNotLoveUs) And no, my pessimism doesn’t cool my fervent belief in Resistance. It does, at its best, make me want to entreat us to carefully consider what we’re creating for the generations and take particular care in weighing what we choose to ignore or leave behind.

But I guess my less agnostic beloveds would  hush their Aunty and say  that as always, this is the crossroads where Olofi, Elegua,  and the Potencias will manifest their will…

Let us listen; we shall see

Daughters: It don’t have to be true to be real.

MomMozella Hatwood 12/31/06

I have just figured it out: for all women raised by southern women-Black, White, Native- it doesn’t matter- there’s a common denominator, a way of dealing and not dealing with stress that seems to be passed on from generation to generation. The thread of a very particular insanity flows through us although I’m unsure as to whether or not it’s in the blood, the bone, or the brain.

We seem all, in some way that’s not always obvious, to be playing to a “theme.” Yes, any good shrink will tell you that all humans are playing out certain archetypes and that the archetype has a story or stories and that in the course of our lives, we might play out several such stories, but there’s generally an overriding “type”that fits. Yet the southern version is a bit different. It’s more immediate and both less and more mysterious than the eternal struggle between the ego and the id. We write books and plays, choreograph and perform dances, skits, and dramas, on and off the stage. We sing, we decorate, we fashion our lives to support the theme we’ve been given and we pay homage, more consciously than most, to ancestors we may or may not venerate.

We “daughters of the dust” know better, and yet we still believe. That’s the essential difference and I cannot account for it other than to say that we’re taught by mothers-mouth to ear- who themselves excelled to varying degrees, in creatively draping the windows to suit the motifs  of their own lives. We are the best of good girls and we bring being bad to high art. We seem more often than not, to know who our audience is (the family, of course) and we seem to accept the boundaries on some level even when we dance on stages ten thousand miles away. We will dazzle and thrill you, charm the whiskers off a cat, go all “Bette Davis ” on you if need be, invoke the wrath in a glance, and we do all that we do wrapped in a cloak not of invincibility, but of right(eous)ness. We may be crippled and crazy and we may have made a complete mess of our lives and the lives of those around us, but in our hearts, we know that we do know what’s right and the proper order of things, and that if we can only “get ourselves straight/harness our resources/muster our strengths/ rest awhile/gather our wits/regroup/have a lie down/ a cup of tea-coffee-pick-me-up or just a finger of Jim Beam or a drop of whiskey or rye or a glass of sherry, nice ripe wine, grandmother’s ‘medicine’, a simple ‘cokecola’, or ‘that nice chamomile/peppermint/sassafras tea’, then We-the true women among women- can still somehow make it all work out!

I no longer care to delude myself that this is not true. It’s what we believe and it was passed onto us in some mysterious way, from our adored and benighted mothers, no matter what our relationship to them might be. There is great humor in this, often intended, frequently unamusing, and certainly not jokey.  I’m not sure how this works and why it’s different than the relationship that all other daughters have with their own crazy mothers, I just know that it is, and maybe that’s the only real point. My upbringing tells me so it must be true. Hah.